EARLY CONTACTS INFLUENCING CAREER CHOICES IN THE LIVES OF THREE HAMILTON (ONTARIO) GEOLOGISTS

Charles Coote Grant (1825-1914), born in Ireland, reached the rank of Lt. Colonel in the British army, but retired in 1867 to avoid transfer from Ontario to India. He was a self-taught paleontologist who amassed important collections from Paleozoic rocks near Hamilton, and was a founding member of the Geological Section of the Hamilton Association. He befriended the young Joseph Winthrop Spencer (1851-1921), son of a pioneer Empire Loyalist and mill owner, and took the boy on field excursions. Spencer graduated B.Sc. (McGill, 1874) and Ph.D.(Goettingen, 1877): upon returning to Canada he was appointed head of Science (Chemistry, Geology, Mineralogy, and Natural History) at Hamilton Collegiate Institute (HCI), remaining there until 1880. After this he held positions in Halifax, Missouri and Georgia (State Geologist) before setting up as an independent geologist in Washington, DC. He must have known, and almost certainly taught Andrew Cowper Lawson (1861-1952), though neither ever mentions the other in their writings. Lawson, born in Scotland, spent the years 1876-1880 at HCI, was a star student, and studied chemistry as well as classics. He worked part-time for the Hamilton Spectator, and after a freshman year in Toronto took a summer job as a reporter in Montreal: he was already interested in geology and took courses in geology, mineralogy, and medicine at McGill. He decided then that he was too squeamish to be a doctor, and preferred geology to journalism. After degrees at Toronto and Hopkins, two years with the Geological Survey of Canada, and one as a consultant in Vancouver, he accepted a position at Berkeley. Would there have been no "King" of geology at Berkeley without the retired British colonel?