Interesting Times

More than 37 years ago when I was made an editor of Canadian Consulting Engineer, headlines in the magazine ranged from “Former Prime Minister Diefenbaker made Honorary Member of EIC,” to “Ontario Premier William Davis promises to save historic buildings near new Pickering International Airport,” to “Canada’s largest interchange, Highway 401 and 27, wins top design award.”

Later on, projects started getting even more exciting and international in nature with headlines like, “Toronto’s CBC [later CN] Tower to be higher than the Empire State Building,” and “New Inco smokestack now completed,” describing the 1,250-ft. high chimney as the “largest structure of its kind in the world.”

With projects like those it’s easy to see why my 12 years as the editor of the magazine were among the more interesting times in both my career and in consulting engineering in general.

As I look back, some of the people I worked with were not only instrumental in my career, but were also deeply committed to helping make Canadian Consulting Engineer the respected magazine it is today.

Starting with its founder and my mentor, Carson F. Morrison, P. Eng., a University of Toronto engineering professor who in 1959 convinced the publishers Hugh C. MacLean, [later Southam Business Publications,] that consulting engineers needed their own magazine, to Tom Davey, the editor who hired me as his assistant in 1972, to the other “consulting” editors Jack Chisvin, Robert Tamblyn and Robert Halsall, who each took such great pride in having their names on the masthead. All of those people made working on a pleasure.

One of the better times I had during my tenure with the magazine was helping to create the Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards along with the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada.

Canadian Consulting Engineer offered me the opportunity to make a career in the magazine publishing business, and ironically after various stints with other publications over the years, I’m now the editor of Canadian Mining Journal with offices adjacent to CCE. Talk about going full circle.

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Louanne Smrke

(1951-1991)

Louanne Smrke was an editor on the magazine from 1978, and eventually became publisher. She was recognized for her dedication to the consulting engineering industry and after her untimely death from cancer in 1991, Women in Science and Engineering Corporation (WISE/CFSG) established the Louanne Smrke Memorial Scholarship.