Memorial to Conrad Gravenor 1923-1986 DAVID T.A
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Memorial to Conrad Gravenor 1923-1986 DAVID T.A. SYMONS Department of Geology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada Con Gravenor, former Dean of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics and professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Windsor, died on July 26, 1986, after a six-month battle with cancer. His career was marked by excellence regardless of the venue—be it university, industry, or government—and regardless of the enterprise—teaching, research, or administration. The majority of his 78 research publications were in the realm of glacial geology, with an ongoing bent toward explaining the origins of glacial features and deposits. Nevertheless, he also contributed to other diverse areas, such as mineralogy, hydrometallurgy, field mapping, and rock magnetism. Con was born in the Ottawa Valley on December 19, 1923, in the town of Renfrew, Ontario. His father, Horace, was a Baptist minister who christened him Conrad Percival Gravenor. His early years were spent in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, where he roamed on the rugged granite outcrops of the Atlantic shoreline. He also had the rare experience of sailing on the famed Bluenose schooner, a noted “rum-runner” out of Lunenberg that is featured on the Canadian ten-cent coin. During his teens, the family moved to Toronto, Ontario, a sober city in those Depression years. Upon finishing high school in 1942, he joined the Canadian armed forces and served in Europe from 1943 to 1946. Following his discharge, Con enrolled in the “Vets College” at Ajax, which was a temporary satellite campus of the University of Toronto. Here the “excellence” started to show. After three years he graduated in 1949 with his B.A. in geology. He won not only the Coleman Gold Medal as the top student in geology, but he also won the Regent’s Gold Medal as the top science student at the “U of T.” Some of the credit for this stellar performance may be ascribed, I suspect, to the impetus provided by his marriage to Anna Brown at the start of his final undergraduate year. He also got his first taste of geology during the summers of 1948 and 1949 as a junior assistant, and then as a senior assistant, on an Ontario Department of Mines field party. Con then headed for the University of Wisconsin to study glacial geology under two well-known mentors, namely Fred Twaites and Cal Emmons. With Emmons’ guidance through numerous rewrites, Con published his first refereed paper, a contribution in mineralogy. After only one year, he left Wisconsin with his M.S. degree in hand. Winning a research fellowship from the Indiana Conservation Board, he went next to the University of Indiana to earn his doctorate. Here he majored in glacial geology under Roger Deane and minored in geochemistry under Brian Mason. In addition to completing his Ph.D. by 1952, after a scant two years, Con worked as a party chief for the Geological Survey of Canada during the summers of 1950, 1951, and 1952. He was responsible for the initial mapping of the glacial geology in five large counties which constitute about one-half of southeastern Ontario. The other half was being mapped by Vic Prest, also for the GSC. Their “vigorous discussions” on the origin and significance of what they were mapping led to both a long friendship and a realization that there was still much to be learned about the remanents of the Ice Ages. Moving west to Edmonton, Conjoined the Department of Geology at the University of Alberta 2 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA for four years, two as a lecturer and two as an assistant professor. Here he learned the artifices of academic administration from the likes of Bob Folinsbee and P. S. “Doc” Warren. His summers were spent mapping on the prairies as a party chief for the Research Council of Alberta. Several significant papers on glacial features, such as drumlins, prairie mounds, and indicator minerals, stem from this period. Recognition of his summer work led the Research Council of Alberta to appoint Con as their chief geologist in 1956, a time of rapid expansion of geologic research in the province. Shortly thereafter, in 1959, he was appointed chief of the Earth Sciences Branch of the Research Council. Thus he added responsibility for the Alberta Soil Survey and for the Ground-water and Metallurgical Research Divisions. Given that agriculture and petroleum were and are the basis of Alberta’s economy, these duties were substantial. Despite the workload, Con remained scientifically active and published frequently on various topics, such as the heavy minerals in the Athabaska sandstone, the general geology of Alberta’s iron ore deposits, the weathering of silicate minerals, the glacial flutings in northern Alberta, and the hydrometallurgy of low-grade iron ores. Some notable collaborators from this period included R. H. Barton, L. A. Bayrock, W. H. Mathews, and W. O. Kupsch. The excellence of this work was obviously recognized; in 1963 he was honored by election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1964, Con took a year’s sabbatical as a research associate at the Institut de Recherches de la Siderugie in Metz, France, and at the Nordac Chemical Company in Uxbridge, England, to study the hydrometallurgy of iron ores. On his return to the Research Council, he became its Assistant Director of Research. Con’s expertise in chloride hydrometallurgy (he held eight patents in 28 countries) led him to accept the position of Director of Research for Peace River Mining and Smelting, Limited, in 1965. The focus of his research tracked the economics of the times, resulting in a switch of emphasis from low-grade iron ore in Western Canada to reprocessing scrap iron in Eastern Canada. Peace River responded in 1968 by promoting him to Vice-President and installing him as the general manager of its steel mill in Amherstburg, near Windsor, Ontario. Fortunately for the Department of Geology at the University of Windsor, Con Gravenor loved to teach and excelled at it. During the 1969-1970 academic year, he voluntarily gave up his lunch hours to speed into Windsor to teach geology to engineers. One year later he returned to academic life as the Vice-Dean of the Division of Science and Mathematics at Windsor. Rapid expansion and evolution of the University led to a change in title, but not duties. In 1973, Con became the Dean of Science and Mathematics, a post that he held for the ensuing decade. This was not an easy decade to be an administrator in Ontario. Enrollments increased by about sixty percent, while budgets lagged behind inflation by an additional few percent each year. With a quick wit and an eye for the absurd, Con used common sense to promote and build his faculty, without losing his own faculties over the numerous problems. While Dean, Con Gravenor continued to be a professor in the truest sense of the word. He continued to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in glacial geology and he always obtained high ratings when the teaching evaluations were completed. When he relinquished his decanal duties in 1983, the Department of Geology was quick to utilize his excellence as a teacher by giving him the large introductory geology course for science students. His high standards continued unabated. Con was also quick to establish an active research program at Windsor, which he supported with a steady flow of research grants. Recognizing the potential of rock magnetic and paleomagnetic methods in studying glacial deposits, he proposed some joint research to me. I was less than delighted with the prospect of having glacial “dirt” in my laboratory; however, Con persisted. In his ever pragmatic and innovative fashion, he solved the problems of sampling and measuring his specimens. He also brought Mike Stupavsky into the research program. Together, in various combinations with Con, we published some nineteen papers on the paleomagnetism and magnetic fabric of tills, tillites, and other glacial sediments. Research “conferences” with Con are mostly remembered, however, for MEMORIAL TO CONRAD GRAVENOR 3 his incisive and genial humor as the foibles of politicians, bureaucrats, and colleagues came under scrutiny. Con’s research was not easy to label, for he worked on chattermark trails in garnets, on theoretical glacial models, and on other instrumental techniques as well. His research also had a world-wide dimension and perspective that led to collaboration with colleagues such as A. C. Rocha-Campos and A.S.L. Montes in South America, V. von Brunn in South Africa, and V. A. Gostin in Australia. Con remained scientifically active until his last few weeks, and sadly, the last three of his papers are being published posthumously. Over the years, Con Gravenor served many scientific, university, and community organizations as a member of innumerable committees and in various offices. As but one example, he was the President of the Canadian Quaternary Association when he became ill. He gave his time and energy to such ventures unstintingly when he could have been tracking the wind in his sailboat about Lake Erie. He is and will be missed. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CONRAD GRAVENOR 1951 A graphical simplification of the relationship between 2V and Nx, Ny and Nz: American Mineralogist, v. 36, p. 162-164. ____Bedrock source of tills in southwestern Ontario: American Journal of Science, v. 249, p. 66-71. 1953 The origin of drumlins: American Journal of Science, v. 251, p. 674-681, reprinted in Benchmarks, 1975. 1954 Mineralogical and size analysis of weathering zones on Illinoian till in Indiana: American Journal of Science, v. 252, p. 159-171. 1955 (with Bayrock, L.