The Main Thrust, Fall 1998
1) 1998 CTG meeting in Canmore (A summary report from Shoufa Lin)
The Canadian Tectonics Group 18th annual meeting and the Geological Association of Canada NUNA research conference on "Evolution of Structures in Deforming Rocks" was held September 26-28, 1998 in Canmore, Alberta. The meeting was held in honour of Paul Williams. It was organized by Shoufa Lin, Wouter Bleeker, Colleen Elliott and Cees van Staal. 119 people attended the meeting, 64 from Canada, 24 from the US, 11 from Australia, 11 from Europe, 7 from Asia and 2 from Africa. 31 of Paul Williams' former and current students attended the meeting.
A total of 82 papers were presented at the meeting, 39 orally and 43 as posters. The talks were organised into the following sessions: folding and foliation development, veins and associated folds, microstructures, porphyroblasts and metamorphism, high strain zones, extensional structures, pluton emplacement, mid to deep crustal structures, and orogenic structures and tectonics. A collection of papers presented at the meeting will be published as a special issue of the Journal of Structural Geology.
The meeting was followed by a two-day field trip in the Canadian Cordillera, led by Philip Simony and Richard Brown. It featured the Rocky Mountain foreland fold and thrust belt on the first day and the structural evolution of the Shuswap metamorphic complex of the core zone on the second day. 66 people participated in the field trip.
*** end of Shufa's report
We would like to thank the organisers for doing a great job of preparing and running a well organised, very interesting meeting. We have scanned in the official photos from the meeting and they are available in the picture section of the CTG website. We will shortly add a whole bunch of photos submitted by Robin Wiley .
2) Annual Prizes. Once again we were able to award a number of prizes to some deserving winners.
The Jack Henderson Prize for the outstanding thesis was awarded to:
Dennis Johnston
Structural and thermal evolution of northwest Thor-Odin Dome, Monashee Complex, southeast British Columbia
Ph.D. Thesis, 1998, University of New Brunswick
The research, which was based at the University of New Brunswick, was supervised by Paul Williams and was carried out in collaboration with Dick Brown and Sharon Carr of Carleton University. Funding was primarily from an NSERC grant to Williams with additional support from NSERC grants to Brown and Carr. The greater project is continuing.
During the business meeting the membership also agreed to establish a second thesis award for the best M.Sc. thesis. More on this decision is given in the next section.
The prize for the best M.Sc. thesis was awarded to:
Evsen Aydemir
Investigation or Strain Related to Displacement Transfer and Along-Strike Variation using 3-D Seismic Interpretation, Physical Modelling and Computer-Graphics Visualization.
M.Sc. Thesis, 1998, Queens University
The thesis was supervised by John Dixon at Queen's University. The research was carried out as part of the Foothills Research Project, which is a collaboration between John Dixon (Queen's) and Don Lawton and Deb Spratt (University of Calgary) that is funded by a consortium of about 25 Oil Industry firms. Evsen also held an NSERC Post-Graduate Scholarship during her MSc program.
The best paper award went to:
Lin, S., Jiang, D., and Williams, P.F., 1998 Transpression (or transtension) zones of triclinic symmetry: natural example and theoretic modelling. In: Holdsworth, R.E., Strachan, R.A., and Dewey, J.F. (eds) 1998. Continental Transpressional and Transtensional Tectonics. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, vol. 135, pp. 41-57
Reprints of this paper can be obtained by contacting Shufa Lin (SLin@NorCom.Mb.Ca) Our congratulations to all prize winners.
Minutes of SGTD business meeting held during the Canmore CTG
1) It was proposed that we establish a new prize for M.Sc. theses. While both, M.Sc. and Ph.D. thesis have always been eligible for the best thesis award (now the Jack Henderson award), in reality it has been almost impossible for a good M.Sc. thesis to beat good Ph.D. thesis. As a result the winners of our best thesis prize have been (almost?) exclusively been Ph.D. theses, preventing some excellent M.Sc. theses from getting the recognition they deserved. So, the executive proposed to convert the Jack Henderson award into a prize for the best Ph.D. thesis and to establish a separate prize for the best M.Sc. thesis. A caveat to this motion is that the executive is not bound to award the best M.Sc. thesis award on an annual basis if submissions are insufficient in number or deemed to be inadequate. The motion was passed by a majority vote. Evsen Aydemir won the first M.Sc. thesis award.
2) We decided to waive the $5 SGTD membership fee for student members of GAC, following the example of other divisions. This should encourage more students to join the SGTD. They will hopefully remain loyal (paying) members for the remainder of their lives.
3) Location of the next CTG. At the May 1998 business meeting, Normand Goulet offered to hold a field trip that had to be cancelled for the Quebec GAC as the next CTG outing. We decided to take him up on this kind offer, hence the next CTG meeting will be held somewhere in Quebec, hosted by Normand. Details will follow.
4) Sponsorship of Sessions at the GAC 2000 meeting in Calgary In addition to a special session and short course on "Fission Track studieses in Canada" which was discussed and approved at the May 1998 business meeting, several special sessions were proposed.
Shoufa Lin suggested a special session entitled "Structural Geology in Mineral Deposit Studies"
Lori Kennedy proposed a session on "Effects of fluid flow on the mechanical strength and sealing abilty of shear zones: Field, Theory and Experimental observations" Future Main Thrusts will provide updates on these session.
5) GAC-MAC Subury Impact 99. This meeting is offering a number of symposia, special sessions and field trips that should be of interest to Division members. The Division is sponsoring a symposium on "Precambrian Terrane Boundaries". Other sessions of note include "Tectonics of Impact Basin Formation, with Special Reference to Sudbury (J. Spray), "Toward a new tectonic paradigm for the Western Superior Province" (J. Percival, T. Skulski, H. Helmstaedt, P.C. Thurston, & T. Corkery), "3-D computing for the geoscinces" (R. Harrap & C. Bowie), "The Southern Province at 1 million years before impact" (M. Easton), as well as the usual open sessions. There are several exciting looking field trips in the Sudbury region, the Grenville, Southerna and Superior Provinces.
6) Out with the old, in with the new
A new executive has agreed to take over responsibility for the SGTD for the next 3 years. In keeping with the recent tradition of having all execs located in the same general region, the next executive committee is Calgary based.
Your new committee is:
Chairman:
Larry S. Lane,
GSC Calgary,
3303 - 33rd St., NW, Calgary, Alberta, T2L 2A7
phone: 403-292-7131
llane@nrcan.gc.ca
Secretary:
Dennis Johnston
Petro-Canada
150 - 6th Ave, SW,
Calgary Alberta, T2P 3Y7
phone: 403-296-3270
dejohnst@petro-canada.ca
Treasurer:
Andrew Okulitch,
GSC Calgary,
3303 - 33rd St., NW, Calgary, Alberta, T2L 2A7
phone: 403-292-7132
aokulitc@nrcan.gc.ca
We (the old execs) wish them the best of luck.
7) The listing of Canadian papers.
We are currently putting together a list of all Canadian papers to be incorporated in to our annual list of "Canadian" papers published between September 1997 and September 1998. To produce a list as complete as possible (and avoid a repeat of what happened last year) I am appealing to all authors to send me (Frank, ffueten@craton.geol.brocku.ca) your relevant publications. While we get lists from our councilors, sometimes papers are not recognized as Canadian or they are published in a journal we do not check. So, if you would like to absolutely ensure that your paper(s) are included, cut that section out of your CV and paste it into an email to me (and please do it this month).
That's all folks. Enjoy what's left of the Fall and have a good Christmas season.
Frank Fueten // Department of Earth Sciences --- ffueten@craton.geol.Brocku.Ca // Brock U., St. Catharines --- Phone: 905-688-5550 ext.3856 // Ont. Canada --- Fax: 905-682-9020 // L2S 3A1 --- http://craton.geol.brocku.ca/faculty/ff/ff1.html ---