Geotechnical News • September 2017
43
Don Welch
It is with great sadness that we share
the passing of Don Welch on June
12, 2017. Don was a senior tailings
engineering, Principal, and Senior
Consultant in the Mississauga office of
Golder for over 50 years.
Don was born and grew up in Ottawa,
and went to McGill University in
Montreal to study Civil Engineering.
Part of his decision to choose McGill
was his love of skiing—he was on
the McGill ski team for four years.
After graduation, he moved to Europe
where he completed post-graduate
studies in Soil Mechanics and Founda-
tion Engineering. Upon his return to
Montreal, a friend invited him to hear
a lecture by Golder founder Victor
Milligan and Don was inspired to join
Golder’s Toronto office in December
1964. He became an Associate in 1973
and a Principal in 1977. Initially, Don
worked on many overseas projects
for Golder including road projects
in South Africa and Paraguay. In the
early 1970s, as one of thirteen Golder
expatriates, he was responsible for the
geotechnical investigations, analyses
and reporting on final engineering
studies for three hydroelectric dams
in northern Greece. While in Greece,
Don met his future wife, Foula, who
worked for the original SNC, with
which Golder was carrying out the
project on a joint basis. Greece was
followed by work and living in Hong
Kong and Egypt. With all the travel,
Don acquired the nickname “the Wan-
dering Welch”.
Don became an acknowledged global
expert in the management of mine
tailings—from site selection studies
through operation to decommission-
ing. Since the late 1970s, Don worked
almost exclusively on the disposal
of mine tailings and waste rock as a
group leader, project manager, project
director, advisor and review consul-
tant.
He was the initial engineering man-
ager for the 300 m high Antamina
tailings facility situated in a high-
seismic risk zone of the Peruvian
Andes. Other major projects include
the large Collahuasi copper tailings
facility in Chile, feasibility studies
for an 800 million ton copper basin
in Argentina, the large Goro nickel
project in New Caledonia and Inco’s
150 million ton Voisey’s Bay nickel
project in Labrador. Don was heav-
ily involved with the expansions and
subsequent closures of the Rio Algom
and Denison uranium tailings facilities
in Elliot Lake, Ontario,
A prolific writer, Don authored or
co-authored 38 technical papers on
tailings and paste. He was one of
only two consultants who participated
with 17 staff from mining companies
on the Mining Association of Canada
committee that developed the 1998
“Guide to the Management of Tail-
ings Facilities”. He helped incorporate
tailings dams into the Canadian Dam
Safety Guidelines and also developed
numerous internal Golder guides and
tools for water balance modelling and
mine waste management. For several
years, Don was also heavily involved
with the Association of Consulting
Engineers of Canada (ACEC).
Renowned for his passion, experience,
and development of junior staff, Don’s
leadership in Golder and in the mining
world are well-recognized and will be
deeply missed.
Oldrich Hungr
Dr. Oldrich Hungr, P.Eng./P.Geo.,
FGC and professor Emeritus in the
department of Earth, Ocean and
Atmospheric Sciences at UBC passed
away at his son’s home in Grenoble
on August 10, 2017. Oldrich was one
of Canada’s foremost Geotechnical
Engineers and ran the Landslide Haz-
ards Research Geological Engineer-
ing Program at UBC. He developed
or co-developed new techniques and
applications for slope stability analysis
and assessment including some of the
earliest applications of magnitude-
frequency assessment, to rock fall
and debris flow runouts, to his many
applications analyzing the behav-
iour of landslides. He is perhaps best
known for his DAN suite of models
that describe the dynamic behaviour of
rapid landslides including entrainment,
runout distance, and velocity. Those
models continue to be used the world
over. His tenure at UBC inspired
cohorts of students and grad students
to do some of their best work, and he
authored or co-authored dozens of
seminal papers on landslides and land-
slide mechanics. In his own words,
he was interested in landslides, in the
modelling of landslide behaviour, in
applied geomorphology and terrain
mapping, and in the engineering
geology of excavations. His passing
is a loss for the geotechnical commu-
nity and will be deeply felt by many.
Despite his extraordinary achieve-
ments, Oldrich continued to be active
in the field (his most recent articles
were on the Oso Landslide, numeri-
cal modelling, and rock avalanche
case studies) and continued to nurture
personal relationships with those
around him. In the recent words of one
of his long-time colleagues, “…he was
always so empathic….”. Perhaps that
is what will be missed the most.
IN MEMORIAM
