Journal Contributor Ken Rattee writes:
I was born in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada but my family moved to the
Southern Ontario area when I was very young and where I grew up in the
suburbs just outside of Toronto. I attended the University of Toronto from
1975 -1980 where I entered to study astronomy and ended up graduating with
a B.Sc.in hard rock geology in 1980.
After two summers of uranium
exploration on the coast of Labrador, Canada I moved to the Northern
Ontario town of Kirkland Lake in late 1980 where I worked as a Mine
Geologist at the Macassa gold mine for the next 17 years. In 1997 I left
the mine, two years before it would ultimately close down after 65 years of
continual mining, to pursue work more in the exploration side of the
business. Since then I've been involved in several exploration and mine
contracts across Northern Ontario from gold and diamond exploration to mine production geology.
My fascination with space exploration stems from being a child with a scientific curiosity growing up in the sixties, I can still recall John Glenn's lift-off as a child in kindergarten. Certainly one on my life long dreams has been to go up there myself and practice my profession on the Moon or Mars. Thanks to the ALSJ it almost feels like I have walked the lunar surface. My other main interest besides geology and space exploration is amateur astronomy. If the night is clear and the moon has set (the skies can be sublimely dark in Northern Ontario), the cold not too severe or the mosquitos not too ravenous, I can often be found in my backyard with my ancient 6-inch Newtonian reflector. As well I'm an avid listener and collector of the music of Bob Dylan.