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INTRODUCTION TO PROFESSIONAL
FRASER MACGREGOR
ANDREWS APLEVICH
ENGINEERING IN CANADA
FIFTH
E DI T I ON
GORDON C. ANDREWS
J. DWIGHT APLEVICH
INTRODUCTION TO PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING IN CANADA

ROYDON A. FRASER
CAROLYN G. MACGREGOR
The bridge across the St. Lawrence River at Québec City has
been of symbolic importance to the engineering profession
in Canada for more than a century. An important link in the
railway route to the Maritime provinces, the Québec Bridge
is the farthest one downstream on the river and the longest
cantilever-span bridge in the world. In 1907, during erection
and again at final assembly in 1916, the bridge collapsed
with great loss of life. A Royal Commission determined that
the cause of the first accident was an incorrect design com-
plicated by poor communication between the design engineer
in New York, the fabrication company in Pennsylvania, and
the construction crew at Québec. The disaster attracted the
FIFTH EDITION
attention of the public and legislators to the need to restrict
the practice of engineering in Canada to competent and eth-
ical persons. The first provincial laws regulating the profes-
sion were passed in the decade that followed.
www.pearson.com 90000
ISBN 978-0-13-420448-2
9 780134 204482
Contents
Preface to the fifth edition, iii
Part I The Engineering Profession 1
Chapter 1 An Introduction to Engineering 3

1.1 What is an engineer? 3
1.2 The role of the engineer, 5
1.3 Engineering disciplines, 6
1.3.1 Choosing your program, 7
1.4 Engineers across Canada, 10
1.5 Canadian engineering achievements, 11
1.5.1 Sources related to Canadian engineering history, 13
1.6 Challenges and opportunities for engineering, 14
1.7 Further study, 15
1.8 References, 17
Chapter 2 The Licensed Professional Engineer 19

2.1 Engineering is a profession, 20
2.2 Regulation of the engineering profession, 20
2.2.1 Government regulation, 21
2.2.2 A critical event: the Québec Bridge tragedy, 22
2.2.3 The laws regulating engineering, 25
2.2.4 Legal definitions of engineering, 27
2.3 Admission to the engineering profession, 28
2.3.1 Academic requirements, 29
2.3.2 Experience requirements, 31
2.3.3 Language competency, 32
2.3.4 The professional practice examination, 32
2.3.5 Offering engineering services to the public, 32
2.4 The purpose of provincial Associations, 33
2.6 References, 36
vii
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viii Contents
Chapter 3 Professional Engineering Ethics 37
3.1 Association codes of ethics, 38

3.1.1 The national code of ethics, 38
3.2 Enforcement activities of the Associations, 39
3.2.1 Common professional complaints, 40
3.3 Ethics in the workplace, 41
3.4 Analyzing ethical problems, 42
3.4.1 Ethical theories, 43
3.4.2 Case studies in ethics, 46
3.5 The professional use of computer programs, 48
3.6 Proper use of the engineer’s seal, 50
3.7 The iron ring, 51
3.9 References, 56
Chapter 4 Engineering Societies 57
4.1 The purpose of engineering societies, 57

4.2 The history of engineering societies, 58
4.3 The importance of engineering societies, 59
4.4 The relationship of the engineer to laws and organizations, 60
4.5 Choosing your engineering society, 62
4.5.1 Canadian engineering societies, 62
4.5.2 American and international engineering societies, 64
4.7 References, 68
Chapter 5 Learning Strategies 69
5.1 The good and bad news about engineering studies, 69

5.2 Managing your time, 70
5.3 Preparing for the start of classes, 71
5.4 Developing a note-taking strategy, 72
5.5 A checklist of good study skills, 72
5.6 Assignments and projects, 73
5.7 Preparing for examinations, 74
5.8 Writing examinations, 75
5.9 When things go wrong, 76
5.10 Your professional career and lifelong learning, 76
5.12 References, 79

Contents ix
Part II Engineering Communications 81
Chapter 6 Technical Documents 83

6.1 Types of technical documents, 83
6.1.1 Letters, 84
6.1.2 Memos, 84
6.1.3 Internet postings, 86
6.1.4 Electronic messages, 87
6.1.5 Specification documents, 88
6.1.6 Bids and proposals, 88
6.1.7 Reports, 89
6.2 Finding information, 92
6.3 Technical presentations, 94
6.3.1 Visual aids, 96
6.5 References, 100
Chapter 7 Technical Writing Basics 101

7.1 The importance of clarity, 101
7.2 Hints for improving your writing style, 102
7.3 Punctuation: a basic summary, 105
7.4 The parts of speech: a basic summary, 106
7.5 Avoid these writing errors, 107
7.6 The Greek alphabet in technical writing, 108
7.8 References, 112
Chapter 8 Formal Technical Reports 113

8.1 Components of a formal report, 114
8.1.1 The front matter, 114
8.1.2 The report body, 119
8.1.3 The back matter, 123
8.2 Steps in writing a technical report, 125
8.3 A checklist for engineering reports, 127
8.5 References, 132
Chapter 9 Report Graphics 133

9.1 Graphics in engineering documents, 134
9.2 Standard formats for graphs, 134
9.2.1 Bar charts and others, 136
9.2.2 Straight-line graphs, 137
9.2.3 Logarithmic scales, 138

x Contents
9.3 Engineering calculations, 141

9.4 Sketches, 143
9.6 References, 148
Part III Engineering Measurements 149
Chapter 10 Measurements and Units 151

10.1 Measurements, 151
10.2 SI and other unit systems for engineering, 152
10.3 Writing quantities with units, 156
10.4 Basic and common units, 158
10.5 Unit algebra, 161
10.7 References, 164
Chapter 11 Measurement Error 165

11.1 Measurements, uncertainty, and calibration, 165
11.2 Systematic and random errors, 167
11.2.1 Systematic errors, 167
11.2.2 Random errors, 167
11.3 Precision, accuracy, and bias, 168
11.4 Estimating measurement error, 169
11.5 How to write inexact quantities, 169
11.5.1 Explicit uncertainty notation, 169
11.5.2 Implicit uncertainty notation, 170
11.6 Significant digits, 170
11.6.1 Rounding numbers, 171
11.6.2 The effect of algebraic operations, 172
Chapter 12 Error in Computed Quantities 177

12.1 Method 1: exact range of a calculated result, 177
12.2 Method 2: linear estimate of the error range, 179
12.2.1 Sensitivities, 180
12.2.2 Relative sensitivities, 182
12.2.3 Approximate error range, 183
12.2.4 Application of Method 2 to algebraic functions, 184
12.3 Method 3: estimated uncertainty, 186
12.3.1 Derivation of the estimated value, 188

Contents xi
Chapter 13 Basic Statistics 193

13.1 Definitions and examples, 193
13.2 Presentation of measured data: the histogram, 196
13.3 Measures of central value, 197
13.4 Measures of spread, 201
13.5 Measures of relative standing, 203
Chapter 14 Gaussian Law of Errors 207

14.1 Conditions for applying the Gaussian model, 208
14.2 Properties of the Gaussian distribution function, 211
14.2.1 Probability intervals, 212
14.3 Fitting a Gaussian curve to sample data, 214
14.4 Least squares, 215
14.4.1 Optimality of the sample mean, 215
14.4.2 The best straight line, 216
14.4.3 Correlation coefficient, 218
14.5 Rejection of an outlying point, 220
14.5.1 Standard deviation test, 220
Part IV Engineering Practice 223
Chapter 15 Fundamentals of Engineering Design 225

15.1 Defining engineering design, 226
15.1.1 Types of engineering design, 226
15.2 Characteristics of good design practice, 227
15.2.1 Design heuristics, guidelines, standards, and specifications, 231
15.3 The engineering design process, 233
15.4 Design skills, 235
15.4.1 Clearly defining the design project, 235
15.4.2 Generating solutions, 236
15.4.3 Models, simulations, and prototypes, 237
15.5 Systematic decision-making, 239
15.5.1 Pairwise comparisons, 239
15.5.2 Computational decision-making, 241
15.6 Design documentation, 242
15.7 System life cycle, 246
15.8 Designing with others, 247
15.9 Becoming a design engineer, 249

xii Contents

Chapter 16 Project Management and Scheduling 255

16.1 Project management, 255
16.1.1 The project life cycle, 256
16.1.2 Cost management, 258
16.2 Gantt charts, 259
16.3 The critical path method (CPM), 259
16.4 Scheduling with CPM, 262
16.5 Refinement of CPM, 264
16.6 Summary of steps in CPM, 265
Chapter 17 Safety in Engineering Design 269

17.1 Responsibility of the design engineer, 269
17.2 Principles of hazard recognition and control, 270
17.3 Eliminating workplace hazards, 274
17.4 Codes and standards, 276
17.4.1 Finding and using safety codes and standards, 278
Chapter 18 Safety, Risk, and the Engineer 283

18.1 Evaluating risk in design, 283
18.2 Risk management, 283
18.3 Analytical methods, 284
18.3.1 Checklists, 285
18.3.2 Hazard and operability studies, 285
18.3.3 Failure modes and effects analysis, 286
18.3.4 Fault-tree analysis, 287
18.4 Safety in large systems, 289
18.5 System risk, 290
18.6 Expressing the costs of a hazard, 291
Chapter 19 Environmental Sustainability 295

19.1 Defining sustainability, 295
19.2 An overview of sustainable thinking, 297
19.3 The process of global warming and climate change, 300
19.3.1 The solar balance, 302

Contents xiii
19.4 Excessive consumption and the depletion of oil and gas, 304
19.4.1 Ethical implications of a peak in oil and gas production, 308
19.5 Guidelines for environmental practice, 309
19.6 What we can do: personal lifestyles, 310
19.7 What we can do: engineering for sustainability, 312
19.8 Conclusion, 314
Chapter 20 The Engineer in Business 321

20.1 Seeking a job: résumés and interviews, 322
20.2 Business organizations, 325
20.2.1 Legal business structures, 325
20.3 The individual in corporate culture, 327
20.4 Starting or joining a small company, 328
20.4.1 The business plan, 329
20.4.2 Getting advice, 330
Chapter 21 Intellectual Property 333

21.1 Introduction, 333
21.1.1 Proprietary intellectual property, 334
21.1.2 The public domain, 334
21.2 The importance of intellectual property, 336
21.2.1 Rights of employers and employees, 337
21.3 Copyright, 337
21.3.1 Copyright registration, 338
21.3.2 Fair dealing, 338
21.3.3 Copyright and computer programs, 338
21.4 Patents, 339
21.4.1 The patent application process, 341
21.5 Industrial designs, 342
21.6 Trademarks, 343
21.7 Integrated circuit topographies, 344
21.8 Trade secrets, 345
Appendix Answers to Quick Quiz and selected Further Study questions 349
Chapter 1, 349
Chapter 2, 349
Chapter 3, 349

xiv Contents
Chapter 4, 349
Chapter 5, 349
Chapter 6, 349
Chapter 7, 349
Chapter 8, 349
Chapter 9, 349
Chapter 10, 350
Chapter 11, 351
Chapter 12, 351
Chapter 13, 352
Chapter 14, 352
Chapter 15, 352
Chapter 16, 352
Chapter 17, 352
Chapter 18, 352
Chapter 19, 352
Chapter 20, 353
Chapter 21, 353
Index, 355

I
Part
The Engineering Profession
Figure I.1 Design of the Canadarm and Canadarm2 required expertise in several engineering disciplines: mate-
rials, structures, robotics, electronics, control systems, computers, and software. The Canadarm is
listed among the five most significant Canadian engineering achievements of the 20th century. A key
part of the American space shuttle program for almost 30 years, the original Canadarm was retired in
2011, with the Canadarm2 continuing on the International Space Station. (Courtesy of MDA)
1
2 Part I The Engineering Profession
By choosing engineering, you have taken the first step toward a challenging and reward-
ing profession. In future years you will share the great sense of personal achievement
that is typical of engineering, as your ideas move from the design office or computer lab
to the production line or construction site. This book is intended to acquaint future engi-
neers with many basic engineering concepts. However, in passing along this basic infor-
mation, we hope that the excitement and creativity of engineering also show through.
Part I introduces the engineering profession.
Chapter 1 An Introduction to Engineering: Most people know that Canadian engineers wear
iron rings, but what does the word engineering mean? This chapter gives you a working
definition of engineering, an overview of engineering in Canada, and a description of
some differences between the work of engineers and other technical specialists such as
research scientists, technicians, and technologists.
Chapter 2 The Licensed Professional Engineer: An engineering education is not merely a group
of related university courses; it is an entry point into a legally recognized profession
with strict requirements for admission, a code of ethics, and professional regulations.
This chapter tells you how the engineering profession is organized and how to enter it.
Chapter 3 Professional Engineering Ethics: The public expects all professionals to be honest,
reliable, and ethical. How does the public expectation apply to engineering? This chapter
includes engineering codes of ethics, how they apply to typical engineering practice, the
proper use of the engineer’s seal, and the significance of the iron ring.
Chapter 4 Engineering Societies: Engineering societies help you by publishing technical papers,
organizing conferences and engineering contests, and presenting short courses. Such
assistance can be very useful while you are a student, but it will be even more important
after you graduate. This chapter explains the role of engineering societies and mentions
several societies that may be of interest to you.
Chapter 5 Learning Strategies: You are investing much effort, time, and money in your engi-
neering education. Would you like to protect this investment? If you can master the
fundamental advice in this chapter, you should be able to achieve academic success and
still have enough free time to enjoy other fulfilling parts of university life.
1
Chapter
An Introduction to Engineering
An engineering degree opens the door to a highly respected and structured profession, so
graduation is a major achievement. Engineering students look forward to the happy day
when they receive their engineering degrees, as shown in Figure 1.1, and their iron rings,
described in Section 3.7. Chapter 1 of this book introduces the engineering profession
by exploring the following topics:
• a definition of engineer, to begin the discus-
sion of engineering,
• the role of engineers in relation to other tech-
nical specialists,
• characteristics of some important engineer-
ing disciplines,
• engineering in Canada and the distribution of
engineers by province,
• Canadian engineering achievements that
have been judged to be of particular signifi-
cance,
• some of the engineering challenges faced by
Figure 1.1 Two engineering graduates, diploma in society.
hand and Ritual of the Calling of an
Engineer in memory (as described in The Further Study questions at the end of this
Section 3.7), celebrate their achieve- chapter (Section 1.7) may help you to master the
ments. Graduation is the first important
step to becoming a professional engineer. main ideas in the chapter and also to confirm your
(Photo: D. Aplevich) decision to choose engineering as a career.
1.1 What is an engineer?

The term engineer comes to English from the Latin word ingenium, meaning talent,
genius, cleverness, or native ability. Its first use was to describe those who had an ability
to invent and operate weapons of war. Later, the word came to be associated with the
design and construction of works, such as ships, roads, canals, and bridges, and the
people skilled in these fields were non-military, or civil, engineers. The modern meaning
of the term engineering depends, to some degree, on context. In the United Kingdom,
people with practical skills have been called engineers since the Industrial Revolution. In
North America, more emphasis is placed on formal training, as a result of a recognized
need for trained engineers during the wars of the 1700s and 1800s and the modelling of
early American engineering programs on French engineering schools [1].
3
4 Chapter 1 An Introduction to Engineering
In Canada, the title Professional Engineer is restricted by law for use by persons
who have demonstrated their competence and have been licensed by a provincial licens-
ing body, referred to in this book as a provincial Association (with a capital letter, to
distinguish the meaning from that of a generic association). In addition, the designa-
tions engineer, engineering, professional engineer, P.Eng., consulting engineer, and their
French equivalents are official marks held by Engineers Canada, and only licensed engi-
neers may use these titles. A few exceptions are permitted by law, such as for station-
ary, operating, and military engineers, who are subject to other regulations. Engineers
Canada coordinates policy and acts on behalf of the provincial Associations. The legal
definition of engineering and the licensing of engineers are discussed in Chapter 2.
Although early civilizations produced significant engineering achievements, tools
and techniques evolved especially rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries during the
Industrial Revolution. Advances in mathematics and science during this period permit-
ted the prediction of strength, motion, flow, power, and other quantities with increasing
accuracy. More recently, the development of computers, inexpensive electronic commu-
nication, and the Internet have placed huge amounts of information within easy reach,
and the role of the engineer continues to evolve together with the rest of modern society.
Therefore, modern definitions related to engineering must be broad enough to allow for
change. The following definition of an engineer is adequate for most informal discus-
sions, and a more specific definition of engineering is given in the next chapter:
An engineer is a person who uses science, mathematics, experience, and judg-

ment to create, operate, manage, control, or maintain devices, mechanisms,
processes, structures, or complex systems, and who does this in a rational and
economic way subject to human, societal, and environmental constraints.
This definition emphasizes the rational nature and technological base of engineering,
but it does not fully express the human context of the profession. An engineering career
involves problem solving, designing, and building, which can give great pleasure to the
engineer and others. There are many opportunities for friendship with team members,
and engineering projects exercise communication, management, and leadership skills.
Engineering decisions may involve societal or ethical questions. Personal experience
and judgment are needed for many decisions because projects may involve technical
complexity as well as social effects that are not easily reducible to scientific principles
or mathematical theorems.
Engineer and writer Henry Petroski emphasized the human side of engineering in To
Engineer Is Human [2]. He contends that, in response to constantly changing require-
ments imposed by clients and society, it is human nature to extend design methods to
their limits, where unpredicted failures sometimes occur, and to create new design meth-
ods as a result of those failures. Samuel Florman, also an engineer and prolific writer,
suggests in The Existential Pleasures of Engineering [3] that since humankind first began
to use tools, the impulse to change the world around us has been part of our nature. Thus,
he argues, to be human is to engineer.
Section 1.2 The role of the engineer 5
1.2 The role of the engineer

Engineering is usually a team activity. Because of the great complexity of many projects,
engineering teams often include persons with widely different abilities, interests, and
education, who cooperate by contributing their particular expertise to advance the pro-
ject. Although engineers are only one component of this diverse group, they contribute
a vital link between theory and practical application. A team working on a project might
include scientists, engineers, technologists, technicians, and skilled workers, whose
activities and skills may appear to overlap. The following paragraphs describe the tasks
and responsibilities of members of such a team. These are broad categorizations, so
exceptions are common.
Research scientist The raison d’être of pure science is the understanding of natural phenomena, and in a
project team, the main responsibility of the scientist is to provide scientific knowledge
and analysis. The typical research scientist works in a laboratory together with research
assistants on problems that expand the frontiers of knowledge but may not have immedi-
ate practical application. A doctorate is usually the basic educational requirement. Scien-
tists are often members of learned societies in their particular field of interest. Although
many scientists apply their knowledge to practical tasks, scientific practice does not have
the same legal structure or responsibilities as engineering, and scientists are not normally
licensed by a professional body with responsibilities defined by law.
Engineer The engineer typically provides a key link between theory and practical applications.
An engineer must have a combination of extensive theoretical knowledge, the ability to
think creatively, a knack for obtaining practical results, and the ability to lead a team
toward a common goal. A bachelor’s degree is the minimum educational requirement,
although many engineers have additional qualifications, including master’s and doctoral
degrees. In Canada, all work that is legally defined as engineering must be performed
or supervised by a licensed professional engineer, who is required, by provincial law,
to be a member or licensee of the provincial Association of Professional Engineers (or
in Québec, the Ordre des ingénieurs). Membership confers the right to use the title
Professional Engineer, abbreviated P.Eng. or, in Québec, ing.
Technologist The technologist typically works under the direction of engineers in applying engi-
neering principles and methods to complex technical problems. The basic educational
requirement is graduation from a three-year technology program at a community col-
lege or equivalent, although many technologists have earned university credits as well.
Technologists are encouraged to have their qualifications certified by a provincial asso-
ciation such as, for example, the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Techni-
cians and Technologists (OACETT) or the Association of Science and Engineering Tech-
nology Professionals of Alberta (ASET). Credentials issued by provincial associations
carry the titles C.E.T. (Certified Engineering Technologist), P.Tech (Professional Tech-
nologist), R.E.T. (Registered Engineering Technologist), T.P. (in Québec, Technologue
professionel), or similar titles in related fields. Such credentials are recognized by law
in most provinces but are typically not legally essential for working as a technologist.
The Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists (CCTT) is a national body that
coordinates activities of its constituent and related provincial associations, and in 2013
it launched a new designation, International Engineering Technologist, abbreviated as
IntET(Canada), which will aid in international recognition of qualifications.
Technician The technician typically works under the supervision of an engineer or technologist in
the practical aspects of engineering, such as making tests and maintaining equipment.
The basic educational requirement is graduation from a two-year technician program at
a community college or its equivalent. Associations of technologists and technicians
such as those mentioned previously may confer the title C.Tech. (Certified Engineering
Technician), although the title is not essential to obtain work as a technician.
Skilled worker The skilled worker typically carries out the designs and plans of others. Such a person
may have great expertise acquired through formal apprenticeship, years of experience,
or both. Most trades (electrician, plumber, carpenter, welder, pattern maker, machinist,
and others) have a trade organization and certification procedures.
Accountability The categories described above are not rigid. Movement from one group to another is
possible, but is not always easy. Each of the above groups has a different task, and
there are considerable differences in the skills, knowledge, and responsibilities expected
of each. In particular, a much higher level of accountability is expected from the pro-
fessional engineer than from other members of the engineering team. The engineer is
responsible for competent performance of the work that he or she supervises. In fact,
engineers may be held legally accountable not only for their own acts but also for advice
given to others. Judgment and experience are often as important as mathematics, science,
and technical knowledge. Liability insurance is also becoming essential in the public
practice of engineering. These professional aspects are discussed further in Chapter 2.
1.3 Engineering disciplines

Most people can name a few branches of engineering: civil, electrical, mechanical, and
chemical engineering, perhaps. However, the number of engineering disciplines is much
larger than is commonly known. The Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board pub-
lishes an annual list of accredited Canadian engineering degree programs [4]. The list
changes slightly from year to year as new programs are created or old ones are dropped,
but the trend is of a gradually increasing number of programs. Equating equivalent
French and English names, counting joint programs as one, and then removing all dupli-
cates reduces the full list of accredited programs to a smaller set of distinct specializa-
tions, illustrated in Figure 1.2. The figure shows the names and number of occurrences
of programs with names occurring more than once, and at the bottom, the large number
of programs with unique names. The five most common branches make up more than
half of the total number of accredited programs in Canada.
In the United States there are approximately eight times as many accredited engi-
neering degree programs comparable to those in Canada, with twice as many program
names, but the most common names are typically identical and in the same order as in
Canada.
Section 1.3 Engineering disciplines 7
Number of programs
0 10 20 30 40 50
Mechanical
Electrical
Civil
Computer
Chemical
Software
Engineering physics
Geological
Industrial
Environmental
Materials
Mining
Biomedical
Geomatics
Aerospace
Biological
Electronic systems
Engineering science
Integrated
Mechatronic systems
Mechatronics
Occurring once (53)
0 20 40 60 80 100
Cumulative percent
Figure 1.2 Names of accredited Canadian engineering programs in 2017. Of the 278 program names published
in reference [4], those occurring more than once are listed on the left, with the bottom row showing that
each of 53 others occurs only once. Mechanical engineering, found at 36 institutions, has the largest
count. There are 74 distinct names, but the cumulative percent line shows that the most common three
make up more than a third of the total and the most common five more than 50 %.
1.3.1 Choosing your program

Your choice of university program (that is, your engineering discipline) should be a
conscious decision, because it will likely shape the rest of your life. Many students
choose before they apply for university, but others are less certain. If you have not made
a choice or have doubts, do not hesitate to seek advice from your professors, guidance
counsellors, or perhaps best of all, a friend who is a practising engineer. Typical factors
to consider are the program topics that strongly motivate you, the industry in which you
wish to work, where you want to work after graduation, or even professors who inspire
you. Write a list of the advantages and disadvantages for each program, based on the
factors that are most important to you. You may find that you need to gather information
by looking at university calendars or websites. You can then make a subjective, but
informed, decision.
You might also like to try the computational decision-making method described in
Section 15.5.2: create a chart with a column for each program choice and a row for
each criterion that is important in your decision. Assign a weight to each criterion,
depending on its importance to you. The total benefit for each program is calculated as
a weighted sum of values representing how well the program satisfies each of the crite-
ria, as described in detail in Section 15.5.2. The “best” program is one that receives the
largest weighted sum. This computational method sometimes yields surprising results!
Creating a spreadsheet would be useful because you might want to recalculate with differ-
ent criteria and weights until you are confident that you have the right result. Employing
this detailed process ensures that the stated criteria are systematically considered before
a final decision is made.
To help you confirm your knowledge of engineering disciplines, the following para-
graphs describe a few well-known specializations. The basic courses are similar in many
disciplines, especially in the first year or two. Consequently, switching from one disci-
pline to another is usually easiest then.
Chemical Chemical engineers use knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, and mathematics to
design equipment and processes for the manufacture of chemicals and chemical prod-
ucts. The chemical process industries are skill- and capital-intensive, and require highly
specialized designers to achieve competitive manufacturing. Some chemical engineers
design equipment and processes for the extraction of minerals, petroleum, and other nat-
ural resources. Others design new processes for sustaining and reclaiming the natural
environment.
Civil Civil engineers design and supervise the construction of roads, highways, bridges, dams,
airports, railways, harbours, buildings, water supply systems, and sewage systems. Many
civil engineers specialize in one phase of their discipline, such as highway, sanitary, soil,
structural, transportation, hydraulic, or environmental engineering. The largest fraction
of licensed engineers in private practice is in civil engineering.
Computer Computer engineers use a combination of electrical engineering and computer science
subjects to design, develop, and apply computer systems. They must understand elec-
tronic circuits, computer hardware, computer interfacing and interconnection, software
development, and algorithms. Most importantly, they must be able to select the optimal
combination of hardware and software components required to satisfy specified perfor-
mance criteria.
Section 1.3 Engineering disciplines 9
Electrical Electrical engineers design and manage systems to generate, transmit, and control elec-
trical signals and energy. Electrical engineering overlaps with other disciplines because
of the widespread use of electronics. Specialists in electronics use microscopic devices,
medium-scale circuitry, and large systems for data sensing, transmission, and computa-
tion. Specialists in the power field design and manage electrical equipment and distribu-
tion systems, including equipment and software for control of electric machines and the
complex networks that transmit and stabilize energy flowing from localized sources as
well as large generating stations.
Environmental Environmental engineers respond to needs for improved air and water quality and effi-
cient waste management. Environmental engineering is a rapidly growing discipline,
concerned with site assessment and approval, air quality in buildings, monitoring and
control devices, and a host of investigative, instrumentation, and other support activities.
These environmental applications require a broad engineering knowledge, including top-
ics from chemistry, physics, soils engineering, mechanical design, fluid mechanics, and
meteorology.
Geological Geological engineers use knowledge of the origin and behaviour of geological materials
to design structures, such as foundations, roads, or tunnels built on or through these
materials, and to develop exploration or extraction methods for petroleum and minerals.
They may also work with civil engineers in the geotechnical design or construction of
roads, airports, harbours, waste disposal systems, and other civil works. Geological
engineers are in increasing demand for groundwater and environmental impact studies
and for new petroleum recovery projects.
Industrial Industrial engineers use probability, statistics, and other mathematical subjects for the
design of efficient manufacturing processes. They assume responsibility for quality con-
trol, plant design, and the allocation of material, financial, and human resources for effi-
cient production. Automation, materials handling, environmental protection, robotics,
human factors, and data processing are some of the specialized subjects required.
Mechanical Mechanical engineers enjoy a wide scope of activity, including the design, development,
manufacture, and maintenance of machinery, ranging from small appliances to aircraft.
They may be involved with engines, turbines, boilers, pressure vessels, heat exchangers,
or machine tools. They may specialize in fields such as machine design, heating, ven-
tilating and refrigeration, thermal and nuclear power generation, manufacturing, quality
control, or production scheduling. There are many mechanical engineers employed in
related fields, such as mining, metallurgy, transportation, oil refining, and chemical pro-
cessing.
Software Software engineering combines classical engineering project-management skills with
the specialized tools and knowledge that are required to design, build, analyze, and
maintain complex computer software. In addition to intimate knowledge of the program-
design aspects of computer science, the software engineer requires an understanding
of the natural sciences in sufficient breadth to allow working with specialists in other
disciplines and designing correct software to be embedded in machines.
Other programs Some engineering programs have a relatively broad set of requirements, with the oppor-
tunity to choose specialized options or projects in later years. Systems design engi-
neering, engineering science, and génie unifié are examples of such programs. Grad-
uates may work in interdisciplinary areas requiring computer expertise combined with
broad problem-solving and group management abilities. Some engineering disciplines
are industry-related, for example, aerospace, agricultural, biosystems, building, forest,
mining, and petroleum engineering. Finally, some engineering disciplines are directly
related to specific scientific knowledge: engineering physics, management engineer-
ing, mathematics and engineering, materials engineering, mechatronics engineering, and
nanotechnology engineering are examples.
Other careers An engineering degree can be excellent preparation for a career in another discipline
such as law, medicine, or business, to name only a few possibilities. If this is your
intention, emphasize breadth in your choice of elective courses, since your breadth of
knowledge combined with your problem-solving skills will be key future assets.
1.4 Engineers across Canada

Engineers Canada publishes data on the number and distribution of Canadian engi-
neers [5]. Table 1.1 shows the number of licences held by actively practising engineers
by province and territory in 2016. A small fraction of the approximately 210 000 total
licences are held by persons who are licensed in more than one province or territory.
The total increases to nearly 290 000 if life members, retired licence holders, and other
nonpractising members of provincial Associations are included.
Most engineers are found in the industrialized areas of Ontario, Québec, and the
resource-rich provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Comparing the coasts, the
Table 1.1 Distribution of licences of practising engineers in Canada by province and territory, corresponding to
licensing Associations, in 2016 (data from reference [5]).
Practising Percentage
Province or Territory
Engineers of Total
Ontario 68 011 32.5
Alberta 47 835 22.8
Québec 44 846 21.4
British Columbia 20 218 9.7
Saskatchewan 7 933 3.8
Manitoba 5 273 2.5
Nova Scotia 4 504 2.2
New Brunswick 4 218 2.0
Newfoundland and Labrador 3 757 1.8
Northwest Territories and Nunavut 1 545 0.7
Yukon 789 0.4
Prince Edward Island 541 0.3
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study to resemble your office, or for your dining-room to resemble
the Automat, or for every bedroom in your house to bear on its door
printed directions to ring twice for your wife to bring you hot water
and three times for a clean collar.
The crowning virtue of the successful private library is
inefficiency. As an example closely approaching the ideal, as a
model to householders who have been allowed a closet or vault in
which to keep books, I respectfully present my own library. And in
order that the radiance of its inefficiency may be as penetrating as
possible, I wish my library to be considered in comparison with its
efficient rivals.
Let us therefore assume that the spectacled young gentleman
already several times celebrated in this treatise has, without
acquiring more sense, got married, and perhaps thereby acquired a
sufficient competency to warrant his establishing a library. Let us
begin our survey of his books with the shelves of poetry. Where is
there a good basis for comparison? Ah, here we have it—here is
Milton in the efficient library, and here the long-winded old gentleman
is found again in my own! Is any comparison between these volumes
possible? Would any real bibliophile hesitate a moment in making his
choice between the two? The efficient Milton is a tall, sombre-looking
volume with a long biographical preface by a man who used to be a
poet before he became a college professor, a preface which proves
that Milton never went blind, lived in Wales rather than in England,
had only one daughter and knew no Latin. At the foot of every page
there is a thick sprinkling of notes conveying unnecessary
information. There is an appendix of variant readings and an
exhaustive, monumental bibliography.
Could anything be more depressing? The only illustration in the
book is John himself, in a black cloak, with what seems to be a
baby’s bib under his chin, and this picture can scarcely be called a
decoration. My “Milton’s Poetical Works,” which was published in
New York in 1857 and purchased by me from a stall on Twenty-third
Street for a quarter, is more entertaining in every respect. In the first
place, it has no notes—which alone makes it worth the price of
admission. In the second place, the only biographical introduction is
“The Life of Milton, by His Nephew, Edward Philips,” a most
estimable piece of writing, which begins, “Of all the several parts of
history, that which sets forth the lives, and commemorates the most
remarkable actions, sayings or writings of famous and illustrious
persons, whether in war or peace—whether many together, or any
one in particular—as it is not the least useful in itself, so it is in the
highest vogue and esteem among the studious and reading part of
mankind.” Doesn’t a biography of this sort promise more flavours
and exciting things than one written by a college professor, and
beginning, “John Milton was born in London, England, December
9th, 1608”?
Furthermore, my Milton is bound in black cloth, with stars and
wreaths and baskets of flowers stamped in gold all over it.
Furthermore, my Milton has all sorts of highly entertaining steel
engravings, most delightfully 1857—Lycidas being shipwrecked on
St. Michael’s Mount, and the Warring Angels mustering for battle,
and skeletons and devils and angels and “wood nymphs, deck’d with
daisies trim,” keeping “their merry wakes and pastimes,” and
Melancholy, who looks like Queen Victoria in her old age, and the
“Goddess fair and free, in heaven yclep’d Euphrosyne,” wearing a
very becoming white frock. Furthermore, my Milton was “Presented
to Mifs Ellen R. Baxter, by Her Resp’t’l friend, J. Stuart, Oswego,
May 4, 1859”—so the violet ink inscription on the flyleaf tells me. And
some one has drawn in pencil a very attractive cat on the blank page
opposite the opening of “Samson Agonistes.” The efficient library’s
copy of Milton lacks all these amiable associations.
My efficient friend possesses a Byron, it is true. But not to be
mentioned in the same breath with the volume which stands in my
study between Witter Bynner and Bliss Carman. My Byron contains
eight contemporary memoirs of the poet, by distinguished fellow-
craftsmen, and sixteen pictures—himself, his birthplace, his
Newfoundland dog, his daughter, and a dozen landscapes which the
publisher happened to have on hand. Also, in the preface of my
Byron I find this sentence: “Thus died Lord Byron at the early age of
thirty-seven, leaving behind him a name second only to that of the
renowned Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, and a memory which the
sublime effusions of his muse will endear to all posterity.” My friend’s
Byron has nothing to compare with this.
The trouble with my friend’s library is that it has no surprises.
Any one who has seen his waistcoat—the V of which is edged with
heavy white cord—and his cuff links—which are oval and bear,
engraven on their golden surfaces, his initials—could describe his
library to a volume. It is obvious; its obviousness is a part of its
efficiency.
I suppose Benvenuto Cellini is on a shelf of the efficient library.
He must be, since he is in the public library. Probably my efficient
friend has also Benjamin Franklin’s “Autobiography” and the
“Complete Works of Mrs. Humphry Ward.” He has a limp-leather
tissue-paper encyclopedia, and an obese dictionary, and a
magnificent atlas. And in a corner of his study he has a map of the
world in the form of a great globe on a pivot.
I envy him this last possession, for one may amuse himself by
spinning a geographical globe, as one entertains himself by spinning
a piano stool. But aside from this, there is nothing in my friend’s
library that I desire. And my own triumphantly inefficient library—
what treasures it contains!
You mention French literature. Do I overwhelm you with a
sumptuous Voltaire, or sicken you with a sentimentally illustrated
“Paul et Virginie”? I do not. I exhibit to you yellow-back volumes of
the later verse of Francis Jammes—which are supposed to be going
to be bound one of these days—or I show you a play or two of
Rostand’s. If you desire to have further dealings with the literature of
France, the French department of the university is, for a
consideration, at your service. You mention Fraser’s “Golden
Bough”? I show you something equally informing and more
entertaining, comfortable volumes in which the mythology of Ireland
is narrated to us by Jeremiah Curtin and by Seumas MacManus, and
I show you a stray volume of Louis Ginzberg’s “The Legends of the
Jews.”
I should not try to make the possessors of efficient libraries
unhappy. But I do it for their own good, in the hope that I may
eventually reform them. And when I look upon my two volumes of
“The Evergreen,” a quarterly published in Edinburgh some twenty
years ago, numbering among its contributors Fiona MacLeod, Nora
Hopper, Douglas Hyde, Standish O’Grady and Rosa Mulholland, and
“The Squire’s Recipes,” by Kendall Banning, and “Scottish Heraldry
Made Easy,” and Shaemas O’Sheel’s “The Dear Old Lady of Eighty-
sixth Street,” and a bound volume of The Gentleman’s Magazine for
1761 and “L. Annsei Senecae et Aliorum Tragoediae (Amsterodami,
Apud Guiljel: Ians: Caesium)” and a battered edition of Scott’s
“Marmion,” enriched by the comments of a Louise Cogswell who
owned it in 1810 and wrote approvingly, “and very well told too”
under the sub-title “A Tale of Flodden Field,” and Joseph Forster’s
“Studies in Black and Red” (very ghastly), and both of Ernest
Dowson’s novels and his translations from the French, as well as his
poems, and “The American Annual of Photography” for 1916, and
“Miss Thackeray’s Works,” complete in one volume, and Layton
Crippen’s “Clay and Fire,” and Bithell’s “Contemporary Belgian
Poetry,” and Sir Francis Burnand’s “More Happy Thoughts,” and a
volume containing “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J.
Montgomery Lamb, and Kirke White,” and an inscribed copy of
Palmer Cox’s “The Brownies, Their Book”—when I contemplate,
among the more commonplace inhabitants of my shelves, these
books, then I cannot keep from feeling a sense of superiority to all
those who have laboriously “built up” their libraries in accordance
with the mandates of strict utility.
My library is inefficient and impractical, entertaining and
unexacting. Its members have come to me by chance and by
momentary inclination. For if a man’s books are to be, as the old
phrase has it, his friends, they must be allowed to him because of
some fitness on his part subtly felt by them. A man does not
deliberately select his friends; there must be a selection by them as
well as by him. Unless he is applying the principles of efficiency to
friendship. And in that case he has no friends at all.
THE POETRY OF HILAIRE BELLOC
FAR FROM the poets being astray in prose-writing (said Francis
Thompson), it might plausibly be contended that English prose, as
an art, is but a secondary stream of the Pierian fount, and owes its
very origin to the poets. The first writer one remembers with whom
prose became an art was Sir Philip Sidney. And Sidney was a poet.
This quotation is relevant to a consideration of Hilaire Belloc,
because Belloc is a poet who happens to be known chiefly for his
prose. His Danton and Robespierre have been read by every
intelligent student of French history, his Path to Rome, that most
high-spirited and engaging of travel books, has passed through
many editions, his political writings are known to all lovers—and
many foes—of democracy, his whimsically imaginative novels have
their large and appreciative audience, and his exquisite brief essays
are contemporary classics. And since the unforgetable month of
August of the unforgetable year 1914, Hilaire Belloc has added to
the number of his friends many thousands who care little for belles
lettres and less for the French Revolution—he has become certainly
the most popular, and by general opinion the shrewdest and best
informed, of all chroniclers and critics of the Great War.
There is nothing, it may be said, about these achievements to
indicate the poet. How can this most public of publicists woo the shy
and exacting Muse? His superabundant energy may now and again
overflow in little lyrical rivulets, but how can he find time to turn it into
the deep channels of song?
Well, what is the difference between a poet who writes prose and
a prose-writer who writes verse? The difference is easy to see but
hard to describe. Mr. Thomas Hardy is a prose writer. He has
forsaken the novel, of which he was so distinguished a master, to
make cynical little sonnet portraits and to pour the acid wine of his
philosophy—a sort of perverted Presbyterianism—into the graceful
amphora of poetic drama. But he is not a poet. Thackeray was a
prose-writer, in spite of his delicious light verse. Every novelist writes
or has written verse, but not all of them are poets.
Of course, Sir Walter Scott was first of all a poet—the greatest
poet who ever wrote a novel. And no one who has read Love in the
Valley can hesitate to give Meredith his proper title. Was Macaulay a
poet? I think so—but perhaps I am in a hopeless minority in my
belief that the author of The Battle of Naseby and The Lays of
Ancient Rome was the last of the great English ballad makers.
But this general truth cannot, I think, honestly be denied; there
have been many great poets who have devoted most of their lives to
writing prose. Some of them have died without discovering their
neglected talent. I think that Walter Pater was one of these; much
that is annoyingly subtle or annoyingly elaborate in his essays needs
only rhyme and rhythm—the lovely accidents of poetry—to become
graceful and appropriate. His famous description of the Mona Lisa is
worthless if considered as a piece of serious æsthetic criticism. But it
would make an admirable sonnet. And it is significant that Walter
Pater’s two greatest pupils—Lionel Johnson and Father Gerard
Hopkins, S.J.,—found expression for their genius not in prose, the
chosen medium of their “unforgetably most gracious friend,” but in
verse.
From Walter Pater, that exquisite of letters, to the robust Hilaire
Belloc may seem a long journey. But there is, I insist, this similarity
between these contrasting writers, both are poets, and both are
known to fame by their prose.
For proof that Walter Pater was a poet, it is necessary only to
read his Renaissance Studies or his interpretations—unsound but
fascinating—of the soul of ancient Greece. Often his essays, too
delicately accurate in phrasing or too heavily laden with golden
rhetoric, seem almost to cry aloud for the relief of rhyme and rhythm.
Now, Hilaire Belloc suggests in many of his prose sketches that
he is not using his true medium. I remember a brief essay on sleep
which appeared in The New Witness—or, as it was then called, The
Eye Witness—several years ago, which was not so much a complete
work in itself as it was a draft for a poem. It had the economy of
phrase, the concentration of idea, which is proper to poetry.
But it is not necessary in the case of Hilaire Belloc, as it is in that
of Walter Pater, to search pages of prose for proof that their author is
a poet. Now and then—all too seldom—the idea in this man’s brain
has insisted on its right, has scorned the proffered dress of prose,
however fine of warp and woof, however stiff with rich verbal
embroidery, and has demanded its rhymed and rhythmed wedding
garments. Therefore, for proof that Hilaire Belloc is a poet it is
necessary only to read his poetry.
II
Hilaire Belloc is a poet. Also he is a Frenchman, an Englishman,
an Oxford man, a Roman Catholic, a country gentleman, a soldier, a
democrat, and a practical journalist. He is always all these things.
One sign that he is naturally a poet is that he is never
deliberately a poet. No one can imagine him writing a poem to order
—even to his own order. The poems knock at the door of his brain
and demand to be let out. And he lets them out, carelessly enough,
setting them comfortably down on paper simply because that is the
treatment they desire. And this happens to be the way all real poetry
is made.
Not that all verse makers work that way. There are men who
come upon a waterfall or mountain or an emotion and say: “Aha!
here is something out of which I can extract a poem!” And they sit
down in front of that waterfall or mountain or an emotion and think up
clever things to say about it. These things they put into metrical form,
and the result they fondly call a poem.
There’s no harm in that. It’s good exercise for the mind, and of it
comes much interesting verse. But it is not the way in which the sum
of the world’s literature is increased.
Could anything, for example, be less studied, be more clearly
marked with the stigmata of that noble spontaneity we call
inspiration, than the passionate, rushing, irresistible lines “To the
Balliol Men Still in Africa”? Like Gilbert K. Chesterton and many
another English democrat, Hilaire Belloc deeply resented his
country’s war upon the Boers. Yet his heart went out to the friends of
his university days who were fighting in Africa. They were fighting, he
thought, in an unjust cause; but they were his friends and they were,
at any rate, fighting. And so he made something that seems (like all
great writing) an utterance rather than a composition; he put his love
of war in general and his hatred of this war in particular, his devotion
to Balliol and to the friends of his youth into one of the very few
pieces of genuine poetry which the Boer War produced. Nor has any
of Oxford’s much-sung colleges known praise more fit than this
“House that armours a man

With the eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger,
And a laughing way in the teeth of the world,
And a holy hunger and thirst for danger.”
But perhaps a more typical example of Hilaire Belloc’s wanton

genius is to be found not among those poems which are, throughout,
the beautiful expressions of beautiful impressions, but among those
which are careless, whimsical, colloquial. There is that delightful, but
somewhat exasperating Dedicatory Ode. Hilaire Belloc is talking—
charmingly, as is his custom—to some of his friends, who had
belonged, in their university days, to a youthful revolutionary
organisation called the Republican Club. He happens to be talking in
verse, for no particular reason except that it amuses him to talk in
verse. He makes a number of excellent jokes, and enjoys them very
much; his Pegasus is cantering down the road at a jolly gait, when
suddenly, to the amazement of the spectators, it spreads out great
golden wings and flashes like a meteor across the vault of heaven!
We have been laughing at the droll tragedy of the opium-smoking
Uncle Paul; we have been enjoying the humorous spectacle of the
contemplative freshman—and suddenly we come upon a bit of
astonishingly fine poetry. Who would expect, in all this whimsical and
jovial writing, to find this really great stanza?
“From quiet homes and first beginning

Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning
But laughter and the love of friends.”
Who having read these four lines, can forget them? And who but
a poet could write them? But Hilaire Belloc has not forced himself
into this high mood, nor does he bother to maintain it. He gaily
passes on to another verse of drollery, and then, not because he
wishes to bring the poem to an effective climax, but merely because
it happens to be his mood, he ends the escapade he calls an Ode
with eight or ten stanzas of nobly beautiful poetry.
There is something almost uncanny about the flashes of
inspiration which dart out at the astonished reader of Hilaire Belloc’s
most frivolous verses. Let me alter a famous epigram and call his
light verse a circus illuminated by lightning. There is that
monumental burlesque, the Newdigate Poem—A Prize Poem
Submitted by Mr. Lambkin of Burford to the Examiners of the
University of Oxford on the Prescribed Poetic Theme Set by Them in
1893, “The Benefits of the Electric Light.” It is a tremendous joke;
with every line the reader echoes the author’s laughter. But without
the slightest warning Hilaire Belloc passes from rollicking burlesque
to shrewd satire; he has been merrily jesting with a bladder on a
stick, he suddenly draws a gleaming rapier and thrusts it into the
heart of error. He makes Mr. Lambkin say:
“Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough

Only because we do not know enough:
When Science has discovered something more
We shall be happier than we were before.”
Here we find the directness and restraint which belong to really great
satire. This is the materialistic theory, the religion of Science, not
burlesqued, not parodied, but merely stated nakedly, without the
verbal frills and furbelows with which our forward-looking leaders of
popular thought are accustomed to cover its obscene absurdity.
Almost these very words have been uttered in a dozen “rationalistic”
pulpits I could mention, pulpits occupied by robustuous practical
gentlemen with very large eyes, great favourites with the women’s
clubs. Their pet doctrine, their only and most offensive dogma, is not
attacked, is not ridiculed; it is merely stated for them, in all kindness
and simplicity. They cannot answer it, they cannot deny that it is a
mercilessly fair statement of the “philosophy” that is their stock in
trade. I hope that many of them will read it.
III
Hilaire Belloc was born July 27, 1870. He was educated at the
Oratory School, Edgbaston, and at Balliol College, Oxford. After
leaving school he served as a driver in the Eighth Regiment of
French Artillery at Toul Meurthe-et-Moselle, being at that time a
French citizen. Later he was naturalised as a British subject, and
entered the House of Commons in 1906 as Liberal Member for
South Salford. British politicians will not soon forget the motion which
Hilaire Belloc introduced one day in the early Spring of 1908, the
motion that the Party funds, hitherto secretly administered, be
publicly audited. His vigorous and persistent campaign against the
party system has placed him, with Cecil Chesterton, in the very front
ranks of those to whom the democrats of Great Britain must look for
leadership and inspiration. He was always a keen student of military
affairs; he prophesied, long before the event, the present
international conflict, describing with astonishing accuracy the details
of the German invasion of Belgium and the resistance of Liège. Now
he occupies a unique position among the journalists who comment
upon the War, having tremendously increased the circulation of Land
and Water, the periodical for which he writes regularly, and lecturing
to a huge audience once a week on the events of the War in one of
the largest of London’s concert halls—Queen’s Hall, where the same
vast crowds that listen to the War lectures used to gather to hear the
works of the foremost German composers.
IV
Hilaire Belloc, as I have said, is a Frenchman, an Englishman,
an Oxford man, a country gentleman, a soldier, a democrat, and a
practical journalist. In all these characters he utters his poetry. As a
Frenchman, he is vivacious and gallant and quick. He has the noble
English frankness, and that broad irresistible English mirthfulness
which is so much more inclusive than that narrow possession, a
sense of humour. Democrat though he is, there is about him
something of the atmosphere of the country squire of some
generations ago; it is in his heartiness, his jovial dignity, his deep
love of the land. The author of The South Country and Courtesy has
made Sussex his inalienable possession; he owns Sussex, as
Dickens owns London, and Blackmore owns Devonshire. And he is
thoroughly a soldier, a happy warrior, as brave and dexterous, no
one can doubt, with a sword of steel as with a sword of words.
He has taken the most severe risk which a poet can take: he has
written poems about childhood. What happened when the late
Algernon Charles Swinburne bent his energies to the task of
celebrating this theme? As the result of his solemn meditation on the
mystery of childhood, he arrived at two conclusions, which he
melodiously announced to the world. They were, first, that the face of
a baby wearing a plush cap looks like a moss-rose bud in its soft
sheath, and, second, that “astrolabe” rhymes with “babe.” Very
charming, of course, but certainly unworthy of a great poet. And
upon this the obvious comment is that Swinburne was not a great
poet. He took a theme terribly great and terribly simple, and about it
he wrote ... something rather pretty.
Now, when a really great poet—Francis Thompson, for example
—has before him such a theme as childhood, he does not spend his
time making far-fetched comparisons with moss-rose buds, or
hunting for words that rhyme with “babe.” Childhood suggests Him
Who made childhood sacred, so the poet writes Ex Ore Infantium, or
such a poem as that which ends with the line:
“Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.”
A poet may write pleasingly about mountains, and cyclones and

battles, and the love of woman, but if he is at all timid about the
verdict of posterity he should avoid the theme of childhood as he
would avoid the plague. For only great poets can write about
childhood poems worthy to be printed.
Hilaire Belloc has written poems about children, and they are
worthy to be printed. He is never ironic when he thinks about
childhood; he is gay, whimsical, with a slight suggestion of elfin
cynicism, but he is direct, as a child is direct. He has written two
dedicatory poems for books to be given to children; they are slight
things, but they are a revelation of their author’s power to do what
only a very few poets can do, that is, to enter into the heart and mind
of the child, following that advice which has its literary as well as
moral significance, to “become as a little child.”
And in many of Hilaire Belloc’s poems by no means intended for
childish audiences there is an appealing simplicity that is genuinely
and beautifully childish, something quite different from the adult and
highly artificial simplicity of Professor A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire
Lad. Take that quatrain The Early Morning. It is as clear and cool as
the time it celebrates; it is absolutely destitute of rhetorical
indulgence, poetical inversions or “literary” phrasing. It is, in fact,
conversation—inspired conversation, which is poetry. It might have
been written by a Wordsworth not painfully self-conscious, or by a
Blake whose brain was not as yet muddled with impressionistic
metaphysics.
And his Christmas carols—they are fit to be sung by a chorus of
children. Can any songs of the sort receive higher praise than that?
Children, too, appreciate The Birds and Our Lord and Our Lady. Nor
is that wonderful prayer rather flatly called In a Boat beyond the
reach of their intelligence.
Naturally enough, Hilaire Belloc is strongly drawn to the almost
violent simplicity of the ballad. Bishop Percy would not have enjoyed
the theological and political atmosphere of The Little Serving Maid,
but he would have acknowledged its irresistible charm. There is that
wholly delightful poem The Death and Last Confession of Wandering
Peter—a most Bellocian vagabond. “He wandered everywhere he
would: and all that he approved was sung, and most of what he saw
was good.” Says Peter:
“If all that I have loved and seen

Be with me on the Judgment Day,
I shall be saved the crowd between
From Satan and his foul array.”
Hilaire Belloc has seen much and loved much. He has sung
lustily the things he approved—with what hearty hatred has he sung
the things he disapproved!
V
Hilaire Belloc is not the man to spend much time in analysing his
own emotions; he is not, thank God, a poetical psychologist. Love
songs, drinking songs, battle songs—it is with these primitive and
democratic things that he is chiefly concerned.
But there is something more democratic than wine or love or
war. That thing is Faith. And Hilaire Belloc’s part in increasing the
sum of the world’s beauty would not be the considerable thing that it
is were it not for his Faith. It is not that (like Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
he is attracted by the Church’s pageantry and wealth of legend. To
Hilaire Belloc the pageantry is only incidental, the essential thing is
his Catholic Faith. He writes convincingly about Our Lady and Saint
Joseph and the Child Jesus because he himself is convinced. He
does not delve into mediæval tradition in quest of picturesque
incidents, he merely writes what he knows to be true. His Faith
furnishes him with the theme for those of his poems which are most
likely to endure; his Faith gives him the “rapture of an inspiration.”
His Faith enables him, as it has enabled many another poet, to see
“in the lamp that is beauty, the light that is God.”
And therein is Hilaire Belloc most thoroughly and consistently a
democrat. For in this twentieth century it happens that there is on
earth only one genuine democratic institution. And that institution is
the Catholic Church.
THE CATHOLIC POETS OF
BELGIUM
AT A recent meeting of the English Poetry Society, Mlle. Coppin,
a distinguished Belgian poetess, who now, like so many of her
compatriots, is a refugee in London, said: “I believe we have been
too prosperous, too fond of pleasure. We are being purged, and in
our adversity we have found our nationality. If ever England, France,
and Russia make a new Belgium, we shall be more simple and hard-
working.”
Those of us who believe that the character of a nation is, to a
great extent, revealed in its literature cannot doubt that Mlle.
Coppin’s words are true. Surely the sick fancies of Maurice
Maeterlinck (to mention the most conspicuous of Belgian men of
letters) could come into being only in a land suffering from over-
much civilisation, in a land whose citizens are too sophisticated for
common and wholesome delights. Even more than the elaborate
obscenities of Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud, Maeterlinck’s morbid
studies of mental, spiritual, and physical degradation belong to that
sort of literature which is called “decadent.” And decadent literature
usually is produced for and by people who need to be, in Mlle.
Coppin’s words, “more simple and hard-working.”
That the great tragedy which has overtaken Belgium will have a
beneficial effect upon its literature is not to be doubted. Of course,
the first result is an almost total cessation of creative activity; one
cannot handle a rifle and a pen at the same time. But with the return
of peace must come the development of a new Belgian literature, a
literature which is not an echo of the salon-philosophies of Paris and
Berlin, but a beautiful expression of the soul of a strong and brave
race.
It is possible that when the poets of a re-created Belgium are
singing their clear songs, the world, comparing them with Gilkin,
Giraud, Maeterlinck, and the Verhaeren of Les Débâcles and Les
Flambeaux Noirs, will say: “Now, for the first time, Belgian poetry
deserves the attention of those who are interested in other than the
pathological aspects of literature! Not until the land had been purified
by blood and flame did the Spirit of Beauty come to dwell in
Flanders!”
But this criticism will be unjust. Great literary movements do not
spontaneously come into being; they develop slowly and surely
through the centuries. If all the poetry of Belgium were the work of
charlatans and vicious men, then, not even this tremendous war
could stimulate it into healthy life. The fame of Maeterlinck’s dismal
dramas, and of the least worthy poems of Emile Verhaeren, should
not make us oblivious of the fact that Belgium has, and has always
had, its small, but brilliant, company of sincere and gifted writers,
men who have not debased their art, but have held in honour the
sacred traditions of their high calling. He who, neglecting the
productions of the symbolists, decadents, and similar phantasists,
turns his attention to the authentic literature of the Belgian people,
finds a strain of poetry white and beautiful, and as fervently Catholic
as the immortal songs of Crashaw and Francis Thompson. It is not
the disciples of Baudelaire and Mallarmé who have planted the
seeds of poetry that soon shall burst into splendid bloom, but men
like Thomas Braun and Georges Ramaekers, men who, serving
faithfully their Muse, have never wavered in their allegiance to the
Mistress of all the Arts, the Catholic Church.
It must not be thought that these poets write only religious
poems. They have, indeed, produced such masterpieces of
devotional verse as Braun’s Livre des Bénédictions and Ramaekers’
Le Chant des Trois Regnes. But when their poetry is not religious it
is not, at any rate, irreligious; they “utter nothing base.” And surely
even the lightest of secular poems may do its author’s Catholicism
no discredit. As Francis Thompson said of poetry in the eloquent
appeal to the “fathers of the Church, pastors of the Church, pious
laics of the Church” with which his most famous essay begins, “Eye
her not askance if she seldom sing directly of religion: the bird gives
glory to God though it sings only of its own innocent loves.... Suffer
her to wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round the foot of the
Cross!”
Indeed, what is true of much modern English verse is true also of
that of Belgium, there are Catholic poets who seldom in their work
refer directly to their faith, and there are infidel poets who have laid
impious hands on the Church’s treasures and decorate their rhymes
with rich ecclesiastical imagery and the fragrant names of the Saints.
So we find, for example, Emile Verhaeren using the first chapters of
Genesis as the theme of a poem that is anything but edifying, while
that pious Catholic, Thomas Braun, writes a volume of verses about
postage stamps.
There are certain optimistic persons who believe that the general
use in literature of sacred names and traditions augurs well for the
spread of faith. A member of an Anglican religious order, who two
years ago delivered a series of lectures in New York City, prophesied
a mighty recrudescence of religion among the poets of England, and
based his prophecy, apparently, on the fact that Mr. Lascelles
Abercrombie and other brilliant young writers have made ballads out
of some of the most picturesque of the legends about the Saints. He
did not see that Mr. Abercrombie selected his themes solely because
of their literary value. There are many poets who eagerly avail
themselves of the stores which are the Church’s heritage, who
introduce the name of the Blessed Virgin into their verses exactly as
they would introduce that of Diana, or Venus or any creature of fable.
Personally, I have never been able to enjoy the recital, however
skillful, of a sacred story by a poet who did not believe in it, and
therefore I cannot grow enthusiastic over the knowledge that many
Belgian poets, whose philosophies are hostile to the Church, like to
write about monstrances and chalices and altars, and to tell
ostentatiously “human” stories about sacred people in general and
St. Mary Magdalen in particular. I find Thomas Braun’s poems about
postage stamps more edifying.
The modern Catholic poets of Belgium may be roughly divided
into two groups, the mystics and the primitives. These terms are
here used merely for the purposes of this classification, and cannot
perhaps be justified by scientific criticism. Among the mystics I would
include such writers as Georges Ramaekers, the brilliant editor of Le
Catholique, and perhaps Max Elskamp, who use elaborate and
complicated symbols, and, in general, may be said to do in verse
what the late Joris Karl Huysmans, after his conversion to
Catholicism, did in prose. Among the primitives I would place such
poets as Victor Kinon and Thomas Braun, who look for their
inspirations to the ancient religious life of Flanders, in all its
picturesque simplicity, and are more concerned with celebrating the
piety of simple Flemish peasants than with endeavouring to
penetrate high mysteries.
It is to that valued friend of Belgian letters, Mr. Jethro Bithell, of
Birbeck College, London, whose translation of Stefan Zweig’s book
on Verhaeren has recently earned him the gratitude of the English-
speaking public, that we owe this excellent version of Thomas
Braun’s The Benediction of the Nuptial Ring, taken from this poet’s
The Book of the Benedictions. The directness and sincerity of this
poem suggest the work of George Herbert.
THE BENEDICTION OF THE NUPTIAL KING

“That she who shall wear it, keep faith unchanged with her husband and ever live
in mutual love.”
Almighty God, bless now the ring of gold

Which bride and bridegroom shall together hold!
They whom fresh water gave to You are now
United in You by the marriage vow.
The ring is of a heavy, beaten ore,
And yet it shall not make the finger sore,
But easefully be carried day and night,
Because its secret spirit makes it light.
Its perfect circle sings into the skin,
Nor hurts it, and the phalanx growing thin
Under its pressure molds itself ere long,
Yet keeps its agile grace and still is strong.
So love, which in this symbol lies, with no
Beginning more nor ending here below,
Shall, if You bless it, Lord, like gold resist,
And never show decay, nor flaw, nor twist,
And be so light, though solid, that the soul,
A composite yet indivisible whole,
Shall keep its tender impress to the last,
And never know the bonds that bind it fast.
In many of Thomas Braun’s poems is to be found a quality

suggestive of the folk song. Like the Verhaeren of Les Flamandes,
Braun writes of those huge, boisterous farmers and merchants who
live for us on the canvases of Brauwer and Jan Steen. But he writes
of them, it need scarcely be said, in a very different spirit. Verhaeren
saw only their gluttony, drunkenness, and coarseness; Braun sees
their courage, industry, good-nature, piety. In fact, Verhaeren saw
their bodies, Braun sees their souls.
In an essay on Verhaeren recently printed, I called attention to
the fact that while Verhaeren wrote of the Flemings with enthusiasm,
and with repulsively careful attention to detail, he did not write of
them with sympathy. He does not join in the revels about which he
writes; he is interested in his loud purple-faced peasants, but with his
interest is mingled a certain scorn. Thomas Braun, on the other
hand, is thoroughly in sympathy with the life of which he writes; the
reader feels that such a poem as The Benediction of Wine, for
example, was written by a man who is artist enough to share actually
in the strong simple piety of the keeper of the vineyard. The
quaintness of Thomas Braun’s poems, which is emphasized by the
woodcuts made to accompany them by his brother who is a
Benedictine monk, is not an affectation, it is a quality proper to the
work of a man who, like Wordsworth, sees beauty chiefly in
simplicity. Like Coventry Patmore, he has “divine frivolity,” he is
acquainted with the mirth of the Saints. In his own beautiful words,
he knows how to play in the straw with the Child of Bethlehem.
Georges Ramaekers is a poet whose verse is for the most part
too obscure to lend itself readily to translation. He will write a poem,
for example, on mushrooms, and the reader will think after several
minutes that he is being told merely about the common fungi. Then it
comes to him that it is the Tree of Life that these maleficent growths
are attacking; then they cover the columns of the Church and
actually reach the Host Itself. The poem is, it seems, a denunciation
of certain heresies, or of sloth, indifference, and other spiritual evils,
but its meaning cannot adequately be given in an English translation.
Here is a similar poem, which, in Mr. Bithell’s translation, shows
Georges Ramaeker’s symbolic method at its best and clearest.
THE THISTLE
Rooted on herbless peaks, where its erect

And prickly leaves, austerely cold and dumb,
Hold the slow, scaly serpent in respect,
The Gothic thistle, while the insects’ hum
Sounds far off, rears above the rock it scorns
Its rigid virtue for the Heavens to see.
The towering boulders guard it. And the bee
Makes honey from the blossoms on its thorns.
Victor Kinon, like that very different poet, Albert Giraud, the chief
Belgian disciple of Baudelaire, is of Walloon descent. Mr. Bithell calls
this poet a “fervent Roman Catholic,” but the poems which he has
selected for translation are entirely secular in theme and treatment.
They show, however, that their author is free from the vices of
extreme realism and hysteria, which afflict many of his
contemporaries. Sometimes it is fair to judge a poet’s whole attitude
toward life from his love poems. When decadence and feverish
eroticism are in fashion, it is refreshing to come upon a poet sane
enough to write so honest and delicate a poem as this of Victor
Kinon.
HIDING FROM THE WORLD
Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet,

And open in the dewy, dustless air

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(eBook PDF) Introduction to

Professional Engineering in Canada,

INTRODUCTION TO PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING IN CANADA

Preface to the fifth edition, iii

Part I The Engineering Profession 1

Chapter 1 An Introduction to Engineering 3

Chapter 2 The Licensed Professional Engineer 19

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Chapter 3 Professional Engineering Ethics 37

3.1 Association codes of ethics, 38

Chapter 4 Engineering Societies 57

4.1 The purpose of engineering societies, 57

Chapter 5 Learning Strategies 69

5.1 The good and bad news about engineering studies, 69

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Part II Engineering Communications 81

Chapter 6 Technical Documents 83

Chapter 7 Technical Writing Basics 101

Chapter 8 Formal Technical Reports 113

Chapter 9 Report Graphics 133

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9.3 Engineering calculations, 141

Part III Engineering Measurements 149

Chapter 10 Measurements and Units 151

Chapter 11 Measurement Error 165

Chapter 12 Error in Computed Quantities 177

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Chapter 13 Basic Statistics 193

Chapter 14 Gaussian Law of Errors 207

Part IV Engineering Practice 223

Chapter 15 Fundamentals of Engineering Design 225

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15.10 Further study, 250

Chapter 16 Project Management and Scheduling 255

Chapter 17 Safety in Engineering Design 269

Chapter 18 Safety, Risk, and the Engineer 283

Chapter 19 Environmental Sustainability 295

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Chapter 20 The Engineer in Business 321

Chapter 21 Intellectual Property 333

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00_andr_eng5_FM_final.indd 14 02/04/18 3:45 PM

The Engineering Profession

1.1 What is an engineer?

An engineer is a person who uses science, mathematics, experience, and judg-

1.2 The role of the engineer

1.3 Engineering disciplines

1.3.1 Choosing your program

1.4 Engineers across Canada

“House that armours a man

But perhaps a more typical example of Hilaire Belloc’s wanton

“From quiet homes and first beginning

“Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough

“Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.”

A poet may write pleasingly about mountains, and cyclones and

“If all that I have loved and seen

THE BENEDICTION OF THE NUPTIAL KING

Almighty God, bless now the ring of gold

In many of Thomas Braun’s poems is to be found a quality

Rooted on herbless peaks, where its erect

HIDING FROM THE WORLD

Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet,