Geotechnical News • September 2017
45
COMMEMORATIVE EDITION
consistently demonstrated in practice,
Terzaghi’s stature in the engineer-
ing profession became universally
acclaimed, and his expertise as a
consultant was avidly sought in many
parts of the globe. But he carefully
husbanded his time, accepting only
those assignments that advanced the
science and demanded artful, novel
solutions.
Terzaghi’s first exposure to the soils
of the Pacific Northwest came during
his visit to the United States in 1912-
1913, when he had an opportunity to
observe the instability of clay slopes in
Washington and Oregon. In 1929, as
Professor of Foundation Engineering
at MIT, Terzaghi was engaged by the
industrial engineers V.D. Simons Inc.
of Chicago, designer of the Grays Har-
bor Pulp and Paper Mill in Hoquiam,
Washington. Terzaghi was asked by
this firm to analyze the cause of settle-
ment which was occurring beneath the
mill’s foundation piles at tidewater. In
a landmark report containing detailed
computations, Terzaghi determined
that the setttlingwas not, as previously
believed, the result of “the weight of
fill forcing the piles into the ground.” In
fact settlement occurred “as if the piles
were non-existent.” The settlement
was due to the gradual consolida-
tion of a soft clay layer, 30 to 50 feet
thick, located at a depth of 120 feet
below the surface of the tidal flat, later
described byTerzaghi as “drowned
valley clay.”
The field engineer on the Grays Har-
bor job was the boss’s son, Howard A.
Simons. H.A. Simons later moved to
Vancouver, British Columbia, where he
established the international engineer-
ing company that bears his name.
Faced with the design of a number
of pulp mills on Vancouver Island,
having similar tidewater conditions,
in1945 Simons brought Terzaghi to
B.C. as a consultant. Terzaghi found
British Columbia much to his liking,
enjoyed its beautiful scenic landscape,
and was attracted to the experience of
participating in the development of a
new country with many technical chal-
lenges. Here, during the last decade-
and-a-half of his consulting practice,
Terzaghi found many of his most chal-
lenging projects, on the foundations of
pulp mills, and on hydroelectric and
water supply dams.
Canadian Soil Mechanics
Pioneers
Ibrahim Folinsbee (Ibe) Morrison
(1889-1958) is regarded as the father
of soil mechanics in Canada. Born
near Boston, Massachusetts, he
received his civil engineering degree
from MIT in 1911. Morrison joined
the University of Alberta as a lecturer
in civil engineering in 1912, and
was appointed Professor of Applied
Mechanics in the civil engineering
department in 1922. Commencing
with the first graduation class, Profes-
sor Morrison, having a keen mind and
a gift for sharp dialogue, taught and
inspired virtually every engineering
student at the university for over four
decades.
I.F. Morrison was a perpetual stu-
dent. Self-taught in German, he read
Terzaghi’s and other works, and began
to introduce soil mechanics into his
courses. By 1925 “Foundations” was
recognized as a subject in the fourth
year civil engineering curriculum. In
1930 an elementary soils laboratory
was set up for classification tests, and
by 1931 soil mechanics was recog-
nized as a separate segment of the
foundation course. In 1936 Morrison
was one of eight Canadians to attend
the First International Conference on
Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engi-
neering at Harvard. In 1937 his course
was officially designated Soil Mechan-
ics and Foundations. Active in profes-
sional practice and research, Morrison
contributed extensively to technical
discussions in Canada and the United
States, and authored textbooks and
papers. “The Fundamentals of Pile
Foundations,” published in 1939 in
The Engineering Journal,
was an early
paper on the subject of foundations.
Robert M. (Bob) Hardy (1903-1985)
graduated as a gold medallist in civil
engineering from the University of
Manitoba in 1929 and received his
master’s degree in 1930 from McGill
University, specializing in structural
engineering. In September 1930 he
joined the Faculty of Engineering at
the University of Alberta as a ses-
sional lecturer. Professor I.F. Mor-
rison encouraged his bright, younger
colleague to take the soil mechanics
courses at the Harvard Graduate
School of Engineering taught by
Casagrande and Terzaghi, which Bob
Hardy did in 1939-1940.
When he returned to Alberta, Hardy
established a state-of-the-art soil
mechanics laboratory, and by Septem-
ber 1945, a graduate program. In 1946
he was appointed Professor, Head of
the Department of Civil Engineering
and Dean of Engineering. Thus, under
the impetus of Morrison and Hardy,
the University of Alberta became the
first soil mechanics school in Canada,
attracting large numbers of students
from every province and from many
countries abroad.
The beginning of applied soil mechan-
ics in Canada dates as early as 1928,
when Morrison and later Hardy
commenced a long-lasting consulting
association with Montreal Engineer-
ing Company and Calgary Power in
the design and construction of several
early power projects in Alberta.
In
1942-43 Hardy carried out research
studies on muskeg and permafrost for
the US Army Corps. of Engineers,
who were then hastily constructing
the Alcan Military Highway—the
first such studies conducted in North
America. During the war Hardy also
consulted on Canadian airports, then
being built from Vancouver Island to
Newfoundland.
In April 1951, Hardy, along with L.A.
(Chick) Thorssen, a concrete spe-
cialist, established Engineering and
Construction Services, a commercial
soil and concrete testing laboratory in
Edmonton—one of the first inCanada.
After Thorssen left, in 1954 the com-
pany was renamed R.M. Hardy and
