THE EMERGENCE OF ENGINEERING GEOLOGY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
"AN ENGINEERING GEOLOGIST KNOWS A DAM SITE BETTER"!

D.F. VanDine,
VanDine Geological Engineering, Victoria, B.C.
H.W. Nasmith & C.F. Ripley
Victoria, B.C.

ABSTRACT

Engineering geology is a subdiscipline of geology. Engineering geologists apply geological principles of rock, soil and groundwater to the appropriate location, design and construction of a wide variety of engineering structures, and to the assessment and design of mitigative measures for a wide variety of natural and man-made hazards. The types of projects with which engineering geologists are involved are quite different from those carried out by traditional geologists. It follows, therefore, that the aptitudes of engineering geologists and the approaches used in their investigations also differ from those of traditional geologists.

Based on this thesis, the development of engineering geology in British Columbia can be divided roughly into three phases. Up to 1920, geology was not consciously considered in the engineering projects in the province. Between 1920 and 1945, when geological input was required or requested for an engineering project, it was usually supplied by traditional geologists. After 1945, trained and experienced engineering geologists began to practice in the province and began their involvement with the engineering projects of the day. By the 1960s, engineering geology was well established and a recognized subdiscipline of geology in British Columbia.

INTRODUCTION

This paper deals with the emergence of engineering geology, and hence emphasizes developments prior to 1960. What is the significance of the sub-title? We’ll let you be the judge.

What is engineering geology? There are many definitions and the following is a hybrid of a number of these:

Engineering geology is a branch of geology that applies geological principles of rock, soil and groundwater to the appropriate location, design and construction of a wide variety of engineering structures, and to the assessment of, and design of mitigative measures for, a wide variety of natural and man-made hazards.

Some disagree that engineering geology is a branch of geology; rather it is the application of all branches of geology to the practical problems of engineering. Usually an engineering geologist is a generalist as opposed to a specialist, uses existing geological maps as opposed to creating new ones, predicts how things will behave in the future as opposed to how they were formed in the past, tends to be a pessimist as opposed to an optimist, is a bearer of bad news as opposed to a bearer of good news, and is paid accordingly!

ORIGINS OF GEOLOGY AND ENGINEERING GEOLOGY

Modern geology had its beginnings in the late 1700s and early 1800s, for example, in the works of Hutton, Werner and Lyell. The first geological map of England was prepared by William Smith in 1813, who is now known as the father of British geology (Sheppard, 1920 as referred to by Legget and Karrow, 1983). Smith was also the first engineering geologist. With reference to the location and construction of canals in England, he wrote:

The natural order of the various strata will enable the engineer to find the most appropriate materials, choose his location, avoid slippery ground or remedy the evil.

Meanwhile, during the same era, the Spanish, Captain James Cook, Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser were just discovering and exploring the area that is now British Columbia. Of course, native peoples had lived in the area for many thousands of years.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, engineering geology was developing as a recognized discipline in Europe and the United States. In 1881, Penning’s British textbook entitled Engineering Geology was published as the first text in the field. In the early 1900s Charles Berkey, an American, was a trained geologist who worked on the water supply for New York City, then later on the Hoover dam and a multitude of other engineering projects. Berkey is considered the first American engineering geologist. In 1914, Ries and Watson published the first edition of their American text entitled Engineering Geology and in 1925, Karl Terzaghi, a trained Austrian engineer, published the first text in Soil Mechanics (in German). Terzaghi is known as the father of soil mechanics, but also had great interest in geology. In 1929, Redlich, Kampe and Terzaghi, published their text Engineering Geology (in German). Later, Terzaghi was to have a very close association with British Columbia.

An event occurred in 1928 that raised the level of awareness of geology in engineering around the world. In the failure of the St. Francis dam in California, 426 lives were lost. From Ransome’s 1928 paper in Economic Geology:

So far as can be ascertained, no geological examination was made of the dam-site before construction began...The plain lesson of the disaster is that engineers, no matter how extensive their experience in building of dams...cannot safely dispense with the knowledge of the character and structure of the adjacent rocks, such as only an expert and thorough geological examination can provide. (Ransome, 1928)

Thomas Roy is considered the first Canadian engineering geologist. In the 1830s and early 1840s, as a civil engineer in Upper Canada (now Ontario), he had a keen interest in, and appreciation of, geology (Legget, 1980). Projects and studies carried out by Roy include: a survey for one of the first railways in Ontario, a proposed theory for the raised beaches around Lake Ontario, a stratigraphic section for a portion of southern Ontario, a study for the improvement of Toronto’s harbour, a similar study for improved navigation on the upper Ottawa River and a pamphlet on the principles and practices of road building in Canada. Today the Engineering Geology Division of the Canadian Geotechnical Society presents an annual award named after him.

The year 1842 was the beginning of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), but for many years its work was restricted to bedrock mapping in eastern Canada. In late 1800s and early 1900s, geologists from the GSC started to take an interest in engineering (Scott, 1979). In 1873, the GSC bought a steam-driven diamond drill to locate various construction materials to extend and hasten the exploration and survey in the North West Territory. In 1900, H. Ami reported on the geology of the cities of Saint John, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. In 1903 he worked on the geology for the foundations of the bridge over the St. Lawrence River at Quebec. In 1904, R.W. Ells wrote about the landslides in the Ottawa Valley–St. Lawrence Lowlands. McConnell and Brock, in 1904, investigated the Frank slide in Alberta, and in 1914 Brock became first Dean of Applied Science at the recently founded University of British Columbia. All this work was done by classical hardrock geologists.

Between the 1850s and 1890s civil engineering began to be taught at a number of eastern Canadian universities including New Brunswick, Toronto, McGill, Ecole Polytechnique, Royal Military College and Queen’s. Beginning in the 1870s, McGill, Toronto, Royal Military College, École Polytechnique, Laval and Queen’s began teaching geology but it would be more than 50 years before the two disciplines began to integrate.

In 1925, John Allen at the University of Alberta taught the first geology course in Canada specifically designed for civil engineers. In 1927, he wrote the first engineering geology paper to appear in the (Canadian) Engineering Journal, entitled Geological Aspects of the Spray Lake Water Power Project. In 1929, he also wrote a discussion in the Engineering Journal entitled, Importance of Geology in Civil Engineering. From that discussion:

The day was coming...when the practicing civil engineer would invariably have the geological problems associated with the particular project on hand investigated by one qualified in that profession. (Allen, 1929 as referred to by VanDine, 1987)

In the late 1920s, Robert Legget, a young, energetic British civil engineer, emigrated to Canada to work on a hydro development in northern Ontario. In the early 1930s, he took up Allen’s cause, and wrote his first paper for the Engineering Journal entitled, Geology and Civil Engineering: their Relationship with Reference to Canada. This 12-page paper was expanded by 1939 to become the first Canadian text on the subject, Geology and Engineering. It is presently in its 3rd edition entitled Handbook of Geology in Civil Engineering (Legget and Karrow, 1983). Legget went on to head the National Research Council, Division of Building Research and become President of the Geological Society of America.

DEVELOPMENT OF ENGINEERING GEOLOGY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

In 1843, Fort Victoria was established on lower Vancouver Island by the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was the first European settlement on the west coast of what was to become British Columbia. The first geological observations in the province were made by Dr. James Hector, a doctor, naturalist and geologist on the Palliser Expedition of 1857-60. In 1871, Selwyn and Richardson conducted the first GSC mapping in the province followed by numerous others.

Early Engineering in British Columbia
 

Examples of early engineering in British Columbia include several road and railway construction projects. In the 1860s the British Columbia gold rush led to the construction of the Cariboo Road from Yale to Barkerville under the direction of the Royal Engineers  (Figure 17). The location and construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) through the province took place in the 1870s and 1880s. In the early 1900s the spiral tunnels and the Connaught tunnel were constructed to reduce the grade on the CPR line and the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern (now the Canadian National) railways were constructed through British Columbia (Figure 18).

If you examine the records for these, and most engineering works in Canada in the 1800s and early 1900s, there was very little attention paid to geology in the location, design and construction. For the most part these works were bulled through by civil engineers who were trained, both in school and on the job, to be resourceful and innovative and most of all to get the job done in spite of the geology. In addition, there were few geologists at that time and fewer who were interested in engineering projects.

Early Observations of Landslides in British Columbia

Possibly the first description of a landslide in the province was of the Drynoch landslide, south of Spences Bridge, along the Thompson River. Matthew Begbie, Chief Justice of British Columbia (also known as the Hanging Judge), presented a paper to the Royal Geographic Society in 1871 entitled On the Benches or Terraces of British Columbia. He writes:

In some [areas], the displaced surface seems to have moved painfully and grindingly over the subjacent bed-rock [sic], and the surface is broken into a thousand irregularities ...the mass [Drynoch landslide] looks not unlike an earthen `glacier du Rhin’ (Begbie, 1871 as referred to by VanDine, 1983).

In 1877, John Macoun, a naturalist with the GSC, also described Drynoch landslide. H.J. Cambie, a civil engineer, during a survey for the CPR in 1878, was the first engineer to briefly describe the slide and postulate a cause and possible solution. Cambie’s report is possibly the first engineering geology report on a natural hazard in the province.

In 1897 Robert Stanton, a British civil engineer, wrote a thorough 18-page paper (plus 3 drawings) entitled The Great Land-slides on the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia which was presented to, and published by, the (British) Institution of Civil Engineers. This paper on landslides in glaciolacustrine silts along the Thompson River is the first major paper related to engineering geology in the province. Stanton described the slides, the bedrock and surficial geology, climatic conditions and postulated probable causes. For example:

"In considering the real nature and causes of the slides, the solid geology does not have so important a bearing on the matter as the present position and condition of the superficial or drift deposits due to the glaciers, which now partially cover, and at one time largely covered, the interior country" (Stanton, 1897).

Engineering Geology in British Columbia
1920 to 1945

In 1921, Geological Engineering began at the University of British Columbia (UBC), but only geology related to mining and petroleum geology, not civil engineering, was taught. Between 1920 and 1945, British Columbia was beginning to develop and a few larger engineering projects were under construction. In 1919, when the Department of Public Works wanted to improve navigation in the Fraser River delta, W.A. Johnson of the GSC carried out a geological investigation to determine by what engineering methods the navigable part of the river might be improved (Johnson, 1921). This is possibly the first geological investigation for an engineering project in the province.

Victor Dolmage, a hardrock mining geologist with the GSC, was Chief of the British Columbia division from 1922-1929, and mapped the bedrock geology of many parts of the province. In 1927, he started his involvement in engineering geology by carrying out geological mapping of the tunnel on Mission Mountain as part of the first Bridge River Project for British Columbia Electric Railway Company. In 1929, he began private consulting as a mining geologist and taught on a part time basis at UBC in the Geological Engineering program. One of his students was Dr. Jack Armstrong (referred to later). In 1930, Dolmage provided geological input for the Cleveland dam site on the Capilano River and for the First Narrows pressure tunnel for the Greater Vancouver Water and Sewage Board (Dolmage, unpublished). Although not trained as such, Victor Dolmage can be considered the first engineering geologist in British Columbia.

Other geologists who also contributed to some engineering projects during this period were D.F. (Cap) Kidd and H.C. Gunning, also both originally with the GSC. Kidd left the survey to form his own practice, while Gunning went to teach at UBC and later become Department Head of Geological Sciences and Dean of Applied Science. The volume of their work in engineering and geology is minor compared with Dolmage.

1945 to 1960

The early post-World War II years were a boom period in British Columbia. A host of dams, pulp and paper mills, tunnels and large plants were conceived, designed and constructed. While still consulting as a mining geologist (until 1955), Dolmage was involved in many of these major projects including a number for British Columbia Electric (later British Columbia Hydro) such as the Bridge River Powerhouse, Wahleach power project, Cheakamus power project, Jordan River project and the W.A.C. Bennett dam (Figure 19). He also worked on most of the water tunnels in the Vancouver area for the Greater Vancouver Water and Sewage Board and assessed the geology of most proposed dam sites along the coast for Alcan, including the 14.5-kilometre Kemano tunnel.
 

By 1955, Dolmage was doing engineering geology work almost exclusively under the company name of Dolmage, Mason and Stewart. This included the demolition of Ripple Rock in Seymour Narrows for Canada Public Works in 1957, at the time the largest ever non-nuclear blast. A paper on that project, published in the Bulletin of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, won the Leonard Gold Medal. It is interesting to note that of all the hydro-related work that Dolmage did, he did none in the Strathcona Park area (John Hart and Strathcona dams) out of principle, feeling that the park should not be developed. In 1950, in the first volume of the British Columbia Professional Engineer, Dolmage contributed a paper entitled Geological Examination of a Dam Site.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Karl Terzaghi was a Professor of the Practice of Civil Engineering at Harvard. The only course he taught was Engineering Geology. In 1945, Terzaghi was brought to the west coast, initially in Washington but later in British Columbia, by H.A. Simons as a review consultant for soil mechanics in relation to pulp and paper mills at Port Alberni, Campbell River, Nanaimo, Crofton and Castlegar. Later, for British Columbia Electric and Alcan, Terzaghi worked closely with Dolmage on numerous sites: Mission dam, Daisy Lake dam and Cheakamus power project (located on landslide debris). He also carried out assignments for Pacific Great Eastern Railway (now British Columbia Rail), Greater Vancouver Water District and for Alaska Pine and Cellulose at Woodfibre (on a submarine landslide). These are all classic, one-of-a-kind projects (Figure 20).
 

Although trained as a mechanical engineer, Terzaghi had a very strong leaning towards geology.

"He never gave a lecture in soil mechanics. They were always lectures in geology, geomorphology, and how they related to a problem, to which...some...soil mechanics had an application. He was a geologist at heart although he was an engineer’s engineer at the same time. But he always regarded soil mechanics as a branch of engineering geology which in turn was a branch of geology." (Peck as referred to by Legget, 1979)

"Every civil engineer is engaged in experimental geology..." (Terzaghi, 1953 as referred to by Legget, 1979)

In Terzaghi’s lectures and writings he often referred to his projects and experience in British Columbia. He had a great influence on engineering geology in the province and upon his death in 1963, British Columbia Hydro renamed Mission dam, Terzaghi dam.

In 1951, Charlie Ripley, a relatively young soil mechanics engineer, with an undergraduate degree from the University of Alberta and a graduate degree from Harvard (under Terzaghi), moved to British Columbia from the prairies and started one of the first soil mechanics consulting firms in the province, Ripley and Associates, now known as Klohn Leonoff. Over the next few years Ripley worked closely with both Dolmage and Terzaghi on numerous large engineering projects. Under that tutelage he learned the value of geology in engineering projects, a lesson remembered throughout his career and passed along to his colleagues.

In the early 1950s, the British Columbia Department of Mines was the only provincial department to have any geologists on staff but they were all hardrock geologists working on mining-related projects. There was a need to provide advice on civil engineering and groundwater problems to other departments including Highways, Agriculture, Water Resources and Public Works. Consequently, Hugh Nasmith, a University of British Columbia graduate in Geological Engineering, with post graduate training in Engineering Geology from the University of Washington, was hired. He was the first trained engineering geologist to work in the province and for the province. Nasmith was involved in numerous projects from the early 1950s to 1958 when he left the department and joined R.C. Thurber and Associates, now Thurber Engineering Limited, where he continued that involvement.

In this same time period other geologists and engineering geologists came on the scene. In the late 1940s Jack Armstrong, trained as a hardrock geologist, began mapping the surficial geology of Vancouver and the Fraser Lowland which led to the publication of a GSC Paper entitled Environmental and Engineering Applications of the Surficial Geology of the Fraser Lowland, British Columbia (Armstrong, 1983).

Doug Campbell, another classically trained geologist, was introduced to engineering geology by Dolmage. In the late 1950s he became involved in geological investigations for the W.A.C. Bennett dam. Jack Mollard, a Regina-based engineering geologist, introduced air-photo interpretation to geology and engineering in the province in the late 1950s, while on a project for British Columbia Electric.

At UBC in 1959, an engineering geology program was initiated within the Geological Engineering Program, partially at the insistence of Henry Gunning, then Dean of Applied Science. Bill Mathews recounting the beginning of engineering geology at UBC:

"...a demand has arisen for geologists trained in interpreting the rocks and soil in the vicinity of major construction projects in terms of (1) potential hazards, (2) problems of construction, and (3) sources of raw materials. The geological engineer, soundly trained in both geology and engineering fundamentals, is the man, we believe, best qualified to work closely with the civil engineer responsible for the execution of this work" ( Mathews, 1967).

1960 to Present

Continued growth of the province has generated numerous, large, challenging engineering projects in recent years. There is a continued acceptance of engineering geology.The number of well trained and experienced engineering geologists, including some of the best in the world, has grown. Today engineering geology is practiced in a number of provincial government ministries, Crown corporations, federal government agencies, railways and consulting firms. Although engineering geology has had little impact on bedrock mapping in British Columbia, it has stimulated research in surficial geology, geomorphology, geologic processes, groundwater and environmental work. Today, engineering geologists are involved in a wide spectrum of projects, of which dams are a major area because engineering geologists know a dam site better!

Allen, J.A. (1929): Discussion of Paper on the Importance of Geology to Civil Engineering by Prof. H. Ries; Engineering Journal, Volume 12, pages 329-330.

Armstrong, J.E. (1983): Environmental and Engineering Applications of the Surficial Geology of the Fraser Lowland, British Columbia; Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 83-23, 54 pages.

Johnson, W.A. (1921): Sedimentation of the Fraser River Delta; Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 125, 46 pages.

Legget, R.F. (1979): Geology and geotechnical engineering, the 13th Terzaghi Lecture; Journal of the Geotechnical Engineering Division, Volume 105, pages 342-391.

Legget, R.F. (1980): Les Débuts de la Géologie de l’Ingenieur au Canada; in Proceedings of Homage à Leon Calembert, Georges Thone, Editor, Liège, Belgium, pages 135-140.

Legget, R.F. and Karrow, P.F. (1983): Handbook of Geology in Civil Engineering; McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Mathews, W.H. (1967): Geological Engineering at the University of British Columbia; The British Columbia Professional Engineer, May 1967.

Ransome, F.L. (1928): Geology of the St. Francis Dam Site; Economic Geology, Volume 23, pages 553-563.

Scott, J.S. (1979): The Role and Development of Engineering Geology in the Geological Survey of Canada; unpublished manuscript presented at the Geological Society of America Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sheppard, T. (1920): William Smith, His Maps and Memoirs; Brown, Hull, England.

Stanton, R.E. (1897): The Great Landslides on the Canadian Pacific Railway; Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 132, Number 1.

Terzaghi, K. (1953): Address at ETH, Zurich; in Proceedings, 3rd International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Zurich, Switzerland, Volume 3, page 79.

VanDine, D.F. (1983): Drynoch Landslide, British Columbia - A History; Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Volume 20, pages 82-103.

VanDine, D.F. (1987): Early History of the Geotechnical Profession in Canada; Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Centennial Convention, Montreal, Quebec, pages 9-21.