INNOVATION Centennial Collectors Edition January-February 2020

F E A T U R E

The Phoenix Mine comprised an open pit (shown here in 1967) and underground workings, located in the now-defunct town of Phoenix. P hoto : G reenwood M useum , G reenwood , BC

1990 GEOSCIENCE BECOMES A REGULATED PROFESSION

Sir James Hector, a Scottish geologist, naturalist, and surgeon, became the first to observe and map British Columbia’s geological features when he participated in the Palliser Expedition of 1857 to 1860. He was also the one responsible for a name that has puzzled many travelling through the Canadian Rockies. The expedition was traversing a high mountain pass in 1858 when Hector was kicked in the chest and knocked unconscious by one of his own packhorses. Thinking him dead, his companions dug a grave and were preparing to put him in when he, fortunately, woke up. And Kicking Horse Pass got its name. Many other trail-blazing geoscientists followed over the next hundred years to explore and record our landscapes, evaluate and develop our natural resources, collect geophysical data, and analyze seismic activity. Eventually, however, people both within and outside the profession became concerned about overlapping engineering/ geoscience practises and the absence of oversight for mining resource evaluations. In 1990, after 10 years of working with government to develop new legislation, as well as internally to create new credential examination and registration procedures, geoscience became a regulated profession in BC— and the association expanded to become The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia. 2015 AND BEYOND BC ENGINEERS TAKE THE LEAD IN TELESCOPE TECHNOLOGY Over the past three decades, engineers and geoscientists have played a central role in major projects across the province, including (to name just a few) massive seismic retrofits, economically significant mineral exploration developments, and Vancouver’s Expo 86, attended by over 22 million people from around the

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