Memorial to Freleigh Fitz Osborne 1903–2000 J.F.V. RIVA Quebec Geoscience Center, P.O. Box 7500, Ste-Foy, Quebec G1V 4C7, Canada

Freleigh Fitz Osborne, a major figure in Canadian Precam- brian geology from the 1930s to the 1960s, lived through nearly the complete twentieth century and into the dawn of the twenty-first. He was born on November 7, 1903, in Nogales, then Arizona territory. He was the first of two sons of Walter Fitz Osborne and Rachel May Freleigh. His parents were Canadians from Ontario, his father having stopped in Nogales at the end of 1901 to visit his sister Lydia on his return from a two-year stint as a teacher in Australia. In Nogales he found a job as an accountant for a company selling mining equipment and he sent for Rachel in Ontario. The couple was married on February 17, 1902, and went to live in an adobe house on West Crawford Street, about one-quarter of a mile from the Mexican bor- der. Freleigh was born in this house. In 1904 the Osborne family left Nogales for Vancouver, Canada, after his father developed an allergy that gave him debilitating asthma attacks. In Vancouver, he worked as an accountant and office manager. He was often in charge of liquidating bankrupt oil and mining companies and joined the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy to get a better understanding of the operations and prospects in which the companies were involved. For many years he was the sec- retary of the Vancouver branch of the Institute. Freleigh graduated from high school in 1919 at age 15, having skipped a grade. He seldom spoke of his school days, but would dwell at length on his religious upbringing. His parents were Sunday school teachers at the local Methodist church. Protestant Sunday was a dull day for a boy. Sunday school began at 7:30 a.m. and ended at 9:00 a.m. The morning service started at 11:00 a.m. and ended at 1:00 p.m. “Sermons were long and often nonspiritual,” he wrote in his family history. “I have listened to some utter nonsense.” More pleasant were his recollections of the picnics and weekend excursions with his parents in the countryside around Vancouver. He also helped his father clear and landscape the two lots around their new house on 15th Avenue. He was not quite 16 when he entered the University of British Columbia in the fall of 1919 to study mining. He took jobs painting houses to subsidize his studies, and worked as a diamond driller for coal in the summer of 1921 and as a field assistant for the Geological Survey of Canada in the summers of 1922–25. In 1924 he earned a B.S. in mining engineering and went on to graduate school, graduating in 1925 with an M.S. in geology and a minor in biology. His thesis was on the origin and time of deposition of the contact metamorphic magnetic iron ore on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In the fall of 1925 he went to work as a mining engineer for the Sally Mine, British Columbia, and soon came to feel that he had gained more practical knowledge than some of his professors. The experience, however, convinced him that life in a mine was not for him. He was equally determined not to work in a laboratory, clearly preferring the outdoors.

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In 1926 Freleigh entered Yale University to study toward a Ph.D. At Yale he found himself with a group of students that would leave their mark on North American geology. Among them were James “Red” Gilluly, Gustav Arthur Cooper, Aaron C. Waters, Chester R. Longwell, and Philip B. King, all future Penrose Medalists and/or presidents of the Geological Society of Amer- ica. They would remember Freleigh as a well-informed, argumentative, but rational individual. The years spent at Yale were the high point in his life, and he would never forget that he was a Yale graduate. He received the Carroll Cutler Fellowship from Yale University in 1926–27 and the S.F. Emmons Memorial Fellowship in 1927–28. He was inducted into Sigma Xi in 1927. His Ph.D. thesis was on the ore genesis of magnetite and ilmenite in anorthosite and gab- bro. Freleigh demonstrated, based on fieldwork in the Adirondacks of New York, and in Quebec and Ontario, that magnetite and ilmenite bodies were not central or marginal magmatic segrega- tions, but magmatic injections that had crystallized later than the silicate minerals. He classified the titaniferous ore bodies as discordant and concordant bodies, both in anorthosites and gabbro and related rocks, and suggested filtration differentiation as the mode of origin for deposits in anorthosite. This was a radical departure from the accepted interpretation, and three extracts from the thesis were published in 1928 in Economic Geology. Dr. Osborne graduated in 1928 with the second highest standing in geology to date and began teaching as an associate at the State University of Iowa. In the summers of 1928–29 he worked for the Ontario Department of Mines mapping nonmetallic mineral resources forty miles northwest of Sudbury. He also completed a study of a nepheline-gneiss complex in Ontario. He had hoped to find an explanation for the origin of nepheline syenite, but concluded that it was “at best uncertain.” In Iowa City, in the fall of 1928, Osborne married Agnes Alexandra Jardine, whom he had met as a student at the University of British Columbia. She was from an old ship-building and shipping family of New Brunswick, and had moved to Vancouver as a youngster. Their son, Freleigh Jardine Fitz, was born in 1929. In the summer of 1930 Osborne applied for the post of assistant professor of petrology at McGill University in Montreal to replace Frank D. Adams, the dean of Canadian geologists. His accession was not a shoo-in, but the Yale connection proved to be the determining factor. Recalling Freleigh’s coming to McGill fifty years later, T.H. Clark remarked: “We had many candidates, but Osborne was from Yale and O’Neil [the chairman] was from Yale, and he wanted Osborne.” At McGill, Osborne first worked with Adams on a nepheline syenite from Rhodesia and the laboratory deformation of galena and pyrrhotite. But Adams’s eyesight was failing and he turned all petrographic work over to Osborne. Osborne then turned his attention to the Grenville Series of Quebec and the Monteregian intrusions. It was to be his field of work for the next twenty years. The Quebec Bureau of Mines hired him to study commercial granites and super- vise field parties, thus giving him an opportunity to become familiar with the Precambrian geol- ogy in various parts of the province. Because most of the province was unmapped, he drew his field maps with the aid of a compass and was one of the first to use aerial photographs. He worked in the La Belle–L’Annonciation area north-northeast of Montreal, supervising at the same time a growing number of graduate students to whom he would assign selected parts for their thesis work. Detailed fieldwork accompanied by petrographic studies was the key of Osborne’s approach to research. He stuck to the facts and had little use for such theories as gran- itization, which he dubbed “the theory of discontented ions.” He supervised a total of 41 M.S. and Ph.D. theses in the 17 years that he was at McGill. Many of his students went on to occupy important positions in academia, the geological services, and the mining industry. In 1934 Osborne demonstrated that the granite and syenite of the Chatham-Grenville stock cutting Grenville schists and Laurentian gneisses were the youngest Precambrian rocks of the area. In 1936 he published some important papers on the Grenville near Shawinigan Falls, Quebec. MEMORIAL TO FRELEIGH FITZ OSBORNE 15

He divided the series into a lower amphibolite part, probably of metavolcanic origin, and an apparently conformable upper part, consisting of metasedimentary rocks of the sillimanite grade. He interpreted the irregular masses of red granite gneiss in the amphibolite as injections parallel to the foliation, and the gabbro intruded in the upper Grenville as related to the Morin and Saguenay anorthosite massifs. He used petrofabric analysis, just introduced in North Amer- ica by Adolph and Eleanor Knopf, to interpret the style of folding in the upper Grenville. He became intrigued with the origin of anorthosite. On the practical side, he published reports on commercial granites, the rift, grain and hardway of Precambrian granites, the Montauban miner- alized zone, the anhydrite and gypsum deposits at Calumet Island, the iron minerals of Quebec, and he discovered the first brucite deposits in Quebec. In 1937 he was promoted to associate professor. During World War II he taught map read- ing, radio mechanics, and navigation to military personnel. From 1945 to 1947 he sat in the Montreal City Council, representing McGill. In the postwar expansion of the university he was named chairman of the timetable committee. He was then carrying a heavy administrative load, besides teaching and supervising a growing number of graduate students and, as no relief was in sight, he tendered his resignation to the university. The principal, F. Cyril James, asked him to reconsider, but he refused. Jobless, Osborne considered offers from Berkeley and the University of Arizona. But he wanted to remain close to the Precambrian sites, so in October 1947 he offered his services to abbé J.-W. Laverdière, head of the geology department of Université Laval. Université Laval was then an old, but small, French-speaking Catholic university in Quebec City. After due con- sultation, the university decided that it could not afford to deprive itself of his services, and in January 1948 Osborne moved with his family to Quebec City and began teaching petrography at Laval and supervising the graduate students. He was named a full professor in April. He gave his courses in English. André Carrier, one of his undergraduate students, remarked, “He was a reserved person, early to work, his eye often riveted to the microscope. He appeared to us as a great researcher, a sort of ivory tower, and an authority on the geology of Quebec. He was not a great speaker, but determined to get his message through. In lecturing he spoke to the brighter students and had little patience with the slower ones. He taught in English, which bothered some students, but did not hesitate to correct the French of our reports, surprising many with his mas- tery of the language.” Jacques Béland, one of his graduate students, added, “He taught in English although he could have used French because in many occasions I heard him correct the French of some students. I thought he was too proud to risk using inappropriate expressions or pronunciation. He spoke French only when the person he was speaking to did not understand English. Most students never had problems with that.” Osborne’s reputation as a scientist followed him to Laval. In the next 18 years he would direct another 41 master’s and doctoral theses of students from Quebec, other parts of Canada, Asia, Europe, and Africa. He trained many of the professors, geologists, and administrators that would fill the positions then opening up in the universities, the exploration and geological services, and the mining industry of Quebec. With abbé Laverdière at his side, he made geology respectable as a profession among the French-Canadians and put Laval on the geologic map of North America. When some French-Canadian laymen complained that a Protestant was teaching at Laval, the arch- bishop of Quebec replied that Osborne had been hired because of his merits as a scientist and not his religion. In the early 1950s, he was offered the chairmanship of the fledgling Department of Geology of the University of Montreal, but he turned it down because he was reluctant to leave the amenities of a quiet Quebec City suburb for the inconveniences of a big city. More than half of his graduate students worked on the Precambrian, but others were attracted to the deformed lower Paleozoic sedimentary sequences near Quebec City and in the Appalachians, from the Eastern Townships to the Gaspé Peninsula. This forced Osborne to shift 16 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA his attention from the Precambrian to the lower Paleozoic and begin a new career as a sedimen- tary petrographer. In 1956 he published a concise interpretation of the geology near Quebec City, and his 1960 presidential address to the Royal Society of Canada was on turbidites. He understood that graptolites were the key to dating Ordovician strata, and so began leafing through Ruedemann’s Graptolites of North America. In time he was able to identify most Early Ordovician graptolites. He made large collections of graptolites with the help of René Bureau, and in 1965 B.-D. Erdtmann came to Laval to study the collections. Two of his last papers were on graptolites. His last contribution to geology was a lexicon of stratigraphical names of Quebec that was to serve as the basis of the present Canadian lexicon. In 1967 Osborne became as associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Earth Science and made many an author unhappy with his exacting standards. He retired from Laval in 1971. He had taught for 43 years and directed a total of 82 theses. He understood the need of “not holding the fort” and letting the new generations take over. He had hoped to be able to study the problem of the origin of anorthosite in retirement, but his wife’s long illness prevented him from doing that. He was an avid reader and kept up with the literature. His hobbies were optical instruments and geneology. He owned many cameras, including an early Leica with many accessories and a Soviet panorama Horizon, but he preferred a Miranda Sensorex SLR. In his later years he under- took a study of his family through church and family records and documents, and was able to retrace his paternal ancestors back to James Osborn, who had migrated to Canada from New York in 1795, after the end of the American Revolution. In 1977, during the New England Intercollegiate Geological conference at Laval Univer- sity, René Béland dedicated the conference guidebook to Dr. Osborne for having been “the insti- gator and prime mover of geological research at our institution.” Dr. Osborne was a member of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (since 1920), a senior fellow of the Geological Society of America, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (president of Section IV in 1959–60), and a member of the Society of Economic Geolo- gists, the Corporation of Professional Engineers (Quebec), l’Office de la recherche scientifique de Québec, and the Geological Association of Canada. He was an honorary member of the Pro- fessional Order of the Geologists and Geophysicists of Quebec. Agnes Osborne died in 1984. Dr. Osborne lived in his home in Quebec City until 1995, when he moved to a home for retired people in Montreal. He took with him his petrographic microscope hoping again to work on anorthosite, but failing eyesight prevented that. He died after a short illness on March 13, 2000, at the age of 96. Freleigh Jr., with a doctorate in physics from Laval University, had a successful career in space research with Canadian Marconi and RCA–Spar Space Systems. He and his wife Hazel Fitzgerald are the parents of Donald Freleigh Fitz, a mechanical engineer with an M.B.A., who is vice-president and general manager of EMS Technologies in Montreal. Donald is married to Kate Walsh and is father to Matthew and Jenifer. Acknowledgments F.J.F. Osborne, Jacques Béland, Art J. Boucot, André Carrier, René Bureau, Dennis Shaw, Tim White, Tomas Feininger, Léopold Nadeau, and Patricia Riva have contributed to this memo- rial. The author has also drawn from the manuscript James Osborn, Yeoman, and Some Descen- dants by F.F. Osborne. MEMORIAL TO FRELEIGH FITZ OSBORNE 17 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF F.F. OSBORNE 1928 Certain magmatic titaniferous ores and their origin: Economic Geology, v. 23, p. 724–761, 895–922. 1930 The nepheline-gneiss complex near Egan Chute, Dungannon Township, Ontario, and its bearing on the origin of nepheline syenite: American Journal of Science, v. 20, p. 33–60. 1931 A polarizing vertical illuminator for mineralography: Economic Geology, v. 26, p. 545–550. —— (with Adams, F.D.) Deformation of galena and pyrrhotite: Economic Geology, v. 26, p. 884–893. 1934 The Chatham-Grenville composite stock, Quebec: Royal Society of Canada Transactions, v. 28, p. 49–64. 1935 Rift, grain and hardway in some Precambrian granites, Quebec: Economic Geology, v. 30, p. 540–551. 1936 Petrology of the Shawinigan Falls district: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 47, p. 197–228. —— Intrusives of part of the Laurentian complex of Quebec: American Journal of Science, v. 192, p. 407–434. 1939 The Montauban mineralized zone, Quebec: Economic Geology, v. 34, p. 712–726. —— Brucite: Quebec Department of Mines, Division of Mineral Deposits, Preliminary Report 139, p. 1–15. 1944 The microtextures of certain Quebec iron ores: Quebec Department of Mines, Division of Mineral Deposits, Preliminary Report 186, p. 1–41. 1949 Coronite, labradorite, anorthosite and dykes of andesine anorthosite, New Glasgow, Que- bec: Royal Society of Canada Proceedings, v. 43, section IV, p. 85–112. 1956 The Grenville region of Quebec, the Grenville problem: Royal Society of Canada Transac- tions Special Publication no. 1, p. 3–21. —— Evolution and interpretation of the geology near Quebec City: Geological Association of Canada Proceedings, v. 8, part 1, p. 157–166. 1962 (with Morin, M.) Tectonics of part of the Grenville subprovince in Quebec, in Royal Soci- ety of Canada Special Publication no. 4, p. 118–143. 1964 (Editor) Geochronology in Canada: Royal Society of Canada Special Publication no. 8, 156 p. 1975 Québec Geological Lexicon: Ministère des Richesses Naturelles, Québec, S-162, 364 p.

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