About
Paul Lortie graduated in 1979 with a degree in Engineering Geology and Geophysics. In the mid 1980’s, Paul developed an interest for collecting minerals and fossils with the Columbia Gem & Mineral Society while working as a geophysicist for a mineral exploration company based in Camden, South Carolina. At that time, his interest was shared with two other geologists and together they started a business to buy, sell and trade minerals, gems and jewels.
After moving back to Canada in late 1987 to work as a fulltime consulting geophysicist, Paul continued his distance education studies of colored gemstones with the GIA (Gemological Institute of America) and created Collection Arkane in 1988 as a part time business to buy, sell and trade minerals, carved rocks, gems and jewels and to expand his personal collections of fine minerals and gems. Business was initially carried through product presentations at clients home and, from 1992, also at trade shows in Quebec Province (Montreal and Quebec) and later in Ontario Province (Bancroft, Ottawa and Toronto) until 2004. With time, inventories of carved rocks, gems and jewels were replaced solely with fine minerals.
Paul halted Collection Arkane business operations in 2004 but continued to buy fine minerals and gems for his personal collections. He continued to diversify into classes of minerals with emphasis first on sulphides and sulfosalts (class 2), then native elements and alloys (class 1). Thereafter, he started collecting type locality specimens. Since about 2010, Paul’s collection was expanded to crystal and gem pairs of minerals especially gem minerals from Canada and the representative gems of the 12 months calendar.
In 2012, his wife Agathe Favreau re-started Collection Arkane business activities in order to help Paul sell the major part of his mineral collections and inventory. Theirf son Francois joined the company operations in 2015 with the objective of expanding business operations with a new website. Born in 1988, Francois has always been exposed to his father’s interest for minerals, especially because Paul provided his three children with opportunity to build their very own personal collections.
The origin of the name Collection Arkane comes from Paul’s idea of using the word rainbow in his business name. In French, the word rainbow translates to “arc-en-ciel”. While looking for a synonym of the word, Paul found the phonetic translation of the first two syllables of the word: “ar-kan”. The name Arkane stands for rainbow which expresses concepts of prism (crystals and systems), light (visibility, clarity and quality; refraction, reflection, dispersion and polarization), and multicolored arc (colours range of minerals and gems). For the website, Paul came up with a symbol built from his modification of a graphic design by Polly T. White he found in the book (figure 64, page 42) “A Guide to Understanding Crystallography” by Jennie R. Smith (1991). The design shows trigonal classes in the hexagonal prisms division, again an emphasis on minerals and gems crystals and systems.
After a few years of development financed by Gestion Lofa, the new technology platform Lofa is now being used by Collection Arkane to support its new website starting in 2025.