English

Electrical engineer and former President of Royal Military College, Dr. John Plant, reflects on the responsibilities of a professional engineer – "protect the public." He describes the Iron Ring "Society", where newly graduated engineering students receive an iron ring by attending a ceremony written by Rudyard Kipling. He recalls Kipling's poem, "The Sons of Martha" – "who strive to help the Sons of Mary rule", noting that Martha and Mary were the daughters of Jesus' friend Lazarus. According to the Bible, when Martha complained that Mary was flirting with Jesus, He replied "there ae many ways to serve the Lord." So Kipling called engineers "the Sons of Martha" recognizing that there ar many ways to serve the Lord.

Nuclear engineer Paul Thompson talks about what's next on his agenda. "I am particularly interested in the potential merging and applications between nuclear and hydrogen." He stresses, given climate change concerns, the importance of getting nuclear established in areas of Canada that don't have hydro-electric power. "I think there's tremendous synergies in the advanced reactors, which are high temperature, and hydrogen." He also describes the need to think about where the future is headed, and the benefit of trying to proactively be there before it arrives.

Biomedical Engineer Robin Black thinks he more-or-less stumbled into his career in Engineering. In high school, he didn't know anyone who was an engineer. He was interested in medicine because his father and grandfather had been medical doctors. He started a biology program at McMaster, but when he found out that no one from that program at McMaster ever got into medicine, he switched to engineering at Queen's. He worked summers at an orthopedic laboratory, building and installing an artificial knee, and then joined a group doing rehabilitation engineering at the Ontario Crippled Children's Centre– helping people.

Tracy Primeau recalls a "huge" transport leak that occurred while she was working as a field operator at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in 1994. They had to go into the reactor and manually close a valve after the unit came offline. The event, and response, became well known in the nuclear industry and formed the basis of changes to design and operating practices. Then she experienced a reactivity event, where the unit "spiked" but then responded appropriately. It was also well-known and studied. When these events came up in discussion, she would say "Yes, I was there" and "yes, I was at that one too". She describes being able to tell the actual story from her first hand experience – and usually get a free beer at a nuclear conference.

Power systems engineer Willy Kotiuga describes his latest endeavour – enrolling in a Master of Fine Arts program at Kings College Halifax – primarily to prevent his untold stories from getting lost. The intention is to educate the next generation, allowing them to learn primarily from his mistakes. He was surprised, after authoring many reports and documents, by how his Creative Nonfiction Writing course changed his outlook. He realized that, drawing material from his collection of 40 notebooks, he was creating a document that would not get buried and forgotten on a shelf but would instead inform his family, his colleagues. He realized that he needed primarily to describe himself – what drives his decisions.

Mechanical engineer Madiha Kotb describes her calling as "engineers do fix things". Life-saving equipment found in hospitals is designed and maintained by engineers. Society takes engineering achievements for granted, even though they are essential and everywhere in every-day life: from plumbing fixtures to electricity to the buildings that we live in. "Unfortunately", she says, "engineers did not used to be good communicators" – though initiatives like the oral history project are changing this.

Metallurgical engineer Ken Putt describes his role overseeing the building of the Strathcona Refinery at Edmonton, then the biggest project that his employer, Imperial Oil, had ever done. The new refinery replaced existing refineries in Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, and Winnipeg, and its product was pipelined to Vancouver, Winnipeg, and points between. He was the owner's representative on the design team, and learned chemical engineering "by doing". When the design was finished, he was sent to Edmonton to do the start-up planning. Eventually he was in charge of start-up operations for half the plant.

Nuclear engineer Fred Dermarkar describes the importance of humility in complimenting teamwork. "If you want to get things done, you really need to view everyone as your equal and everyone as someone you can learn from." He reflects on the successful application of this philosophy to a team of thousands that complete a very challenging response to a major nuclear accident.

Biomedical engineer Dr. Monique Frize describes her "best project", a system for intensive care of infants – a software program that provides physicians and parents with decision assistance. It provides the physician with relevant data, predicts mortality, potential complications, duration of ventilation, and duration of stay. It provides parents with definitions of common medical terms and decision support should a change of treatment be needed. It was successfully piloted at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. "It took 25 years to get there – and about 35 theses"

Environmental engineer Dr. Suzelle Barrington offers suggestions on changing the engineering workplace to encourage diversity. Government policies and programs to encourage the employment of workers with diverse backgrounds are a start. Bosses should be able to use human resources personnel to improve workplace environments. But there are subconscious biases still out there, some consulting firms still give the big jobs to the guys, for example. It is necessary to reminde people that such subconscious biases exist.