Regions & Sections
Canada Region
The Canada Region has quite a busy year ahead of us! One of our main focal points will be preparations to host the 2010 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition (ICE) which will be held in Calgary, Alberta from September 12-15, 2010. Our conference organizers have been busy planning a very interesting program with sessions that will cover everything from local and international resource plays to frontier exploration.We are also planning a twoday international core conference at the world class Energy Resources Conservation Board’s Core Research Centre along with some excellent short courses. September is a perfect time to run pre- and postconference field trips west into the nearby Rockies, and through cooperation with the SEPM and our Affiliated Society, the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, there will be a great selection of excursions to choose from. As I sit in my office this late September day, I am looking west and there isn’t a cloud in the sky, no snow in the mountains (yet!) and temperatures are a perfect 25 Celsius. We are hoping this will be the best attended ICE ever, so mark your calendars for September, 2010. Hope to see you here!
Our Region has now competed in the Imperial Barrel Awards (IBA) program for two consecutive years, with our 2008 and 2009 regional winning team’s finishing 4th and 3rd, respectively, in the final Global Competitions. The IBA program in Canada is a very successful event which we are finding is an excellent introduction for students as to what petroleum geologists REALLY do, AAPG recruiting vehicle, great publicity for AAPG and an outreach platform for the development of Student Chapters and a larger AAPG volunteer base within our Region. With over 30 universities teaching a graduate level geosciences program in Canada, the success and growth of the IBA program seems assured. Our biggest challenge is how to manage this success with our limited volunteer base and the associated costs in getting teams from across Canada to Calgary to compete.
We are also working through the steps to get a Canada Region AAPG office opened in Calgary in 2010. The AAPG would share office space with the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists (CSPG) and Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists (CSEG). Excellent synergies exist between the AAPG and the CSPG/CSEG for training, publications, workshops, conventions, student expos/outreach and membership building. In Canada we have approximately 1,626 AAPG members with 2,600 geoscientists living in the Calgary area alone that are not AAPG members. Having a stronger AAPG presence in Calgary should help grow our membership base in the Region.
Some of the other initiatives we are addressing are:
- The 2010 affiliation of the Atlantic Geoscience Society (AGS).
- Student Chapter growth, primarily through the success of the IBA program.
- Development of a “Foundation” in which Canadian AAPG members will be able to make charitable donations through the AAPG for fund use within Canada, and obtain a tax receipt.
- Canada Region Delegates sit on the Constitution and Bylaws, Education, Publications, Student Chapter, Resolutions and Regions Committees.
- We are hoping to be able to fund the donation of “Datapages” each year to a Canadian University with a geosciences program. In 2009 we were able to supply Calgary’s Mount Royal University with our first “Datapages” donation.
- Assuring Canada Region AAPG members are well represented in nominations for AAPG Honors and Awards. In 2010, four Canada Region members will be receiving awards.
It will be a busy but exciting year for us looking forward. We have a very dedicated, but small group of Canada Region Delegates with lots to do, including our day jobs. I encourage all Delegates who may know any Canadian geoscientists that are keen to help us out have them give us a call anytime!