Environmental protection

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.