Geotechnical News • September 2019
15
From the CGS Board
The First Canadian Geotechnical Conference (1947)
Doug VanDine
This is a contribution from the CGS
Heritage Committee, of which Doug is
a member.
Introduction
The Canadian Geotechnical Soci-
ety’s annual conference is one of the
longest, if not the longest running
geotechnical conferences in the world.
This year’s conference, GeoSt.John’s
(Newfoundland) 2019, will be the
72
nd
. Over those years the conferences
have had different names, have been
planned and hosted by different orga-
nizations related to the CGS, and have
been held using different formats. This
article briefly tells the story of the
First Canadian Geotechnical Confer-
ence held in Ottawa in 1947.
Background
Most of this background information
comes from an article by Bill Eden
and Gordon McRostie, published in
a 1987 issue of Geotechnical News
(Eden and McRostie 1987).
The Engineering Institute of Canada’s
Annual Meeting, held in Winnipeg in
February 1945, included one technical
session on soil mechanics. The session
included papers by G.B. Williams
from the Manitoba Department of
Public Works, and R. (Bob) Peterson,
from the Prairie Farm Rehabilita-
tion Administration. This session is
believed to be the first soil mechanics
meeting in Canada and was a precur-
sor to the first conference.
The year 1945 also saw the establish-
ment of the National Research Coun-
cil’s Associate Committee on Soil and
Snow Mechanics (ACSSM). The first
Chair of the ACSSM was R.F. (Rob-
ert) Legget
1
(Photo 1), at the time an
Associate Professor at the University
of Toronto. One of the mandates of the
ACSSM was to promote and stimulate
research on the engineering aspects of
the terrain of Canada, including soil
mechanics.
The First Conference
At the tenth meeting of the ACSSM
held in Ottawa on March 29, 1947, it
was announced that L.F. Cooling, the
Head of the Soil Mechanics Section,
Building Research Station, England,
and G.G. Meyerhof
2
, Mr. Cooling’s
assistant, were planning to visit
Canada in late April 1947. “The Com-
mittee jumped at the opportunity that
this visit would provide and autho-
rized the holding of a two-day meeting
in Ottawa, with the visitors, to which
all known workers in Soil Mechanics
in Canada were to be invited.” (Legget
1983)
Invitations to attend were extended
to all individuals and organizations
across Canada known to be interested
in the topic. On April 28 and 29, 1947,
only one month from the decision to
hold the meeting, 40 individuals gath-
ered at the NRC Council Chamber on
Sussex Drive in Ottawa (Photo 2) for
the two-day “Civilian
3
Soil Mechanics
Conference”. Considering the methods
of communication and travel in 1947,
to get 40 delegates together on such
short notice was an amazing logistical
feat, and a testament to the inter-
est in the relatively new field of soil
mechanics at that time.
Attendees
All provinces, except British Colum-
bia, were represented by at least one
delegate
4
. Ontario was best repre-
1
The R.F. Legget Medal, the CGS’s most prestigious award, is named after Robert Legget.
2
G.G. Meyerhof subsequently immigrated to Canada and, among many other accomplishments, in 1972 became the first President of the
CGS.
3
The reference to “Civilian” indicated that the end of World War II was still on people’s minds.
Photo 1: Robert Legget in the late
1940s (photo from Library and
Archives Canada). Robert Legget à
la fin des années 1940.
