Welcome to the CIMarE Ottawa Branch Home Page. Our branch is uniquely situated at the hub of operation of the Federal Government. Located here in the Nation’s Capital are the main headquarters of the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy and Transport Canada along with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. Thus, although Ottawa is not an active commercial seaport, nevertheless a good number of marine engineers live and work here.

Several years ago the Eastern Canadian Section of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) and the Ottawa Branch decided to pool their resources and to share efforts required to arrange most Branch/Section meetings. This proved to be a successful formula that has served both the Branch and SNAME well.

In 2012, it was the Ottawa Branch’s turn to host the annual Mari-Tech Exhibition and Technical Conference. It was decided to continue the shared arrangement; the Branch and the Eastern Canadian Section of SNAME co-hosted Mari-Tech 2012. The result was a resounding success that it is hoped will lead to a renewal of interest in CIMarE in the Ottawa area.

In February 2013, our Branch and SNAME brought the Ottawa marine community together as co-hosts of the Ottawa Marine Technical Symposium. This successful event was held February 20th and 21st at the Delta Ottawa City Centre Hotel. To learn more about this event, please visit the Ottawa MTS website.

Members may be interested in a project undertaken by the Ottawa Branch. We are scanning back issues of the Marine Engineering Digest (MED) and posting them to an MED archive being assembled under the Newsletter banner in the Members Only area of  our website. In due course it will be possible to review these publications all the way back to March, 1980 when the Pilot MED was published. Ottawa members are being canvassed to come up with copies of previous issues and, should that not provide a full set of MED’s, the canvas will be expanded to other branches. Here is what we are missing:

• Newsletters: 3,4,10,11 & 14
• Digests – Volumes: 1,2,3,4,5 & 32

Thanks for all your help to date. Please help us fill the remaining gaps in our MED Archive.

2014 brought to an end Jeff Smith’s participation in the work of National Council. Jeff had been Chair for some time and had dedicated much of his time – with the support of Council colleagues – to improvements to our Institute. We have seen the creation of two new websites – one for the Institute and the other for our Mari-Tech Annual events. The Mari-Tech Conference here in 2012 marked a milestone with the support of our new website and with the hiring of an event organizer. Having a new look and feel for our website allowed our Atlantic friends to build on that new format and demonstrate its value while the 2012 and 2013 websites have been archived for future reference. It is hoped that future events likewise will be archived. We in the Ottawa Branch will aim to benefit from Jeff’s knowledge and expertise as we look for program options designed to bring out our Members to future events.

The Branch continues to welcome Members to informal lunches held at the Naval Officers Mess, HMCS BYTOWN. Here is a photo taken at one of these lunches in December, 2013.

Recently Dr. Brian Staples has joined National Council as Jeff Smith’s successor from our Branch.

Members of the Ottawa Branch met in 2014 with Commodore Marcel Hallé, the RCN’s senior technical officer, to discuss possible joint meetings with the RCN’s Technical Officers and NCO’s designed to share with our Navy colleagues technical matters of interest and to offer them an opportunity to join our Institute.

Commodore (now Rear Admiral) Hallé’s successor, Commodore Simon Page, has undertaken a mentorship program in his organization and in November a Town Hall meeting was hosted by the RCN where there were presentations organized by the Ottawa Branch and by SNAME. It is expected that joint RCN-CIMarE sessions will be undertaken and it is likely CIMarE will be invited to contribute to the annual Naval Engineering seminars held each year in Halifax and Esquimalt.

The Ottawa Branch 2015 Christmas Luncheon

The luncheon was held in the DeWolfe Room at HMCS BYTOWN. There was an animated discussion that included global warming – with an interesting levels of disagreement among this knowledgeable group – along with Arctic operations, an interim AOR solution, and recent Branch activities.

There was also discussion of a paper at a Branch meeting in October on Latest Developments in Fibreglas Piping and Valve Applications by Fibreglass Solutions Inc. There were a number of positive comments including one saying it was informative, entertaining, and even a pleasure to see familiar faces.