CITATION

Robert Michael Easton
2025 Goldich Medal Recipient

It is a great pleasure and honor to present the 2025 Goldich Medal to Dr. Robert Michael Easton, a highly respected senior scientist at the Ontario Geological Survey, in Sudbury, Ontario. Michael Easton, or ‘Mike’ as we know him, has been and is, without any doubt, among the leading and most productive geoscientists at the Geological Survey of Ontario (OGS) where he has spent much of his geological career (1982–2025). His curriculum vitae and publication list provide evidence for >600 publications and significant contributions — way too many to cite here. Even a short list of publications most relevant to the interests of the Institute and the geology of the Midcontinent Rift (MCR) spans four pages. The highlights include:

• a large number of peer-reviewed papers and reports;
• numerous extended abstracts in ILSG Proceedings volumes spanning the years from 1985 to 2023;
• meticulous editing of various ILSG Proceedings volumes; and
• the writing and editing of several comprehensive ILSG field trip guidebooks.

In 2022, Mike co-lead and co-organized the 68th ILSG meeting in Sudbury, the first post-“peak COVID” meeting. We had proposed organizing this Sudbury meeting years earlier, an idea cooked up at another ILSG meeting in Terrace Bay, … but then COVID hit! It was a pleasure to organize this highly successful meeting with Mike, as one can always be 100% sure Mike will come through with everything. Although it was a joint effort, Mike took care of all the editing of both Proceedings volumes (Part I and II), and a fair bit of the local logistics.

Born and raised in Ontario, Mike started his geology career with a BSc Honours degree (1976) at the University of Western Ontario, London, with a thesis titled "Geobotanical Studies in the Back River Volcanic Complex, NWT." He then moved on to the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, where he graduated (1978) with an MSc thesis on the "Stratigraphy and Petrology of the Hilina Formation: The oldest exposed lavas of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii". In the late 1980s, I remember studying a treatise and guidebook on volcanology that was influential at the time, and this was authored by Mike Easton and his wife Monica (Easton & Easton, 1985)!
Mike completed his graduate studies with a PhD from Memorial University (1982), in Newfoundland, with a thesis titled "Tectonic Significance of the Akaitcho Group, Wopmay Orogen, NWT." These studies brought him to the Slave craton of northern Canada, and its western active margin, the Paleoproterozoic Great Bear Magmatic Zone. His studies of these ancient terranes, sponsored in part by the Geological Survey of Canada, prepared him well for the complex geology of the Canadian Shield in Ontario. He then joined the OGS, where over the years he has taken on more and more senior roles but never gotten away from doing fieldwork. At the OGS, Mike has mentored and supervised numerous students and junior colleagues, including a good number of them working in areas along the northern shore of Lake Superior. He has also taken on more and more editorial roles for various OGS publications, maps, and datasets. From 2002 to 2007, Mike was one of the scientific leads of the Lake Nipigon Geoscience Initiative (LNGI), and provided oversight on OGS mapping projects in the region. He was directly involved in some of the mapping, and particularly the geochronology sampling. He handled numerous publications for this large project and was a guest-editor on the final volume that published many of the LNGI results (Easton et al., 2007). Since then, Mike has been a frequent collaborator on other projects either directly or indirectly relevant to Lake Superior area geology.

In the early 1990s, together with Terry Carter, Mike investigated the basement geology beneath the Paleozoic cover in SW Ontario (e.g., Easton & Carter, 1991, 1994, 1995), using geophysical data, and drill cores and cuttings, to locate the Grenville Front and the extension of the MCR in Ontario and into Michigan. Notably, they found that the Grenville Front was located some 100 km to the east of where previous interpretations had located it, and that metamorphosed equivalents of MCR rocks were likely present in the Grenville Front tectonic zone in Essex County. They were among the first to hypothesize that the final stages of MCR rifting and inversion were connected to the main tectonic phases of the Grenville orogeny.

From 2002 to 2010, Mike was involved with the MCR digital data and publication collaboration between the OGS, the Minnesota Geological Survey, and the United States Geological Survey, specifically the compilation of Ontario geological, mineral deposit, geochemical, and geochronological data in GIS-compatible formats to allow incorporation into the USGS-led cross-border compilation for the Midcontinent Rift. In addition, also in 2010, he was a co-organizer and editor of four guidebooks for the 11th International Platinum Symposium (June 2010, Sudbury), a meeting that had a strong focus on the MCR, including a week-long field trip visiting deposits around Lake Superior. None of this would have ever happened without Mike’s efforts and contributions. Among his many other contributions to ILSG over the years, Mike also served (and still serves) as a board member for the Institute (2022-2025).

After spending the last 53 summers doing fieldwork and research in the Grenville, the Southern Province, the Lake Superior area, or elsewhere in Ontario, Mike retired in March 2025. Given his outstanding accomplishments and amazing productivity over the years, either for the OGS or for various extra-curricular projects such as ILSG meetings, leading field trips, time-consuming editorial jobs, teaching as an adjunct professor, or supervising and mentoring many students (and never missing a beat!), it is a great honour to present Mike with the Goldich Medal

Citation by:
 Wouter Bleeker, Senior Research Scientist, Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa

Mike's response

It is with great humility that I accept this award, since it places me in the company of many of the greats of our profession that I grew up admiring. And, over time, by attending many Institute meetings, I got to know and learn from those greats, which has benefited me greatly over my career.

This award comes on the 40th Anniversary of the first Institute on Lake Superior Geology meeting that I attended in Kenora, Ontario. As such, I would like to take a few moments to reflect on that experience as it illustrates what makes the Institute such a wonderful and meaningful organization. At that time, I was working for the Ontario Geological Survey far away from the Lake Superior Region. Although I found the meeting presentations of great interest, the highlight of the meeting of course were the field trips, one of which showed me some Archean rocks that were identical to rocks I was working on in the Grenville Province. Totally unexpected but insightful and thought-provoking at the time. Little did I know where this first taste of Institute activities would eventually lead.

Although totally unplanned, over the years, my work kept drawing me to the Lake Superior region and the Institute. First, by looking at the basement geology of southwestern Ontario, I had to reconcile the interaction of the Midcontinent Rift underneath Michigan with the Grenville Front. This ended up drawing me to the10th Basement Tectonics Meeting in Duluth in 1992, and the first of many field trips examining rocks of the Midcontinent Rift, along with my getting to know many of the stalwarts of the Institute that I had only known previously by reputation.

Forward to the 2000s, and due to a fortuitous conjunction of industry, government, and academic interest, along with some unanticipated external funding, the Lake Nipigon Region Geoscience Initiative (LNRGI) was borne. Along with Pete Hollings, and others, I served on the science advisory board. LNRGI resulted in many new scientific discoveries in northwestern Ontario and helped to kick-start a renewed interest in the Proterozoic rocks of northwestern Ontario, which had been somewhat neglected during the 1990s. This was followed by the recognition soon after that Sudbury impact detritus in the Lake Superior region, once again tying the geology of eastern Ontario with that of the northwest. And, once again, it was an Institute field trip that allowed me to see these rocks first-hand.

Throughout this entire period of LNRGI the role of the Institute was critical. It served as an important venue for presentations by researchers and most importantly, their students, on the latest scientific discoveries, and making those results available in a readily accessible format. More importantly, by providing inexpensive field trips throughout the region, researchers and their students could see the latest discoveries first-hand.

In preparing these remarks, I have been able to reflect on why the Institute has played such a significant role in the development of my career, and that of others. Four points stand out.
First, geology is one of the professions where experience, of all kinds, is critical. Thus, one cannot overstate the role the Institute plays in providing great field trips. Even better, it makes these field trip guidebooks readily accessible.
Second, the Institute embraces student-participation, in an environment where young scientists are encouraged and mentored.
Third, it is often the first-place where new research is presented, sometimes years before it eventually makes it into the mainstream literature. This is key to active researchers, especially with the extended abstract format.
And fourth and finally, the attendees are what make the Institute great. Over the past forty years I have always found it to be a welcoming environment where one can openly discuss any geoscience questions or topics.
For all of the reasons above, I greatly regret that I was unable to attend this year’s meeting.

Finally, in closing, I would like to thank all of those who were involved in the nomination and selection process. I truly appreciate the time and effort involved seeing the process through to compilation. Thank you all.