November Speaker: The King of Tides -- Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy by Ray McDougall

by Cindy Schmidtlein, MSDC Vice President

Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy

Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy has been famous among mineral collectors for a long time. The shoreline and island occurrences are among the earliest of Canadian mineral localities, and have been producing superb specimens of many mineral species since the mid-19th century.

The Bay of Fundy also is known for the highest tides in the world, with a difference of over 50 feet from low to high tide. These daily surges of huge volumes of water scour the cliff bases of the shorelines and the islands. Together with the annual destruction caused by freeze-thaw, the phenomenal tides cause significant erosion and change, constantly exposing mineralized areas.

Several minerals occur in world-class specimens from the Bay of Fundy localities:
analcime, chabazite, and gmelinite are the classics. Excellent specimens of natrolite, native copper, thomsonite, heulandite, and laumontite also are found.

Ray's presentation will focus on five classic localities and will focus on beautiful minerals from this region, highlighting specimens that have been collected over the last 25 years. He also will share with us some insights into the nature of the collecting in the localities and the scenery along Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy.

Raymond McDougall's Bio

Our speaker, Ray McDougall, was born in Montreal, grew up in Toronto, and studied mineralogy and geology while completing a B.A. at McGill University in 1992. He went on to become a corporate securities lawyer in Toronto for 18 years, where he worked with clients in the Canadian mining industry. He retired from law in 2013 to become a mineral dealer (McDougall Minerals, www.mcdougallminerals.com) and is the past Chair of the Rochester Mineralogical Symposium.

Ray has been an avid mineral collector since childhood and has been a member of
the Walker Mineralogical Club in Toronto since the early 90s. He enjoys field
collecting and lives in the woods near Bancroft, Ontario where he regularly burrows in holes in the woods. Ray travels internationally in pursuit of fine mineral specimens - and he spends a lot of time in a dark room taking photographs of minerals.