Yves Oscar Fortier (1914–2014)

Yves Fortier, a geologist of unusual versatility, former director of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), and a pioneer of the modern study of Canadian High Arctic geology, died in Ottawa on 19 August 2014, at age 100.Yves Oscar Fortier was born in Quebec City on 17 August 1914, two weeks after Germany declared war on France at the outbreak of World War I. His early education was a classical one, at the Jesuit Séminaire de Québec; from there, he went on to Laval University, obtaining a BA in 1936.One of his teachers, Fr.J.W. Laverdière, introduced Yves to geology.Entering Queen's University in 1936, he chose the Geology option in Mining Engineering.He was awarded a BSc in 1940.That same year, Yves began a study of the mineral chromite-important in steelmaking, particularly for the war effort-while employed as a field assistant to Dr. C.H. Stockwell of the GSC, who was investigating the Appalachian rocks of the Eastern Townships of Quebec.This work led to the award of an MSc by McGill University in 1941.Yves continued his investigations of potential chromite deposits in the southern Quebec Appalachians, eventually focusing on geological mapping of the Mount Orford area for the GSC.This project formed the subject of a PhD dissertation at Stanford University, where Yves spent two academic years from 1941 to 1943.In 1943 Yves joined the GSC full-time as a Junior Wartime Technologist and began work in the Archean-age Precambrian shield of the Ross Lake area, northwest of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.After a second summer at Ross Lake, Yves completed mapping of the Mount Orford area in the fall of 1944.His PhD degree was conferred by Stanford in 1946.Yves spent the 1946 field season studying uranium mineralization in the Port Radium area of Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories.Yves began the Arctic phase of his career in 1947, when he was directed to evaluate the potential for local use of coal deposits in the area of Pond Inlet, northern Baffin Island.Yves planned to reach Pond Inlet on an RCAF Canso aircraft being used by a group of geophysicists from the Dominion Observatory, who were investigating Earth's magnetic field in the Arctic Islands (Operation Polco).At the end of the field season, he was to return south on the Hudson Bay Company's supply ship Nascopie.In July, however, the Nascopie was wrecked near Cape Dorset, and Yves decided to remain with the Operation Polco team and carry out geological work during ground stops, as well as making observations from the air.Thus did Yves become the first GSC geologist to penetrate the Arctic Islands by air.He was profoundly impressed by the superb exposure of rocks and structures in treeless terrain that was unexplored geologically.In 1949 Yves investigated the Precambrian granitic terrane of Meta Incognita Peninsula, southern Baffin Island, using two Acadia-type fishing boats-one on the Frobisher Bay coast, the other on the Hudson Strait side-and pack dogs on land, respectively crewed and handled by Inuit.A foretaste of the future?Yves immersed in paperwork on Operation Franklin in 1955.

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