Geological Technician Co-op Program Student Blog
Who was my co-op with? I did my Earth Resource Technician (ERT, now Geological Technician) co-op with AMG Environmental Monitoring. My six-month co-op at AMG began on May 10th. AMG Environmental provides flow monitoring services for storm sewers, sanitary sewers and rivers. AMG also offers …
For my summer and fall co-op term I worked for Aurora Geosciences as a geo-technician. Aurora is a Canada-wide exploration consulting company that specializes in geological consulting and conducts a wide variety of geophysical surveys. As I was eager to being my co-op, I started …
For my co-op term, I worked at Generation Mining as a Geotechnician in a remote township in North Western Ontario called Marathon. Working in Marathon was a great opportunity because it is in one of the most mining rich areas of Ontario.. My experience with this company shaped the way I look at mineral exploration and gave me experiences of a life time. I found it very easy to work with this company as they are small and treat everyone well and help you overcome any problem you may encounter on the job. My days working for Generation Mining would consist of gathering, processing, and shipping of core. Another part of my job was when I got to visit remote drill sites and preform a down-the-hole gyro survey on our drill holes.
Getting to perform surveys on our drill sites using a Reflex Gyro was one of my favorite parts of my job. Our surveys were a quality control of the drill hole. The purpose of the survey was to ensure that the drill maintained planned dip and azimuth to hit our drill targets. Every time I went out in the field there was a new problem to solve and would always be a unique challenge to each drill site. Sometimes the first challenge of surveying the holes was just how you were going to get to the site. We used ATV’s, UTV’s, and even helicopters to get to the sites.
I conducted two different types of surveys on the drill holes – manual and electronic. Most of the time we used electronic surveys, but the most memorable experience was one of my manual surveys. This survey was conducted on the deepest hole that was drilled on site at 1044m. Since it was a manual survey I would have to stop every ten meters to allow the gyro to take a shot of the hole. During this survey I taught French drillers how to count to a thousand and multiple English sayings such as “How deep is the hole?”. I also learnt basic French drilling terms to help communicate my point to them more easily and got to sing with the drillers as we conducted our survey. Also, during this survey, I was offered a whole block of cheese and learnt how to cook lasagna over an open fire.
My first year of ERT greatly prepared me for my position. My co-op has furthered my geoscience education by helping me use and upgrade my minerology skills. This position also helped me realize the importance of knowing where you are in three dimensional space when undertaking a drilling program.
Overall Generation Mining is a great company to work for and I would love to work for them again after graduation. My position at this company was exactly what I was hoping and made me want to work in the mineral exploration field.
This summer I worked as a Soil Sampler for Big River Mineral Exploration in the Yukon. I found out about this opportunity through our ERT (now Geological Technician) Program Coordinator, Joanna Hodge. During my time with this company I learned a lot about the practical …
I completed my co-op for the Earth Resource Technician Program (ERT, now known as the Geological Technician Program) as an Environmental Remediation Student with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL). Overall, my position was largely administrative which meant that I spent a lot of time at a …
During this co-op semester, I worked for Bayside Geoscience. They are a geological consultation company based out of Thunder Bay, Ontario. I found this position through networking on LinkedIn. My position in the company was as a Geological Technician. With Bayside being a consultation company this allowed me to work as a contract worker for 4 different companies this summer in a wide variety of roles.
In May, my role was as a supervisor for a soil sampling program for Manitou Gold. It was based out of Missanabie which is an hour and a half drive north of Wawa, Ontario. We worked in pairs traversing and collecting soil samples of the A-Horizon using a hand auger. Most of our days included at an hour of travel time using either trucks or boats and sometimes both. Our farthest traverses took us through two portages. After three weeks of sampling my work partner and I were moved to the geophysics crew and began doing magnetic surveys. This involved hiking up to 12km wearing a specialized backpack that measures the magnetic field of the earth. This was my favourite work as it allowed me to cover a lot of ground in a beautiful area.
After that, I worked briefly for Rio Tinto helping to tech and cut core from their nickel project in Northwestern Ontario. This was my introduction to drill core logging and cutting. I learned a lot from the geologists I worked with there. All the equipment was top of the line and extremely easy and safe to use. I then worked for Noront in The Ring of Fire, which is approximately 700km North of Thunder Bay. Over six weeks, we completed a pXRF survey on 14000m of historic drill core. We had an ATV set up with the survey gear and drove through the core farm and took readings every 3 metres on holes of interest. After the survey was completed, I had the opportunity to go out into the field. I was with the senior geologist and we were sampling different outcrops for age dating.
My final position was at the Young-Davidson Gold Mine in Matachewan, Ontario. I was there as a core tech for all their production core, which is the core that is being drilled underground to further develop the resource. This position was essentially like working in a warehouse, core would come in daily, we would tech it and put it in racks until the geologists could log it. It would then get sampled immediately and sent to the lab next door for assay. This position was educational, however my preference is working in an exploration environment.
My favourite part of the job this summer was getting hands on experience working with geologists. I worked alongside so many talented people that were unbelievably patient with any questions that I had. It helped me develop my knowledge specifically in the structure and formation of mineral deposits. I enjoyed every moment of this summer and can’t wait to get back in the field. I would recommend a position like this to anyone interested in a career in geology. After graduation, I plan on attending Acadia University and completed a B.Sc. in Geology. During the summers I will continue working in exploration and continue to develop my skills. This semester has really helped me to confirm that I am following the right career path and I’m excited to see what happens next!
My co-op term was spent at the engineering consultancy firm WSP in their Peterborough office. My role at the company was officially “Co-op student – geotechnical” however the equivalent role was geotechnical technician. I found my opportunity to be an excellent learning experience overall, the …
Over this past summer I had the good fortune of working for a mineral exploration company in northern Canada. The company is called Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp. The focus of our camp in northern Saskatchewan was looking for thorium-rich monazite that contains rare …
My co-op for the ERT course was working as a Geotechnical field technician in Ottawa with the company Golder Associates. Working at Golder was a very good opportunity for me to learn, grow, and get a taste of what type of industries I can go into when I finish my education.
My day-to-day had me doing a variety of different tasks at many different job sites. My main jobs were testing concrete on construction sites – which typically meant a slump test (how much the concrete drops when put in a cone, consolidated with a rod, removing the cone), an air test (what percentage of air is in the concrete. Air is important for when it gets cold. It allows the concrete to expand without cracking.) and casting 3 cylinders for a compression test later. My other main job (and also my favorite) was doing a compaction test, which involved getting certified to transfer nuclear goods, and slugging a 50-pound portable nuclear gauge through construction sites to test the compaction levels of granular materials.
For clarification on what compaction on granular means – every granular material has a proctor number calculated by a lab. That number represents the point where the moisture content in the granular as well as the amount it has been compacted (vibrated and stomped by a machine) will result in the highest dry density, or strength. Almost everything requires granular material to be compacted to a certain strength. I tested granular below asphalt was laid on roads, granular below service pipes leading to new houses, granular underneath walking paths at public parks, and even granular in a Costco parking lot that was being built.
Both granular and compaction are incredibly important to get right and are very important parts of all types of construction. I constantly felt the pressure of my testing – and sometimes had to face the backlash of telling crews that the work they are doing was not good enough.
When it came to site safety Golder is very strict on their safety policies. Hard hats, high visibility vests, safety boots, and glasses were required on all sites. Golder also has a rule on not walking across highways even when there were no cars, which required me to go the long way around on more than one occasion. It was always extremely important to follow the safety standards closely to avoid any sort of injury.
Working this co-op has made me want to further pursue a deeper education of Earth sciences. It contributed to my geoscience education by strengthening my knowledge of the use of proctors and showing me the use of quarries in all aspects of construction. I am planning to use the Fleming College transfer agreements with either Trent University or Acadia University to pursue a degree in Geology and my goal moving forward is to focus on the mineral exploration side of Geology. I enjoyed my time at Golder and would recommend them to anyone who is looking to go into the materials testing side of geotechnical field work.
I applied to the ERT program with the intent to get into mineral exploration and wanted to take the co-op as an opportunity to get introduced into the profession. I spent some time in my first semester getting excited about the co-op, researching different companies, …
