It would be tedious and inappropriate to describe all the meetings of the Canadian Society of Plant Physiologists in detail. Instead, it seemed best for the purposes of this narrative to cover only the highlights that illustrate how the Society developed and changed in response to the social and scientific pressures of the past 25 years. In doing this, choices have been made with which not everyone will agree. Some decisions appeared momentous at the time they were taken, but in retrospect they now seem trivial. Conversely, some decisions that were lightly taken have had important consequences for the welfare of the Society. In this Chapter we will attempt to outline the origin and development of the major characteristics that set the tone of today’s Society.

Meeting places were (and still are) chosen with care, to reflect the Society’s response to the regions of Canada, acknowledged centers of physiological research, the distribution pattern of the plant physiological population, cost of travel, and so on. It was agreed that the Society should meet in centers all across Canada, alternating between the central regions and the east or west. The record of the Society’s meeting places during the past 25 years, outlined in Table 2, will show that these considerations have been pretty well met. The time of meeting, usually early June, was agreed upon from the first. It was only varied for special reasons, such as a joint meeting with another Society. While every Canadian university has not had the opportunity of hosting the CSPP, some 16 have had that honour, and five had done so more than once. On the whole, the CSPP can be said to have distributed its favors fairly.

Speaking of favors, the Society has also received much assistance in various forms from its most gracious host institutions. Initially (until the cost became prohibitive) the host university or agency provided a banquet for the whole meeting. In later years it has been the custom for the host to provide "hospitality" in the form of a cocktail party, social evening, wine-and-cheese, or some similar function. In addition to this "direct" support, various universities and laboratories have provided much-needed assistance in the form of secretarial help, mailing privileges and organizational facilities both to members of the Executive and to Local Committees. For all this generous and welcome assistance, the Society is most grateful.

An early tradition of the CSPP, initiated at its second Scientific Meeting at Carlton University in 1961, was to invite a distinguished plant physiologist to give a special lecture. These are listed in Table 3. In the early 1970’s the practice was abandoned, largely because the number of symposia at each meeting increased about this time to two or three, and also because Gold Medal addresses began to take the place of special invited lectures.

Symposia have been an important part of every scientific meeting of the CSPP (Table 4). The organizers of the 1970 meeting at Laval University, striving to "satisfy a diversity of interests…and yet attain a greater coherence of content and participation," introduced the practice of having two or more non-concurrent symposia, noting that the newly instituted Regional Meetings provided a forum for the short papers thereby excluded from the program. From that time, usually more than one and sometimes as many as three or four symposia were held on diverse subjects at each meeting. Some of the symposia were published as a unit in the Canadian Journal of Botany. While many foreign experts have participated in the symposia, particularly on occasions when the Society met with a foreign organization, the majority of speakers have been Canadian.

Great care was taken in choosing the topics of symposia, and this matter occupied much of the attention of early Executives. As a rule the topics chosen related to the major theme of the meeting, which was usually determined by special interests of the host institution, the prospect of a special visitor, some important national or international scientific or socio-scientific debate, or a major scientific development that needed expounding. Some jointly sponsored symposia were mounted at joint meetings, examples of the best kind of both interdisciplinary and intersocietal cooperation. The list of symposia in Table 4 shows how interested focused on one and then another area of plant physiology, and provides an instructive insight into the development of the discipline in Canada during the past 25 years.

An important factor in the success of the symposia was the steady support they received from the first from NRC and then from NSERC. The initial grant, for the Duff Memorial Symposium, was $300; inflation and increasing interest in this aspect of scientific meetings has resulted in much larger grants in later years. During the past few years support for CSPP symposia has averaged over $2,000 per year. The Society has often expressed its sincere appreciation to NRC and NSERC for their support of one of the most important aspects of its scientific and educational program, and takes this opportunity to do so again.

A major part of the scientific program of the CSPP since 1970 has been the holding of Regional Meetings in the East and West each year in addition to the Annual Meeting. The idea had been tested by D.S. Fensom, who ran a very successful "unofficial" regional meeting at Mt. Allison University in 1969, when the Annual meeting took place as an adjunct of the IX^th International Botanical Congress in Seattle. The idea was officially proposed by Dr. F. Wightman and adopted at the 1969 Business Meeting. The first Eastern and Western Regional Meetings were held at McGill University and the University of Alberta, respectively, in January, 1970. The midwinter date, approximately half-way between Annual Meetings, has become traditional. It was hoped that more student members could attend and present papers, and that more time would be available at Annual Meetings for symposia, workshops and discussion sessions. There were a number of arguments for and against Regional Meetings, and more than once the suggestion has come to abandon them. But they have proved their worth, and many young plant physiologists who might otherwise have been prevented from attending CSPP meetings have launched their careers at an Eastern or Western Regional Meeting.

It should not be thought that the Regional Meetings are of lower caliber than the Annual Meeting. The importance of publishing the abstracts of papers from Regional Meetings in the Society's Annual Proceedings was recognized from the start. Regional Meetings are usually smaller than Annual Meetings (though the first Eastern Regional Meeting had 80 registrants – almost as many as the first Annual Scientific Meeting in 1960) but the CSPP’s traditional insistence on excellence has resulted in symposia, invited lectures and scientific programs of international quality. In spite of this, the Executive’s early dictum that Regional Meetings should not exert a financial drain on the Society has nearly always been met.

Other activities of the CSPP should be mentioned briefly. The Society began to publish a Newsletter in 1965, and this most useful service has continued to the present. At times it has been the forum of debate, and in the last decade it has served the function of providing news about positions vacant. From the earliest days of the Society, P.R. Gorham provided a most useful series of Placement Lists giving information about positions available to those who needed it. The Placement Service was taken over and expanded by R.G.S. Bidwell in 1969, but by 1973 the number of available positions had decreased to so few that the service was discontinued. Instead, vacancies were announced by the Secretary in the Newsletter, as is now also the practice of the American Society of Plant Physiologists. The Newsletter, now published several times per year, continues to be the main avenue of communication between the Executive of the Society and its Members and (on occasion) among Members. At one time it was the hope of the Executive that the Society’s life would be made miserable by the number of Letters to the Editor he would have to deal with. There’s always hope!

 *Business meeting only

 * Joint meetings.

 *Joint meetings.