Al Grant

Grant, Alan Carson, August 21, 1933 - June 14, 2012. BA (geology), Acadia University; BSc, Dalhousie University; MSc, University of New Brunswick; PhD, Dalhousie University; Doctorate of laws, honouris causa , Dalhousie University.

Dr. Grant was a marine geologist and geophysicist whose career spanned more than 40 years. Known as a pre-eminent authority on the geology of the East Coast offshore area, Dr. Grant provided a crucial link between industry and the academic world. A leader in his field, a mentor to a generation of geoscientists and an accomplished writer and researcher, Dr. Grant left an indelible mark on the region he called home.

Dr. Grant is a prime example of a Nova Scotia boy who made good. Born outside the town of Pictou, he went to school in a one-room schoolhouse before attending Pictou Academy. After receiving his BA -- and the University Medal in Geology -- from Acadia University in 1955, he worked as a geophysicist for Mobil Oil on seismic crews in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In the 1960s, when geological studies expanded to explore what lies beneath the ocean floor, the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO) was established and Dr. Grant knew he wanted to come home to be part of the discovery. He returned to academic study at Dalhousie where he completed his BSc in 1963, followed by an MSc from the University of New Brunswick in 1965. That year he began working for the Geological Survey of Canada at BIO, doing extensive research on the continental shelf off Labrador and Newfoundland. Later, he returned to Dalhousie where he earned a PhD in 1971.

Dr. Grant's career accomplishments have been recognized through numerous awards -- the M.J. Keen Medal of the Geological Association of Canada, the Robert JW Douglas Award of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists and the degree, Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, bestowed on him by Dalhousie University in 2006. The June 2006 Vol. 54, No.2, pp. 177-179 Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology citation for the award of the Society's R.J.W. DOUGLAS MEDAL is found at the URL: <http://bcpg.geoscienceworld.org/content/54/2/177.full> and that of the AGS For the Gesner Medal in Feb. 2004 is found at the URL: <http://ags.earthsciences.dal.ca/News/Vol33_No2_Apr04.pdf> as it in the AGS Newsletter of April 2004, Vol.32, No.2, pp 6-8. I will admit to writing both save the last two paragraphs of the CSPG citation.

Alan was well-liked by everyone. He was known for his terrible puns, a dry sense of humour, his creative stone carvings and for playing the harmonica badly with great enthusiasm. He is survived by his wife, Nancy; his children, Dana Bourgeois (Andre), Gore, NS; Tim, Vancouver, BC; granddaughter, Maddie Davis, Gore and Halifax; His brothers, Donald (Viola), Ottawa; Malcolm (Marilyn), Vernon, BC; and several nieces and nephews. Special thanks are extended to Janet Oxon and the staff at The Adelaide Respite Inn, Waverley, NS.

A gathering was held to celebrate Alan's life at the Dartmouth Funeral Home, Queen Street, Dartmouth, Sunday afternoon, June 17, 2-4 pm. online condolences by visiting www.dartmouthfuneralhome.ca

Rebecca A. Jamieson

Chair, Department of Earth Sciences

Distinguished Scientist Award (Gesner Medal)

The Gesner Medal is awarded to a person who has developed and promoted the advancement of geoscience in the Atlantic region through his or her own effort (i.e. publications, maps, memoirs, etc.). Dr. Alan Grant of the Geological Survey of Canada is the 2004 recipient.

The following citation was read to the banquet by Alan Ruffman:

Alan Grant is one of the finest compilers of geology and geophysics that we have in our region of Atlantic Canada. His reputation for top-notch work is legion, and for the past 37 years there has not been a Canadian east coast compilation that has not included Alan Grant’s work – be it the Decade of North American Geology volumes, reviews of the continental margin off Labrador, in Baffin Bay, off eastern Newfoundland, geophysical results for potential petroleum provinces of Eastern Canada, isopach maps of east coast sediment thicknesses, basement contours off Eastern Canada, Palaeozoic seafloor geology of Hudson Bay, seafloor geology of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, maps of seismic basement, Newfoundland to Nares Strait, or basement character and sediment thickness over the same area, etc., etc.

Alan Grant came out of six years of work with Mobil Oil Canada Ltd. as a seismic field person and an interpreter, and was comfortable working with deep seismic data long before these sorts of data were generally available to the Geological Survey of Canada or university scientists. He speaks the language of the oil company explorationist, and he has not ever forgotten it despite going back to school to earn a second science degree in geology, a BSc in geology, then going on to an MSc at the University of New Brunswick on recent marine sediments in Baffin Bay in 1965, and finally a Dalhousie PhD in 1971 on the continental margin off Labrador and Eastern Newfoundland.

And he is used to working with early poor quality offshore seismic data. His recent Gulf of St. Lawrence work is a credit to his perseverance with such data! As a result, there is a steady stream of oil companies’ personnel into his office at the Geological Survey of Canada – Atlantic. And Alan takes time to talk to them. He has always taken time to talk to all who approach him, and in that sense has probably affected any number of firms’ plans to enter the East Coast Canadian petroleum scene in ways that no-one can enumerate or document.

I first met Alan Grant as an undergraduate student when I drove a station wagon of Geological Survey of Canada hammer seismic equipment back from Winnipeg where I’d worked the summer of 1962 on profiling the proposed Winnipeg Floodway. I was detailed to stop in the Kirkland Lake area, where I met Alan who had just finished his summer as interpreter on the GSC seismic refraction crew in southern Ontario. I showed him how to run our gear, and then he and I diligently swung the sledgehammer over a two- or three-day period as we tried to map the buried glacial valleys and esker thicknesses in the area. A sample of kimberlite had just been found in an esker, and the GSC was keen to start a diamond rush in Ontario. It took about 30 years, but as we now all know, Canada is now producing diamonds with lots of promise for more. Alan impressed me in that first encounter as a teacher, and has ever since.

We shared the cruise of the launch NEEDLIK during a glorious, sunny, day-long, sub-bottom profiling run across from the Ottawa Islands in Hudson Bay to the shoreline of the Province of Québec in 1965. And regularly while Alan was a scientist at the Atlantic Geoscience Centre and I was at Geomarine Associates Ltd., I, or my employees, did not hesitate to drop in to chat with Alan, to get some guidance, share his dry humour, locate a line of seismic data, look over his shoulder as a map was coming together, and I hope occasionally offer our own piece of worthwhile advice. I am sure that the selection committee found Alan’s letters of support all reflected a great admiration for Alan, not only as a geoscientist, but also as a mentor, as a role model, as a listener, and as a person.

Dr. Alan Grant, now an Emeritus Scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, is being awarded the 2004 Gesner Medal of the Atlantic Geoscience Society, to recognize his long and impressive contribution to geology and geophysics in Atlantic Canada, and well beyond. His areas of contribution cover not only all parts of Canada’s offshore, from the Arctic Islands south along all parts of the eastern Canada continental shelf and slope, including those of west Greenland, the Labrador margin, Orphan Knoll and Flemish Cap, Hudson Bay, Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Scotian Shelf through to Georges Bank, but also parts of southern and northern Ontario, and the subsurface geology of Alberta and southern Saskatchewan as he began his career.

His curriculum vita and bibliography show us a very wide publication range, reaching beyond 200 items to date (and still growing!), from company private reports for Mobil Oil Canada Ltd., Geological Survey of Canada Papers, Memoirs, Maps and Open File Reports, to a wide variety of international, national, and regional peer-reviewed journals, including Science and Nature on at least four occasions. He has also published in journals reaching a very wide, more popular, audience, such as Geotimes, Geos and Episodes.

Alan Grant’s extensive bibliography includes regular presentations to the Atlantic Geoscience Society’s annual colloquium. He is a regular participant at the Geological Association of Canada’s annual meetings, and at various national, and occasionally international, meetings. Dr. Grant, as a federal employee, like all employees in the GSC, suffered the all-too-common federal stricture on travel to international conferences. He was, however, used regularly at the GSC annual review with talks and posters. Dr. Grant also served two periods of eight and two years as Associate Editor of the Bulletin of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists.

He has persevered and produced scientific work at the Atlantic Geoscience Centre at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography far beyond most others, in spite of an Ottawa-driven policy of under-funding and understaffing. Alan received the M.J. Keen Medal from the Geological Association of Canada in 1997. We can be quite proud to have a person like Alan Grant in our camp, and tonight we are delighted to honour his 47 years in geology and geophysics, with the award of the Gesner Medal, the Atlantic Geoscience Society’s Distinguished Scientist Award. Well done, sir.

The colour photo in the newsletter of the 2004 presentation may well serve you as a screen shot for the program and/or introduction to the session Grant or to put on a poster if you decide to prepare one with his extensive bibliography of scientific publications (see below).

I also nominated Alan or the CSPG R.J.W. Douglas Medal in 2005. I also wrote at least the first draft of ihe citation and this citation is also published by the CSPG in their Bulletin of the CSPG and this text and a business suit photo is found at the URL: <http://bcpg.geoscienceworld.org/content/54/2/177.full?ck=nck>.

Alan Ruffman

R.J.W. DOUGLAS MEDAL

Alan Carson Grant

CITATION

The March 1960 issue (No. 35) of Mobil News still headlined the fine old logo of the flying horse. On page 2 it asks, “Seismic Record?” and goes on to tell the reader:

"Winter seismic party #40 under Party Chief Al Grant has set what might be a record for Western Canada. They recently recorded 40 shot holes in one 11-hour field day in the Watt Mountain area about 160 miles north of Peace River. A dozen holes a day is about average. (Note to seismic people everywhere: these were split spreads which in some areas might be recorded as 80 profiles.)"

This Western Canada field work was almost certainly a seismic record for all of Canada in 1960; however, being Canadians the Mobil Oil Canada management writers made no such extravagant claims.

That young Nova Scotian, Alan Carson Grant, was born in Pictou and a student at the same high school that educated Albert Gesner. Alan went on to earn his first degree, a B.A. in Geology, at Acadia University, taking courses from the legendary Harky Cameron, a leader in the interpretation of aerial photography. Alan captured the Acadia University Medal in Geology at his graduation in 1955, and parlayed two summer stints as a Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) student assistant doing regional mapping in Newfoundland into a full-time position with Mobil Oil Canada in the Western Canadian Basin; two years as a field computer, two as an interpreter, and two as a seismic party chief in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Alan went on to shoot refraction seismic for the GSC in southwestern Ontario; was part of the 1965 Hudson Bay crustal seismic project that shot off up to 4000 lb. charges; helped wrestle belligerent 800 lb. torpedo warheads in rough seas and assembled 2000 lb. charges on a Dalhousie University refraction seismic crew on M/V THETA in 1966 northeast of Newfoundland in perpetual fog; and yes, Alan wielded the lowly sledge hammer in doing hammer seismic reflection work in northern Ontario in 1962 and 1963. Here, the GSC was mapping glacial deposits as it chased the discovery of a piece of kimberlite float in the Kirkland Lake area. As we all know, some 30 years later, Canada is well on the road to becoming a world leader in diamond production. Indeed, Canada’s third diamond mine is headed into production not far northward, perhaps up-ice of Kirkland Lake, on the Hudson Bay Lowlands of Ontario west of James Bay.

Alan Grant has not forgotten his oil company and seismic experience. He returned to eastern Canada in 1961 to obtain a B.Sc. in Geology at Dalhousie University, comfortable with the language of the explorationist and comfortable working with deep seismic data long before these data were generally available to the GSC, or to university scientists. Alan went on to work with all manner of analogue and digital marine seismic reflection data during his 39 years with the GSC’s Atlantic Geoscience Centre, housed in the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, N.S. He is used to, and tolerant of, working with older or challenging deep seismic data, where others would rather wait and hope for an area to be re-shot. Alan’s recent Gulf of St. Lawrence reassessment of the Anticosti and Carboniferous (Magdalen) Maritimes Basins is a credit to his perseverance with such data! These two basins together cover an area virtually equal to the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, yet only four or five dozen wells have been drilled since World War II. It was in 1944–45 that Canada’s deepest well to that date, and the world’s first oil or gas well drilled from a fixed, artificial, offshore platform, was drilled in Northumberland Strait just south of Charlottetown—Hillsborough No. 1.