Greetings,

Here is the text of an article published in the National Post.  In
honour of the 75th anniversary of the Initiation Ritual, the Canadian
Post Office has issued a commemorative stamp.  If you go to the web
address given just below, you can see a picture of the new stamp.

Cheers,
Jay Johnson
Medicine Hat College
Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada


Page URL:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news.asp?s2=national&f=000422/267612.html

Saturday, April 22, 2000

Honour and cold iron
The engineering fraternity's ritual of the iron ring has stood for high
professional standards for 75 years

Michael Rappaport
National Post

The engineering fraternity's ritual of the iron ring, with its solemn
oath of "honour and cold iron" penned by Rudyard Kipling, marks its 75th
anniversary this month.

During the ceremony, a slender band of iron is slipped onto the little
finger of the graduate's working hand, marking the passage from student
to professional engineer.

Legend has it that the iron rings were originally crafted from the
remnants of a steel bridge near Quebec City that collapsed under the
weight of a locomotive Aug. 29, 1907, killing all 75 people aboard.
The iron rings were intended to instill the importance of safety in
recently graduating engineers.

It is a compelling, romantic history for a uniquely Canadian ritual that
celebrates its 75th anniversary on Tuesday.

It is also a myth.

"It makes the tradition sound romantic, but there's no truth behind it,"
says Malcolm McGrath, whose organization administers the Ritual of the
Calling of the Engineer at the University of Toronto.

Rings were made from iron because it is a material that engineers work
with and were meant to remind graduating engineers to maintain high
professional standards, says Mr. McGrath, secretary of Camp One of the
Seven Wardens, one of the branches of the organization charged with
administering the ceremony.

The iron ring ceremony was established by Herbert Haultain, a mining
engineering professor at the University of Toronto in 1925, as a way to
confer recognition on professional engineers across Canada.

In 1922, Prof. Haultain attended a meeting of the Engineering Institute
of Canada in Montreal and suggested starting a ceremony for graduating
engineers.

Prof. Haultain wrote to poet Rudyard Kipling for help. In reply, Kipling
penned an obligation for engineers and scripted the ceremony.

The rings were originally hand-hammered by First World War veterans at
Christie Street Veterans' Hospital in Toronto as part of a
rehabilitation program. Since 1940, they have been fabricated
commercially.

Rings have been made with stainless steel since the 1960s to prevent
rusting -- except at the University of Toronto, where engineering grads
continue to receive rings made from iron, Mr. McGrath says.

Administering and maintaining the ritual is the responsibility of the
Corporation of the Seven Wardens Inc., which has 25 camps across Canada
that are independent of any engineering schools or organizations.

The ritual, which engineers voluntarily undergo sometime near the end of
their final year, is private. No guests or cameras are permitted.

According to David Backman, a mechanical engineer who graduated from the
University of Ottawa in December, 1994, engineering students are fitted
for rings during the ceremony itself, not beforehand.  As a result, he
says, they often mistakenly select rings that are too big, since their
fingers swell due to nervousness.

At the ceremony, students are seated after being sized for the ring and
hold on to a chain laid out between their seats until receiving their
rings.

They repeat an obligation, swearing to always uphold the highest
standards of professional integrity and conduct in their practices upon
their "honour and cold iron."

The rings are placed on the little finger of each student by a
professional engineer, typically a professor whom the student requested
to fulfill the honour.

"The ritual is a very solemn occasion," Mr. Backman says. "Students in
engineering work very hard and endure a lot of stress. The desire to
earn an iron ring really motivated me during exams."

Not everyone has held such favourable views of the ritual. In the 1980s,
female engineering students complained that the ceremony was sexist,
according to Remy Dussault, chief warden of the Seven Wardens Inc.

"Gender references in the ceremony were eliminated in the mid-'80s to
appease female engineering grads," Mr. Dussault says.

This year at the University of Toronto, an engineering student refused
to participate in the ritual because he felt that it contained too many
religious references, says Mr. McGrath.

Recently, Mr. McGrath has noted some resistance to the ceremony by
students who think it inappropriate or believe it is antiquated.

However, he says only about 3% of engineering grads forgo the ceremony.

More than 250,000 rings have been granted across Canada over the past 75
years -- 254,071 to be exact, Mr. Dussault says. This spring's
ceremonies will put that number at more than 260,000.

Each ring weighs about 1.57 grams. Multiply that figure by 260,000 and
you get 408.2 kilograms, or about 900 pounds -- about half the average
amount of steel used in an average car in North America.

But definitely not enough steel to build a bridge.


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