Field Trips
GAC-MAC-IAH-CNC 2025 Field Trips
GAC-MAC: Field Guide Summary
More details and pictures of the proposed field trips can be found in the attached field guide summary.
PRE-CONFERENCE FIELD TRIPS
Organizers: David Lowe (Memorial University of Newfoundland) and Bill Arnott (Ottawa University)
Cost: 380 $ + taxes
Date: May 9th to May 10th 2025
This 2-day will focus on the origin and evolution of the Ottawa Embayment as recorded by the fill of a reactivated rift, providing a stratigraphic archive of climate fluctuation, relative sea level change, and fault reactivation before and during the regional early Ordovician transgression of Laurentia. Note that participants will cross the US border into New York State on Day 2 and may need visas for such entry if not citizens of Canada or the USA.
Organizer: Bill Pearson (Professional Geologists of Ontario Foundation)
Cost: 1600 $ + taxes
Date: May 8th to May 11th 2025
This 2-day excursion highlights the Niagara UNESCO Aspiring Global Geopark focusing on geology of the Niagara Escarpment and its influence on many other aspects of the region. The trip will include a visit to the world famous Niagara Falls and one of the area’s finest wineries.
Organizer: Wouter Bleeker (Natural Resources Canada)
Cost: 300 $ + taxes
Date: May 10th to May 11th 2025
This 2-day fieldtrip will cover many of the geological highlights of the Ottawa area, and its setting in the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben. We will travel through time from Precambrian bedrock, through lower Paleozoic cover stratigraphy, into the glacial and post-glacial history, and into the current era of seismic activity and catastrophic landslides.
Title: Geology of the Sudbury Impact Structure and a deeper understanding on the origin and formation of its associated Ni-Cu-PGE mineralization in contact and offset dike environments.
Organizers: Dustin Peters, Sandra Baurier and Michael Lesher of Laurentian University
Cost: 775 $ + taxes
Date: May 7th to May 9th 2025
This multi-day excursion will start and end in Sudbury, Ontario, and participants are responsible for their own travel to and from Sudbury. The field trip fee includes 4 nights of accommodation (the night before the field trip starts plus three nights during the field trip). The trip consists of a geological traverse across the Sudbury Impact Structure that will focus on both shocked and undeformed country rocks, and on mineralized and unmineralized sublayer norite and footwall breccia of the Sudbury Igneous Complex. It will highlight differences and similarities related to the timing and mode of emplacement of the offset dykes in the southwestern and southern parts of the Sudbury Structure (Copper Cliff, Worthington and Vermillion) and their surrounding footwall rocks. Participants will also observe the complex relationship between the different breccia units hosted in offset dyke environments and at the base of the impact melt sheet. Mineralized drill core sections will be examined and mining companies active in the region will contribute updates on their recent operations.
Organizers: Hazen Russell and Melissa Bunn (Geological Survey of Canada)
Cost: 75 $ + taxes
Date: May 11th 2025
This one-day field trip will include presentations on methodology (held at the University of Ottawa) and field visits that demonstrate equipment deployments for downhole geophysics, passive seismic, reflection seismic, and hydrogeological-sedimentological investigations.
Organizer: Richard Léveillé (McGill University)
Cost: Free
Self Guided Field Trip
This is a half-day excursion will explore outcrops of Ordovician limestone along the Ottawa River which offer some of the best and most easily accessible stromatolites in Canada. These layered and often domed-shaped structures are excellent examples of geobiological interactions and help record the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere on Earth. This trip will feature an easy access stroll to the stromatolite localities and other fossiliferous rocks in the area.
Organizer: Beth McLarty Halfkenny (Carleton University)
Cost: included in Professional Training Workshop and Field Trip package accessible only to K-12 Educators
Date: May 10th 2025
The GAC-MAC conference has a rich history of engaging with local teachers wherever the conference is held, leveraging the expertise of conference attendees to help educators gain the knowledge, resources and confidence to teach Earth Science topics within their provincial curriculum. The one-day professional training and sharing workshop will include an afternoon field trip to sites in the Ottawa region that showcase exceptional geological features and can be used to illustrate how teachers can build field experiences for their students. Participants will receive a teaching resource kit containing rocks, minerals, fossils, identification tools and guides, other books, posters and digital resources including prepared lesson plans. Participants will also have the opportunity to attend the conference’s “Geoscience Education and Communication” technical session with a discounted one-day pass.
This Field trip is part of the SCW_A1 Workshop and open to K-12 Educators only. Please see Workshop SCW-A1 for registration information or contact beth.mclartyhalfkenny@carleton.ca."
Organizers: Beth McLarty Halfkenny (Carleton University, Canadian Geoscience Education Network CGEN) and Anita Marshall (University of Florida, GeoSPACE Accessible Planetary Geology Field Course, International Association for Geoscience Diversity IAGD)
Cost: 100 $ + taxes
Date: May 11th 2025
This is a one-day excursion led by Beth McLarty Halfkenny (Carleton University, Canadian Geoscience Education Network CGEN) and Anita Marshall (University of Florida, GeoSPACE Accessible Planetary Geology Field Course, International Association for Geoscience Diversity IAGD) that is intended to fully include conference participants with accessibility needs, and model the technologies, methods, and considerations for creating inclusive field excursions.
This trip will visit several geoheritage locations in the National Capital Region, chosen for their exceptional geological features and for varied physical terrains and other potential accessibility challenges that can be overcome with thoughtful planning and simple tools. Some needs-based fee waivers are available.
To ensure we have a good mix of people with disabilities and education practitioners, a short application form is required (short URL link to form). Questions? Contact beth.mclartyhalfkenny@carleton.ca.
POST-CONFERENCE FIELD TRIPS
Organizers: Philip Kompass (Canadian Nuclear Laboratories) and Tessa Di lorio (City of Ottawa)
Cost: 100 $ + taxes
Date: May 15th 2025
This one-day excursion consists of a visit to the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL), Canada’s large single scientific campus and the birthplace of nuclear technology in Canada. With a site which spans over 3000 hectares, and over 120 unique scientific facilities, a visit to CRL is a unique experience. For more than 60 years, Canadian scientists and technicians have been conducting hydrogeological research, with a particular focus on radionuclide migration in the environment. The site has an extensive groundwater monitoring network and ongoing groundwater remediation measures which will also be discussed. Note that advance registration for security clearances will be required for all participants.
Organizers: David Lentz (University of New Brunswick, Fredericton)
Cost: 300 $
Date: May 15th to May 16th 2025
The Bancroft region is known as the “Mineral Capital of Canada”. This two-day trip will be led by David Lentz (University of New Brunswick, Fredericton). On the first day, the excursion will visit the Quadville pegmatites, known for beryl and rose quartz, the Craigmont corundum pegmatite and the MacDonald REE-Y-Nb-U pegmatite. On the second day, the excursion will feature the Saranac Zr-REE pegmatite, the Princess sodalite pegmatite, the Goulding-Keene pegmatite, and finally the type perthite locality south of Perth. Other localities including some near the Faraday pegmatite (Madawaska uranium deposit) will also be visited if possible. These iconic localities are very well known for their mineral collecting and former mines, although in recent decades they have become less accessible due to changing land ownership. Scientific discussions will focus on source(s), timing, degrees of fractionation, the role of exsolved volatiles, fractionation history, and structural controls on pegmatite emplacement.
Organizers: George Dix (Carleton University)
Cost: 100 $ + taxes
Date: May 15th 2025
This one day excursion will examine key boundaries and stratigraphic transitions in the Middle through Upper Ordovician stratigraphic record of a foreland-interior platform succession that underlies eastern Ontario. The carbonate and siliciclastic sedimentary record extends from foreland initiation represented by the local expression of the Sauk-Tippecanoe I supersequence boundary to final stages of platform foundering adjacent to an anoxic deep-water shale basin. The trip examines stratigraphic and sedimentological evidence for local and regional structural controls on base-level change related to basement reactivation along the axis of the intracratonic Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben and far-field effects of plate boundary evolution.
Organizers: Riley Mulligan (Ontario Geological Survey) and Roger Paulen (Natural Resources Canada)
Cost: 315 $ + taxes
Date: May 15th to May 16th 2025
This two-day field trip will introduce participants to key landforms and sections that shed light on a wide range of subglacial events and processes that operated within the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben region of eastern Ontario. Participants will encounter a wide range of bedrock erosional features, originating from at least three distinct ice flow phases and a complex local pattern of abrasion, plucking, hydraulic jacking and bedrock raft entrainment. Evidence for processes is exposed in road cuts and quarry walls and thick sections of till that display a complex ice flow history. The nature and paleo-glaciological significance of clast macrofabric data measured from sections exposing their internal sediments will also be discussed.
Organizers: Jean Bédard (Natural Resources Canada) and Alain Tremblay (UQAM)
Cost: 700 $ + taxes
Date: May 14th to May 17th 2025
This 3-day field trip will provide a detailed encounter with the Thetford Mines Ophiolite. It will show representative crustal and mantle facies, including surrounding continental margin sedimentary rocks, a sliver of the obduction sole, layered dunitechromitite in the lower crust, peridotite-pyroxenite layered rocks injected by PGE-enriched chromitites, late websterite megadykes emplaced into active syn-oceanic faults, gabbroic rocks affected by hydrothermal systems, boninitic pillow lavas and sheeted dykes, and the syn-orogenic flysch. It is anticipated that there will be a choice of field trip stops on the final day, depending on whether participants are returning to Québec or Ottawa (via Montréal).
