Electrical Engineering

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.

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.

Celia Desmond describes her unusual early career journey – although she loved mathematics as a high-school student, she was counselled to consider a career in nursing or teaching. She became a kindergarten teacher, earning a degree in mathematics by taking night courses. The neighbours in her apartment building were undergraduate engineering students – and she found their homework interesting. When she married and moved, there were no teaching opportunities, so she took a masters degree in systems engineering.

Electrical Engineer Guy Van Uytven describes leaving university at Ghent, Belgium, to start his first job with Schlumberger, an oil services exploration firm. He was given a ticket to fly to Lisbon the same day he was interviewed! He found his way to a hotel and, not knowing Portuguese, managed to order a chicken meal for supper. He was surprised to be served a soup that contained a chicken leg sticking up out of it – but ate it. While in Portugal, he learned to play the classical guitar, and to speak Portuguese – his fourth language.

Power systems engineer Willy Kotiuga "always liked tinkering with telephones", causing a short circuit when his parents gave him permission to open one up. His first job was working as a projectionist at Montreal's Man in World theme park in 1972: "it wasn't really engineering design, it was more troubleshooting when things went wrong." The next summer he was designing introductory experiments for undergraduate engineering students at Concordia for Professor James Lindsay. He took the system studies option, learning to look at engineering "as a whole, as part of a larger system". He subsequently developed answers for example problems in a nonlinear programming textbook written by Professor Vidya Sagar, which became part of his foundation for a PhD in that field. Eventually he developed a niche doing feasibility studies for large hydroelectric systems, including a 1000 MW dam in Saudi Arabia. He spent several years restructuring the power sector in India, and worked on the Three Gorges project in China. After adopting a daughter, he decided to "stay put at home", working for an American energy efficiency firm, then Hydro Quebec. Reflecting on changes in engineering, he notes that he started with a slide rule, then "the most powerful calculator, an HP 41 CV, then the first desktop computer in the company". He counsels high school students interested in engineering to broaden education to include economics, politics and human relations. He counsels newly graduated Engineers-in-Training to learn about liability and legal issues. In retirement, he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Kings University in Halifax, to prepare him for writing a book featuring his engineering stories.

John Plant worked for Frost and Woods, a farm equipment manufacturing company in his hometown, Smiths Falls, planning to become a chartered accountant. He applied to be a pilot in the Canadian Air Force but problems with his left eye led him to the Regular Officer Training Program at Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston. After two years, in 1954, he left to train in Royal Navy ships and studied Marine Engineering at the Royal Navy and Naval Engineering College in Plymouth, England. He took a World War II anti-submarine frigate through a refit in Saint John and was then offered an opportunity to do graduate studies at MIT, where he eventually earned a PhD in Electrical Engineering. He arrived with his family at RMC as a professor of electrical engineering in 1965, became department head in 1967, and resigned his commission to become Dean of Graduate Studies and Research in 1970, a position he held for 12 years. In 1983, he became Principal of RMC, and after he retired became President of the RMC Foundation. He was instrumental in merging Region 7 of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) with the Canadian Society of Electrical and Computer Engineering to for IEEE (Canada) and also served as President of the Engineering Institute of Canada. He briefly describes the Camp of Seven Wardens that co-ordinates Iron Ring Ceremonies across Canada and the basis of Kipling's poem "The Sons of Martha".

Electrical engineer Celia Desmond describes her unusual entry to an engineering career and her subsequent professional achievements. Her first work at Telco involved applying queuing theory to the management of shared data lines and then standardizing equipment that would connect to computer networks. She spent a year in the Human Resources department and then moved into customer support and project management. She then founded her own company, World Class Telecommunications, that primarily trained engineers about telecom network planning and implementation. She briefly describes several projects, including: reclassifying modems as computer accessories to reduce the duty from 17% to 3%; creating secure networks to support government leaders at a T7-type meeting; and, establishing certification for wireless communications engineering companies. She also emphasizes: the need for career transitioning; and the value of business, soft, and communication skills in a technical environment. She describes volunteer roles, primarily with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (Canada), and offers advice to high school students considering careers in engineering and to new engineering graduates. She also describes a personal hobby, making reproductions of antique porcelain dolls.

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.