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Ken Putt's father was in the Royal Canadian Electrical & Mechanical Engineers during the Second World War and, with Ken's strength in math and science, he wanted to go into engineering. After completing a degree in metallurgical engineering at the University of British Colombia, he joined Imperial Oil to work as a shift engineer on a large-scale R&D project, Fluidized Iron Ore Reduction (FIOR-RD) in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He quickly learned to "do whatever it takes to get the job done", and within three years was a group leader. Later, taking an executive training program as Secretary to Imperial Oil's Executive Committee, he recalls the CEO saying "no one will ever get ahead in this company if they don't exceed their level of authority." From Dartmouth, he spent 18 months working in New Jersey on a coal gasification project, becoming an expert in materials handling. He was then selected to be the company's representative of the Strathcona Refinery in Edmonton, then Imperial's biggest-ever project. He learned chemical engineering "by doing" during the preliminary design, went to the contractor's office in California for the detailed (mechanical) design, and was then sent to Edmonton to do the start up planning and oversee the start up. Eventually, he became Planning and Administration Manager for Esso Materials, then Production Operations Manager for Northern Canada at Esso Resources, then Production Research Manager, then head of the Information Systems Department, and the Director of Imperial and Esso Resources' Upstream Research Centre. He created the Canadian Oilsands Network for Research and Development, now the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, for the University of Calgary in 1996, and saw its annual budget grow from $200,000 then to $20 million in 2023. He also served as President of the Canadian Society of Engineering Management, the Canadian Society of Senior Engineers, and the Engineering Institute of Canada, and a Director of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. After taking early retirement, he became a consultant for the National Research Council's Industrial Research Assistance Program offering business and technical advice to private ventures in the program.

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".

Fred Dermarkar was inspired to become an engineer by his father, a civil engineer, his uncle, a mechanical engineer and by a love of math, physics, and chemistry and math and physics puzzles. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the University of Toronto at a time when the Pickering B, Bruce B and Darlington nuclear power plants were under construction. His first job involved developing the sequence of channels to successfully refuel a reactor. He describes subsequent experiences: commissioning a reactor that almost went very badly; resolving an acoustics-created problem that was causing fuel rods at the Darlington reactor to break; developing contingency plans after the 2011 accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. He described his current role, leading Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), developer of the CANDU reactor and the National Research Universal reactor that produced molybdenum 99 for medical diagnostics around the world. AECL, is now busy developing small nuclear reactors for factory settings and developing new technologies to manage nuclear waste. He describes the characteristics of a good mentor: their confidence in the mentee, their ability to stand back and let the mentee proceed; and that they never settle for mediocrity. Finally, he offers advice to a high-school student considering a career in engineering, and a newly graduated Engineer-in-Training.

Emily Cheung took civil engineering at the University of British Columbia because "dams and bridges, that's where I want to be." Her interests evolved from structural engineering to hydrotechnical engineering, and she earned a Master's degree in environmental fluid mechanics. She and her husband decided to leave Vancouver, where the housing market was "unreachable" and the work opportunities "not overly exciting" and found work in Prince George, where the opportunities were numerous and interesting. She designed small resource road and highway bridges and worked in small-scale hydroelectric development, including initial feasibility studies. She designed highway segments to replace segments that had been washed out by river floods. She and her husband spent time in Ecuador assisting with small hydroelectric developments, and continue to work with a Spain-based non-profit organization that does water projects in Africa. She discusses the need for teamwork in engineering practice and how the basis of design is much more holistic than it was when she started practicing. She also volunteered to serve on the Prince George Airport Authority Board, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board, the council of Engineers and Geoscientists BC, the board of Engineers Canada. She also teaches design engineering at the University of Northern British Columbia and initiated the Prince George Camp of the Seven Wardens, Camp 28, which co-ordinates the local Iron Ring Ceremony.

Christine MacKinnon recalls loving math and biology when she finished high school, and so took agricultural engineering, two years at Nova Scotia Agricultural College and then finishing at Macdonald College at McGill. Her first job after graduation was designing farm buildings in Nova Scotia, but she soon moved to Saskatoon to do a Masters degree at the University of Saskatchewan studying ventilation efficiency in small rooms with Professor Ernie Barber. She then took a job in Prince Edward Island designing farm buildings. She joined the PEI Department of Environment in 1988 as an air quality and hazardous material engineer, working on acid rain and trans-boundary pollutants in an intergovernmental environment. She worked part-time while her daughter was little, and took on consulting work as a strategic planner. She returned to full-time work as PEI's Director of Corporate Policy, and was assigned to implement 40 recommendations to improve land use and environmental protection in PEI. She now works as the Director responsible for Municipal Governance. She describes her mentors – her first boss, Larry Honey in Nova Scotia, Ernie Barber, and, later, through her volunteer service on the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation, Suzelle Barrington and Elizabeth Cannon. She serves as a Warden of Camp 27, which organizes the Iron Ring Ceremony for UPEI graduates, and is active in WISE, the Women in Science and Engineering group.

Friends of Sarah Devereaux's family were civil engineers, so she knew from an early age that this would likely be her calling. While an undergraduate student at the Technical University of Nova Scotia, her interests transitioned from structural to environmental engineering, and she stayed to earn a Master's degree in Water Resources. She then joined Halifax office of Dillon Consulting, initially conducting construction reviews, and then transitioning into project management, starting with small projects and graduating t multimillion dollar assignments. She designed storm water systems, storm water ponds, and landfills and became the business unit manager for community infrastructures. She describes several projects, including: work for the Municipality of Guysborough, Nova Scotia; review of waste management systems for remote coastal communities in British Columbia; and resolving the "Million Dollar Hole" left at the US naval base in Argentia Newfoundland. She also volunteered with Engineers Nova Scotia, the Consulting Engineers of Nova Scotia, and eventually Engineers Canada. She has served on committees dedicated to increasing the participation of women in the engineering profession.

Dr. David Weaver describes his youthful interest in gasoline-engine powered go-karts, home-built radios, servicing cars, and how this led him to study mechanical engineering. He left his first job with the Ford Motor Company in Oakville to return to university for a Master's degree on satellites for Spar Aerospace and then a PhD in mathematics and physics. He found a university position and began researching nuclear for Ontario Hydro Research and hydroelectric power generation for Nova Scotia Power. He contributed to a model study of flood protection for the City of Venice conducted by the Dutch Hydrodynamics Laboratories in Delft. He worked on a fusion energy project the Joint European Taurus (JET) in England. In retirement, he has worked for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and with Babcock and Wilcox, Ontario Power Generation, and Atomic Energy of Canada. He talks of the evolution of computational tools from slide rules to computers and their applications to autonomous vehicles – and the importance of selecting the appropriate tool to max the complexity of a problem.

Aeronautical engineer Dr. Karl Doetsch did an apprenticeship with English Electric, an aeronautic company in the UK, before starting his university studies at Imperial College in London. Within months of starting there he worked on the development of the TSR2 aircraft, which was similar to the Avro Arrow, particularly wind tunnel testing to assess its behaviour at low speeds. He completed his PhD on supersonic aerodynamics, but the British government lost interest in the field so he joined the flight research laboratory at the National Research Council of Canada, specializing in control systems and automated control. He was responsible for the software and simulation aspects in the development of the Canadarm – which was developed between 1975 and 1981 in collaboration with Spar Aerospace, NASA, Rockwell International, and various subcontractors. He describes use of the Canadarm to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and removing a stalactite of waste from the outside of the shuttle. He describes Canada's contribution to the International Space Station program, and the initiation of the Canadian astronaut program, where they whittled down the list of 4500 applicants to 2000, then 75, then 20, and then the final six. Part of the learning experience included addressing the physiological things that happen to people in space. The Space Station project was quite demanding politically as well as technically.

Geotechnical engineer Dr. Denise Leahy describes her post-secondary education at Laval and the Institute for Geotechnique in Trondheim, Norway. Her first engineering job was as a technician at the La Grande hydro-electric dam at Baie James, where, sue to security issues, women could not work outside the laboratory. After completing her PhD, she took a job at Geocon, an affiliate of Lavalin, where she was mentored by Lech Brzezinski, Getahun Haile, Heri Major, Benoît Demers and Les MacPhie. Much of her work involved the inspection, maintenance and restoration of mine tailings dams and she describes initiatives to consider acid mine drainage prevention and seismic loading for these structures. She describes initiatives to improve the quality of geotechnical engineering in Quebec, and her interactions with the Canadian Geotechnical Society and the Canadian Dam Association. She recalls the transition to computer-aided engineering, particularly the switch from manual drafting to AutoCad. She offers advice to high school students considering an engineering career and newly graduated Engineers-in-Training.

Dr. Suzelle Barrington was the first Canadian woman to receive a doctorate in agricultural engineering from Macdonald Campus at McGill University. She grew up on a farm near Moose Creek, a half hour east of Ottawa, and, after a year of science at Carleton University, switched to agricultural engineering at McGill. She was turned down for her first job with the Government of Ontario because she was a woman, but got a job as an agronomist in Howick Quebec. She got a job as an agricultural engineer in 1978 in Huntington, and worked hard to improve the productivity of her team. She returned to Macdonald Campus to do graduate studies, receiving a PhD in 1985, and continued there as a professor. Her doctoral research was on means to seal wastewater in soils. She continued on with odor control, building an Olfactometer to expose individuals to odors in a controlled manner, and so developing standards to quantify acceptable concentrations of odor in waste or factory discharges to the atmosphere. She developed a system for anaerobic digestion of wastewater, sludge, or livestock manure that did not require an expensive digestor. She has also worked extensively to promote engineering to women and generally increase the diversity of engineers, serving as President of the Women in Engineering Committee of the Quebec Order of Engineers. In "retirement", she has just finished writhing the history of subsurface drainage in Quebec, which dates from approximately 1920. She expresses her concerns about the amount of waste, including food waste, generated annually in Canada, and about environmental degradation and its impact on climate change. She closes with advice to a high-school student considering a career in engineering, and to a newly graduated Engineer-in-Training.