The Tooth of Time: J. O. Wheeler

This year geologists celebrate the bicentenary of A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with part of Scotland, by the English engineer and mineral surveyor, William Smith (1769-1839).Entirely self-motivated, his was not the first geological map ever made, but it was the first one to encompass an entire nation (Sharpe 2015;Sharpe and Torrens 2015).At a scale of five miles to the inch (1:316,800), it was printed on 15 sheets covering 4.68 square metres in all, individually hand-tinted with water-colours so as to show the surface extent of each stratum softly, but its base in sharp relief.Elements of Smith's colour scheme-green in the Cretaceous, blue in the Jurassic, grey in the Carboniferous-gained lasting international adherence.Ironically, there is no indication in Smith's public or private writings that he ever inferred, from the stratigraphic order he established, a depositional sequence in geologic time (Rudwick 2005).No matter, the map itself was transcendent.This year will also be remembered for the passing of one of Smith's most successful modern map-making descendants, John O. Wheeler .Wheeler's crowning achievements were the Geological Map of Canada (Wheeler et al. 1996) and its companion, the Geologic Map of North America (Reed et al. 2005).Innovative in their day, they remain unsurpassed by any geological map at the classic scale of 1:5M.Earlier, his Tectonic Assemblage Map of the Canadian Cordillera (Wheeler and McFeely 1991) provided a common reference frame for a generation of Cordilleran geologists, analogous to Harold (Hank) Williams' Tectonic Lithofacies Map of the Appalachian Orogen (Williams 1978) and Phillip B. (Phil) King's Tectonic Map of North America (King 1969).J.O., as he was known, was a Cordilleran geologist first and foremost, based in Vancouver with the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC).But in the 1970s, my first decade with the organization, he was based in Ottawa first as Division Chief and then as Chief Geologist (Deputy Director-General).Soft-spoken and blessed with the happy ability to put anyone at ease, J.O. was especially loved by younger geologists because he habitually lingered around the poster booths at conferences, talking with them about their work.He often sought out junior research staff as soundingboards for his ideas.J.O. rarely if ever talked about himself, so it was only during my voluntary secondment to the Vancouver office in 1973-74 that I began to piece together the history and background of the man himself.Five years later, he would seek my opinion about a pressing personnel decision.What I told him haunts me still.J.O. came from a distinguished line of surveyors and mountaineers (Sandford 2006).His paternal grandfather (Fig. 1), the family patriarch in this country Arthur Oliver (A.O.)Wheeler , was author of a landmark monograph on the geography and history of the majestic Selkirk Range (Wheeler 1905), co-founder of the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) in 1906, and commissioner on the Alberta-British Columbia interprovincial boundary survey .Yet, his alpine experience began only at the age of 40.A.O. Wheeler was raised near historic Kilkenny in the southeastern interior of Ireland, the son of land-owning Anglicans long prominent in the area as clergymen, military officers and political leaders.When A.O. was 16, a crash in food prices forced the family to sell their estates in Ireland and emigrate, to Georgian Bay, Ontario in 1876.Four years earlier, a Kilkenny neighbour, Major William Francis Butler (1838-1910), had published The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America (Butler 1872).Having volunteered to collect intelligence about the Red River Métis Rebellion and American settlers pressing northward, Butler met with the Métis leader Louis Riel before guiding the British-Canadian military expedition of 1870 to the Red River settlement, where federal authority was restored.Butler stayed on after the expeditionary force departed and was authorized to travel across the Prairies in winter and report on living conditions in the newly acquired western territory.Reaching Rocky Mountain House in early December, he returned to Upper Fort Garry (Winnipeg) by dog team in mid-February, delivering his report to the Lieutenant-Governor two weeks later.Twelve-year-old A.O. Wheeler was one of the many who were captivated by Butler's sensitive and evocative descriptions of Western Canadian landscapes and people in winter.The Great Lone Land went through 19 editions in his lifetime.For A.O., his family's destination of Collingwood, Ontario was a gateway to Western Canada.

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