On April 27, 1869, the Director of the GSC, Sir William Logan wrote this curt note to the paleontologist Elkanah Billings: "Your constant absence from the office is a worrying annoyance, particularly as I have reason to suspect that it does not arrive from rheumatism".

Office memos whittle heroes down to size!

Portrait of Elkanah Billings (GSC photo 69323 (c))

Elkanah Billings was born in 1820 in Ottawa, then called Bytown, to a well-to-do and socially prominent family. He received a broad liberal education in schools in Ottawa and Potsdam, New York before becoming a student at the Law Society of Upper Canada. He was called to the bar in 1844 and practised law for eight years in Ottawa and Renfrew. Like many educated people in Victorian Canada, he had developed a deep interest in natural science, particularly in the fossils of the local Trenton limestone. However, Billings had ambitions to transcend mere amateur status.

In 1852 Billings initiated what can only be described as a single-minded campaign to achieve paleontological professionalism and to acquire a position. First, he abandoned law and for three years served as the editor of the Ottawa Citizen for which he wrote a series of articles on science, including geology and paleontology. He published his first scientific paper on Trenton fossils in 1854 and, the next year, attracted the attention of William Logan when he won first prize in an essay competition at the Universal Exposition in Paris. Logan was in Paris to organize a display of Canadian minerals at the Exposition which so impressed Queen Victoria that she bestowed a knighthood on him. Billings established himself as part of the professional elite when he launched a new monthly periodical, The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist in 1856, which he also edited and was the major contributor. Canadian scientists, including those at the Geological Survey of Canada who recognized the value of a regular journal, gave their enthusiastic support and endorsement to Billings' endeavour. Meanwhile, Sir William, whose knighthood had made him a Canadian hero with fresh clout in the provincial legislature, had secured increased funding for the Survey which permitted him to add additional staff members -- most importantly, a paleontologist. Logan offered the position of Survey paleontologist to the erstwhile lawyer. In August 1856 Billings' four-year campaign to achieve professional status ended successfully.

Some of the brachiopods Billings studied from Anticosti Island. (Photo by BDEC (c))

Billings immediately began the task of identifying and arranging the vast backlog of fossils that had been collected during the Survey's first 20 years and describing and figuring the more important specimens. His "Report of Progress for 1856", which covered only the first five months of his appointment, weighed in at a hundred pages; immediately demonstrating his usefulness to a geological survey that previously had to depend on the good will of British and American paleontologists for infrequent fossil work. By 1863 he had published descriptions of no fewer than 526 new species of fossils. For a paleontologist with limited practical experience, Billings showed an almost instinctive aptitute for identification and classification of Paleozoic invertebrate fossils.