GAC returns to place of birth for golden jubilee celebration

The Geological Association of Canada (GAC) recently convened here to celebrate its golden anniversary at a special annual meeting.

The meeting was held jointly with the Mineralogical Association of Canada, and, fittingly, took place at Ottawa’s Congress Centre, just a few blocks away from the Chateau Laurier, site of the GAC’s inaugural meeting in 1947.

The University of Waterloo’s Alan Morgan, chairman of the GAC’s 50th anniversary committee, presided over a gala evening marking the event. The venerable crowd included dozens of past presidents and secretary-Treasurers of the association, as well as representatives of geological societies from across Canada, the U.S., Britain and South Africa.

Morgan spoke about how the origins of the association date back to a smoke-filled room at the (now-defunct) Engineers’ Club in Toronto. He quoted the late Duncan Derry, who recalled that those meetings consisted of “usually between 10 and 20 people sitting around the Engineers’ Club board table discussing informally some selected subject, each of us taking turns at supplying a bottle.”

The association first patterned itself on the Geological Society of America (GSA), which sponsored the GAC and its publications in its early years.

Indeed, it was during the GSA’s 60th annual meeting in Ottawa that the GAC was inaugurated.

The GAC tried to fill the gap between the industrial-Mineral orientation of the Canadian Institute for Mining, Metallurgy & Petroleum and the pure-science bent of the Royal Society of Canada. Today, GAC is regarded as the most generally representative of Canada’s associations of professional geologists.

The golden anniversary was marked by a special symposium concerning the impact of Canadian geoscience over the past 50 years. Such notable geologists as Desmond Collins (Burgess shale), Paul Hoffman (Precambrian geology), James Franklin (VMS models) and Anthony Naldrett (sulphide deposits) were on hand to trace the evolution of geological thought.

Some of the older scientists reminisced about the intellectual battles among colleagues during their years as academics, when scientific equipment and geological understanding underwent a revolution, and the modern ideas of tectonism, mineral deposition, sedimentology and paleontology emerged.

Other topics covered by the meeting included: Latin American ore deposits; the Bathurst mining camp of New Brunswick; atypical gold deposits; the Kidd Creek orebody; mapping projects; and remote-sensing and database management.

Attendance at this year’s meeting was 1,300; overall GAC membership stands at about 2,500.

The GAC publishes a range of geology-related journals and books. Its first regular publication was Proceedings of the Geological Association, which began in 1947 and continued to 1972 when it was replaced by the quarterly journal Geoscience Canada.

The GAC has also been intimately involved with the National Research Council’s publication, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

In 1957, the GAC produced the first in a continuing series of Special Papers, which have provided summaries of specific fields of expertise. Far and away the most popular of these has been the classic sedimentology text, Facies Models.

In addition to the special papers, the association publishes its Reprint Series, including Ore Deposit Models, Vol. I and II, and also puts out the quarterly newsletter Geolog. It also sponsors conferences, seminars and short courses, as well as student and professional awards and grants.

The association helped spawn the Canadian Geological Foundation and Canadian Geoscience Council, and remains closely tied to the Geological Survey of Canada.

Though housed at Memorial University in St. John’s, Nfld., the GAC still lacks a national headquarters and a permanent secretariat.