Guest Speakers

"I am from St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and if you Google St. Stephen, you will discover that it is Canada's Chocolate Town, home of Canada's oldest candy company. In my early life I was a high-jumper and basketball player. I obtained a BSc honours degree at UNB in Fredericton in 1968 and a PhD in Geology at UBC in Vancouver, BC, in 1973.  I then moved back to the east coast for a year of postdoctoral work at Dalhousie University and Bedford Institute of Oceanography that included three months at sea on the Scotian margin and Mid-Atlantic Ridge on the CSS Hudson. I then changed course and moved to Chiang Mai University in Thailand as a CUSO volunteer to help establish their MSc program in geology. After an unplanned interview at Acadia University in May while on home leave from Thailand, I accepted a position as assistant professor and arrived in Wolfville in early September 1976, just in time to “supervise” the final year of Brendan Murphy’s MSc thesis. In the early years in a 4-person department, I taught courses in almost every geological topic, but in more recent years that settled down to introductory geology, Earth history, igneous petrology, tectonics and Appalachian geology.  I also supervised about 120 BSc honours and graduate thesis projects. My research is focused on the geological evolution of the northern Appalachian mountain belt in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with emphasis on field mapping, petrology, and geochronology. I have hundreds of publications, including journal articles, book chapters, government reports, maps, open files, field trip guides, and conference presentations. I have also served many volunteer roles in the geoscience community locally, nationally, and internationally, but I am perhaps most happy about my role as editor for 45 years and counting of “Atlantic Geoscience”, the peer-reviewed journal of the Atlantic Geoscience Society, in which the abstracts for the AUGC are published annually.  I attended my first AUGC at Dalhousie University in 1966 and my second at St. FX in 1967, and this must be close to the 50^th that I have attended in person."

"I am from Birr, Ireland. If you google Birr, you find out that the Birr telescope was the largest in the world until 1920. I obtained a BSc from University College, Dublin in 1975, after which I left Ireland to pursue a MSc at Acadia University (where I first met Sandra Barr) in 1977. I then when to McGill University and completed my PhD in 1982 (Sandra was my external examiner)! During that time, I taught several undergraduate courses, not realizing that this experience would help me get a position as assistant professor in the Department of Geology at St. Francis Xavier University (now Earth and Environmental Sciences). I was at St. FX 1982 to 2020 where I am now Senior (definitely senior) Research Professor. The position comes with a gently rocking chair! I taught a wide range of courses at St. FX. In addition to introductory courses and field school, I taught Structural Geology, Tectonics, Mineralogy, Optical Mineralogy, Igneous Petrology, Metamorphic Petrology, Earth History and Geophysics. During my time at X, I was privileged to be able to attend more than 30 AUGC conferences. I have published more than 380 research papers, mainly on tectonic processes and the relationship between tectonics and magmatism. Most of these publications include undergraduate or graduate students as co-authors, and my greatest pride is that the vast majority of those students have had verry successful careers. Until the warranty on my hip expired in 2022, I was an avid runner and squash player, and dodgy tennis player (weak serve). Like many antiques, I too have gravitated to pickleball. I am a life-long long-suffering supporter of Everton FC, and was at their stadium in late September to see them perform their customary 2^nd half choke and snatch a tie from the jaws of a victory.  I think I am still “active” in research (although Sandra may disagree)!"