Sir James Stopford Lauder Brunton, Bt., died on July 25th, 1943, at the age of 58.
He was the elder son of Sir Lauder Brunton, M.D., and received his education at Cheltenham and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He then entered McGill University, where he graduated B.Sc., in 1910 and was elected to a research fellowship for 1911-12, obtaining his M.Sc. of McGi1l in 1912. In the session 1912-13 he was engaged in post-graduate work at Columbia University, New York, and received the A.M. degree of that University in 1913. In the summer of the same year he was employed as an assistant with a Canadian Geological Survey field party, and after a few months’ post-graduate work in England, rejoined the Canadian Survey in 1914.
On the outbreak of war he joined the Canadian Army and in 1917 raised the McGill Siege Artillery draft, later mobilized as the 10th Canadian Siege Battery. He served in France, and in 1919 retired with the rank of major to enter a consulting practice in Montreal with John A. Dresser.
In subsequent years he conducted geological field parties for the Geological Survey of Canada, the Canadian Pacific Railway, and private interests, and was for a time editor of The Canadian Mining Journal.
He was author of a paper on ‘The Gold Deposits of Nova Scotia: a new hypothesis concerning structural features in the Province’ (Trans. I.M.M., Vol. 35, 1926), and other articles, and in 1928 was awarded the Leonard Gold Medal of the Engineering Institute of Canada.
In 1915 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. J. Bonsall Porter, Professor of Engineering of McGill University, and in 1916 he succeeded his father (who was created a baronet in 1908) as second baronet.
Sir Stopford Brunton was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1920, and was transferred to Membership in 1925.
Vol. 53, Trans I.M.M. 1943-44, p. 426
