JOHN UTTING (1940–2018)

1. Introduction

John Utting, an esteemed late Palaeozoic to Triassic palynologist, passed away on 17 August 2018, at the age of 78. He is survived by his wife, Lindsay, their children, Sonia, Oliver, Daniel and Nicholas, and nine grandchildren. Just a few weeks before John died, he and Lindsay celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

2. Childhood, education and hobbies

John was born on 27 March 1940, in Norwich, England. From his parents he gained two exceptional threads that ran through his life: the love of music, and of beekeeping. According to his brother, Paul, John expressed his adventurous personality early in life. In his youth, cycling was a summer passion.

John received his BSc in geology from the University of Nottingham in 1962. After teaching briefly, he emigrated to Canada, completing a master’s degree in 1966 from Memorial University Newfoundland on the geology of the Codroy Valley, Newfoundland, including a preliminary palynological investigation. That led him back to the University of Sheffield, England, to study palynology under the supervision of Roger Neves. John finished another master’s degree in 1967, working on the miospores of the Lower Limestone Shales in the Avon Gorge, Bristol, in south-west England. During his time in Sheffield he met Lindsay, and married her in 1968. For his PhD (1970), John undertook a geological mapping project in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, with a palynological study at the University of Sheffield.

He had many hobbies. He loved music and sang in a church choir, and played the violin during his teenage years. He found a group to play with wherever he lived, first at university then in a chamber group in Newfoundland where he also enjoyed playing jigs and reels. In Zambia he played in an orchestra as well as singing in a choir. In Quebec City he joined the Symphonia de St. Foy. In Calgary he joined the Calgary Civic Symphony and was a proud member for over 30 years. He shared this talent with us at the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) Christmas Eve parties and Calgary Stampede lunches.

John was an exercise enthusiast, and for over 15 years he and one of the authors (JMW) ran at noon, three or four times a week. On winter weekends John cross-country skied with his family in the Front Ranges of the Rockies. John rode his bike to work all year in Calgary until he skidded on ice, breaking his collarbone, thenceforth being forbidden to ride in the winter. He joked about another winter cycling accident, slipping and falling face first into a frozen puddle, leaving a perfect nose hole in thin ice. His cycling passion was followed by his children, who raced in their youth.

He was also a Boy Scout leader, and in one instance a co-leader of an epic overnight Scout trip into Lake O’Hara on the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains. Arriving late at the hut, the leaders were exhausted from lifting Scouts and their packs from the snow over the 13 km, uphill ski-in.

John learned beekeeping from his father, and he kept several hives in the foothills and one in his backyard in Calgary; two of his sons now keep bees. Coffee conversations at the GSC often turned to bees, with some jousting between John and Art Sweet over whose honey was the highest quality. ‘I’m being robbed’, John announced gravely one morning. A little further enquiry revealed that by those words he meant that the bees had found their way into his shed, and were taking the honey back.

In his travels, John enjoyed picking up other languages. Invitations at colleagues’ doors to join the tea break were rarely delivered in English, and he good-naturedly accepted our secretary’s constant correction of his Mandarin.

3. Scientific career

In 1970, the Uttings moved to Zambia where, for three years, John worked as a geologist for the Geological Survey of Zambia. John and Lindsay considered this period an adventure, for which they were greatly fortunate. John’s main focus in the Survey was on palynology and he was able to continue the work he undertook during his PhD on the Lower Karroo in Zambia. In addition, he worked on boreholes from the coalfields. This was pioneering work, later resulting in several papers mainly concerning Permian pollen and spore assemblages (e.g. Utting 1976, 1978, 1979). His stay in Zambia led to continuous scientific interest in this region, as demonstrated by several publications later in his career, culminating in 1988 with a special publication on South Luangwa National Park, Zambia (Utting 1988).

In 1972 John joined the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique Petrole in Quebec City, taking on the challenge of working and living in French. He became fluent in the language of Molière, albeit with hints of a Québécois accent.

In 1976, John joined Petro Canada in Calgary, Alberta, and only two years later, in July 1978, he started work as a research scientist at the Institute of Sedimentary and Petroleum Geology (now the Geological Survey of Canada – Calgary). This was to become his workplace for the rest of his career and gave him the opportunity to work on palynology and also do extensive fieldwork, a part of his job that he treasured. Of the many exotic areas John visited throughout his career, the Arctic held a special place in his heart, an area he visited several times with Canadian and Norwegian colleagues. John was at home in the harsh Arctic environment, climbing talus slopes with ease, wading cold torrents with grace, and hiking long treks without complaining. In various camps, small or large, John’s sunny disposition lighted up everyone’s spirit, always insisting we stop for afternoon tea, while spicing up camp conversations with pointed yet respectful humour. His calm and restrained British demeanour, however, did not prevent him from partaking in impromptu fetes: he once donned a hip wader on his head in a costume party thrown by the students to stave off a rather persistent bout of bad weather on Ellesmere Island in 1989. The sunshine came back the next day!

John’s work was characterised by well-documented records including range charts and plates to illustrate palynomorphs, as well as detailed location maps, and he erected palynological zonation schemes for the areas in which he worked. From the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and from northern Yukon he published several papers dealing with the palynostratigraphy of the Carboniferous, Permian and lowermost Triassic successions. His work on the lower Emma Fiord Formation of the Sverdrup Basin (Utting et al. 1989a) provided a detailed range chart of these late Viséan assemblages, and was a pioneering work for this region. Also worth mentioning is his huge taxonomic and systematic work on the Permian/lowermost Triassic of the Sverdrup Basin, which had great impact in providing a platform for correlation and dating (Utting 1994). He also worked on thermal maturity studies, applying the Thermal Alteration Index. This resulted in a paper on Carboniferous and Permian thermal maturity from the Sverdrup Basin (Utting et al. 1989b). John was an early adopter of digital databases to record and archive his palynological information.

In Atlantic Canada, John undertook extensive palynological work on the Tournaisian Horton and the Mississippian Windsor groups in Nova Scotia and their equivalents elsewhere in eastern Canada. Also for these successions he established the first zonation schemes and presented well-documented findings (e.g. Utting 1987). His research interest in this region culminated with a paper on the palynostratigraphy of the Carboniferous Joggins Fossil Cliffs area of Nova Scotia (Utting et al. 2010), an area designated as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in 2008.

In addition to John’s work throughout Canada, his scientific interests included the circum-Arctic as well as other areas relevant for comparative studies. His co-authored review on the Permian palynology of the northern continents (Utting and Piasecki 1995) is an important paper applying palynology to distinguish floral provinces and demonstrating that palynostratigraphical correlation is problematic between these floral provinces although within them correlations (even between marine and nonmarine successions) are possible. Some of John’s contributions were not without controversy as attested by his landmark Utting et al. (2004) paper, which claimed that many taxa identified by previous workers as earliest Triassic in the Arctic and around the world are actually reworked Devonian miospores. Likewise, John’s suggestion, in a 2005 GSC Paleontological Report, that Devonian taxa in the Okse Bay Formation on northern Ellesmere Island may actually be reworked palynomorphs into Lower Carboniferous strata of the Sverdrup Basin constitutes another important contribution.

While at the GSC, John worked and collaborated with colleagues from many countries. His work on the Meishan sections in Changxing, China (Shu and Utting 1990), contributed important data to the work which eventually selected this site as the Changhsingian (the latest Permian stage) stratotype. He published the palynology from the Ufimian and Kazanian stratotypes of Russia (Utting et al. 1997) and tentatively correlated these to the Canadian Arctic. His work also included collaboration with colleagues in many other countries, and John generously shared his ideas, knowledge and humour.

John was affiliated with the Canadian Association of Palynologists and the International Federation of Palynological Societies (IFPS). He was a councillor for the IFPS from 1977 to 1988. For many years he was the Newsletter Editor for the Subcommission on Permian Stratigraphy. John also enjoyed attending conferences to share ideas and talk to colleagues from around the world.

John Utting is widely known as an expert in Carboniferous, Permian and Early Triassic palynology and stratigraphy, and particularly for his contributions to palynology of the northern areas and Atlantic Canada, regions which are not worked on by many other palynologists. His contributions are therefore of high significance. John Utting was the sole or senior author of 40 journal articles and GSC bulletins and papers, and a co-author of an additional 43 such publications (see the Supplementary information). During his career at the GSC, he produced 177 Paleontological Reports on sample suites collected by colleagues for age determinations. This impressive publication record indicates the international significance of his research and expertise to Carboniferous–Triassic biostratigraphers and to colleagues in stratigraphy, mapping and basin analysis.

4. Retirement

John Utting retired from the GSC in Calgary in April 2010. In his retirement, John returned to his office regularly, even though Parkinson’s disease increasingly affected him. His publication record continues to 2016. John’s scientific expertise, kind smile, sense of humour, care for his family and contributions to the community are greatly missed by all who knew him. The authors are grateful to John’s family for stories of his personal life and for help in compiling his bibliography (see the Supplementary information).

James M. White (Retired)
Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
[email protected]

Jennifer Galloway
Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Gunn Mangerud
Department of Earth Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Benoit Beauchamp
Department of Geoscience, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada