Guy Van Uytven Full Interview

Electrical Engineer Guy Van Uytven passed an admission exam, just after the end of World War II, to enter the Royal University of Ghent, the top engineering school in Belgium, specializing in "zwakke stroom" or "weak currents", basically electronics. His first job was with the oil services exploration firm Schlumberger, who gave him a ticket to fly to Lisbon the day he was interviewed. He then studied briefly in Paris before a year in the Sahara Desert, Hassi Messaoud, conducting measurements on oil wells. In 1964, he returned to Belgium and was hired by Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, a copper cobalt mining company with operations in Katanga, one of the provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during a civil war. In 1966, the government nationalized the company, and he and his family escaped by car to Zambia and, eventually Cape Town. Arriving in Canada in 1967, he joined Acres Canadian Bechtel to assist with the design of the 735 kV substation and transmission lines for the Churchill Falls hydro-electric project in Labrador. At the time he also completed a Master of Engineering program at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia), developing a compute program that optimizes transmission lines that is still in use. He then joined Monenco, and embarked on an MBA program. He subsequently worked internationally in Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Madagascar, the Ivory Coast. At the time of the interview, he was the President of the Canadian Society of Senior Engineers.