Chris has over 10 year of experience in the environmental industry. He obtained a Diploma with Honours from Lakeland College in Conservation and Restoration Ecology and later graduated with a B.Sc. with Distinction from the University of Alberta in Environmental and Conservation Sciences, majoring in land reclamation. In 2016, he joined Trace Associates Inc. as a Senior Reclamation Advisor. In 2020, Chris took on the role of Practice Area Lead for Reclamation, which enables him to mentor and empower staff across the company in all aspects of reclamation across a variety of market sectors.
The Alberta Chapter of the Canadian Land Reclamation Association (CLRA) is looking for abstract submissions! If you are interested in sharing your ideas, submit your abstracts.
Congratulation to Samantha McGarry, recipient of the Dr. Jack Winch Early Career Award for her body of work in reclamation. Sam began her fourth-year thesis work with Dr. Graeme Spiers and Dr. Peter Beckett in 2009. Sam’s thesis and later, Master’s work contributed towards a project was entitled the Green Mines Green Energy (GMGE) project and aimed to grow energy crops on mine tailings using organic residuals. The project addressed many challenges present in society with cross-cutting themes related to environmental sustainability and recycling, as well as reclaiming brownfields in a sustainable manner. Sam’s work focused on growing corn, canola, and switchgrass in biosolids applied to mine tailings at Xstrata (now Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, A Glencore Company where Sam currently is the Site Rehabilitation Lead).
The Ontario chapter of the Canadian Land Reclamation Association (CLRA) along with Vale, the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), and the Ontario Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines (MENDM) are pleased to announce that Jonathan Lavigne has been selected to receive the 2020 Tom Peters Memorial Mine Reclamation student bursary. Jonathan is currently a 1st year Ph.D. student in the Boreal Ecology program at Laurentian University, under the primary supervision of Dr. Nathan Basiliko. Jonathan’s Ph.D. research focuses on the introduction of novel reclamation strategies to improve soil fertility in mining impact areas, encompassing both smelter impacted lands and legacy aggregate mining sites. The award will be used to enhance both GIS and statistical analysis components of Jonathan’s research. The competition was very stiff this year, with four excellent submissions, and we thank all candidates.
We are happy to announce that the Ontario Chapter of the CLRA is now accepting submissions for the Tom Peter’s Student Bursary Award for Excellence in Mine Reclamation. The award includes a bursary of $5,000 generously provided by Vale.
We are also accepting submissions for the Tom Peter’s Memorial Mine Reclamation Industry Award!
The IN-TECH Reclamation Award (Formerly the Noranda Land Reclamation Award) is one of three prestigious awards of the Canadian Land Reclamation Association / Association Canadienne de Réhabilitation des Sites Dégradés (CLRA/ACRSD). This award celebrates innovative techniques that advance the practice of reclamation in Canada within any sector of industry (i.e mining, forestry, oil & gas).
Nominations for the CLRA National Awards including the Noranda Land Reclamation Award, Dr. Edward M. Watkin Award, Dr. Jack Winch Early Career Award, and Linda Jones Memorial Award, are due by August 31, 2020.
As many of you know from our announcement in early April, we rescheduled the Quebec Reclaim, Restore, Rewild (RE3) conference to June 19 – 24, 2021. We are disappointed to announce today that SWS will withdraw as a host of the rescheduled event due to prior conference commitments for 2021. SER and CLRA are pleased to continue their partnership with Université Laval to host this conference, which will now also serve both as SER’s 9th World Conference on Ecological Restoration (SER2021) and the 2021 CLRA National Conference & General Meeting. All three societies look forward to partnering again in the future, and we deeply hope that members from all the societies will still participate in this event as peatlands are such an important wetland component of Canada’s landscape.
Clubroot is caused by a microscopic, soil-borne plant pathogen called Plasmodiophora brassicae. Clubroot was first reported on broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower in a few home gardens in the Edmonton area in the mid-1970s. In 2007, the Government of Alberta added Clubroot as a disease to Alberta's Agricultural Pests Act.
