VANCOUVER -- There were times over the years when the elderly man with his black garbage bag scouring the University of B.C. campus for discarded beer and pop cans on Saturday mornings must have been taken for a homeless person eking out an existence on the throwaways of others.

But Wilbert “Ted” Danner wasn’t homeless.

He was a quirky but well-loved professor of geology and this week his estate donated $1.1 million to the geology department.

In part, the gift will top up a scholarship fund he started by collecting and recycling tens of thousands of beer bottles, cans and other redeemable items he found on the university grounds and down on Wreck Beach.

Danner died in 2012 at the age of 88.

Over 25 years, he had accumulated $46,000 from his scavenging and this went to fund his Beer – Pop Can – Bottle Refund Award which has benefited 53 geology students since he founded it in 1989. It is awarded to students for outstanding field work.

Before he retired in the early 1990s his office was often overflowing with bottles and cans waiting to go to the recycling depot.

UBC geology Prof. Greg Dipple said there was a method behind his collecting cans.

“He thought it was important to emphasize to students the value of little deposits that are retained. He showed them that you could build up a lot of equity over a period of time by small contributions, five and 10 cents at a time.

“Naming his bursary the Beer – Pop Can – Bottle Refund Award was intentional because he wanted to emphasize this.”

Danner was born in Washington state and began teaching at UBC in 1954. He retired in the early 1990s.

Ross Beaty, a mining financier and a former student of Danner’s and executor of his will, described him as a “quirky, enthusiastic professor who inspired many students to go into geosciences, including myself.”

“What a wonderful legacy he’s left for UBC and for future generations of geologists,” Beaty said.

Danner’s bequest includes $320,000 for his beer and pop can award fund. Another $320,000 will fund the new Ted Danner Memorial Entrance Bursary in Geology.

He also gave UBC his personal collection of more than 2,000 specimens of minerals worth $500,000 that he had amassed over the years.

Dipple said Danner was a “geologist 24 hours a day.”

“He was fully devoted to teaching. By the time I arrived, he had retired but he continued to teach credit and non-credit courses for more than a decade for no pay. He was very popular with students because he was so incredibly enthusiastic and knowledgeable.”

“Many important people in the B.C. mining industry such as Ross Beaty were inspired to study geology because of him,” Dipple said.

He said Danner is still remembered by his colleagues for a speech he once gave to an international geology conference which he titled the Sedimentology of Money which had overtones of his fervour for collecting recyclables.

“I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard the faculty talk about that speech in which he asked ‘if you are going to look in a parking lot for lost change where could you expect to find it?’

“It was him exercising his quirkiness again but the premise was if you drop change it gets moved around by the rainwater and gravel and it accumulates in certain places.”

Dipple said it was Danner’s contention that this was the same process that move minerals and gravel around in rivers which is apparent when geologists examine patterns in rocks in order to interpret past environments.

“The talk ended up being standing room only.”

gbellett@vancouversun.com

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