death_date death_place birth_place citizenship notableworks birth_date period genre image article_title name alma_mater
20 december 1998 hawaii near regina , saskatchewan canadian trees british columbia , shrubs , and flowers to know in 1915 1950 - 1997 natural history cplyons.jpg c. p. lyons
 c. p. lyons university of british columbia
c. p. lyons

chester peter `` chess '' lyons -lrb- 1915 - december 20 , 1998 -rrb- was a canadian outdoorsman and natural historian .
the author of several books on the flora and landscape of the pacific northwest , lyons is best known for his popular and widely cited botanical field guides .
lyons grew up in the okanagan valley of british columbia and in 1938 became a forestry engineer at a time when the parks branch was part of the b.c. forest service .
lyons designed many trails , campgrounds and picnic sites for the early provincial parks .
in 1940 , six months after wells gray provincial park was created , he was assigned by the minister of lands , arthur wellesley gray , to explore and map the area .
the park boundaries had been arbitrarily drawn around the drainage basin of the clearwater river and few people knew what had been included in this huge new park .
his four-month expedition produced the first maps of the new park and he established about a quarter of its current place names , all carefully researched to remember settlers , prospectors , explorers , forest rangers , and other people who had lived and worked in the clearwater valley .
after his wells gray park survey , lyons headed similar exploratory expeditions into tweedsmuir and manning provincial parks .
he was also responsible for negotiations with land owners to secure the original barkerville historic site and he acquired many artifacts that have brought realism to this popular heritage site .
he persuaded the summerland agricultural research station to part with some federal land along okanagan lake which became the popular parks of sun-oka beach , pyramid , kickininee , and soorimpt .
british columbia travellers in the 1960s and 1970s remember the `` garbage gobblers '' at many viewpoints ; lyons designed these concrete green and yellow figures with big white teeth and a sign `` please feed me '' .
he also planned the numerous stop of interest signs which were 50-word snippets of information along the province 's highways .
starting in the late 1960s , lyons became a well-known outdoors photographer with frequent appearances on the cbc nature show , `` klahanie '' .
as a film lecturer for the national audubon society and the world around us travel series , he brought british columbia to audiences in many north american cities .
he wrote several books -lrb- see bibliography -rrb- and is probably best known for `` trees , shrubs and flowers to know in british columbia '' , plus several other popular field guides on the plants of british columbia and washington state .
these books have appeared in many revised editions since 1952 and have been used by many outdoors people , tourists , and natural history students and professionals .
