Volunteers

Finding his flock

Eric Shaw named one of Ducks Unlimited Canada’s Prince Edward Island Volunteers of the Year

By Linda Browne April 23, 2025

Eric Shaw, Prince Edward Island Volunteer of the Year

It’s clear that the spirit of volunteerism is alive and well on Prince Edward Island. This year, we’re proud to recognize both Reg Maddix and Eric Shaw as Ducks Unlimited Canada’s P.E.I. Volunteers of the Year.

For Shaw, who’s been a dedicated volunteer with Ducks Unlimited Canada for over three decades, his conservation journey began when he was introduced to a Ducks Unlimited Canada project on the late Hollis McFadyen’s Portage farm. McFadyen (who was a school bus driver where Shaw worked as a teacher) had spent about a decade transforming his farm into a wildlife sanctuary and partnered with DUC to restore several wetlands on the property.

“Hollis had a place where he had birds everywhere. He had a peacock and he had pheasants and ducks and geese and all kinds of things,” Shaw recalls. He also had a successful wood duck nesting project, which Shaw found particularly interesting.

“When DU did the project on Hollis’ land, I knew about that aspect of Ducks Unlimited, but I didn’t realize completely until I talked to Hollis (about) what he was doing; and what he was doing was really changing the habitat. He was bringing the water to the wood ducks more or less.”

Not long after, Shaw accompanied McFadyen to Summerside, where he met the people who’d formed the Prince County committee and learned how Ducks Unlimited Canada fundraising dinners fueled conservation projects like the one on McFadyen’s farm. About a year later, he joined the committee himself.

That was about 35 years ago and while McFadyen passed away in 2009, his legacy lives on in his wildlife sanctuary and the conservation lessons he’s shared with Shaw, who’s passed them along to others.

Since then, Shaw has attended numerous fundraising dinners on the Island, often accompanied by his wife Gail and other members of his family, including his eldest son Byron, who’s also a member of the Prince County committee. (He also expresses his gratitude towards his children Heather, Kendall and Alison, and his grandchildren, for their support.)

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Dinners are the way to raise funds to preserve, restore, or maybe even improve habitat. And by serving on fundraising committees, we can make those projects possible.

Eric Shaw

When it came time to re-start Prince County’s own fundraising dinner post-COVID, Shaw says he and Maddix couldn’t have done it without the support of their committee and others in the community and outside, including members of DUC’s Montague chapter.
“After COVID, they got their dinner up and going again earlier…and in two different years, more than one committee member came up to me and said, ‘Now, if you’re getting ‘er going again in Prince County and you want any help, let us know.’ So last year, when we finally did get it going, seven of them arrived. They all paid for their own ticket and they came up and worked at our dinner,” he says.

Shaw, Maddix and their committee ended up selling 150 tickets to that particular dinner. Not ones to slow down, they’re always on the lookout for opportunities to lend a helping hand with other Ducks Unlimited Canada events on the Island.

Shaw’s passion for conservation and DUC’s work is palpable. He may be retired from teaching, but he’s never stopped learning or sharing his love of nature with his family. In 2003, he and his wife drove across the country and spent a day at DUC headquarters at Oak Hammock Marsh in Manitoba, “which was always a dream of mine,” he says.

“As we drove in that day, I’d say there were maybe between 10-15,000 geese in the fields around there,” Shaw recalls. “The geese start coming back and land in the marsh for the night. And they go by just by the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds – some of them flying right over the top over your head, right over the headquarters; most of them not very far on either side of you. It’s amazing.”

To those considering volunteering with Ducks Unlimited Canada, “I’d tell them welcome aboard. Give ‘er a try,” says Shaw.

“It’s not about the recognition that Reggie and I are getting. It’s about the love of nature and the joy of sharing it with others.”

There are approximately 52 Ducks Unlimited Canada volunteers in Prince Edward Island and 3,030 across Canada. Ducks Unlimited Canada is proud to recognize each of them—including outstanding leaders like Eric Shaw—as volunteer champions and conservationists who make waves and together, create ripples of change by serving with generosity, passion and dedication.

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