 |
|
|
|
|
  
|
Geology lovers gather Simon Whitehouse Northern News Services Published Friday, November 18, 2011
The museum displayed its extensive rock collection and invited a number of rock collectors to share stories and their knowledge about the hobby during 'Rock Hounds Unite.'
Orest Watsyk, an avid collector mingled and shared stories with guests about his experience searching for and finding rocks.
"The first sample I picked up was in 1955 in Field, B.C., when I was teaching elementary school," he recalled, adding that since then he has continued looking for rocks "just based on scientific curiosity."
Watsyk looks for rocks in a variety of places.
"Usually, we look based on colour and pattern and if it might make for a scientific sample," he said. "We have checked Fort Liard at the ferry crossing, the Fort Providence ferry crossing. Whenever (I am) at a lakeshore or something, (I) pay attention to the rocks."
Watsyk said he had hoped there might be other collectors at the heritage centre on Sunday who would be interested in forming a more formal organization.
"I was hoping we would have enough people here to start a lapidary club, and I suppose it is something that could still happen," he said.
People of all ages participated in 'Rock Hounds Unite.' Children took part in a scavenger hunt, a rock cycle game, learned recipes for sedimentary rock cakes, read rock-related jokes and played "Rock Jumble," an organization-type game.
Utilizing the heritage centre to feature the territory's past and the importance of earth sciences is something that has continued to be part of the facility's aims, organizer Rosanna Strong said.
"Throughout the Amazing Sundays programs there have been several versions of rock demonstrations with old prospectors coming in," she said. "We have also had kids do rock swaps and that sort of thing."
She agreed there is a great interest in rock collecting in Yellowknife and suggested Watsyk is only one example of many citizens who share a similar enthusiasm.
The afternoon also featured a slide presentation by Carleton University PhD geology students Andrew Macumber and Lisa Neville. The two discussed their experience conducting field work on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter ice road, which serves diamond mines in the Northwest Territories.
Macumber, who is a specialist in mud sampling and determining how lakes behave, explained how he was approached by a number of mining and other companies using the ice road with concerns about the durability of the route because of climate change.
This was especially the case after El Nino climatic effects occurred in 2006 and resulted in an uncommonly warm summer in the territory.
Similarly, Neville has experience as an oil geologist from her master's degree work where she studied contamination levels in the environment from the oil sands in Fort McMurray. Their combined field work took place last March and the two gave an overview of the project, and some of the tools involved in lake sampling and the methodology of trying to figure out why lakes behave the way they do.
"Today was an overview of what is going on," Neville said. "Normally in a confer- ence you would do a very specific description of how we cut freeze cores with millimetre resolution and then what is done with those freeze cores and the results that (we) got."
The two are clearly looking forward to sharing their scientific knowledge with a number of other academics and researchers who were attending the Geoscience Forum this week.
"This Geoscience Forum is a very interesting conference because it involves anybody who works through the Northwest Territories geoscience office," Macumber said.
"So you have a whole scope of projects and not just that but you have people who work in Yellowknife or do environmental monitoring."
|
