Brock, Reginald Walter

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Brian C. Shipley, “BROCK, REGINALD WALTER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/brock_reginald_walter_16E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Geologist, university professor, office holder, army officer, and university administrator; b. 10 Jan. 1874 in Perth, Ont., son of the Reverend Thomas Brock, a Methodist minister, and Marian Jenkins; m. 28 Nov. 1900 Mildred Gertrude Britton in Kingston, Ont., and they had five sons; d. 30 July 1935 at Alta Lake, B.C.
    • After father’s death in 1886 the family settled in Ottawa, and Brock graduated from the Ottawa Collegiate Institute in 1890. He entered the University of Toronto that year, became known for his prowess in hockey, and obtained a summer appointment as a field assistant to Robert Bell, chief geologist of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC).
    • After he entered Queen’s in January 1894 Brock flourished, touring with the varsity hockey team and developing scientific skills under Miller’s guidance. He graduated in May 1895 with an ma in geology and medals in mineralogy and chemistry, and immediately set out for advanced training in microscopic petrography with Karl Heinrich Ferdinand Rosenbusch at the Rupert Charles University of Heidelberg in Germany. The following year he returned to serve on the staff at the School of Mining, where he performed assays and taught prospectors. In addition, he and Miller experimented with the rays discovered by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, later known as X-rays. In January 1897 he described himself as “the hardest worked man about the institution.”
    • Brock’s career moved another step forward with his permanent appointment to the Geological Survey of Canada that year. Until 1907 he conducted fieldwork in the mining districts of Boundary Creek, Rossland, Lardeau, and west Kootenay in the southern and southeastern interior of British Columbia. At the request of the federal government he and Richard George McConnell investigated the cataclysmic Turtle Mountain landslide of 1903 at Frank (Alta), which killed 70 people. His familiarity with the needs of miners and engineers bolstered his reputation among them as an eminently practical geologist in a profession that was often seen as too preoccupied with purely scientific matters.
    • Having achieved so much and still only 40 years of age, Brock then left the federal government to become professor of geology and dean of applied sciences at the recently established University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The First World War intervened. Brock, initially an officer in the 72nd Battalion (Seaforth Highlanders), became major of the 196th (Western Universities) Infantry Battalion; he sailed for Great Britain in 1916. In England the 196th was broken up. Brock was assigned the 19th and later the 15th Reserve battalions and was stationed at the headquarters of the Canadian military camp in Seaford. There, with educator Edward Annand Corbett, he headed a college of the Khaki University of Canada. At the war’s end he was seconded for service with the British Foreign Office and the Board of Trade as a geological intelligence officer under General Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby in Palestine. He obtained his demobilization on 10 Sept. 1919.
    • On his return to Canada Brock took up his post as dean at the university. There he introduced the first Canadian bsc degree in nursing, advocated a broadly based engineering curriculum for geologists, and inaugurated the teaching of geography as a discipline. His travels and scientific work in the 1920s and 1930s took him to China, Fiji, and Scandinavia, and he contributed two seasons of fieldwork to the geological survey of Hong Kong. The University of Hong Kong awarded him an honorary lld in 1933. He was elected president of the Royal Society of Canada for 1935–36.
    • Brock’s life, though too short at 61 years, spanned a period of fundamental transformation in geologists’ professional identities. He began his career in the era of the heroic generalist explorer, but as survey director he required that geologists have phds and work on specialized subjects. Tall, virile, and athletic (according to an anecdote he had once wrestled a wild wolf), Brock easily played the role of the rugged outdoorsman, but ultimately his greatest geological contributions were made indoors, in government and university administrative offices.
  • Third Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1045
  • Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/254186913/reginald-walter-brock