E.F. Thompson

Bing was born in Lynden (near Hamilton), Ontario in 1918, and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1939 with a B.A.Sc. in civil engineering. He worked for the Canadian Hydrographic Service from June 1939 to December 1940, and spent one field season working on the Quebec Harbour chart. This was followed by a year on the West Coast, where he made the dismaying discovery that he was prone to seasickness. He then worked for six months with the Canadian National Railway bridge department in Toronto.

In May 1941, he joined the Royal Canadian Engineers as a second-lieutenant and was posted to the geographical section of the general staff, where he had one field season, worked on radial line plots and learned about photogrammetry.

He went overseas in March 1942 and was posted to the First Corps Field Survey Company. During the war, he was involved with the production of 1:25,000 maps of the French coast, liaison work with the RAF photo squadron, and radar controlled positioning. He ended the war as a Major. In 1953, he was promoted a Lieutenant Colonel and appointed Commanding Officer of the Army Survey Establishment. He retired from the army in 1959 and joined the Surveys and Mapping Branch, DEMR, as chief of the Air Survey Section. He attended National Defence College in 1964 and after that became involved in the foreign aid mapping programs. Through that work, he has visited Nigeria, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Nepal, Guyana, Kenya, Barbados, Ghana, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and others.
Source: The Canadian Surveyor, June 1980, p. 176-8.

• 1939 - Quebec City survey.
• 1940 - St. Lawrence River survey (to mid-June).
• 1940 - Strait of Georgia survey.
• fall 1940 - resigned, to join Canadian Army.

Alan Thomson

Alan Thomson graduated from BCIT in 1981 as an electronics technologist.  Since then he has worked at the Institute of Ocean Sciences for the CHS supporting their West Coast and Arctic Surveys.
Source: Lighthouse, No. 56, Fall 1997, p. 33.

• 1923 - Automated Gauges Section, then SW Nova Scotia surveys.
• September 1923 - resigned.

• April 1963 (CHS org chart) - Drafting and Reproduction, Unit 2, Group E (Draftsman Grade 2)

M. (Madge) Trafford (Mrs.)

• April 1963 (CHS org chart) - Chart Drafting and Reproduction, Typesetting and Printing (Lithographic Assistant 2)

T.J. Trembley

   1963 - taken on strength - compilation unit - Ottawa
   1967 - working level compiler - Ottawa

Miss N. Tucker

• Nov. 1947-Dec. 1947 - Tidal section

Lt. Col. James Alexander Turner, DSO, MC

• born 12 May 1891 ay Montreal
• 5 foot 7 inches tall
• graduate of Toronto School of [Practical?] Science (civil engineering)
• graduate of RMC
• August 1913 - Hecate Strait survey
• enlisted on 24 September 1914 at Val Cartier, Quebec as a Lieutenant
• August 1914 - went overseas with First Canadian Expeditionary Force, rose to rank of Lt. Colonel, 2nd Battalion Royal Scots [Books of Remembrance].
• 26 July 1918 - killed in action.

John P. Tully

John P. Tully was known as "The Father of West Coast Oceanography". Joined the Fisheries Research Board (FRB) in 1931. He carried out oceanographic and fisheries research studies until being assigned to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1942. For his work in ocean acoustics during the war years, Dr. Tully became a member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

 John Patrick Tully (Jack) was born in Brandon, Manitoba in 1906 and graduated with a bachelors degree from the University of Manitoba in 1931 joining the Pacific Biological Station at Nanaimo (Departure Bay) that year.  In 1946 he became the Oceanographer-in-Charge of the Pacific Oceanographic Group (POG).

In 1948 he obtained his Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from the University of Washington and in 1966 moved to Ottawa as oceanographic consultant with the headquarters staff of Fisheries and Secretary of the Canadian Committee on Oceanography (CCOO).  He was later to be elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and also awarded the Medaille Commemorative Albert Premiere de Manaco et la Mer for his work in oceanography.  His other awards include the Coronation Medal, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal and for his work in WWII he was awarded a Member of the the Order of the British Empire.  Most recently he was the first recipient of the Tully Medal, an award instigated in his name and awarded by the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) for significant contributions to Canadian oceanography.

 Dr. Neal Carter the chief oceanographer at Departure Bay when Tully joined tells the story of Jack Tully’s first encounter with the ocean:

 “I had a lot of correspondence with Tully as on of the applicants for the position of my assistant in the oceanographic work.  He lived in Winnipeg at the time and had never seen salt-water, but he assured me that he was interested, and in the course of the correspondence it turned out that he had a wooden leg.  I felt a little reticent about the idea of employing him because in oceanographic work you have to be on a boat in rough weather when the decks are wet and slippery, and I wondered how his wooden leg would behave.  He assured me that it wouldn’t be any trouble, so I asked him to come to the station.

 “He arrived when I happened to be away on the boat on a week’s oceanographic cruise.  When we came chugging up to the dock at the station on Friday afternoon, here was this individual whom I had never seen before walking down to meet the boat in a resplendent yachtman’s uniform, complete with brass buttons.  He figured he had to have a uniform if he was going to work on a boat, not knowing that we didn’t go for uniforms.  When the boat docked, I had on a dirty old sweaters and was carrying some of the bottles of seawater ashore.  He asked where Dr. Cater was.  The skipper of the boat pointed to me and said: ‘That’s Dr. Caters.’  Tully’s face fell.  I never saw the uniform again.” (Johnstone)

 Tully joined the Station and brought with him “a burst of boisterous enthusiasm which seemed a combined product of the prairie environment and Irish ancestry, which added a sparkle to the Station group.” (Johnstone)  This enthusiasm led to his initial involvement with hydrographers as at the Fifth pacific Science Congress in 1933 where he entered into an arrangement with H.D. Parizeau, the west coast Regional Hydrographer of the day, whereby Tully went out with the hydrographic party aboard CSS William J. Stewart.  The hydrographers used the ship by day and Tully carried out his field work when they had finished.  These surveys were in effect the first multidiscipline surveys on the west coast.  During the 1933/34 seasons the work was off the west coast of Vancouver Island and in 1935 off the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

 During the 1935 season, Tully met Lieutenant Soulsby RCN who was doing reconnaissance surveys for potential destroyer bases, and realizing the greater mobility of HMCS Armentieres on such a prograpm, he transferred his activities from the William J. Stewart and for the first time the RCN on the Pacific Caost became a partner in oceanographic studies.  Armentieres also did winter duties as a rescue ship in the approaches to Juan de Fuca Strait and Tully seized the opportunity for winter oceanographic surveys in the area. (Sandilands)

In 1932 Tully was also successful in making arrangements with the Department of Transport whereby a number of lighthouse keepers along the BC Coast took daily seawater temperatures and samples. (Campbell)

 Two of BC’s major industries are fishing and the production of pulp and the two are not always compatible hence the coastal mills consult with the Fisheries Department on their effluent discharge systems.  The pilot project for these studies was Port Alberni in 193941 when extensive field studies were carried out.  The project was assigned to Tully and a new large trolling boat was chartered for the project.  The fish hold was fitted out as a laboratory.

 Dr. Clemens (Director of the Nanaimo Station 1924-40) reminisced thus in the Aquatic Explorers:

 “After accumulating and analyzing a mass of data, Mr. Tully decided he needed a model of the upper end if the Canal in order to interpret and confirm his conclusions as to the water movements.  With the assistance of three young lads, R.L.I. Fjarlie, H.L. Holister and W. Anderson, and with plaster of Paris, buckets, pulleys, hoses, an electrical fan, and parts of alarm clocks, there appeared a model approximately 6 by 4 feet complete with tides, river flow and winds, all recorded by well devised gauges.  I was intrigued by all this activity and eventually found myself perched on a stool on a table, looking down on th model and recording on a diagram the flow of dye introduced to represent the pulp mill effluent.  Needless to say, I was replaced by a camera.  So the model idea was introduced to the Station.  Later a larger and more effective model was built on the hill above the Station but the little model in the Chemistry building will always remain as a symbol of vision and ingenuity.”

 As a result of this study, the dispersion pattern of the pulp mill effluent in the inlet was predicted, and measures to reduce damage to the fisheries were recommended and carried out. (Johnstone)

 During the war years the major activities in oceanography were in the acoustic field, directed towards submarine detection.  The Atlantic caoast was in the front line, but suitable water conditions for the development and trials of A/S equipment were available in the safe inner channels of BC.  (Sandilands)

 Tully with his usual enthusiasm and energy was seconded to the RCN in 1942 to undertake research in underwater acoustics and sound-ranging.  In this he was assisted by Dr. W.M. Cameron (later to be Director, Marine Sciences Branch) and Fred Barber as Mate and had HMCS Ehkoli, later used as a survey vessel by the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS).  The research work was highly classified and curious requisitions emanated from Ehkoli for equipment which sorely tested the procurement skills of shore-based Naval Supply Officers, such as an urgent midnight signal for 400 glass balls and several thousand feet of chicken wire (to simulate a submarine target). (Campbell)

 Around that time Tully also carried out some launch hydrographic surveys, such as for submarine telephone links between Yorke Island/Kelsey Bay; Quathiaski Cove/Campbell river.  (Barber – personal communication)

 In 1946 the Canadian Joint Commission came into being and Tully was appointed Oceanographer of the pacific Oceanographic Group where he steered the various agencies into cooperative research programs by pooling manpower, ships and equipment.

 A significant program of that time was the oceanographic observations which were tied in with the meteorlogical observations undertaken by the weather ships on passage to and at Station “P” (Papa) some 1250 kilometres west of Vancouver Island.

 Also the formation of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission in 1953, Canada, Japan, and the United States of America joined together in one of the world’s greatest cooperative fisheries investigations and the Pacific Biological Station under Tully led Canada’s contribution of a synoptic survey of the North Pacific.

 These two programs led to the emergence of POG as a truly ocean-oriented establishment backed up with a significant coastal program in the Strait of Georgia and Hecate Strait and the combination of these studies served as a basis for the developemnt of mathematical mdels on ocean transport, a description of North Pacific waters and the construction of the Hecate Strait hydraulic model at Nanaimo in 1958. (Campbell)

 Data from Larsen’s transits of the NW Passage in the RCMP schooner Saint Roch sparked Tully’s interest in the arctic and in 1949 he became a partner in joint Canada/US investigations of the oceanography of the north mainly directed towards submarine passages of the Arctic.

 In today’s parlance, Jack would be classified as handicapped as he lost a leg in a car accident in 1928, a severe blow to an athletic man.  Throughout his working life, it never slowed him down and he led his team from the front and stood on heaving decks with the best of them.  An inveterate pipe smoker, he used his pipe as a management tool lighting, puffing, pointing and gesticulating with it.  In conversation with some of Tully’s old associates they always remember some of his mottoes.  “The difficult – we do immediately; the impossible may take a little longer”; “Produce or perish” ands referring to research, “Everything is pure gold”.  It is typical of Jack in accepting his reward of the Tully Medal, he said that he considered the medal to be a tribute to the Pacific Oceanographic Group – “that gallant band of pioneers who made oceanography practical in Canada.”

 Tully retired in 1969 but he had recruited his “gallant band” to continue his impetus.  Though far from being a comprehensive list Johnstone cites F.G. Barber, A.J. Dodimead, L.A.E. Doe, R.L. Fjarlie, N.P. Fofonoff, G.R. Harris, B.S. Mackay, R.A. Pollard, J.A. Shand, Susumu Tabata, Michael Waldichuck and R.J. Waldie.  Omissions from this list that come to mind are Dick Herlinveaux and Larry Giovando presently at IOS and Tully also supported W.M. Cameron and G.L. Pickard form the Institute of Oceanography, University of British Columbia.

 Source: Lighthouse, Ed. 30, November, 1984.

• 1930 - west coast Vancouver Island survey.
• early 1931 - resigned.

• March 1929 - appointed as an Engineering Clerk in the Precise Water Levels division
• 1929-47 - in Precise Water Levels section

J.W. Tyrell, PLS

• 1886 surveys at Ashe Inlet, Stupart Bay, Port De Boucherville, Marble I (chart BA1221)

• Sept. 1892 - appointed clerk in Dept. Marine and Fisheries
• 1893 - transferred to Second Assistant to Mr. Stewart
• 1895 - employed in draughting office of Great Lakes Survey.
• 1898 - transferred to field duties as Second Assistant to Mr. Stewart.
• 1901-03 - Lake Winnipeg survey.
• 1904 - Lake Superior survey.
• May 1905 - died. "a thorough and conscientious assistant for ten years." [W.J. Stewart]