8
Geotechnical News • December 2019
CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL SOCIETY NEWS
and the Burland mini-tour. The CGS
encouraged Young Professional
Representative,
Maraika DeGroot
,
who initiated the creation of seven
student chapters, started monthly
coaching webinars, proposed an early
achievement award and also actively
supported for the cYGEGC. Efforts
toward gender balance saw tangible
progress, which included publications
about Women in Canadian Geotech-
nique and a Women’s Networking
Breakfast during GeoSt.John’s 2019.
These are in line with our mission
toward youth, women, practitioners
and francophones, while maintaining
loyalty and encourage new member-
ship.
At the start of our mandate, the CGS
Executive Committee informed you
that we would tackle the challenge
of producing the new online CFEM
within 2 years, which would then
become our most tangible deliverable.
Following regular exchanges with the
CGS VP Technical,
Rob Kenyon
, the
Project Coordinator of CFEM 2021,
Ken Skaftfeld
, is on track with this
objective in mind. Good progress was
made in 2019 with the production
of the Chapter Outline, selection of
Chapter Leads and Contributors as
well as initiation of some Chapters.
The first Chapter to be ready will be
Limit States Design in 2020 with the
remaining chapters coming in 2021.
So far, we have had an excellent
response from our community of CGS
experts from coast to coast to contrib-
ute to this National Challenge.
The Cross Canada Lecture Tours
(CCLT) has been successful this
Spring with
Charles Shackelford
(Colorado State University) and
this Fall with
Ian Moore
(Queen’s
University). The next CCLT are
already planned under Rob Kenyon`s
direction with
Guy Houlsby
(Oxford
University) committed to the Spring of
2020, and
Doug Stead
(Simon Fraser
University) in the Fall of 2020.
Kathy Kalenchuk
successfully pre-
sented the 2019 Colloquium at GeoSt.
John’s. We will encourage Kathy to
continue with the Colloquium Lecture
Series so her presentation can be given
at different locations (on University
campuses) across the country.
Local sections lead by
Andrea
Lougheed
and Divisions and Com-
mittees coordinated by
Jack Seto
,
Representatives on the Executive
Committee, have also been quite
active in 2019 and we are striving for
even more collaborations and interac-
tions in the future.
Three of our Executive Committee
(EC) members are completing their
terms at the end of 2019: Andrea
Lougheed (Local Sections Repre-
sentative), Maraika DeGroot (Young
Professionals Representative) and
Jack Seto (Divisions Representative).
I extend my sincere appreciation for
their time and tremendous contribu-
tions to our CGS. It has been very
rewarding to work with you and also
very pleasant working together. I am
pleased to welcome
Billy Singh
and
Vincent Castonguay
who will join
our team, on the EC, to represent the
Local Sections and the Young Geo-
Professionals starting in January 2020.
The new Division and Committee Rep
will also be selected shortly.
Our EC has also been working suc-
cessfully on preparing for a few other
important changes in 2020. Transition
is well underway for the Administra-
tion of CGS, from GGMI to Karma-
Link. The production of our new CGS
Magazine with the proposed name
‘’Canadian Geotechnique’’ is also
progressing well. The EC and the
CGS Communication Task Force is
collaborating actively with our new
publisher Karma-Link for the first
publication next spring 2020. BiTech,
our publisher over the past 30 years is
publishing this last issue Geotechni-
cal News. I would like to thank
Lynn
Pugh
and
John Gadsby
at BiTech, for
all the good work they have done over
the years with this magazine, for the
benefit of our CGS members.
In the name of the CGS, I also want
to express our sincere appreciation
to
Wayne Gibson
for his over 10
years of dedicated services as the
CGS Direction of Administration and
Finance.
Thanks also to our CGS National
office: Executive Director,
Michel
Aubertin
; Director of Communica-
tions and Member Services,
Lisa
Reny
and Communications Coordina-
tor,
Emily Fournier.
We appreciate
their dedication and guidance. They
are essential to us in the Executive
committee and our CGS would not
be able to function without their hard
work.
Upcoming events
In a few weeks, CGS will be partner-
ing with the ASCE Geo-Institute to
organize the GeoCongress 2020 in
Minneapolis, on February 25th-28th.
Later on this year, we will all get
together again for the 73rd conference
planned for Calgary, September 13th
– 16th. We are also looking forward
to the 74th Annual CGS conference in
Niagara Falls, in 2021,
Other important dates to keep in mind
for 2020;
membership and corporate
sponsorship renewals
are due for
January 1
; the nominations for the
2021 CGS Colloquium to be sent by
January 31
and most
CGS award
nominations are due by May 15
th
.
More information on all of these can
be found elsewhere in this issue of
Geotechnical News
, on the CGS Web-
site or by contacting Lisa at
admin@
cgs.ca.
I am honored to lead a great CGS
Executive Committee and I am super
proud to be the President of the CGS.
My goal is to have a strong soci-
ety which will be able to serve our
members even better and help our geo-
profession to be even more present in
our society.
Thanks again for investing your time
in reading my thoughts. I invite you to
get back to me with your questions or
feedback at
