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Mechanical engineer Dr. Martin Fandrich describes one of his design-build projects – a boat lift. The lift reaches under the water surface to pick up the boat and rotates it to the left or right for a forklift to take it to dry storage. The owner of a boat that was at the limit of the lift's capacity offered his vessel for a load test. Dr. Fandrich recalls "I am not a mariner – but it was a very expensive-looking boat!" Fortunately, the new lift functioned perfectly

Aeronautical engineer Dr. Gary Lindberg describes his role as Project Manager for the development of the "Shuttle attached remote manipulator system", now widely known as the Canadarm. In accordance with past practices involving joint ventures with the US National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA), a Memorandum of Understanding was drafted and signed by the President of the National Research Council and the Chief Administrator of NASA. When External Affairs and the US State Department found out, they said "wait a minute – that's an international treaty" and waded in.

Wind engineer Dr. Nicholas Isyumov talks about his work on the Sears Building – now the Willis Tower – in Chicago during the late '60s. It was to be the tallest building in the world, taller than New York's World Trade Center. The World Trade Center was sensitive to cross-wind dynamic excitations due to vortex shedding. The Sears Building had a more irregular shape – only two of the nine modules extended to the full building height – so vortex shedding was mitigated but significant wind-induced torques were possible. These combined drag, cross-wind, and torsional loadings eventually were codified.

Civil engineer Dr. Susan Tighe describes her work in leading a team from across Canada to develop the Pavement Management Asset Design and Management Guide for the Transportation Association of Canada. The guide represents a "crown jewel", containing the results of many laboratory projects she worked on with various graduate students and many field projects, including over 100 test sections located in Canada and internationally. Sophisticated modeling and life-cycle costing were used to develop the recommended best practices. She also briefly describes some of her 200-odd research projects.

Agricultural engineer Yves Choinière describes his work, facilitating the production of food – vegetables, forage for livestock – with a specialty in the design of farm buildings and livestock housing. His work is very diverse: it includes environmental protection and integrating a number of mechanical, control, robotic, and other systems to produce food. Every kind of food – tomatoes, potatoes, root vegetables that grow in soils, fruits – requires a unique specialized treatment. The advances of automation and robotics in agriculture, particularly over the past two decades, has been remarkable.

Geotechnical engineer Kwan Yee Lo describes his work on the intake and discharge tunnels of the Darlington Nuclear Plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Canada. He worked with a student, Dr. Ogawa from Japan, to predict the in-situ stresses and time-dependent deformations of the intake tunnel during its construction in 1983. The predicted values matched the observed values so well that, when constructing the discharge tunnel in 1985, it was deemed unnecessary to take boreholes in the lake or use extensive instrumentation, generating major cost savings. The intake tunnel cost $11.7 million, and the discharge tunnel, which is twice as long, cost $13.5 million.

Geotechnical engineer Peter Lighthall recalls the 2014 failure of the Mount Polly tailings dam in British Columbia, which released over 12 million cubic metres of water and tailings into a creek and, eventually, into pristine Quesnel Lake. This major upset for the mining industry triggered a review of all tailings dams in British Columbia – which "greatly increased the amount of available work for independent reviewers like me". The next year, in Brazil, a tailings dam failure released 40 million cubic metres of tailings that travelled 600 km down a river to the ocean, wiping out communities and destroying the environment.

Chan Wirasinghe wanted to be a civil engineer from about Grade Six, and completed his first engineering degree at his birthplace, Sri Lanka. At the time, Sri Lanka had compulsory civil service, so although he did not take transportation courses as an undergraduate, he was recruited to work for two years at the Department of Highways, which germinated his interest in transportation engineering. An American Fulbright Scholarship supported his Masters and PhD studies at the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Dr. Gordon Newell. His research involved the application of mathematical analysis to model public transport systems. He then joined the University of Calgary as an Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering, pleased to be the third transportation professor on faculty there. His subsequent research included: further work in public transportation systems; optimizing the geometrical design of airports; and, response to natural disasters, particularly tsunamis and tornados, through the International Institute of Infrastructure Renewal and Reconstruction. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering for 12 years, overseeing the renaming of the Faculty as the Schulich School of Engineering for a total matched donation of $50 million, then the largest donation to a Canadian engineering school. He also led initiatives to increase the number of women faculty members and woman students in the Faculty.

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.

Tracy Primeau grew up in Kincardine, Ontario "right beside the largest nuclear plant in the world". Her father, then a shift mechanic at Darlington, suggested that she become an operator in training, and she signed up for an internship. It took 18 months to qualify as a field operator, one of the very first women to serve in this role. On her first shift, her hand became trapped in a contamination monitor – it was designed for men, who have larger hands. She subsequently discovered that he relatively small size allowed her to work in tight spaces that did not readily accommodate larger men. She enjoyed her work with the emergency response team, recalling a "huge" transport leak at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in 1994, where they had to go into the reactor and manually close a valve after the unit came offline. After ten years, she was promoted from field operator to control operator – in part because it reminded her of the command deck of the Enterprise in "Star Trek: The Next Generation". As an Authorized Nuclear Operator, was involved with refurbishing Units 3 and 4 and then 1 and 2 of the Bruce A reactor. Eventually she was promoted to control room shift supervisor and the shift manager – the first and only woman to do that from the shop floor. After retiring in June, 2021, she joined the Ontario Power Generation Board of Directors. She also chairs the Women's House in Kincardine, works on the local hockey club executive, and operates a small consulting company, Agile Bear. She is active in efforts to increase the numbers of women in engineering and is part of a LinkedIn group called DAWN – "Driving for the Advancement of Women in Nuclear". Her leadership philosophies are guided by "seven grandfather teachings" in the indigenous world that include truth, respect, wisdom and humility.