Geoffrey Canning Barnard died suddenly at Nairobi on 28th December, 1952, at the age of 58.
From 1911 to 1914 he attended the School of Metalliferous Mining (Cornwall), graduating with a first class Diploma.
He joined the Royal Warwickshire Regt. as a private in 1914, and a year later was commissioned to the Royal Engineers, serving with 251 and 184 Tunnelling Coys, in France, Flanders and Germany, including one year as liaison officer with French tunnelling companies and as instructor at the 3rd Army mine school. He held the rank of acting captain.
On demobilization in 1919 Mr. Barnard returned to Camborne for a three month refresher course, and later that year went to Mexico as surveyor and sampler to Amparo Mining Co., Etzatlan, working chiefly for their subsidiary exploration company. He left at the end of 1921 to join the geological survey department of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga in the Belgian Congo, and in 1925 was made manager of the Busanga tin mine of that company.
He joined Sir Robert Williams and Company in 1926, acting as consulting engineer and geologist to the East African interests of Tanganyika Concessions, Ltd., Zambesia Exploration Co., Ltd., and the Nile Congo Divide Syndicate, Ltd. He was made manager and consulting engineer in East Africa of the Sir Robert Williams’ Group interests in 1932.
From 1936 to 1939 he was working as an independent consulting engineer in Kenya for many companies, including Selection Trust, Ltd., the Edmund Davis interests, and Anglo-Transvaal Consolidated Investments, Ltd., and he managed gold alluvial properties for Kenya Reefs, Ltd. He was also engaged for some time on reporting work in the Belgian Congo, and in Northern and Southern Rhodesia. In 1946 he was appointed resident engineer, East Africa, for New Consolidated Gold Fields, Ltd., but had returned to private practice in 1948.
Mr. Barnard was elected to Studentship of the Institution in 1914 and was transferred to Associate Membership in 1922 and to Membership in 1934. He was also a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers and a Fellow of the Geological Society.
Vol. 62, Trans I.M.M. 1952-3, pp. 416-17
