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More of our PioneersWilliam Ewart Parks (Ph.D. 1900)Diana McIntyre of Pleasanton, California, has donated tothe Department of Geology three albums of newspaperclippings and other memorabilia of William Ewart Parkswho was the Head of our department from 1932 to 1936when it was known as Geology and Palaeontology. He diedthe same year that he retired. Mrs. McIntyre is the granddaughterof Parks, the great niece of the renowned Universityof Toronto physicist Sir John Cunningham McLennanand is related by marriage to the noted Toronto consultinggeologist Duncan Derry in whose memory we named thelaboratory that houses our electron microprobe.6Parks received the first Ph.D. in Geology in Canada, at theUniversity of Toronto in 1900. He was a very accomplishedearth scientist although, according to Mrs. McIntyre, hewas rather retiring and soft spoken, and always in theshadow of the more flamboyant McLennan. He was alsoone of the five founders and the first Director of the RoyalOntario Museum that was opened by Viscount Connaughtin March 1914. Parks was the General Chairman of the12th International Geological Congress held in UniversityCollege in 1913.Diana McIntyre and a portrait of her grandfatherWilliam Parks which hangs in the seminar roomat the Geology DepartmentThe albums provide a fascinating glimpse of the life andtimes of Parks and other University notables during the firsthalf of the 20th century, and contrasts with today. The attendeesat the 12th IGC came from all over the world, a notinsignificant trip in the era before air travel and just beforeWWI broke out in Europe. A photograph shows over 270or so ladies and gentlemen dressed in their finest, in sharpcontrast with the casual dress of the thousands who attendmodern IGCs. A hot topic of the 1913 IGC was the age ofthe Earth for which estimates ranged from 20 million to1.7 billion years. Parks predicted that, in the not too distantfuture, communities would be built at the Earth’s polesand later be buried by ice. He was seemingly a very earlyadvocate of a hothouse/icehouse world. He wrestled withreconciling his strong religious faith with what his researchin palaeontology was telling him about evolution. A lot waswritten about Parks in the popular press and he receivedmany distinguished honours. Despite this, he was forced tosupplement his meagre university salary by doing contractmapping in northern Ontario each summer.A painting of Professor Parks hangs in our seminar room.S.D.S.