The intro: Jean Bédard from GSC Quebec lays out the problem with a few diagrams.

Being a scientist is about ideas: coming up with them, investigating them, proving them or disproving them, and ultimately discussing them. The scientific community has always relied on discourse and discussion to solidify or develop scientific theories, and the geological world is no exception. As the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) has been breaking scientific ground for over 160 years, it makes sense that a professional discourse accompanied the GSC's progress.

In 1887, the Logan Club - a group focused on the presentation and discussion of scientific theories and ideas - was formed in Ottawa. The meetings had a formal air to encourage professional debate, and the spirit - and name - of the original club survives today.

"The Logan Club was founded as a kind of debate club to discuss important issues in a fairly formal way," explained Wouter Bleeker, a research scientist with the GSC who is currently co-chairing the club with colleague Andrée Blais-Stevens. "We have, and have always had, a notable speaker whose lecture is followed by a formal discussion or question period."

Just as the Club was formed to mirror the progress of scientific discovery within the GSC, its prominence has waned and surged along with that of the GSC. The two echo and run parallel to each other.

"The GSC has gone through various ups-and-downs over time," said Wouter. "At times, people in power realized that frontier geological research helps to build this country, but at other times priorities shifted and geological research and basic surveying didn't get the funding. The Logan Club undergoes a similar cycle, its spirit waxing and waning with time and the morale of the scientific staff."

Warming up, getting the speaker comfortable, meeting a few old friends, and introducing the speaker to the audience.

GSC scientists continue to make important discoveries. Recently, Gary Rogers and Herb Dragert of Earthquake Hazards West discovered a tectonic phenomenon called episodic tremor and slip. Herb made a trip to Ottawa in February to give an overview of his findings at a well-received Logan Club lecture.

"The Logan Club is an excellent vehicle to expose all of this knowledge," said Wouter. "Many of us scientists are so wrapped up in our work that we may neglect the public relations aspect of our discoveries. This is a good forum to talk to people from across the department more directly."

Wouter is proud of the quality of speakers that the Logan Club has had this year and enjoys the setting in which the lectures have taken place. The Logan Club is active, bringing in a dozen speakers or visiting scientists every year who are experts in their fields and who have interesting stories to tell.

The Logan Club Web site alerts fans of upcoming lectures, providing helpful extracts on the topics of the speeches. You don't have to be a geologist to appreciate the content. The subject matter can be steeped in scientific language, but most of the speakers convey it in a way that does not intimidate their non-scientific audience (the lectures are open to the public and notifications of upcoming lectures are sent to NRCan employees in the National Capital Region, both Carleton and the University of Ottawa, and a growing email list).

"As a speaker on a complex topic, you can only come down to a level of comfort with a general audience when you are a true expert on the subject," explained Wouter. "Only then are you able to distill a topic into its essential points, which is when it becomes interesting to people-at-large."

The 3rd movement, the molto andante: the speaker is really getting into it now, diagrams are flying. Pay attention or you're lost.

Such was certainly the case when Herb spoke. He condensed and made familiar a complicated scientific issue - the episodic movement of the earth's tectonic plates beneath Canada's west coast - and engaged an audience that had plenty of questions after the lecture.

In the future, Wouter would like to see the events grow in scale, and he has plans in place to that end. He hopes to bring in John Grotzinger, an old acquaintance of the GSC and currently professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has been actively involved in the Mars rover missions, to lecture in May. For the event - on such a major topic in the international science community - Wouter would like to see two lectures given: one more scientific talk in the morning in Gamble Hall and one public lecture in the evening at the Museum of Nature. The museum is not unfamiliar with the Logan Club - the GSC used to be housed in the Museum of Nature.

The wind down, conclusions. A good talk should be stimulating new thought, hence, a lot of questions and discussion follow. Sometimes egos get in the way. Of course, at Logan Club, we hang on to the old tradition, from more formal days, of thanking the speaker with a Logan Club plaque. Sometimes, however, this becomes a talk in itself...