6
Geotechnical News June 2011
Message from the
President
This is my second message to CGS
members as your President. Our new
Executive Committee (EC) is now well
into their fourth month in their two year
term and, at the time of writing, are
preparing for the first EC meeting in
Calgary on April 9, 2011. During this
initial warming up period we heavily
rely on our Secretary General, Dr.
Victor Sowa, and our Administrator,
Wayne Gibson. You will have now
seen our new website which is largely
due to the efforts of Wayne Gibson and
our past VP, Communications, Ms.
Stephanie Perrett. We hope that you
find it more effective than the previous
website. If you have comments, please
contact our VP, Communications, Dr.
Jean-Marie Konrad.
As part of our responsibilities on the
CGS EC, we also represent the CGS on
other Canadian technical associations
to further communications among such
associations. Our VP, Technical, Dr.
John Sobkowicz, represents us on the
council for the Canadian Foundation
of Earth Sciences (CFES). Ms. Marcia
MacLellan, our Local Sections Rep-
resentative, will represent us on the
Board of the Canadian Society of Civil
Engineers. The umbrella organization
for engineering societies in Canada is
the Engineering Institute of Canada
(EIC) which will have its 125
th
anni-
versary this year. I represent the CGS
on the EIC council.
I had the pleasure of attending my
first EIC Awards dinner as President
in Ottawa on March 5, 2011. I sat at
a table with Dr. Liam Finn who won
the K.Y. Lo Medal. This was especially
gratifying because Dr. K.Y. Lo and his
son were also at the same table. Our Dr.
Wayne Savigny of BGC Engineering
and Dr. Jean Hutchinson of Queen’s
University were elected as Fellows of
the EIC. Adistinguished Canadian geo-
technical engineer, Dr. Graham Mor-
gan, was also elected as a Fellow of the
EIC through his affiliation with the Ca-
nadian Society of Senior Engineers. I
was interested to learn that Dr. Morgan
started his career with Geocon in On-
tario in the 1950s as did so many other
geotechnical engineers of that era. Our
Bryan D. Watts, Klohn Crippen Berger
Ltd. CGS President, 2011-2012.
