Stuart Houston was born on September 26, 1927 in North Dakota where his parents, Dr Sigga Christianson Houston and Dr. Clarence Joseph Houston practiced briefly before relocating to Yorkton, Saskatchewan.
Stuart completed his medical degree at the University of Manitoba and spent eight years in General Practice in Yorkton. Stuart then specialized in Radiology (now Medical Imaging) at the University of Saskatchewan with one year in Boston, pursuing a particular interest in pediatric radiology. He returned to a faculty position at the University of Saskatchewan where he stayed for his professional career. He served a term as chair of the department but particularly enjoyed his term as editor of the Journal of the Canadian Association of Radiologists. He served on the Council of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons and was the only professor in the College of Medicine to have been named honourary president of the Student Medical Society three times.
Stuart's interest in ornithology began as a boy in Yorkton, fostered by an amateur naturalist, Isabel Priestly and subsequently by his work for Ducks Unlimited. He maintained a lifelong commitment to ornithology, mainly expressed through banding birds. To 2014 he had had banded 150,283 individual birds of 211 species, with 3,945 recoveries of 84 species, the highest number of species recovered of any Canadian bander. Over decades he cultivated a large network of people dedicated to the protection of birds. He was an active member of the Saskatoon and provincial Natural History societies and participated extensively in their activities. His work in ornithology included four books on Saskatchewan natural history and 311 articles in ornithology and natural history journals, and culminated in 2020 with the publication with Frank Roy and Alan Smith of the definitive book on the Birds of Saskatchewan. He remained keenly involved in his most recent project, banding and wing-tagging turkey vultures.
Houston was also an historian, writing 13 books with historical subjects including early Canadian explorer naturalists with the Franklin expedition, biographies of pioneer Saskatchewan doctors and Saskatchewan's early achievements in health care (Steps on the Road to Medicare).
Stuart married Mary in Dilke, SK in 1951. She died in 2019. They had 4 children: Stan, Margaret, David and Donald.
Houston received many honours including D. Litt and D CnL degrees, Saskatchewan Order of Merit, Officer of the Order of Canada, and innumerable other awards, local, national and international, in all three spheres of his activities.
Stuart Houston died on July 22, 2021.