CDA celebrates the industry virtually

The CDA honoured its members and post-graduate students in a unique video presentation on October 6, 2020 as part of its virtual Annual General Meeting, replacing the traditional in-person Awards Gala.

CDA Life members
Life Membership is granted to CDA members whose lifetime of dedication and achievement has contributed significantly to the dam industry in Canada.

The CDA granted life membership to two of its distinguished members in 2020. New Life Members are:
Phillip Gilks, M.Sc, P.Eng. and Denis LeBoeuf, ing., M.Sc., Ph.D, FEIC.

For more information about these new Life Members, please visit the CDA website.

Inge Anderson Award of Merit - Dr. Edward (Ed) McRoberts, P.Eng., FEIC, FCAE
The CDA Inge Anderson Award of Merit recognizes CDA members who have distinguished themselves through significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge and practices related to dams in Canada. The award is offered every two years to a member of CDA.

For more information about Ed McRoberts’ contributions to the advancement related to dams in Canada, please visit the CDA website.

Peter Halliday Award for Service – Mr. Bill Chin, M.Eng., P.Eng., FEIC
This award recognizes CDA members for their valued contributions and outstanding commitment to the advancement of the Association.

For more information about Bill Chin’s contributions to the Association, please visit the CDA website.

CDA Corporate Member Award
Each year the CDA recognizes member organizations that have distinguished themselves within the dam community. CDA congratulates Manitoba Hydro and Teck Resources Ltd. as the 2020 Corporate Member Award winners.

For more information about both of these organization’s contributions to the industry, please visit the CDA website.

Published Paper
This award recognizes the contribution made by CDA members in authoring an outstanding article or technical paper related to dams published in Canada or internationally. In 2020, CDA granted two published paper awards.

Mr. Stephen Rigbey and Dr. Desmond (Des) Hartford authored the technical paper “Oroville in Retrospect: What needs to change?” presented at ICOLD 2019 in Ottawa.

Mr. Jeremy Boswell, Dr. Amy Rentz, Mr. Paul Cavanagh, Mr. Larry Staples and Dr. Lianne Lefsrud were recognized for their valuable contribution with their paper, Preliminary Work by the Alberta Dam Integrity Advisory Committee (DIAC) Towards Thinking Clearly and Communicating Effectively about Risk, which was presented in Calgary in October 2019 as part of the CDA annual conference.

For more information about these papers, please visit the CDA website.

CDA Scholarships
The CDA offers two scholarships annually to full-time post-graduate students attending a Canadian university or college whose program of study focuses on dam safety and/or the management of dams.

The Gary Salmon Memorial Scholarship, for $5,000 is awarded to the top applicant; and the CDA Research Scholarship of $2,500 is awarded to the runner up. Candidates are evaluated on the relevance of their research work and the potential for the advancement of knowledge, leadership and community involvement, and academic excellence.

The CDA Gary Salmon Memorial Scholarship recipient, Mayari Bernard-Garcia of Polytechnique Montréal and CDA Research Scholarship winner Elijah Edie of the University of Manitoba were both recognized in the Fall 2020 issue of the CDA Bulletin magazine.

To read more about Ms. Bernard-Garcia, please click here.

To read more about Mr. Edie, please click here.

In 2020, the Honours and Awards Committee of CDA received an unprecedented 12 high quality applications from top students from across Canada. The applications review panel awarded two additional recipients, the CDA Student Award of Merit, each valued at $1,000. The two additional award recipients were:

Ms. Laura Luna, a Master’s student at Dalhousie University with the research titled “Reliability-Based Geotechnical Design Framework for Flood-Protection Dikes”; and
Mr. Ali Fallah Yeznabad, a Ph.D. student at Western University with the research titled “Safety of Embankment Dams: Probabilistic Method for Seismic Stability Evaluation”.

We congratulate all students and award recipients and wish them only the best in their studies and future careers.