·¬ÇÑÉçÇø

As someone who was born in England and moved to Ireland at the age of 10, what was your relationship to earthquakes growing up?

I have a memory of when I was 12 years old, and I was doing my homework one evening, and then, all of a sudden, a picture fell off the wall. It turned out we had a small earthquake. That kind of woke me up to, “Oh, it happens here, too.” There are occasional, very small ones [in Ireland]. Ireland itself has a very interesting geological history in that the two parts of the island used to be on opposite sides of an ocean that no longer exists. So, there's the history of ancient earthquakes and mountain belts—it's all there. It was a very interesting place to study the geology even though I was learning about ancient activity in that sense.

Were you specifically drawn to UVic because of its location and the frequency of earthquakes in the region?

Part of being interested in geology is because you like spending time outside in beautiful places. I'd say that was the number one draw, but then getting connected with a supervisor who said ‘you should come and here's a scholarship.’ It all kind of fell into place.

My supervisor was an adjunct professor with UVic, but also a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. So, I had the opportunity to spend many weeks up in the Yukon territory doing geophysics fieldwork to learn more about the faults and earthquakes in that region.

Do you ever feel conflicted about being excited about a subject that has the potential for so much devastation?

Absolutely. It's a tempered excitement. It's important to know about these things—they are going to happen inevitably. It's not a good approach to put your head in the sand and say, “I don't want to know about it.” It's scary. But the more we know, the better prepared we can be both on a personal level, but also in helping down the road—building codes to get improved, future buildings and infrastructure to gradually be improved so that we won't have devastating impacts.

Is it true that part of the reason you got laser-eye surgery was so you wouldn’t have to rely on glasses during an earthquake?

Yes. I had very poor eyesight, to the point where if somebody's face was right beside me, they wouldn't have any features on their face. From a fairly young age I had contact lenses, but they were hard ones, which stopped my eyesight from getting worse, but they were also terrible if you got dust in your eyes. So, I thought ‘What if I'm driving and I get dust in both of my eyes—I can’t even see the side of the road? This is not safe.’ And then I had the realization, especially with the Christchurch [New Zealand] earthquake, that after an earthquake there is a lot of dust. There's also a lot of danger, and that is not a time where I would want to be completely incapacitated by not being able to see.

What’s a common misconception people have about earthquakes that frustrates you?

One that comes to mind is that people think it's good when we have small earthquakes because [they think] the small earthquakes are taking up the stress and we don't have to worry about big ones. And that's a complete myth. The presence of small earthquakes is telling us that we will get big ones. And the presence of small earthquakes, the statistics of the smaller earthquakes, help us figure out how often we can expect those bigger ones.

What do you do to relax?

I like hiking. Sometimes the hiking involves carrying geophysical equipment, but that's still fun. I ski. I recently got a stand-up paddle board. So that's a nice way to blow off steam. I’ve also been doing yoga and gardening for the past few years, and that helps to keep some balance.

—Michael Kissinger, BEd ’94