Nick Adams, MA

After over forty years of helping developers pave Ontario by weaselling them through the provincial government’s archaeological hoops, Nick is finally doing something useful with his more than fifty years of archaeological experience and has turned his hand to writing.

Archaeology is an inherently interesting discipline, full of engaging characters, interesting situations, and interpretations which are often only limited by the imagination of the archaeologist. Drawing on his varied and extensive field experience in both the UK and Canada, Nick’s writings explore the fringes of the discipline.

 Rudy Fecteau, MA, has been engaged in archaeobotanical research in Canada since 1976.  His education includes an undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the University of Toronto in 1972 and an M.A. in Historical Geography from York University in 1985.  Over the past 45 years Rudy has completed over three hundred reports describing plant remains from more than 330 sites that include pre-contact, 18^th, 19^th and 20^th Century Euro-Canadian and environmental sites from across Canada, Ohio, and New York State. 

Rudy's career in archaeology began in 1972 working for various government agencies in Ontario.  He first studied plant remains from archaeology soils under the guidance of Dr. ‘Jock’ McAndrews at the Botany Department, Royal Ontario Museum in 1976 and was an associate there until 1985.  Recently, he has been appointed as Visiting Scholar in the McMaster Paleoethnobotanical Research Facility, Department of Archaeology, McMaster U in Hamilton, and he has been mentoring students from various Ontario universities.

Rudy is a member of the Association of Professional Archaeologists and a life member of the Ontario Archaeological Society, and has contributed to conferences of the Society of American Archaeology, the Canadian Archaeological Association, Ontario Archaeological Society, Royal Botanical Gardens, and the Archaeology Research Associates CHAP symposia as well as providing in-person archaeobotanical lab workshops for the APA. 

Since retiring from teaching in 2008, he has been able to concentrate more on analysis, report and article writing, academic and public presentations and a community outreach program, giving presentations to elementary, high school, university undergraduate and graduate classes, museums, community groups such as Rotary, Probus and MENSA, Ontario Archaeological Society chapters, and Ohio and New York State Archaeological Association chapters.

Rudy was the 2013 recipient of the J. Norman Emerson Silver Medal Award.  This award is conferred on occasion by the Ontario Archaeological Society in recognition of contributions to the public understanding of archaeology.  Rudy has also been involved with monitor/liaison training at Six Nations of the Grand River, the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Chippewa of the Thames First Nations.  In 2017 he was invited to participate at Aboriginal Day celebrations at the Nippissing First Nation, and he has also given slide presentations at the Gathering at the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Rudy is currently working on several archaeobotanical projects down in the ‘dungeon’ (his basement lab) in Greensville… and he really does plan to clean it up.

William D. (Bill) Finlayson, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., is the senior-most archaeologist in Ontario archaeology with more than 55 years of experience in the field. One of his many noteworthy accomplishments was being voted a Specially-Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for his innovations in Ontario archaeology. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Bill has had an unconventional career. Early on, he undertook the total excavation of the Draper site, a precontact Iroquoian village in Pickering which remains the largest and most significant Iroquoian site subject to salvage excavation in southern Ontario. In 1976, he left the Department of Anthropology at The University of Western Ontario to revitalize Wilfrid Jury’s Museum of Indian Archaeology and Pioneer Life. In 1985, he was appointed Lawson Professor of Canadian Archaeology, the first archaeologist to hold an endowed chair in Canadian archaeology. This allowed Bill to devote time to his field research in the Crawford Lake area near Milton Ontario, culminating in his 4 volume study of 76 Iroquoian sites in the area.

The next phase in Bill’s career began in 2001 when he took early retirement, providing him with an excellent opportunity to establish his own archaeological consulting firm. This Land Archaeology Inc. provides services to land developers in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. Since 2006, he has undertaken the salvage excavation of more than 70 19th century homesteads and farmsteads, culminating in the total excavation of Patterson Village, the only total excavation of a 19th century Euro-Canadian company town in Ontario.

Bill has been a member of the APA for many years, has served on the Executive and has assisted the Executive in a variety of ways.

In 2017, Bill established the Our Lands Speak series of popular books to promote interest in Euro-Canadian archaeological site investigations. In 2019 an academic series was initiated with the Our Lands Speak, Occasional Papers in Ontario Archaeology with the publication of Lawrence Jackson’s study of the Palaeo-Indian occupation of the Rice Lake area since 1976.

Bill also publishes a blog — billfinlayson.ca.  Bill has been steadily publishing new blogs in 2020.

Lawrence Jackson, Ph.D., is one of the foremost Palaeo-Indian scholars and author of this first Paper in Our Lands Speak Occasional Papers in Ontario Archaeology series, Early PalaeoIndian Occupation in the Rice Lake, Otonabee River, and South Kawartha Lakes Watersheds, South-Central Ontario Research Since 1976. He trained as a graduate student in archaeology at Trent University, Ontario, and began field work in the 1970s on sites of diverse time periods— petroglyph sites in Nova Scotia, a contact period village in Simcoe County, subarctic caribou interception sites with the National Museum of Canada, and Early Palaeo-Indian research for the Royal Ontario Museum on the shores of glacial Lake Algonquin near modern Georgian Bay. Through the 1980s, Jackson co-directed winter research projects in Belize, Central America, and in 1994 earned his Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. While completing his Ph.D., he carried out original research in New Mexico on the history of the original Folsom site discovery and the palaeontologists who excavated it. Dr. Jackson continued research on the Palaeo-Indian occupations of the Rice Lake region from 1976 until today, with more recent work on Early to Middle Archaic and Middle Woodland period occupations of the region.

One of the founding members of our organization, Lawrence (Laurie) has served in various positions on Ontario Association of Professional Archaeologists Executive since 1990.  He lives near Rice Lake, Ontario, with his wife Donna, son Daniel, and six eclectic cats.

Grant Karcich, M.A., MLIS, got his early exposure to archaeology (Saugeen and historic Toronto) at university.  In recent years he has maintained these interests with the study of Ontario Middle Woodland populations (through mtDNA and cranial morphology) and by writing about Ontario’s European and Aboriginal history.

Frank J. Krist Jr., Ph.D from Michigan State University in 2001.

Since the 1990's Frank has been developing novel GIS techniques for modeling Pleistocene and Holocene geomorphology, and Paleo flora/fauna habitat and behavior. Frank currently leads a national forest health GIS and spatial analysis program in the United States.