Cameron, Alan Emerson

Alan Cameron was an authority in Canadian mining engineering and metallurgy and was the second president of Nova Scotia Technical College (1947-1957). Born in 1890 in London, ON, Cameron graduated from McGill University with a BA in mining engineering in 1913 and an MSc in 1914. His first position was at the University of Alberta, where he helped to develop its Department of Mining Engineering. During World War One, Cameron worked with the Geological Survey of Canada in the Northwest Territories, before serving in France and Belgium as a lieutenant of engineers with the Imperial Munitions Board.

After the war, Cameron taught at the Khaki University in England before rejoining the University of Alberta. He earned his ScD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1925 and was engaged in professional consulting, particularly in oil and mineral exploration in Alberta and the Northwest Territories. Following his promotion to full professor, he was appointed secretary of the Research Council of Alberta. His professional pursuits in the Canadian north from 1925-1937 included the search for radium in the Great Bear District and the exploration of the Headless Valley of the South Nahanni River district. In 1937 he left Alberta for an appointment as deputy minister in the Nova Scotia Department of Mines, where he served until 1947, when he became president of The Nova Scotia Technical College.

Alan Cameron was also president of the Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Mining Society and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He was the Nova Scotia representative on the Dominion Council of Professional Engineers, and he prepared and presented the Nova Scotia brief to the Royal Commission on Coal in 1944. He retired from his position as president of The Nova Scotia Technical College in 1957 and he died 7 March 1977 in Wolfville, NS.