I was born in Kingston, Ontario towards the end of W.W. II and started collecting minerals in the local Ordovician limestone quarries at the age of nine. No, I was not born with a rock hammer as some
of my students may have thought over my career! My love of minerals has grown uninterrupted over some 66 years. I got my primary, secondary and undergraduate education right here in the “limestone city”. I have nurtured this collecting fever with other activities including world travel, reading and photography. Post grad studies included a M.S. In Geology at the University of Nebraska and a PhD
in Geomorphology at Sydney University in Australia.. Summer jobs in the bush doing bedrock and surficial geology mapping for mostly government surveys kept me close to minerals across the Canadian Shield. After travelling back home from down under through 11 countries in Africa,
I settled down to a career of teaching Geology at the College and University level.

I published some 8 publications on Silcrete in journals, bulletins and symposia in 4 countries while helping to help raise a family of three girls with a very tolerant horse loving wife of nearly 50 years! Access to excellent collecting first in Central Ontario induced in a special way a real love of and respect for nature. To share that education and love of rocks, I became a founding member of the Kingston Lapidary and Mineral Club in 1962. I also maintained financial support from Energy Mines and Resources Canada and the Polar Continental Shelf Project for high Arctic Bedrock Geology Weathering Processes and Products across High Arctic Canada for over 20 years.

Today, my serious collecting days are pretty much over but I do frequent major shows and prefer
micromounts and thumbnails esp. Rare Beasties!