Heather Lynch
Completing a PhD is a great achievement for anyone, but completing a PhD in geology in your eightieth year takes a truly remarkable individual, as Bruce Sanford’s story reveals.
Bruce Sanford (left) with his thesis supervisor Bill Arnott, professor in the Department of Earth Sciences
As a boy growing up in Ontario, Sanford worked with his mother and brother to maintain the family farm during the Depression. A short time later, he left to fight as a young soldier during the Second World War. When the war ended, Sanford completed his undergraduate degree and began working as a research assistant with the Geological Society of Canada (GSC).
Over the course of the next 40 years, Sanford worked as a research scientist with the GSC, primarily on field and marine mapping projects in remote areas. Often confronting difficult terrain and harsh conditions, he found himself relying on survival skills that he had acquired at an early age.
After a successful career with the GSC, Sanford retired in 1989, only to go on and initiate a research project that was in keeping with his work at the GSC. He began examining a thick succession of sandstones known as the Potsdam Group, a succession spanning 10,000 square km in Ontario, western Quebec and northern New York State.
The findings from his research project encouraged him to pursue a PhD, a lifelong goal that he had not yet realized because of time constraints and responsibilities. Realizing this dream also meant facing a number of challenges, including numerous 500-km trips and long hours of climbing and working on rock sections.
In the end, Sanford’s research will enable all future geological research on these layers of sandstone to be carried out on a regional scale with improved precision.
Sanford offers the following advice to those considering postgraduate studies: “Students who go into the workforce should never insist on a 9-to-5 workday. They must be prepared to devote long hours to office, laboratory and library research if they expect to acquire any significant level of expertise in a given field.”
With his thesis now defended, Bruce Sanford serves as a role model to those who hesitate to pursue postgraduate studies. Perseverance pays.
