After a 60-year career as distinguished scientist, explorer, pioneer and innovator, Christopher Gleeson has died of cancer.
Born in Ottawa in August 1931 to Irish immigrants, Gleeson earned his B.Sc. from Loyola College in Montreal in 1953. He pursued post-graduate studies at McGill University, where he was awarded an M.Sc. in geology in 1956 and a PhD in economic geology and applied geochemistry in 1960.
After working with the Geological Survey of Canada, Quebec’s Soquem and privately held exploration companies, he formed C.F. Gleeson and Associates, which took him in the ensuing decades to mineral exploration projects and international development work in Burkina Faso, Algeria, Cameroon, Botswana, Guinea, Jamaica, Zambia, Slovakia, Spain, Malaysia, Ireland, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Brazil, as well as Canada and the U.S.
He pioneered the design and implementation of lightweight drilling though glacial overburden to sample till. The method was useful in evaluating geophysical anomalies and was widely implemented in Canada.
In tropical environments he reintroduced sampling termite mounds for gold.
In 1984 he co-founded Kinbauri Gold, and his extensive experience in applied heavy mineral studies of precious metals led to big gold and diamond discoveries in Canada, Spain and West Africa.
Gleeson received two Barlow Gold Medals from the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM). He was a founding member of the Association of Exploration Geochemists, and a life member of the CIM, the Society of Economic Geologists and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada.
He is survived by his wife Marion in Iroquois, Ont., and their four children, as well as two brothers and a sister.
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