Vernon's Dr. Jeffrey McDonnell never expected much in the way of accolades when he began his career as a hydrologist 35 years ago. 

On Wednesday, he received one of the rarest accolades in the country.

McDonnell was one of the 88 people appointed to the Order of Canada by Gov. Gen. Mary Simon Dec. 18. 

Now a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, McDonnell is touted as one of the world's leading hydrologists who has "transformed the understanding of streamflow generation and the water cycle" through his research, and has had a seminal impact on the field of hydrology, according to the governor general's announcement. 

McDonnell had to sit on the embargoed news that he'd been named to the Order of Canada for weeks. When the appointments were announced on Dec. 18, he received a flurry of messages from people he knew, some even from old high school friends, congratulating him on the achievement. 

"It's been just a really great day of connecting with folks by phone and text and email," he told The Morning Star by phone Wednesday. "It's just been a rare and lovely thing."

Now semi-retired, McDonnell lives at Predator Ridge where he's able to do much of his work remotely, teaching a professional master's program in hydrology for the University of Saskatchewan. He's also continuing his research, which he's mostly doing outside of Canada. 

To date, McDonnell has published over 400 papers and continues to lead groundbreaking research in the field. 

Hydrology is the study of water on the Earth's surface. For the last 35 years, McDonnell and his teams have been studying basic questions about the water cycle, such as where water goes when it rains, what flow path the water takes to the stream, and how long it takes to get there.

"These simple questions really underpin a lot of water sustainability problems around the world," McDonnell said.

With climate change's impact on the Earth's hydrological systems, McDonnell said it's a fascinating time for the field of hydrology, which has grown significantly over recent decades.

He pointed to an annual meeting of hydrologists, the American Geophysical Union, which he recently attended. 

"When I started going to that meeting in 1987, there were 5,000 participants at a conference centre in San Francisco. This year we hit 30,000," he said. 

"This just reflects the growth and the amount of activity in the field of water, just given how we're having such profound impacts on water in terms of pumping aquifers dry in certain parts of the world or impacting water quality, or climate change impacts fundamentally disrupting the water cycle in northern Canada, where permafrost thaw is altering how water cycles and streams interact with their environment. 

"In so many ways, it's a terrifically exciting time to be a hydrologist and to play a small role in understanding changes that are happening and how they're going to play out now and in the future for society."

McDonnell is also the associate director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan. It's an institute that leads water research on campus, bringing different experts together to coordinate water-related activities that cut across different departments and colleges.

"Not in a million years" did McDonnell think he'd be named to the Order of Canada for his research. Even making it to university seemed a stretch at one point in his life. 

"My dad was a policeman, my mother was a housewife, and no one in my family had gone to university," he said. 

After his undergraduate degree, McDonnell didn't think he'd do a master's degree. After his master's degree, he didn't imagine doing a doctorate degree. But at every stage, he fell in love with the research. 

"I've never lost that fire that's burning in me," he said.