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Club Meeting September 4th – Amber, the fossilized tree resin 

On September 4th, 2024, Bill Lecher will be speaking about Amber, the fossilized tree resin. The emphasis will be on Earth’s geological time scale and the formation of Amber. However, no presentation about Amber would be complete without photographs of Amber and photomicrographs of insects and other inclusions in Amber. Bill will also explain why he decided to compose a presentation about a topic so far removed from mineralogy and micro-minerals.

Bill was educated in Toronto: high school at Parkdale Collegiate Institute where he developed his love of chemistry and the University of Toronto. In 4th year at U of T, all his classes were at Lash Miller, the chemistry building.
Bill taught high school science, mostly chemistry, for over 30 years, all in the Etobicoke system. He has always been a great fan of chemistry, so interest in mineralogy and mineral collecting came very naturally to him. He “formally” started collecting micros in 1993, which was the first time he went collecting at Mont Saint-Hilaire (MSH) & the Varennes quarry in Quebec. Since 1993, MSH has been his chief point of interest, but since then, he has also learned to appreciate minerals from other quarries such as the Varrenes quarry, the Francon quarry in Montreal, the Ariskop quarry in Namibia and the Clara quarry in Germany. He also likes all pretty and rare minerals. Over the years he has done considerable trading with many people all over the world.