A gift from (and for) Sheila
Colla Lab founder Dr. Sheila Colla was a creative interdisciplinary conservation scientist, whose life’s work was dedicated to the protection of wild pollinators. She often collaborated with artists to help her think about her research in new ways and to present her findings with attention to beauty.
One of her favourite collaborators, and a dear friend, is artist Ann Sanderson, a gifted science illustrator whose work graces A Garden for the Rusty-patched Bumblebee as well as a number of educational posters and guides that Colla Conservation Science Lab has produced over the years.
Heartbreakingly, Mesothelioma took Sheila from us in the summer of 2025. In the weeks before her death, she asked that part of the NSERC Award she’d received be used to commission an educational art poster by Ann that would depict the deep, co-evolutionary relationships between native plants and native pollinators. Ann was honoured to do so.
We are calling the painting central to the posters (there are a few variations) “For Sheila” but it is just as true to say it is from her, for all of us. In this illustration, Ann has taken great care in capturing the details of tiny and precarious life, as an invitation to appreciate this world as Sheila did, to notice the overlooked, and protect the vulnerable.
She has also, as Sheila hoped, filled the frame with interdependent pairs, a lesson on and celebration of mutuality. Ann’s art serves as both a practical plan for growing pollinator habitat in the Great Lakes region, and a reminder that reciprocity is our nature. We are all connected.
Our lab hopes that you will find “For Sheila” beautiful too and will print your favourite (or several) so it might hang in classrooms and cubicles and livingrooms all over, encouraging viewers to recognize their own essential place in our shared ecosystem and take action to help at-risk species. Sheila would like that.
Click a thumbnail below to download a PDF for printing. These posters are 8.5 x 11″ and can be printed on standard letter-sized paper.
Another way to remember Sheila
Our friends at Wildlife Preservation Canada have established the Sheila Colla Pollinator Research Conservation Fund, a permanent scholarship supporting graduate students studying at-risk pollinators across Canada. By contributing, you will help ensure Sheila’s vision continues to shape our future of pollinator conservation for decades to come.
Sheila leading a bee talk in Humber Bay Butterfly Habitat | photo: Matt Forsythe, City of Toronto