12
Geotechnical News • September 2017
CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL SOCIETY NEWS
From the Society
Canadian Foundation for
Geotechnique
From the Society
Canadian Foundation for
Geotechnique
Brief history of the CGS Cross
Canada Lecture Tour
The Cross Canada Lecture Tour was
initiated in 1965 by the Associate
Committee on Geotechnical Research
(ACGR), a forerunner to the Canadian
Geotechnical Society. The purpose of
the lecture tour was to provide CGS
members and other Canadian geotech-
nical professionals an opportunity to
attend high quality technical presen-
tations by prominent Canadian and
international geotechnical profession-
als.
In September 1965, the ACGR orga-
nized and hosted the 6th International
Conference on Soil Mechanics and
Foundation Engineering in Montreal.
The first CCLT was held shortly after
that conference and may have been
somehow associated with the confer-
ence.
The first CCLT presenter was
Ivan
Rosenqvist
from the University of
Oslo in Norway in the fall of 1965.
The actual topic or topics of his pre-
sentations was not recorded, but Dr.
Rosenqvist was at that time a profes-
sor of mineralogy and geology, whose
specialty was marine sediments,
specifically clays and clay minerals. It
is likely his presentations were associ-
ated with his specialty related to the
Norwegian quick clay, but that having
been said, Dr. Rosenqvist attended the
6
th
ISCSMFE and presented a paper on
the ‘
Fundamental Properties of Some
Norwegian Magmatic and Metamor-
phic Rocks
’!
The second lecturer in the Spring of
1966 was
David Henkel
from Cornell
University in Ithaca, NY, and the
third lecturer in the Fall of 1966 was
a young, Canadian-born lecturer from
Imperial College in the UK,
Norbert
Morgenstern
. Two years later, Dr.
Morgenstern would return to Canada
and join the faculty at the University
of Alberta.
Since 1965, a CCLT has been pre-
sented at least once a year and in most
years, twice a year. The intent was to
have one Canadian lecturer and one
international lecturer each year. For
the most part, this intent has been met.
On five occasions, two lecturers have
split a single tour, with one lecturer
covering eastern Canada and one lec-
turer covering western Canada. Five
individuals have been ‘Cross Canada
Lecturers’ more than once:
Geoffrey
Meyerhof
(1967 and 1983);
Robert
Quigley
(1969 and 1990);
Victor Mil-
ligan
(1972 and 1997);
Ralph Peck
(1972 and 2000); and
Liam Finn
(1991 and 2001). A list of all past lec-
turers can be found on the CGS web-
site
It reads like a who’s who of Canadian
and international geotechnique.
In 1972, the CGS assumed the respon-
sibility for selecting the lecturers,
arranging the lectures through the 20
CGS sections across the country, and
covering the lecturers’ travel costs and
honoraria.
In the late 1990s, due to funding
issues, there was talk of reducing the
frequency of the CCLTs. The Cana-
dian Foundation for Geotechnique (or
Geo Contributions as it was called
until 2000), came to the rescue. By
2000, largely through the hard work of
the Canadian Foundation for Geo-
technique’s President
Dr. Michael
Bozozuk
and Geo Contributions mem-
bers
Jack Clark
and
Ray Benson
,
as well as through the generosity of
CGS members
Jack Mollard
and
Ben
Torchinsky
, sufficient funds were
raised to retain the two CCLTs per
year. Since 2000, a major activity of
the Canadian Foundation for Geotech-
nique has been to solicit donations
from Canadian corporations to sponsor
the travel costs involved in the two
CCLTs each year.
The 99
th
CCLT lecturer in the spring
of 2017 was
Vaughn Griffiths
from
the Colorado School of Mines, CO,
and the 100
th
CCLT lecturer in the fall
of 2017 will be
Jean-Marie Konrad
from Univérsité Laval, QC. With these
two lecturers, there will have been 53
Canadian and 47 international lectur-
ers (although some of the international
lecturers were also Canadians), over
the course of the history of CCLT’s.
There will have been 58 academics,
31 consultants or individuals from
industry, and 11 from various levels of
government.
The Cross Canada Lecture Tour has
been, and continues to be, one of the
‘flagship’ activities of the CGS. These
twice-a-year lecture tours are very
highly anticipated by the many CGS
local sections, members and Canadian
geotechnical professionals. The CCLT
has the distinction of being the longest
such lecture tour anywhere in the
world and is the envy of geotechnical
organizations and geotechnical profes-
sionals in many countries.
Meet the 2017 Members for the
Canadian Foundation for
Geotechnique
The
Canadian Foundation for
Geotechnique
is a registered chari-
table organization that works at arm’s
length from the Canadian Geotechni-
cal Society. It funds the annual CGS’
student awards and prizes, the annual
Canadian Geotechnical Colloquium,
the travel costs associated with the
two Cross Canada Lecture Tours each
year, and offers its own annual $5000
National Graduate Scholarship. On an
annual basis the Foundation provides
approximately $45,000 to recognize
and foster excellence in the geotechni-
cal field in Canada.
The Foundation is currently man-
aged and overseen by 13 volunteer
members who typically serve for one
or more three-year terms. From the
13 members, 6 serve on the Board
