A Scientist In the Making

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My parents were both from Montreal, Québec. They met on a blind date at a jazz club shortly after my father returned from the Korean War. Since my Dad was Black, and a descendant of slaves taken from the Igbo tribe in Nigeria (my daughters discovered this using my uncle's genealogy research and DNA analysis), they could only go to nightclubs where Blacks were allowed. They were married in 1953 and I was born in 1954. My father was posted to a military base in Germany where I started school - Kindergarten and the first half of Grade 1. In early 1960 we moved to Camp Petawawa (as it was known then) in Ontario. I continued my education on base schools, graduating from Grade 13 in 1973.

It was clear to my parents that I was keenly interested in science, so they provided many materials for me to learn at home including a chemistry set, rock and mineral collection, microscope, weather station, Meccano construction sets, and my Dad's binoculars to study the stars. When I was 11 years old I signed out the book shown here from the Camp Petawawa Community Library. The due date card entries at the back of the book, from the first borrow on November 12, 1965, were mostly my loans. When the library closed in the early 1970s, they let me keep the book since I was the most frequent borrower!

Reference

"Introducing Astronomy", J.B. Sidgwick, Faber and Faber Limited, London, UK, 1958.

With a full scholarship to the University of Western Ontario, I enrolled in the astronomy program in the fall of 1973. I still have my textbook, "Survey of the Universe", D.H. Menzel, F.L. Whipple, and G. deVancouleurs, Prentice-Hall, Englewood-Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970. One of my first year projects was to study Comet C/1973 E1 Kohoutek using the telescope on top of the Science Building. Although it wasn't as spectacular as predicted, I had a great bird's-eye view.

I spent lots of time playing piano in one of the Music Department studios and studying classical music in the library. For those of you who are computer science buffs, my first year computer course used Fortran IV. We submitted our programs on punch cards and, after a bit of a wait, the computer staff placed our results, printed on perforated continuous computer paper, on a rack.

London, Ontario was a wonderful university town and I enjoyed weekend bowling at Huron Bowl and taking in good bands at the clubs like the Ridout Tavern. Good times for sure!

In 1985, as my MSc Physics was wrapping up, I was getting ready to start a PhD in physics when our laboratory was visited by scientists from the civilian research branch of the Department of National Defence. They had several job openings and were recruiting physicists, engineers, and mathematicians. The salary was excellent for that time period and the job descriptions sounded fascinating. With a new baby at home, it was a great career opportunity not to pass up. The PhD would have to wait.

I was hired by the Operational Research Division, with our offices in the Canadian Forces Maritime Warfare School at HMCS Stadacona in Halifax. In 1985, the Canadian Navy was celebrating its 75th Anniversary as well as the 35th Anniversary of the Warfare School and produced an unclassified special edition of the Maritime Warfare Bulletin. The image here is from the cover of my copy of the "Maritime Warfare Bulletin: Commemorative Edition 1985", Canadian Forces Maritime Warfare School, Department of National Defence (1985). The photo they used on the cover was from the Maritime Command Museum.

Operations research is primarily concerned with problems that require mathematical modelling and/or statistical analysis. I was hired for this particular job for my extensive mathematics background and not physics. However, whenever a physics solution to a given problem was possible, I jumped at the opportunity to work on it. One such problem was to develop a model to analyze the motions and effectiveness of stabilization parachutes. I teamed up with one of my colleagues and developed several complex aerodynamic models using both Newtonian and Lagrange mechanics. We were permitted to publish a paper in a prestigious refereed physics journal as follows:

• "Stabilization parachutes: A rigid body treatment", D.F. Jones and P.E. Desmier, American Journal of Physics, 55(6), 538-544 (1987).

On December 6, 2017 the Norwegian SS Imo and French SS Mont Blanc collided in Halifax Harbour setting off the munitions onboard the latter. In the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion, a famous photograph emerged of the Norwegian steamship Imo aground on the Dartmouth side of the Halifax Narrows. This devastating explosion had an impact on my life in two ways.

1. The house where my great grandfather George Albert Jones lived, 36 1/2 King's Place in Halifax, was damaged by the explosive shock wave that claimed many lives and caused incredible destruction. He worked as a sleeping car porter on the Intercolonial Railway line between Halifax and Montreal. In 1918 he moved his family to Montreal and worked the same line but from the Québec end. After a few generations, my father married my French Canadian mother Denise, which probably would not have happened if the explosion did not take place (my hypothesis). In other words, I believe the Halifax Explosion and my very existence were a cause and effect phenomenon.

2. The building in the background of the Imo is the French Cable building. It was one of the few structures on the Dartmouth side that survived the explosion due to its reinforced concrete fabrication. The windows you can see on the upper floor (see label in photograph) became my office and Transducer Group laboratory during my scientific career at DREA! My word, how the universe unfolds!

Photo used with permission from the Nova Scotia Archives.

Invitation to the Institute of Acoustics, UK

In 1995 the organizers of the Sonar Transducer '95 conference from the University of Birmingham, UK invited me to present a paper on North American developments in the field of high-power sonar transducer design. I asked my American colleague Jan Lindberg from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in New London, CT to coauthor this work and he readily accepted. Our paper on the state-of-the-art in Canada and the United States was well-received. The proceedings cover is shown here.

• "Recent transduction developments in Canada and the United States", D.F. Jones and J.F. Lindberg, Sonar Transducers '95, Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, 17(3), pp. 15-33 (1995).

Advanced Ceramics Book Chapter

Beginning in the late 1980s, I put together a team of Canadian researchers with expertise in piezoelectric materials, measurements, and development related to sonar transducer design. My two contractors were Dr. Eswar Prasad, President of Sensor Technology Limited (B.M. Hi-Tech Division) in Collingwood, Ontario,  and Dr. Binu K. Mukherjee, Department of Physics, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario. Many contractor reports were generated by both teams and we worked together on projects that had an immediate impact on my research.

In 1996 Eswar was asked to write a chapter in a book on Advanced Ceramic Materials as an expert in piezoceramics. He asked me to join him and we published a comprehensive 73-page work along with other chapters written by experts from the US, UK, Germany, and Japan. Here is the reference:

• "Piezoelectric materials and their applications", D.F. Jones, S.E. Prasad, and J.B. Wallace, Advanced Ceramic Materials: Applications of Advanced Materials in a High-Tech Society I, Hamid Mostaghaci (Editor), Key Engineering Materials Vols. 122-124 (1996), pp. 71-144.

As a side note, Binu invited me to teach a short sonar transducer design course to a class of Air Force captains at the Royal Military College of Canada. One of the students looked familiar but he recognized me right away. Turns out we were both in the same platoon at boot camp in Cornwallis back in 1976! He rose from a private to a commissioned officer while I made the transformation from private to scientist, both with the Department of National Defence! Strange how our paths deviated then came back together for a few days at RMC after a few decades had passed.

Playback Experiments With Whales

By 2000, my broadband barrel-stave transducer was incorporated into a portable underwater transmitter system capable of producing sound in a relatively wide audio frequency band. This sea-going equipment, known as the Broadband Acoustic Transmission System (BATS), was developed in collaboration with my long-time contractor Sensor Technology Limited in Collingwood, Ontario.

I had built a close relationship with marine mammal experts at the Hal Whitehead Laboratory in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax and they borrowed BATS for vocal mimicry experiments with pilot whales off the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in the summer of 1999. We gave a paper at the 139th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Atlanta, Georgia in 2000, and published a paper in Sea Technology magazine:

• "Playback experiments with long-finned pilot whales using a new broadband transmitter", D.F. Jones and L.E. Rendell, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 107(5), Pt. 2, May 2000, p. 2774.
• "Broadband acoustic transmitter for marine mammal applications", D.F. Jones and L.E. Rendell, Sea Technology, 41(8), August 2000, pp. 10-14.

Sluice the Trapped Humpback Whale

I was monitoring the news about a humpback whale that swam through the sluice gates of the Annapolis Tidal Generating Plant in Annapolis Royal in August 2004. The whale was putting on quite a show for the spectators, who gathered on the causeway over the Annapolis River to watch and take photos as it breached and played around each day. After about a week I contacted the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to offer my assistance to help lure the whale back through the sluice gates using my portable BATS transmitter and humpback whale calls.

This was not my idea, it was done successfully before with Humphrey the humpback whale who swam into San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento River in 1985. I contacted the marine mammal researchers involved in that rescue and they sent me extensive notes concerning their efforts. They had obtained audio recordings of humpback whales on feeding grounds in Alaskan waters from the University of Alaska so I did the same. One of those recordings was very similar to my recordings from sea trials in the Bay of Fundy. This recording would be my Plan B.

I drove to Annapolis Royal with all my gear early one morning and set everything up near the bow of the small fisheries patrol boat manned by two crew. For anyone who has a picture of the guy sitting in the bow, that's me! I also had a hydrophone and headset so I could listen to everything underwater. I did an interview with one news outlet before departing. We set off upriver from the causeway, which was packed with onlookers and media. When we found Sluice 'he' was headed back to the sluice gates so we did not have to broadcast anything underwater. We followed Sluice to the gates but by this time water was pouring through as the Bay of Fundy tide was coming in. There was no chance any marine mammal could swim through the oncoming torrent of water, and besides, Sluice was about to be served a fresh fish dinner!

At this point, Plan B kicked in and my idea was to make the relatively quiet underwater river environment sound like the Bay of Fundy. I did that for quite some time and at one point Sluice came right up to me to check out the sounds I was broadcasting (see the Nova Scotia Power press release below). That was the only time I heard his voice - briefly, just one call! My hope was that Sluice would be a bit homesick and would leave when the tide turned. We also broadcast these same whale vocalizations on the ocean side of the gates but these sounds would likely have not been heard on the river side over the sounds of the water rushing through the gates.

In the morning I returned to the patrol boat from my hotel and we set off to find Sluice. Only one reporter was there and we talked casually for a bit. We sailed almost 20 km, all the way to Bridgetown where the river became very narrow. There was no sign of the whale. I could not detect any whale vocalizations either. We assumed he had left the river overnight. Unfortunately, I cannot take any credit for success because we had a very loud thunderstorm that night and the marine mammal experts I talked to in the days that followed, had no idea how a whale in a quiet shallow river would react to loud thunder.

I left for Dartmouth but a few days later, as I recall, Sluice returned to the river only to leave again on his own. I made a second trip to the river to see for myself that he wasn't there any longer. This was the story from my perspective - a story never told in print until now.

"Nova Scotia Power press release: Sluice Update, Sep 02, 2004

Annapolis Royal, NS - The humpback whale that entered the Annapolis River via the sluice gates of the Annapolis Tidal Power Plant on Aug. 23 remains in the river and its activity level continues to suggest the whale is in good condition, is under no undue stress and has ample access to food such as herring and mackerel, which enter the river at high tide.

On Aug. 30-31, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) broadcast the sound of feeding humpback whale vocalizations in waters on both sides of the sluice gates in hopes this would coax the whale into returning to the Annapolis Basin and its natural habitat in the Bay of Fundy. Although the whale took interest in these sounds, even circling one of the transmitters, it did not exit the river. Nova Scotia Power has decided not to run the Tidal Plant this weekend."

Acoustic Bar Codes

An experiment using a signal I called acoustic bar codes (ABCs) was tested near the Berry Islands in the Bahamas and near the Western Bank on the Scotian Shelf using my BATS transmitter. The ABC signal was made-up of the ambient noise of the ocean plus information in the form of "silent bars". These experiments were presented at the 150th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2005. It was such a novel idea that the conference committee selected it for a Lay Language Paper for the press and general public (see website link below).

• "Preliminary investigation of acoustic bar codes for short-range underwater communications", D.F. Jones, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118(3), Pt. 2, September 2005, pp. 2038-2039.
• "Communicating underwater using natural ocean noise", ASA 150th Meeting Lay Language Papers, 2005. Website Link: https://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/150th/Jones.html

Hurricane Juan Paper

When Hurricane Juan made landfall in Nova Scotia on September 28, 2003, we were living in Dartmouth. The strongest winds in the eastern eyewall of the storm passed directly over Halifax. At 9:30 p.m. I was setting up audio recording equipment upstairs to capture the sounds of Juan as it passed over our house. At the same time, meteorologist Chris Fogarty from the Canadian Hurricane Centre was boarding a reconnaissance flight at the Halifax International Airport (now the Halifax Stanfield International Airport) to drop air-launched dropsondes into the storm.

From my audio recordings I was able to determine wind gust frequencies at different times throughout the night, and even captured the sounds of nearby trees breaking. As it happened, Chris and I became aware of each others measurements and wrote a unique paper combining his wind data with my acoustic data, and even explained how these trees broke. The paper appeared in Acoustic Research Letters Online, a web-based publication of the Acoustical Society of America.

• "The acoustic heartbeat of Hurricane Juan", D.F. Jones and C. Fogarty, Acoustic Research Letters Online, 6(2), April 2005, pp. 85-91.

Hermit Thrush Paper

Beginning in 2003 I became interested in the vocalizations of bird species. I recorded many of them in my travels around the province. By far the most intriguing vocalizations were those of the Hermit Thrush that migrated to Nova Scotia in the spring each year. What I noticed as I studied their song structures using audio editing software (spectrographic analysis), was that each Hermit Thrush had its own repertoire of songs, and no two birds sang even one identical song. This made me wonder if I could acoustically identify a single individual from one migration year to the next. And so, an experiment was undertaken.

I recorded more than 4000 songs from 17 Hermit Thrushes at 11 sites in and around the Halifax/Dartmouth metropolitan area from April 2003 until July 2006. My experiment went longer than the two consecutive years I had planned (2003-2004) because Hurricane Juan (September 2003) essentially destroyed the habitats where the birds made their homes in 2003. I had to start again in 2005 then see if the birds returned to the same locations in 2006.

Two of the birds in 2005 did return to their exact locations in 2006 and I recognized every single one of their songs from the year before using my audio analysis software. Both birds sang their own repertoires - not one new song nor one forgotten! I published a paper on this first-of-its-kind Hermit Thrush voice-print in the Journal of the Canadian Acoustical Association:

• "Voice-printing the Hermit Thrush (Catharus Guttatus), D.F. Jones, Canadian Acoustics, 34(3), September 2006, pp. 14-15.

Joe Blue Memorial Paper

The late Joe Blue was the Director of the Naval Research Laboratory Underwater Sound Detachment in Orlando, Florida from 1980 to 1996. I met with him a few times to discuss sonar transducers, materials, and acoustic calibrations. We became friends and I interacted with his laboratory several times in my career. He was instrumental in helping me purchase one of their protected US Navy transducer elastomers (rubber) for use on my transducers.

At the 125th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America held in Ottawa in May 1993, the two of us went out for lunch at a downtown bistro and discussed many topics of mutual interest, my broadband transducers among them. I really enjoyed listening to his slow southern dialect! Many years later, after Joe passed away, the Acoustical Society's Engineering Acoustics committee held a special memorial session honouring his many achievements over his 42 year experiences in underwater acoustics. It was a testament to my close relationship with him and many of his colleagues that I was chosen (a Canadian) to present the first of two invited papers at this special session at the 151st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Providence, Rhode Island in June 2006. Here is the reference:

• Broadband barrel-stave flextensional transducers", D.F. Jones, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(5), Pt. 2, May 2006, p. 3409.

Life After Retirement

Life Threatening Illnesses

I am very lucky to have survived three life threatening illnesses since retirement. The first was total kidney failure due to an allergic reaction to a specific type of antibiotic, the second was a stroke, and the third was a heart attack which runs on my mother's side of the family. I am still experiencing the effects of the stroke which initially blocked my ability to read and comprehend what I was reading. With hard work and determination, I have come a long way.

Volunteer Musician

My stroke had an immediate impact on my ability to remember how to play guitar, lyrics to songs, and even chord progressions. In order to continue performing in some capacity, I began volunteering to help raise funds for charitable organizations as a musician. I had to write out every song by hand in order to be able to play them. I started playing at events organized by the Children's Wish Foundation (now the Nova Scotia Chapter of Make-A-Wish Canada). Over the years I performed at their summer family events, one Christmas venue, and many times on the Halifax Waterfront. After my heart attack and stroke, I did fundraising shows for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada at Annapolis Valley clubs, restaurants and even a political event. In addition, I volunteered to Chair the Music Committee of the Hants County Exhibition (HCEx) owned and operated by the Windsor Agricultural Society. The HCEx is the oldest agricultural fair in North America - 260 years in 2025! I did that for three years, 2022-2024.

Chief Justice of Nova Scotia

I have to mention the historical milestones of one of our family friends, the Honourable Michael J. Wood. In 2019, he became the 23rd Chief Justice of Nova Scotia and my wife and I were invited as family friends to witness his historic swearing in ceremony. 

Farm Life in Rural Nova Scotia

I never thought I would love living on a small farm in the country but I do. At the beginning of Covid we moved from Dartmouth to Kempt Shore where my daughter had bought a small farm. She is a fibre artist and keeps Icelandic sheep for their wool. We have sheep as well - a Shetland-Cotswold mix. Over the years our two farms have added more animals including chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, and an endangered Newfoundland pony. Of course we have dogs and cats on both farms. From Kempt Shore we can see across the Minas Basin to Cape Blomidon and further to Parrsboro. We can hear the Bay of Fundy tides come in twice a day and go for hikes along the beautiful shoreline anytime. I enjoy using my Kubota tractor and going for country drives in our RAM pickup.