The 70th Canadian Geotechnical Conference and 12th Joint Canadian Geotechnical Society/IAH Canadian National Chapter Groundwater Conference, GeoOttawa 2017, was held from October 1-4. Over 900 delegates participated in four days of plenary and technical sessions, workshops, short courses, business meetings, social events and the 10th Annual Awards Gala. Just under 400 plenary and technical session papers were presented during the conference, with approximately 25% of these in the groundwater sessions. Highlights of the conference included the Kamini Singha’s Darcy Lecture, as well as lectures by the 2016 Farvolden Award recipient, Rene Lefebrve of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, and the 2017 Farvolden Award Recipient, Mike Wei of the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy. The Tóth Award for best student paper in Canadian hydrogeology was given to Samantha Morgan for her paper “Using Petrel to integrate geophysical datasets for investigating the three-dimensional hydrostratigraphic architecture of a buried valley network”.
Former IAH CNC president and 2012 IAH Congress Steve Holysh received the IAH CNC Long Term Service Award. The conference was a great success due to the efforts of the organizing committee, which included IAH CNC members Nell van Walsum and Sean Sterling. Our 2018 conference will be held in Edmonton, Alberta from Sept 23-26. Look out for further news about this, and see the Canadian National Chapter website for other forthcoming events and activities.
