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When Rene Savenye retired from his teaching job in 1993 the fossil expeditions also occurred during the week. Some of his discoveries were 150 million years old. During his last hunt on July 26, 2002, the amateur naturalist was struck by lightning near Lake Louise. Rene Savenye died at 63 doing the work he passionately loved. “I was supposed to meet him in three days,” said his widow Anne Savenye prior to a dedication ceremony of his work Wednesday. “Next to me (his work) was his greatest passion.”
Searching, collecting and cataloguing fossils went far beyond work. Now, thanks to his wife, a portion of his 38-year collection has been donated to the Royal B.C. Museum. The dedication ceremony attended by family and friends was held on the museum’s third-floor Experts Galleries area. Museum staff and volunteers needed eight months to prepare the exhibits of 2,700 plant, animal, fish and marine invertebrate fossils. Among the specimens displayed during unveiling of the exhibit were a lobster claw and clam and crab shells. These fossils look like images tattooed into dark rock. They are 150 million years old, give or take a few million, Anne Savenye said. The new museum exhibit is about a third of Rene Savenye’s collection. A shed outside their Surrey home still stores thousands of other fossils, most not catalogued and many only a part of a creature, such as a wing. His collection is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in B.C. Rene Savenye’s interest in palaeontology began with a geology class at the University of British Columbia but became a passion when he was taking a summer class toward his teaching credentials. One student who brought some fossils to class for a project drew his attention. The student offered to take him to the site where he found the fossils. Rene Savenye was hooked. From 1964 until his untimely death in 2002, fossil hunting was a big part of life for Savenye, who was also a teacher at Princess Margaret secondary school in Surrey. When his children got older he usually was accompanied by his wife and sometimes also by his three boys. Michael, 41, and Edward, 35, joined their mother for the opening of their father’s fossil exhibit but Paul died from kidney problems seven months before his dad, at the age of 35. As black veils came off
the display counters that now house some of his collection, the extent
of his passion was quickly revealed. The exhibit has specimens from about 50 B.C. sites. The fossils range from the Cambrian Period of a half-billion years ago to the Pleistocene Epoch or ice age only tens of thousands of years ago. “The collection ... is truly exceptional, its size, quality ... picking out the best specimens,” said Richard Hebda, the museum’s curator of botany. “His legacy will live in this museum for many years to come.” Savenye, who also led interpretative field trips for all ages, is an example of how an amateur can make an impact in a field such as palaeontology, he said. He drew international acclaim in 1995 when he discovered what is believed to be the second oldest fossilized bee in the world. The bee, found near Merritt, is not at the museum but instead housed at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. Savenye was posthumously awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and became the first recipient of an award named after him and presented by the B.C. Palaeontology Alliance. The collection is on display to the public until Sunday at the Experts Galleries. © Copyright 2004 Times
Colonist (Victoria)
reprinted
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A
typical weekend at the Savenye home often began at 5 a.m. with the
family putting together a picnic lunch and making preparations for the
day’s search for old dead things. 
