September 1, 2021 Program: Smaller Localities Across Eastern Canada

Presented by Quintin Wight

by Yury Kalish, MSDC Vice President

With an unexpected setback in the coronavirus situation, our return to in-person meetings at the Smithsonian is again delayed, and we will restart our 2021 programs by continuing virtual meetings via Zoom. The silver lining is that this allows the MSDC to continue with presentations from out-of-town speakers.  

Our presenter in September will be Quintin Wight, a long time mineralogical collector and frequent speaker to clubs across North America.  Quintin was a member of MSDC for several years when he was stationed in Washington, D.C. as a Canadian military representative. Some of our members are familiar with presentations Quintin makes jointly with his wife, Willow, that are based on their travels to exotic locales in Asia and Africa.  On September 1, however, Quintin will present alone on a topic that is a little closer to home: Smaller Localities Across Eastern Canada.

Eastern Canada is a source of many wonderful minerals, and Quintin’s presentation will take us on a sweeping mineralogical tour of that area. The presentation begins with a scattering of quarries in the Siliurian Lockport dolomite of Niagara Falls.  It then proceeds east to a Precambrian outcrop with högbomite and corundum, and then on to Montreal and the Francon quarry. Quintin will then discuss the South Ham antimony mine, before continuing east again to boron deposits in New Brunswick (including volkovskite and penobsquisite).  Finally, we reach the Atlantic Ocean for a quick look at the zeolites on the shores of the Bay of Fundy.