Robert Dewfall Auger was born in Quebec City, where he spent a happy childhood and where, around the Plains of Abraham, began his lifelong love of running. He was educated at the Jesuit College in Quebec and then studied law at Laval University. Robert was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1968 and entered the Canadian Foreign Service. He was first posted to the Canadian Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva where he worked on the International Law of the Sea. After a few more years working at the Canadian Consulate in Morocco, he was seconded to the Privy Council Office in Ottawa to help draft the new Canadian Legislation on Access to Information, which came into law in 1982.
The next chapter in Robert’s life saw him join IDRC as its Secretary and General Counsel. Leaving the Centre in 1996, Robert, along with his wife and ex-IDRC Director General Anne Whyte, established a small consulting firm that undertook research and provided advice to NGOs and governments in the global south. Some of his most challenging legal work was to help to establish international networks of organizations working on common problems like a devastating food crop disease, or how to combat poverty and isolation among their mountain peoples, so that they could learn from one another even though they were located far apart in different geographic and political regions of the world.
Over the next 20 years, between overseas assignments travelling to Africa, Latin America, and Asia, Robert and Anne renovated their 1868 farmhouse in rural eastern Ontario, built fences around fields in the stoniest of stony soils, dug ponds, moved erratic rocks, and created a bog garden for a chorus of local frogs, and, wonder of wonders, somehow came to own an old woodlot full of native trees and wildflowers, with a beaver stream running through it crossed by a covered bridge. Robert spent hours in his woodlot and only left it when he and Anne retired to live in Victoria in 2011.
In Victoria, Robert continued to pursue his love of running and the outdoors. He regularly entered community runs, especially the Victoria 10K and participated in birdwatching events. He volunteered with the BC Beached Bird Survey and for many years walked the length of Cadboro Bay beach each month checking birds. He joined and later led a group of hikers who called themselves the Green Adventurers (because they used public transport whenever they could to reach their weekly hikes).
Robert was a born naturalist and citizen scientist and an acute observer of the natural and human world. He also enjoyed Spanish conversation classes in Victoria when he was not spending winter months in Mexico, conversing with new friends on his daily forays into the fields and mountains of Oaxaca. He loved Mexican ranchera music, which he said had helped him to learn the subjunctive in Spanish. Despite his talents and wide interests, he was a modest man with a mischievous side that few saw, unless they were one of the mystified strangers who were stopped in their tracks in the street wondering why this tall man was waving to them as he passed by.
Robert was a kind and gentle father and grandfather who was loved by all his family and served as a role model to them of how to be a good person who cared, listened, supported them, and never judged. Robert died peacefully at home in Victoria surrounded by his family and with his wife, Anne, by his side.
Please consider donating to Birds Canada or to a charity of your choice in his memory.
Bulletin 80
April 2026