Upon graduation in 1960, Owen
briefly worked as a soils engineer for
Racey, McCallum & Associates, a
geotechnical consulting engineering
firm in Toronto, before being offered
the position of Lecturer in the Depart-
ment of Civil Engineering at the,
then, new University of Waterloo. He
became an Assistant Professor, then
Associate Professor, and then was
cross appointed with the Department
of Earth Sciences. While at Waterloo,
Owen also attended the University of
Illinois where he completed a Ph.D.
in engineering geology under Prof.
Don Deere, graduating in 1970. Owen
left Waterloo in 1977 and joined the
Ontario Geological Survey as Chief,
Engineering and Terrain Geology Sec-
tion and worked in that capacity until
he retired in 1991.
In 1973, he founded the Engineering
Geology Division of the Canadian
Geotechnical Society (the CGS’s first
division), and served as its chair until
1979. In 1982 he was elected Vice
President North America of the Inter-
national Association of Engineering
Geology and Environment, and served
as the IAEG President from 1986-
1990. Owen was awarded the IAEG’s
most senior award, the Hans Cloos
Medal, in 1998.
Besides the Hans Cloos Medal,
Owen’s awards and honours were
many: Fellow of the Geological
Society of London (1975); Fellow of
the Engineering Institute of Canada
(1980); the Thomas Roy Award from
the CGS’s Engineering Geology Divi-
sion (1996); the EB Burwell Jr. Award
from the Geological Society of Amer-
ica’s Engineering Geology Division
(1998); a Special Achievement Award
from the Prospectors and Developers
Association of Canada (2003); and the
RF Legget Medal, the CGS’s high-
est award, for his contributions to the
geotechnical community, in particular,
engineering geology (2006).
In retirement, Owen continued doing
some lecturing, in Canada and abroad,
some consulting and some research
and writing. In 1998, he co-edited
along with Dr. P.F. Karrow, a 500-page
Geological Association of Canada
special paper on “Urban Geology of
Canadian Cities”.
Owen’s other interests included
stamp and postmark collecting, and
the military. He was a
Fellow of the
Royal Philatelic Society of Canada,
was attached to the Royal Australian
Engineers in Melbourne and the 2
Field Engineer Regiment in Toronto,
and was a member of the Military
Engineers Association of Canada until
his death.
Owen was a taciturn man with bushy
eyebrows and a quiet Australian voice.
During his career and in retirement he
accomplished a great deal, and had a
profound effect on engineering geol-
ogy in Canada and abroad.
IN MEMORIAM
