The Ninth International Palynological Congress (IPC) took place at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Houston, Texas, 23-28 June 1996. About 450 delegates convened from all over the world and, for the first time officially, these included members of the International Association of Aerobiologists - this group having joined the International Federation of Palynological Societies (IFPS), the IPC's sponsoring body, About 450 delegates convened from all over the world and, for the first time officially, these included members of the International Association of Aerobiologists - this group having joined the International Federation of Palynological Societies (IFPS), the IPC's sponsoring body, only last year. Also, for the first time in my experience of attending palynological meetings, there was a significant Russian contingent. CAP was well represented, with most of the executive attending (the report of the AGM, which took place at the IPC, is included elsewhere in this website), as well as a number of other prominent Canadian palynologists.

The scientific sessions offered a rich menu, with topics ranging from the geologically recent (e.g., "Forensic Palynology" and "Aerobiology") to the old (e.g., "Cryptospores and the Origins of Terrestrial Floras"); and from the straightforward ("Cretaceous Palynology") to the more esoteric ("Palynomorph Distribution Patterns and their Interpretation"). A full slate of posters as well as intensive sessions, led to a very busy schedule. Oral papers of Canadian interest, in program order, were those by Grace Parsons and Geoff Norris on Paleogene dinoflagellates from the Beaufort-Mackenzie region; Esther Asselin et al. on Late Ordovician chitinozoa from the Lac-Saint-Jean Outlier, Quebec; Patrick Cashman on Devonian spores of Prairie evaporites; Koldo Nuñez-Betelu and Len Hills on a new Late Coniacian dinoflagellate, Odontochitina octopusa, from the Arctic; Eva Koppelhus on the palynology of the Centrosaurus bone beds from Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta; Rolf Mathewes on Late Wisconsin paleoecology in coastal British Columbia; John Beck and Paul Strother on Silurian spores and cryptospores from Arisaig, Nova Scotia; Nuñez-Betelu and Hills again on the sequence stratigraphy of a Late Cretaceous coastal to offshore transition in the Arctic; Ian Campbell and others on fire, climate and vegetation in the Canadian Late Holocene; and M. G. Pellatt and others on pollen analysis and ordination of lake surface sediments from coastal British Columbia (with apologies for any that I may have missed).

No individual could do justice to the vast range of talks and posters, displays of the latter changing daily. As I look through the program again, I find myself regretting "the ones that got away" - for example, I had to miss K. Oeggi's talk on "Pollen analysis of the Iceman's colon content" - an intriguing title on a gruesomely fascinating topic. (This reminds be of an Arts and Entertainment TV network documentary on Egyptian mummies in which one of our colleagues was identified on screen as a "pollenologist".) However, such regrets notwithstanding, for me and I'm sure many others, meetings like the IPC are important opportunities to "network" - to sit down and discuss ongoing projects with far-flung colleagues, to generate new collaborative, and perhaps business, opportunities and to generally talk science, preferably over dinner or a beer, with like-minded people.

In this respect, the social events of a meeting are of great importance. The 9th IPC was no exception and some excellent events were organized. After the Plenary Session welcoming delegates on the Sunday evening, the huge Exhibition Center of the Marriott Hotel (which only a short while previously had housed a political rally for President Clinton) was the venue of the opening Reception. On Wednesday lunchtime, the host society, AASP, held its annual luncheon, at which German dinoflagellate worker Hans Gocht and our own Graham Williams, were both deservedly awarded with the AASP Medal for Scientific Excellence. Graham was so taken aback that his acceptance speech was uncharacteristically restrained and polite. (However, he has now recovered.) The IFPS banquet on Thursday evening was buffet style and "Tex-Mex" in content - the buffet style again allowing for fluid social discourse, to me preferable to more formal arrangements where one can sometimes feel a bit trapped. Breakfast each day also became a social event, since the hotel supplied a generous spread of bagels, muffins, fruit and beverages outside the conference rooms each morning. Tuesday through Thursday, there were trips to NASA's Houston Space Center for those whose schedules allowed.

The trilogy Palynology: Principles and Applications had its launch at the Congress. For those of you who don't know by now, the book, published by AASP, is a multi-authored, three volume set on all aspects of palynology. Its editors are CAP members Jan Jansonius and Colin McGregor.

In all, the organizing committee of Vaughn Bryant, John Wrenn, Bob Clarke, David Pocknall, Dave Goodman, Sarah Damassa and Doug Nichols should be congratulated for a job excellently done. It should be mentioned that, in the weeks leading up to the meeting, illness in the family and a personal accident to Vaughn Bryant threw a monkey-wrench into the organization. It is to all the credit of the whole committee that the meeting went without a visible hitch. Both AASP and Elsevier are planning to publish segments of proceedings from the 9th IPC. The 10th IPC will be held in Nanjing, China in the year 2000. See you there (if not at the next CAP AGM)!

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This article first appeared in CAP Newsletter 19(2):9-10, 1996. The text has been slightly edited for clarity.