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Geotechnical News • December 2013
www.geotechnicalnews.com
CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL SOCIETY NEWS
ods in Geomechanics
- vice-chair
Richard Wan; TC104 - Physical
Modelling in Geotechnics
– vice-
chair
Andy Take; TC208 Slope Sta-
bility in Engineering Practice
- chair
Jonathan Fannin; TC 307 -Sustain-
ability in Geotechnical Engineer-
ing
– chair
Dipanjan Basu
). In my
previous message, I gave details of the
ISSMGE awards received by three of
our younger members
Greg Siemens
(RMC),
Nicholas Beier
(University
of Alberta) and
Vincent Goreham
(Dalhousie University). Congratula-
tions again and please read their report
on the conference, included below.
I invite all our members to visit the
ISSMGE website at
to read about current and upcoming
activities of our international mother
society.
The annual CGS board meeting was
held in Montreal on September 28
th
,
immediately before the
66
th
Annual
CGS Conference
(GeoMontreal).
Some highlights of the board meet-
ing was the welcome news that the
Society now has 1238 active members
of which 95 are student members and
that the annual membership fees will
remain unchanged from last year. To
further encourage student participation
in our Society, CGS members at the
annual business luncheon approved
a board motion to give each student
who registered for the GeoMontreal
conference a free student membership
for 2014. CGS members also voted to
accept the proposal by the Vancouver
Geotechnical Society to host the
69
th
Annual CGS Conference
in Vancou-
ver in 2016. This is most appropriate
since this will mark 10 years since
our annual conference was last held in
Vancouver. Finally, at the request of
the
Hydrogeology Division
, a motion
was passed to change the name of the
division to the
Groundwater Division
(Division des eaux souterraines)
to
better reflect the scope and interests of
the division members. The
2013 CGS
Annual Report
will be made avail-
able on the CGS website
at the end of the calendar year.
Of course, the most important news
to report is the hugely successful
66
th
Canadian Geotechnical Con-
ference
(GeoMontreal), held at the
Hilton Bonaventure Hotel in beautiful
downtown Montreal. The conference
attracted over 875 delegates and 57
exhibitors. A total of 348 oral pre-
sentations were assigned to 7 parallel
sessions over three days. Another
30 papers were delivered in a poster
session. The technical program was
very broad as a result of our part-
nership with the
North American
Geosynthetics Society (NAGS)
and the International Association
of Hydrogeologists – Canadian
National Chapter (IAH-CNC)
. The
conference co-chairs
Mario Ruel
and
Sylvain Roy
, along with the confer-
ence management team led by
Wayne
Gibson
and
Lisa McJunkin
must be
commended for putting this confer-
ence together. Many thanks also to
Victor Sowa
(CGS Secretary General)
who worked tirelessly to ensure that
all CGS events were well-scripted and
occurred on time, and to
Catherine
Mulligan
, our VP Communications,
who somehow found time in her busy
schedule to be chair of the conference
Technical Committee.
The first plenary session of the confer-
ence was the
CGS Hardy Address
by
Michel Aubertin
of École Poly-
technique on the topic of
Self-Weight
Consolidation Problems Related to
Surface and Underground Disposal
of Fine-Grained Mine Wastes
. The
2013 CGS Colloquium
was given by
Paul Simms
of Carleton University on
Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental
Behaviour of High Density Tailings.
Scott McDougall
of BGC Engineer-
ing was announced as the
2014 CGS
Colloquium
winner and will give his
talk next year in Regina at the
67
th
Canadian Geotechnical Conference
.
CGS awards were given to some
of our outstanding members at the
conference Awards Banquet. The
most senior award of the CGS is the
R.F. Legget Medal
. The 2013 Legget
Medal was given to
Serge Leroueil
from the University of Laval. His
colleague,
Jean-Marie Konrad
introduced Serge with the recognition
of Serge’s “outstanding contribution
to the development of theoretical and
applied techniques related to various
geotechnical issues particularly those
related to the behavior of soft soils,
compacted soils, dams and slopes.”
The complete text of Serge’s intro-
duction and acceptance speech are
included below. Congratulations to
Serge.
The winners of the
2013 R.M. Quig-
ley Award
for the best paper pub-
lished in the Canadian Geotechnical
Journal in 2012 were
Gang Zheng, Si
Yuan Peng, Charles W.W. Ng and
Yu Diao
for their paper
Excavation
Effects on Pile Behavior and Capacity.
The
Schuster Medal
, which is a joint
award of the CGS and the Association
of Engineering and Environmental
Geologists, was presented to
Jacques
Locat
of Laval. The
Robert N.
Farvolden Award
, which is a joint
award of the (IAH-CNC) and the
CGS, was won by
Richard Jackson
.
Other important awards given out
were the
John A. Franklin Award
to
Erik Eberhardt
of UBC, the
Thomas
Roy Award
to
Jean Hutchinson
of Queen’s University and the
G.
Geoffrey Meyerhof Award
to
Jean
Lafleur
of École Polytechnique.
Jean Lafleur was also the team leader
for the French translation of the
4
th
Canadian Foundation Engineer-
ing Manual
(CFEM), which became
officially available at the confer-
ence. The
A.G. Stermac Award
for
distinguished service to the CGS was
presented to the members of his edito-
rial team:
Paul Chiasson
and
Michel
Massiéra
of Moncton University,
Denis Leboeuf, Muhsin-Elie Rahhal
and
Jean-Marie Konrad
, all from
Laval University.
Younger members of our geotechnical
fraternity were also recognized. The
Best Graduate Student Paper Presen-
tation was given by
Ryley Beddoe
of Queen’s University on
Physical