Geotechnical News • September 2018
19
From the CGS Board
History of the Development of the Canadian Foundation
Engineering Manual/
Manuel Canadien d’Ingénierie des Fondations
Part 3 of 4
Doug VanDine
Introduction to Part 3 of the
Series
Parts 1 and 2 of this series, published
in the March and June 2018 issues,
covered the beginnings of the manual
and brought the history up to the
‘
1985 Second Edition
’. This part
covers the ‘
1989 French Edition
’, the
‘
1992 Third Edition
’ (in English) and
the ‘
1994 French Edition
’. If you can’t
wait to read Part 4, the entire article is
on the CGS website (see
1989 French Edition of the
CFEM (MCIF)
In the late 1980s, Robert Chapuis
(École Polytechnique), assisted
primarily by Pierre Morin (Memorial
University of Newfoundland), trans-
lated the
1985 Second Edition
, and in
so doing corrected a number of errors
they found in the English version–
errors mainly associated with unit
conversions from Imperial to metric.
The resulting 378-page French ver-
sion, known as the Manuel Canadien
d’Ingénierie des Fondations (
MCIF
)
was published by the CGS (in French,
La Société canadienne de geotech-
nique, or SCG) in 1989 and distributed
by BiTech Publishers (SCG, 1989,
Figure 1). Although based on the
1985
Second Edition
of the
CFEM
, the
MCIF
was not identified as either the
first or second edition.
Translated from the preface of the
1989 French Edition
:
“The contribution [to Canadian geo-
technique] of Francophone members,
very active in the profession and
within the [Canadian Geotechnical]
Society, has necessitated the transla-
tion of this Manual, which is essential
to learning the important principles
and geotechnical methods at the uni-
versity level”.
It is not known how many copies of
the
1989 French Edition
were printed,
but likely less than 1,000. They sold
for $132 for CGS members, $147 for
non-members and $84 for students.
Late 1980s
By the late-1980s, the
CFEM
and the
MCIF
were gaining acceptance and
copies were being sold quite widely
across Canada and internationally.
Besides geotechnical engineering
consultants, the manual was being
adopted by many Canadian universi-
ties as a text book for geotechnical
engineering courses. The revenue
generated from the sales of the
CFEM
and the
MCIF
was starting to make a
positive effect on the revenue of the
Society and, at least partially because
of this revenue, the Society was able
to maintain its relatively low member-
ship fees.
As an aside, when the author taught at
the Institute of Engineering in Kath-
mandu, Nepal, in 1993-1994, the
1985
Second Edition of the CFEM
was
being used there as a textbook. The
document was an unauthorized Asian
reproduction of the
1985 Second Edi-
tion
, printed on light-weight paper,
and sold at a fraction of the Canadian
price. Others have reported a wide-
spread use of various editions of the
Manual in countries such as Hong
Kong and Australia.
1992 Third Edition of the CFEM
The preface of the
1992 Third Edi-
tion
(CGS, 1992, Figure 2) identified
the main contributors of that edition
as follows (their organizations at that
time were not identified, but have been
added).
Figure 1: Cover of the 1989 French
Edition.
