New Earth Scienes Centre opened at U of T campus

At the centre’s 400-seat lecture auditorium, Ken Babcock, assistant deputy minister of Energy Mines and Resources Canada, delivered a keynote speech during a geological symposium to mark the opening. It dealt with topics pertaining to natural resources and the global environment.

Babcock praised the “multidisciplinary” approach to scientific research the centre will encourage.

“Many of the problems we face today cut across disciplines,” he noted.

The new complex is a home for the fields of botany, forestry and geology all under one roof.

The university’s geology department is ranked among the top five in the world, and has close relationships with the Ontario Geological Survey, the Geological Survey of Canada and the mineral and petroleum exploration industries. Part of the centre’s funding came from several Canadian mining companies.

Babcock noted that the environment has become one of the most popular topics of public debate in Canada today, and called upon all earth scientists to participate in the debate.

“The earth sciences must play a role in monitoring global change,” he said, adding that “as a nation, Canada has an important world role to play, too.”

He stressed that science-based policies will take environmental issues into consideration.

“Earth scientists have been studying global change long before it became a popular topic,” he added.

Global change suddenly took on new meaning when he showed a slide of a 40-million-year-old fossilized tree that was uncovered by geologists high up in Canada’s Artic region.

Turning to the mining industry, he said, “Man has created some pretty big holes in the earth,” one of the largest of which is the Syncrude tar sands project in Western Canada.

Babcock concluded by putting global change in a geological perspective. “The earth has always been evolving and will always continue to evolve,” he said. “Earth scientists must play their role in monitoring over-all global change.”

The new centre symbolizes one of the university’s greatest strengths by making possible linkages between various streams of research. It was designed by Don Schmitt of the architectural firm A. J. Diamond, Donald Schmitt and Company.

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