Engineering traditions in Canada

Engineering traditions in Canada are diverse. Many of the traditions are practised at the engineering departments of Canadian universities, where student organisations continue to practise traditions started by other engineers in previous years.

In the early 1920s, Professor H. E. T. Haultain of the University of Toronto wrote to Rudyard Kipling, who had made reference to the work of engineers in some of his poems and writings. He asked Kipling for his assistance in developing a suitably dignified obligation and ceremony for its undertaking. Kipling was very enthusiastic in his response and shortly produced both an obligation and a ceremony formally entitled "The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer."

Kipling had long been the literary hero of engineers, having published the poem "The Sons of Martha" in 1907. In the poem, Kipling identifies engineers with Martha and her children, who continue to do the chores necessary to keep the household running rather than sit at the Lord's feet.

Although some later engineers would read Kipling's poem as condemning engineers to being second-class citizens compared to managers, those of Haultain's generation were pleased to take "The Sons of Martha" as their defining text.

The first Iron Ring ceremony was held at the University of Toronto in 1925, with the first rings made of "hammered iron" that Kipling called "cold". Although some say the writer used the adjective because the structural material did not forgive the mistakes of engineers working in it, another poem of his puts it in a different and more positive context:

The iron ring's circular shape has been said to symbolize the continuity of the profession and its methods and the circle is also an appropriate symbol of the iterative engineering design process. The original rings were said to have been fabricated from the wreckage of the Québec Bridge, which collapsed during construction in 1907. Although this is generally thought to be false, the Québec Bridge is still held as significant. That bridge, whose 1,800 foot main span was to be the largest cantilever structure in the world, collapsed under its own weight because of an error in the design engineer's calculations. The bridge was redesigned, but suffered a second accident in 1916, when its centre span fell while being hoisted into place. Finally, in 1917 the bridge was completed and stood across the St. Lawrence River as a symbolic gateway into Canada. The engineers sometimes regard the bridge as a reminder to Canadian engineers to take care with their designs and to persevere in the face of adversity.

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