Life of Sir William E. Logan, Kt., LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c., First Director of the Geological Survey of Canada. Chiefly Compiled from his Letters, Journals, and Reports

In 1843, the Montreal-born William Logan (1798-1875) was hired to undertake a geological survey of Lower Canada and Upper Canada. The Geological Survey of Canada, based in Montreal from 1843 until 1881, evolved from this position. Logan was the director of the GSC until 1870. Logan's establishment of a stratigraphic succession for the Paleozoic rocks south of Quebec City created a bitter international confrontation in the 1860s. Establishing the geological framework for Canada after 1842, Logan relied on the system of nomenclature established by the New York Geological Survey and James Hall. Moreover, in elaborating a stratigraphic succession for the Quebec rocks, Logan drew directly on Hall's paleontological expertise. Their combined skills contributed to a coherent column for the "Quebec Group", geologic fossils dating back to the Silurian period. Yet in 1861 new trilobite evidence proved the column wrong, created a strident conflict between Logan and Hall, dragged them into the "Taconic" controversy and seriously damaged their close working relationship. Appendix A in this biography (pages 403-418) is titled "The Quebec Group" by McGill University Principal and geologist John William Dawson (1820-1899); and Appendix B in the book (pages 419-422) is titled "List of Sir William Logan's more important papers, reports, &c."

Montreal

Dawson Brothers

1883

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