Meeting October 2nd 8:00pm at Knox United Church Meeting Hall
Join us at the meeting as Bob regales us with his adventures collecting in Yukon Territory.
Collecting rocks and minerals has been a passion for Bob since early childhood. Born and raised on the west coast of England, close to the English Lake District, he had great access to the many mines in the Cumbria area, the iron mines in the Furness region, and in the Lake District such as the Caldbeck Fells & Copper Mines Valley. He also travelled further afield to explore the areas around Alston & Nenthead and went north into the Lower Highlands of Scotland and south into Yorkshire & the Peak District. When not collecting in the quarries and on mine dumps, he spent many hours “spelunking” underground, exploring the old mines and limestone cave systems in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
His interest in English and world-wide minerals continued to grow after he immigrated to Canada in 1977, settling in the north Kawartha Lakes area of Ontario, where he attended his first Bancroft Gemboree. Living and owning and operating an engineering company in Peterborough, ON provided the greatest of opportunities to field collect in the surrounding counties of Hastings, the Haliburton Highlands and further north to Cobalt and east to Nova Scotia & Cape Breton. His collecting interests changed in the late 1980s, and he divested himself of most his of international collection to focus strictly on Canadian mineral specimens only, which continues to this day. In the early 1990s he started to add Canadian faceted gemstones to his growing Canadian collection. So now, 95% of his collection consists of several thousand Canadian mineral and gem specimens, with the remaining 5% consisting of specimens and artifacts from his earlier years in the UK.
Bob and his wife Brenda continue to make sizable donations to Canadian mineral & gemstone related projects and publications for capital equipment, MSc & Phd student research funding, exploration and research trips, major institutional exhibits, specimen donations and mineralogical publications.
Now enjoying retirement in Stouffville, close to his grandsons, and the opportunities to travel into in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories to further enhance his collection, he still is very actively field collecting, faceting some of his own gemstones, cataloging all his finds and operating his mineral & gemstone business, known as Kawartha Minerals Inc. (KMI).