Keith Bell

Keith was a northerner, born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, Northumberland, England. He attended the local village school in the small, coal-mining village of Delves Lane in County Durham, not too far away from the gritty, iron and steel town of Consett. After attending the local grammar school, Keith went on to the University of Leeds to study geology, obtained a B.Sc. and from there went to Oxford where he obtained a D.Phil. His time at Oxford, was among the happiest days of his life and there he made lifelong friends. A visiting Fulbright fellow at Oxford invited Keith to take up a post-doctoral position at the University of Texas in Austin where he spent three years. He always liked to comment on the differences between Oxford and Texas which were immense but at the same time interesting. During his stay in Austin, Keith made many visits to Mexico, and claimed that this was one of the most fascinating countries he had visited.

Later Keith spent two years in the Dept. of Physics at the University of Toronto in Canada and from there he went on to take up a permanent position at Carleton University, Ottawa, where he remained until he retired. He was an excellent teacher, and this came through with the students’ annual evaluations. During his university life Keith was active in academia. He was Director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, a joint research programme between Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. He was also a member of the University Senate, served on countless university and departmental committees, and was at one time president of the Faculty Club. He also was the first chair of the Grievance committee for the faculty union. Keith was appointed Distinguished Research Professor in 2004.

Keith travelled extensively during his career. After Oxford, but before Texas, Keith had a special grant from the British Government to collect samples from some unusual volcanoes in Uganda. Even after his retirement, he was still approached by researchers from different institutions for access to these samples. For most of his career Keith worked on a very unusual group of rocks called carbonatites. In 1989 he edited a book “Carbonatites – Genesis and Evolution” which became the standard work in the field. Later with a colleague J. Keller from the University of Freiburg he co-edited another volume on an unusual volcano Oldoinyo Lengai in Tanzania. Along with Tony Simonetti and Bruce Kjarsgaard he co-edited a volume of the Journal of Petrology dealing solely with carbonatites.

Keith always enjoyed working with others. Throughout his career he worked with Canadian colleagues of the Geological Survey of Canada, the Saskatchewan Geological Survey, the Ontario Geological Survey, the Newfoundland Dept. of Mines and Energy, and the New Brunswick Dept. of Mines.

Keith had an active research group of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows at Carleton. With J. Blenkinsop, they set up the first multicollector mass spectrometer. He was invited as a visitor to Leningrad State University in 1991 and to Complutense University in Madrid in 1989. During his visit to Russia, Keith was one of the first non-Soviet geologists since the revolution to visit the Kola Peninsula, an out-of-bounds, militarily sensitive region in the Russian arctic. In his later years Keith carried out research in Italy, and along with Italian colleagues proposed a controversial model for volcanic activity. Throughout his career Keith reviewed papers for all of the international journals in his field, including Nature. Keith was always very proud of the fact that he co-authored eight papers in Nature. Keith’s collection of carbonatites was second to none. Samples were collected by him from Canada, Italy, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Hawaii, Finland, Ukraine, the USA and Russia.

In 1971, Keith married Irena Zajszlyj, and they spent 54 happy years together. Irena, of Ukrainian background, worked for many years at the National Library in Ottawa, and produced a Ukrainian radio programme in Ottawa for twenty years. Their quite different personalities complemented one another, and over the years they both did a great deal of travelling.

Throughout his life Keith, even as a small child, was a keen collector, if not stamps then old coins, if not old coins then antiques. Along with his wife, a collection was made over the years of art from young, contemporary Canadian artists. As a child Keith was considered to be a gifted artist, and throughout his scientific career he rented several studios where he continued drawing and painting. In later years he took up block print-making, and participated in several group shows at one of the major galleries in Ottawa. His one-man show of composers, conductors and musicians at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, he considered to be one of the highlights of his artistic endeavours.

In 2008 a session of the Goldschmidt Conference, one of the most prestigious conferences in his field, was held in his honour in Vancouver, Canada, and this led to a volume of Mineralogy and Petrology in 2010 dedicated to him entitled “Carbonatites, Alkaline Rocks and the Mantle: A Special Issue Dedicated to Keith Bell”. In the dedication of this volume one of his former students wrote “He was an excellent mentor and his drive for knowledge and research is relentless, stimulating and infectious”

During the last years of his life, Keith succumbed to an undiagnosed chronic pain condition that hampered his enjoyment of life and severely curtailed his interest in both art and science.

Keith is survived by his wife, Irena, his sister Helen Crozier, and his niece Emma and his nephew Richard along with their families. Keith’s passing on November 20 at The Ottawa Hospital, was sad for his wife, his family and all who knew him. It was hoped that his wonderful personality, outstanding intellect, vast knowledge in various fields would remain with us for more years. He was loved, admired and will be missed. On November 20th the world lost an outstanding person.

Family, close friends and colleagues are invited to say good bye at the Beechwood Funeral, Cemetery and Cremation Services (280 Beechwood Avenue, Ottawa) at 1 PM on Monday December 1 (and also via live stream), followed by an internment at 2 PM. 

In addition, a full memorial celebration will take place in Spring 2026.

Donations in lieu of flowers to Diabetes Canada.