Club Activities

March 2nd Meeting, In person, Learn everything about Opals

We’re back to live meetings, for now. Our March 2nd meeting will be back at the church hall. Due to circumstances, we will be having a regular meeting with a presentation instead of the usual March Auction. We hope to do a live auction later in the year

Join long-time member and newsletter editor, David Bellamy as he discusses that most colourful of gemstones, opal. Topics discussed include the basis of opal’s play-of-colour, the many different types of opal, what distinguishes it from other forms of silica, colour patterns, methods of enhancing opal’s appearance, synthetic and imitation opals, fraud in the opal trade, opals in art and opal mining locations.

David Bellamy is a retired high school science teacher who has been a member of the GMCS since the fall of 1994. He was an avid collector many years before that and his collection has grown in leaps and bounds since joining the GMCS. His interests are varied and his collection includes minerals, rocks, fossils, faceted & cabbed gemstones, artificial and enhanced minerals as well as frogs carved from various rocks and minerals. He is also an avid traveller, having visited places like the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island, Italy, Madagascar and many countries in Latin America.

For anyone wishing to attend in person these are the rules we will be observing.

Masks must be worn at all times. Please bring your own, but we will try to have extras available if needed.

There will be a short screening form that will need to be filled out at the door prior to entry. This is for contact tracing only. All forms will be destroyed after a few weeks.

There will be no food served during the meeting and we ask that you please NOT bring any food or drinks in with you.  

For anyone who can’t attend in person, the meeting will be streamed live over the internet. A link will be e-mailed to GMCS members closer to the meeting date. We now have a new laptop and a new webcam, hopefully will improve the quality from what we had before.