Acceptance of the Society of Economic Geologists Ralph W. Marsden Award for 2012

Abstract

Thank you for those kind words, Harold, and for providing a direct link to your former professor, Dr. Marsden. President Arribas, fellow SEG members and guests: It is with the utmost pleasure and humility that I accept this award for service to the Society of Economic Geologists. When I look at the list of names and the professional statures of my predecessors in this award, I am truly humbled and awed that my peers would place me in the same company. I am of the fourth generation of my family to be involved in the North American mining industry. My maternal great-grandfather and my grandfather were underground coal miners in the Crowsnest Pass and Lethbridge districts of Alberta, my grandfather being one of the few persons from his shift to survive Canada’s worst mining disaster that took 189 lives at the Hillcrest mine, in June 1914. My father was in the gravel and road construction businesses in southern Alberta, and so I spent a lot of time in gravel pits. It is there that I became interested in all those weird and wonderful rocks that had been carried in from afar, and that, of course, led to my career as an economic geologist. I frankly do not consider anything that I have done for SEG to be exceptional or special. I helped raise some money during my term as President of the Foundation, and I helped streamline the Student Grants programs, but Doug Silver and John Thoms did the heavy lifting to establish and fund …