Honorary Address
2008 Honorary Address Webcasts
Stephen Hubbard's Presentation
*Riding Giants. Dir. Stacy Peralta. Setsuna LLC, Forever Films and Studio Canal, 2004.
Jeff Clark presenting on Mavericks,
his surfing Mecca.
Dr. Stephen Hubbard explaining the
science of Mavericks' notorious waves.
The Science of Big Wave Surfing
By Linden Achen, 2008 Honorary Address Co-Chair
This year's Honourary Address was held October 28, 2008 at the Jubilee Auditorium in Calgary, Alberta. The purpose of the event is to provide an exciting and dynamic scientific talk targeted to the 11 to 17 year old future geoscientists and the general public, and to raise interest in science, the geosciences in particular. Thus the Address included a morning presentation for students, and an evening presentation for the interested public.
This year the morning presentation was appreciated by local 1,800 school children. The evening event was attended by 1,000 individuals of many ages. As an experiment, the Committee this year expanded advertising of the evening event to include both television and daily and weekly magazines, in the hope of increasing future Honorary Address attendances and reaching additional individuals with the excitement of the geosciences.
The Honourary Address Committee would like to thank both Jeff Clark and Dr. Stephen Hubbard for their exciting and knowledgeable talks that they presented at the 2008 Honourary Address. Dr Hubbard began by illustrating that geologists are rock detectives and highlighting the fact that understanding current processes helps geologists identify past environments. Jeff Clark followed by explaining how he meticulously studied "Mavericks," a famous and deadly surfing location in Northern California, surfed solely by Jeff for over 15 years. It was easy to see the passion of both speakers on the topic of big wave surfing relating to Jeff's adolescent desire to understand why Mavericks existed and how the bathymetry of the underlying shoreface has a large bearing in the creation of the massive wave, and Dr. Hubbard's scientific explanation on how studying current processes today, using Mavericks as an analogy, gives geoscientists invaluable knowledge in identifying ancient environments which geologists study in the oil and gas industry here in Alberta.
The Honorary Address is presented by the CSPG in partnership with APEGGA, CSEG and the CSPG Educational Trust Fund. This event would not be possible without the support of the following sponsors: Devon Canada Corporation, Weatherford, Nexen Inc., AJM Petroleum Consultants, and Petro-Canada Oil & Gas; they were very gracious in their donations to our vision of raising interest in science, in particular geosciences among junior high students and the general public.
Next year, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Burgess Shale and the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species, the 2009 CSPG Honorary Address will feature Brian Keating of the Calgary Zoo to speak on the topic of evolution. The Address will take place either November 2 or 3, 2009, so stay tuned for more information.
Dr. Stephen Hubbard, Jeff Clark and the 2008 Honourary Address Committee.
Of course every year there are individuals that put the Honorary Address together and we need to acknowledge and thank them for their hard work that made this event a success. The following people were responsible for organizing the 2008 Address: Alyssa Middleton, Frecia Buenaventura, David Grinde, Jason Frank, Penny Colton, Stacey Perilli, Alex Wright, Tom Sneddon, Annette Milbradt, David Middleton, Greg Lynch, Devon Henderson, Jay Williams, Shawn LaFleur, Stephen Kotkas, and Bret Wrathall.
