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OVMC February 2025 Meeting – Ice River Alkaline Complex – BC
February 20 @ 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
5:30 PM Mineral Identification and Kids Corner
“Rock Doctor” Clinic: Starts at 5:30, ends at 6 PM. Members are free to bring in a reasonable number of samples or specimens to be identified by the expert mineralogists in the club. This has been a very popular activity for the membership (at times exceeding our capacity to deal with everyone present!).
“Kids Corner”: We will now be having a table set aside for children to learn the basics of mineral identification and other related activities. Thank you to Tara Conroy for setting this up!
6:00 PM Meeting
Speaker Dr. Paula Piilonen, Research Scientist, Mineralogy Dept., Canadian Museum of Nature
Topic: The Ice River Alkaline Complex, southeastern British Columbia
Topic Details: The Ice River Alkaline Complex, 23 km south of Field, British Columbia, is a J-shaped, multiphase intrusion comprised of highly alkaline rocks – carbonatite, ijolite, nepheline syenite, and numerous post-intrusive dikes. It is host to at least 92 different minerals including fine examples of relatively rare minerals such as ancylite-(Ce), edingtonite, natrolite, and catapleiite, as well as abundant sodalite. For the last 2 years, Dr. Piilonen and a team from the Canadian Museum of Nature, partnered with Chris Robak of Silver Cove Minerals, have undertaken expeditions to this mineralogically important locality in order to study the late-stage pegmatites in the Moose Creek Valley. Paula will share her experience discovering and collecting minerals from a new type of pegmatite and her discoveries back in the lab.
About our Speaker: Dr. Paula Piilonen is a research scientist in the Mineralogy Section at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa where she has worked for the last 23 years. She completed a B.Sc. in geology at Laurentian University (1997), a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa (2001), and a post-doctoral fellowship at Université de Marne-la-Vallée (France, 2002) before starting with the Museum in 2002. Her work is focused on the mineralogy, crystal chemistry and behavior of rare elements in alkaline systems, in particular the minerals that are formed during late-stage autometasomatic or hydrothermal processes. Her fieldwork has spanned the globe, from Mont Saint-Hilaire to Norway, Thailand and Cambodia, Baffin Island and British Columbia. She lives in rural Dunrobin on the Ottawa River with her husband, Reni. She is an avid squash player, a certified Muay Thai instructor, enjoys mountain biking, kayaking and fishing on the Ottawa River but more likely can be found relaxing on the deck with an adult beverage watching the sunsets.
Location and Directions: Canadian Museum of Nature, 240 McLeod St., Ottawa. Enter through the main entrance and turn left, go to the end of the hall past the cafeteria