Arthur Young SMITH Jr.

1929 - 2020

ARTHUR YOUNG SMITH JR. 1929-2020 Arthur Young Smith, Jr., age 90, passed away peacefully in his sleep on Sunday, August 23, 2020, at Manoir Lac Brome in Knowlton, Québec. He was born September 4, 1929 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Predeceased by his parents Arthur Young Smith, Sr., of Ottawa, Ontario and Emeline Francis West, of Union City, Indiana. He graduated from McGill University in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Geology and received his Master of Science (Honours) in Geology from Queen's University in 1961. He completed course work for his PhD at Carleton University but started working before he could complete all the PhD requirements. In 1958, he married Mariette Hayeur in Montréal, Québec. Art's career was as varied as the places it took him. Coming from an old Ottawa family that was artistic, Art started out as an assistant in the Ottawa studio of the photographer Malak Karsh and became an adept photographer in his own right. Malak once ordered him to stop an Ottawa Street car coming down the tracks so he could capture a shot, much to the amusement of bystanders who figured they would both get run over. When the opportunity arose to put his photographic skills to work with the Geological Survey of Canada, Art seized the adventure of doing airborne photo and magnetic surveys in northern Alberta, the NorthWest Territories and the Yukon, often flying in the belly of old war-time Lancasters and the Canso flying boat, operating the cameras and magnetometers. His photos of Fort McMurray in the early fifties, capturing Fort Mac before the oil boom, are in the archives of the city. He quickly fell in love with the opportunities that geology, geological surveying, and geochemistry gave him for understanding the world at scales ranging from the continental to the elemental. Early in his career, he and the family spent summers in Bathurst, NB, Elliot Lake and Bancroft, ON working on gold and uranium deposits, and doing groundwater surveys. His early survey work helped him develop some of the early radon detection equipment that came into commercial use. His work as a geologist and geo-chemist for the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) took him from Canada's Arctic, Subarctic, and Maritime provinces to Uganda, Greece, Peru, Morocco, Honduras, Chile, Pakistan, Fiji, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, and Niue – doing original fieldwork and training researchers on four continents in methods that he and his teams developed for uranium exploration and mapping. A proud moment at the end of his work in Greece was the invitation to brief the Greek Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis on the geology of North Greece. Upon completion of the Moroccan project he moved to IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria where he worked in the Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology until his retirement in 1989. In April 1986, during the Chernobyl accident, he was a member of the team that advised the IAEA on natural background radiation. After retirement, as a former member of the IAEA, he shared in the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded 'for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way'. He was immensely proud of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize because he had been a lifelong proponent of the safe, non military use of nuclear energy the result of seeing the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings and their effects as a young man. Art was a lifelong member of the Prospectors and Developers (PDAC), the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG), and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CIM). He was also a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario, being granted a P.Eng. in July 1970 when geo-chemistry was admitted as an Engineering discipline. He was the author or co-author of forty-six publications issued by the Geological Survey of Canada, the IAEA, and various journals on topics in mineral exploration, uranium and radon methods, technical reports in uranium exploration and development. He was also the editor of various IAEA publications on uranium geology, geochemistry, Gamma-ray spectrometry and uranium exploration policy. Through his work, Art and his family lived in Canada, Uganda, Greece, Peru, Morocco, and Austria. In 1989, he retired from the IAEA and moved full-time to his farm in Fulford, Québec, where he operated a woodlot and lived until a month before his death. He was a member of the Environmental Advisory Committee for the Town of Brome Lake and of Renaissance Lac Brome for many years. He was a devotee of classical music, opera, jazz, and most other forms of music, a gifted storyteller, a voracious reader, and a proud Canadian, fascinated with Canada's history and contemporary politics. Always a bon vivant his taste in wine was exceptionally broad, but Scotch was his drink of choice. He was blessed with an international network of friends, developed through his professional life and personal contacts, with whom he stayed in contact throughout his long life and whose careers and adventures gave him great pleasure. He was preceded by his wife Mariette (1998), his brother Franklyn (2019), and his sister Harriet (2005). He is survived by his son Robin and wife Bernadine Martenson of Oakville, ON, his daughter Michèle and her husband Kevin Smith of Providence, RI and by three grandchildren, J. Alexander Smith, John A. Smith, and Émilie Mariette Wilder Smith. The family would like to thank all those who helped in Art's final days at the Brome Perkins Missisquoi Hospital, the Manoir Lac Brome, and in the village of Fulford. Due to COVID-19 attendance restrictions, the family will be having a memorial at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to UNICEF and UNWOMEN, two causes that Art believed in.