Maurice Hall Haycock

Cowley Abbott Auction House Biography and Notes

Born at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, he enlisted at the age of 15 in the Canadian Army during the First World War. Being under age he returned to school at Horton Collegiate Academy. From 1918 to 1931 he worked as a summer student for the Geographical Survey of Canada. In 1926 he graduated from Acadia University where he specialized in geology. He then joined Dr. L. J. Weeks on a 15 month geological exploration trip in the eastern Arctic. Returning on the 'Beothic', Haycock and Weeks became friends of A. Y. Jackson, Dr. Frederick Banting and Dr. L. D. Livingston. The meeting of Jackson and Haycock on this trip was to result in their future sketching trips together. On his return from the Arctic, Maurice Haycock enrolled at Princeton University where he took post-graduate studies in geology and mineralogy and in 1931 received his Doctor of Philosophy in Economic Geology. He joined the staff of the Department of Mines of the Canadian Government. During the course of his work he carried out extensive surveys in the Great Bear Lake area (North West Territories) and elsewhere. About the spring of 1939 Dr. Haycock began to sketch in watercolours and took some instruction from Wilfred Flood, Frank Hennessey, Tom Wood and others.