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Jennifer Bates

The summer has come and gone and most of you are back at your desks, after enjoying the summer weather and deer flies! The AGS Executive and Council have been hard at work so far this year and there are a lot of things going on in the AGS these days.

Plans are proceeding for the next AGS Colloquium, which will be held on February 9^th and 10^th, 2001, at the Delta Beausejour Hotel in Moncton, New Brunswick. This will be the first time that the Colloquium will be held in Moncton, and the Executive and Council are excited about hosting the event in a new venue. Mark the dates on your calendars, and contact me if you are willing to help organize the event. Many hands make light work! A block of 100 rooms has been reserved at the hotel. You are encouraged to call and book your rooms early. Please indicate your affiliation with the AGS Colloquium. Mike Parkhill (NBDNR) has agreed to coordinate the abstract volume for the 2001 Colloquium. The Call for Papers is included in this newsletter.

Sandra Barr and Les Fyffe are planning to hold a symposium in conjunction with the 2001 Colloquium entitled Geological Correlations Between New Brunswick and Maine (see article in this newsletter). This is both timely and topical as a new Appalachian geological map is presently being prepared. The organizers are planning to invite several key scientists from both sides of the border to the symposium and the ensuing discussions will be of great interest to many AGS members.

At the Colloquium, I would like to have a slide show featuring AGS members at work. Do you have a great slide or a print from your field activities? How about a picture taken aboard a research ship? If so, please send it to me at the address given at the end of the newsletter.

On a musical "note" for the 2001 Colloquium, I want to encourage all the musicians in the crowd to bring along your musical instruments and your talent to the annual jam session. No instrument is too bizarre (but please leave the bagpipes at home!).

In the spring of 1999, Rob Fensome of the Geological Survey of Canada (Atlantic) proposed that the AGS sponsor a photographic competition within the Photographic Guild of Nova Scotia (PGNS). The subject material for the photos would concentrate on geological images and the resulting photos could then be added to the AGS library of images, for use in our many educational initiatives, such as "The Last Billion Years" and EarthNet. The proposal was accepted by the AGS executive and the competition was held as part of the PGNS activities for 1999/2000. Rob Fensome and I attended the PGNS awards banquet on May 25 and presented the AGS awards, which included the winning photo by Keith Vaughan entitled Zebriski Point and three photos that tied for second place: Paddy Island, Medford and Basalt by John W. Webb and Amphibian trackway, Horton Bluff by Gilbert van Ryckevorsal. The winning slides will be shown at the 2001 AGS Colloquium. Plans for next year's contest are already in progress.

The AGS Executive and Council have approved the formation of a committee to investigate the preparation of a new Geological Highway Map of Nova Scotia. The committee, spearheaded by Howard Donohoe (Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources) and Robert Grantham (Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History), will develop a proposal for the preparation of the new Highway Map. Howard and Bob's committee will investigate all aspects of the proposed map, including royalty agreements, copyright, mar-keting and cost to the AGS, and will report back to the executive in the fall.

The AGS has agreed to be the host society for the 2005 GAC-MAC conference to be held at Dalhousie from May 14-18, 2005. A Local Organizing Committee (LOC) has been formed and includes: Mike Cherry, Chairman; Rob Raeside, Vice-Chair; Pat Ryall, Treasurer; and Mike MacDonald, Secretary. The Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists has agreed in principle to participate in the 2005 conference and predicts that approximately 200 of their members will attend. To date, the conference facilities at Dalhousie University, and blocks of rooms at the University and several downtown hotels have been booked. If you are interested in participating in the organization of the 2005 GAC/MAC I encourage you to contact one of the members of the LOC. The LOC is having a logo contest with the winner being chosen and announced at the 2001 AGS Colloquium. Interested readers should see the "Win a Fabulous Prize" article in this newsletter for more details.

Well, that is about all for now. I hope you are having a great fall and I look forward to hearing about the exploits of the AGS members, in their various pursuits of geoscience excellence and/or the correct chords for a song!

On two beautiful sunny days on the 12th and 13th of June, Clint St. Peter and Sue Johnson of the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources and Energy guided a geological field trip in southern New Brunswick. The objective of the trip was to demonstrate representative sedimentological, stratigraphic and structural features of Carboniferous and early Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the Maritimes and Fundy basins.

The trip was arranged at the request of Phil Moir and Rob Fensome of the Geological Survey of Canada (Atlantic). This annual outing brought fifteen eager participants from Dartmouth to Sussex to learn more about the geology of southern New Brunswick.

The group left Sussex and proceeded south to the mouth of Tynemouth Creek on the Bay of Fundy shoreline where the Westphalian A/B grey plant-bearing grey fluvial beds of the Tyne-mouth Creek Formation were dis-sected. After everyone was saturated with stump-casts and Stigmaria, we journeyed east to St. Martins, where the leadership of the trip was assumed by Bill MacMillan of GSC Atlantic. He gave an overview with nice dia-grams of the geology and contact relationships between the Triassic alluvial Honeycomb Point Formation and overlying fluvial Quaco Forma-tion. The walk along the beach, spectacular caves in the Honeycomb Point beds and delicious ice cream at the beachfront restaurant were enjoyed by all.

Everyone drove back through Sussex and proceeded to Alma in Fundy National Park. After accommodations were secured we met for a robust dinner of seafood and "pop". A few of the GSCers (no names given) tented in the park campground. Everyone was invited back to the campground for a sing-a-long and those who attended will recall the smoking camp fire!! John Shimeld picks a pretty good guitar. (Oh, sorry, that was a name wasn't it.)

The morning of the 13th was mostly spent in the Park. We first went to Point Wolfe where Phil Moir of GSC Atlantic gave us a lecture on the reason why many bridges of days gone by were "covered". Also, at Pointe Wolfe some general features of the Visean/ Namurian Hopewell Cape Formation were demonstrated. The second Park stop was along Dickson Brook and Dickson Falls to inspect an unconformity between the Hopewell Cape Formation and the Pre-Cambrian Broad River Group volcanics. Above Dickson Falls and in the brook bed a disconformity between the immature Hopewell Cape sediments and the mature Boss Point Formation was described.

After stopping in Alma to pick up sandwiches and assorted lunch snacks we drove northeast to Germantown, where we looked at nearly undeformed grey sandstones of the mid- to late Namurian Boss Point Formation and deformed conglomerates of the late Visean/ Namurian Hopewell Cape Formation. Here the Boss Point beds dips below the younger Hopewell Cape strata with the latter having been thrust northwest along the Harvey-Hopewell Fault.

From Germantown we headed back south to Dennis Beach to look at unnamed red roundstone conglomerates and large-scale cross stratified sandstones of the Mesozoic Fundy Group. Following lunch on the beach, we walked west across a concealed interval which hides the Dennis Beach Fault. On the west side of the fault trace there is the polydeformed conglomerates of the Hopewell Cape Formation.

From Dennis Beach we drove north along the shore of Chignecto Bay to the mouth of Shepody River to observe the redbeds of the Maringouin Formation. Climbing ripple-laminated sandstones and mottled mudstones of the Maringouin Formation are distal equivalents of the coarse Hopewell Cape conglomerates.

The next stop was in the Provincial Park at Hopewell Rocks. One group took a shorter walk to see the historic Flower Pots which are tidally carved from conglomerates of the Hopewell Cape Formation. The more hardy walked a fair distance downhill to the southern part of the section, where coarse red terrestrial conglomerates of the Lime-kiln Brook Formation contain two tongues of marine stromatolitic limestone. Everyone seemed to be suitably impressed by the size of the algal heads and their overhanging morphology. The upper limestone tongue represents the youngest Windsor Group unit in New Brunswick. The site is important because it demonstrates beyond a doubt that there are both terrestrial and marine rocks within the Windsor Group and that the Windsor is conformably succeeded by the Mabou Group (Hopewell Cape Formation).

After leaving the "Rocks" we headed north and inland to Frederick Brook and the site of the historic Albert Mines Albertite vein. In a small pit, everyone scrambled to find the first Paleoniscid fish fossils. Most found some fish scales. The beds there are high-grade oil shales of the Lower Carboniferous (Tournaisian) Albert Formation. The paleontologists remained in the pit while the mining crowd walked east to the spoil piles of the old Albertite mine. Pieces of the black vitreous bitumen were collected with relative ease. Hans Wielens of GSC Atlantic was particularly successful in acquiring hand-size samples.

From Albert Mines we headed to Hillsborough were we stopped for a group photo shoot. I think most participants enjoyed the outing. I know Sue and I certainly did so and we would welcome an invitation to participate on a future occasion.

Twenty-six Nova Scotia science teachers gathered at St. Francis Xavier University on August 21-22 to attend the seventh teacher workshop hosted by EdGEO Workshop Committee of the Atlantic Geoscience Society.

During the one and one-half day workshop, geologists and teachers highlighted resources available to grade four to grade ten science teachers. AGS education materials including the geological highway map, the video series and guides, the website EarthNet and Peter Wallace's field guide were presented and used in the sessions. The general program focused on hands-on activities and how they might be brought into the classroom. The afternoon field trip presented the local geology of Antigonish, Malignant Cove and Arisaig. On Monday evening, the participants were free to wander through displays, demonstrations and posters, pose questions to the presenters, and discuss the happenings of the day. Brendan Murphy, on behalf of the host St. F.X., welcomed the teachers and spurred an interesting discussion on geology and education.

So, I suspect you are asking "How could this go on for so many years?" Simply, the answer is the enthusiastic and dedicated members of the Committee. As well, the influx of fresh ideas from new members keeps the blood flowing. All members actively participate in the planning and presenting of the workshop. Our most recent volunteers are Lesleigh Grice (HRM School Board) and John Shimeld (GSC Atlantic). They join Rob Fensome, Nelly Koziel, Bill MacMillan, Iris Hardy, Graham Williams and Jennifer Bates of GSC Atlantic; Howard Donohoe and Linda Ham of NSDNR; Bob Grantham of NSMNH; Henrietta Mann of Dal-Tech; and Susan Baldwin and Kathy Silverstein of HRM School Board.

Plans for the eighth EdGEO workshop (this must be the longest running program within Canada) are underway. EdGEO 2001 will return to the Fundy Geological Museum on August 20-21, 2001 but with a completely different field trip from the one that was part of the 1999 workshop. The registration fee is $65. Please spread the word to the educators in your area. But advise them to register early as most years the workshop is "sold out".

A special symposium on "Geological correlations between New Brunswick and Maine" is planned in conjunction with the Annual Colloquium of the Atlantic Geoscience Society on February 9-10, 2001, at the Delta Beausejour Hotel, Moncton, New Brunswick.

The question of correlations between New Brunswick and Maine is complex, whether we are dealing with stratigraphic and plutonic units, major faults, tectonothermal evolution, paleontology, terranes and terrane boundaries, or mineral deposits. The theme is a timely one, with a new geological map of the Appalachian orogen now being prepared to replace the 1978 classic by Hank Williams.

The organizers envisage the symposium to include both oral and poster sessions, as well as ample time for informal discussion. The abstract deadline is not until January 2001, but we would appreciate an indication at this time as to whether or not you are interested in participating, and also if you are likely to be submitting an abstract. As usual, the abstracts will be published in Atlantic Geology.

The Atlantic Geoscience Society will host the joint annual GAC-MAC meeting in Halifax in May 2005. The core of a Local Organizing Committee (LOC) has been assembled, and is starting the long process of ensuring that this meeting will be another successful undertaking by AGS.

The LOC needs a distinctive logo, which will be used for a wide range of advertising and promotional appli-cations. The logo should provide a graphic association with Nova Scotia and include text identifying the city (Halifax) and the meeting (GAC-MAC 2005). It should be capable of repro-duction in black and white, full colour and single colour, and scalable to allow uses ranging from letterhead to a large symbol on posters.

Submissions are invited from AGS members and other interested parties. Entries will be displayed at the Colloquium in Moncton on February 9 and 10, 2001, and attendees will be invited to cast a ballot for their choice of the submissions. The winning submission will be announced at the Colloquium banquet. The author of the winning entry will receive a fabulous prize.

Contestants are encouraged to submit their entries as digital files created in any commonly used graphics software. Entries submitted as paper must be capable of conversion to digital format by simple scanning. Deadline for submissions is January 15, 2001.

Entries should be sent to:

Laing Ferguson is presently confined to City Hospital in Moncton having suffered a stroke late in the summer. Communications by mail from friends/colleagues will be greatly appreciated.

October 30 and 31, 2000

Mining Matters for Nova Scotia 2000. World Trade and Convention Centre, Halifax, NS.

Geological Survey of Newfoundland and Labrador, 24^th Annual Review of Activities and CIM Newfoundland Branch 47^th Annual Meeting.

Delta Hotel, St. John's, NF.

New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources and Energy, Annual Review of Activities.

Sheraton Inn, Fredericton, NB.

Atlantic Geoscience Society Colloquium and Annual Meeting. Delta Beausejour Hotel, Moncton, NB.

AGS 2000 - 2001