OBITUARY — William George Wahl

William George “Gus” Wahl, a prominent member of Canada’s exploration industry and who discovered numerous mineral deposits throughout the world, has died. He was 80.

Born on June 16, 1918, in Crosby, Minn., Wahl graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s deg-ree in geology in 1940 and from McGill University with a master’s degree in geology in 1941.

After serving with the United States Army during the Second World War, Wahl returned to McGill in 1947 to obtain his doctorate in geology. That same year, he accepted a professorship in geology at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. He remained there for one year, before joining Pennsylvania-based Bethlehem Steel as an exploration geologist.

Over the next four years, Wahl employed an airborne magnetometer developed by the United States Navy during the war in his search for mineral deposits.

Using this exploration technique, he discovered magnetite deposits in Pennsylvania and Ontario. Those discoveries became the Grace and Marmoraton iron ore mines, respectively.

Wahl left Bethlehem in 1952 to accept a position with C.C. Huston & Associates, a Toronto-based consulting firm. In 1955, he established his own exploration consulting firm, W.G. Wahl Limited, which went on to discover limestone deposits in Canada, Mexico and Zimbabwe, as well as the Mano River iron ore deposit in Liberia, and the Mattabi base metal deposit in northern Ontario.

Wahl’s Toronto-based firm was also involved in the hunt for diamonds in Canada, evaluating diamond occurrences identified by Anglo American, De Beers Consolidated Mining, Selco Mining and Diadem Resources. Diamond occurrences also lured Wahl to Liberia, Sierra Leone and California.

Wahl was a life member of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, as well as a member of the Prospectors & Developers Association and the CIM’s Society of Economic Geologists. He was also a past president of the Canadian Exploration Geophysical Society and a fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Wahl is survived by his wife Kate, sons David and John, daughter Kate, and several grandchildren.