MINUTES

ACA Canadian Division Meeting

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

-The meeting was chaired by David Rose.  David began by announcing that next year there would be a vendor-supplied lunch. Bruker and Qiagen both indicated willingness to sponsor.

-Jim Britten was formally asked and formally agreed to be Program Chair for the 2009 ACA meeting in Toronto.  David Rose and/or Lynne Howell will be Local Chair(s), but they are also looking for someone outside the macromolecular community.  David showed some preliminary designs for logos.

-It was suggested that ACA advertise the Toronto meeting internationally but especially in Europe.

-This was followed by discussion of the Canadian bid for the IUCr General Assembly in 2014.  Joe Schrag and a representative from the Montreal Convention Centre will be here on Saturday to make a presentation to the IUCr Executive.

-Bill Duax (visitor) spoke on the advantages of having ACA organize the meeting like they did for the Seattle IUCr GA.  Revenue would likely be split on a 50:50 basis.  Bill will meet with Joe Schrag on Saturday.

-There was some discussion on the role of NRC (National Research Council) in an IUCr GA (in Canada international meetings have to go through the NRC).  If ACA was involved the organization would have to be split in a logical way.  Someone (Gary Enright) volunteered to look into how this was done at the recent IUPAC meeting.

-Also brought up was the fact that the web site, all printed material, etc. would have to be in both official languages if a meeting were to be organized by NRC (ie NOT the ACA’09) .

-There was some discussion on an IUCr Newsletter devoted to crystallography in Canada.  Bill Duax gave some hints.  We need to identify an editor who will gather the material and forward it to Bill.

-Bill suggested that the Canadians come up with their own ACA award named for a prominent Canadian crystallographer.  There was also some discussion about the Etter Award (lack of applicants). David and Louis will attempt to facilitate nominations in time for ACA’09 in hopes that a Canadian might be a recipient of at least one major award at that meeting.

-Lee Groat asked that people forward material for his upcoming RefleXions article.

- Other items that were mentioned:

We need a Secretary/treasurer for the CanDiv (except we have no money).

Financial contributions towards the Canadian Pauling Prize are pretty much non-existent. One option would be to ask the ACA if they could collect centrally (yet another box to check) on the dues form even though this would not be tax deductible in Canada. [or to avoid adding another box – contributions to Pauling Prize from Canadians could be designated to the Canadian Prize and this could be indicated.]

[Note added after Council meeting: Rao indicated willingness to investigate getting ACA charitable status in Canada.]

-The meeting adjourned with cookies supplied by Qiagen.