These are sections of my fictional account of an ordinary man. I am taking advantage of having no readers to throw it out into the universe. I dictate to my phone, and then use Gemini to proof and edit for publication. I never read that version.
Grade 13 served as my direct entry to university, with my chief objective being to secure high marks. We didn't do much in Grade 13, but there was a physics course that encompassed most of First-Year University Physics. Three of us were competing for the top mark in the school, but my competition unfortunately had to take English as an extra credit. While our main credits were in science and math—where we all performed exceptionally well—English was full of difficult teachers who rarely gave good marks on essays. I, on the other hand, was able to take Latin as my elective. Latin was a breeze; we simply learned Latin roots and English words. The Latin teachers were mainly just trying to keep their jobs for another year, and German was similarly easy. These courses eventually disappeared when Grade 13 was canceled a few years later, but at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt well-prepared for university.
By the end of Grade 13, I earned the highest mark in the school, won a gold medal, and received a bursary that covered most of my university tuition. I stayed at home and commuted to the University of Toronto. I chose Engineering Science because it was the most difficult program available, even though I still had no idea what I wanted to do or be. My path was governed entirely by eliminating things I didn't want to do until I was left with a final choice.
As I entered university, I was a total nerd by definition—completely uninvolved in athletics and unconcerned with girls. My self-definition of a nerd back then was someone with no hormones or susceptibility to them; girls, frankly, frightened me. Engineering Science suited me fine, as there were only about three women in the entire class. I didn't participate in any extracurricular activities at school, but I decided to join my church choir. I had a very good bass voice and strong relative pitch, excelling at listening and repeating. However, I had zero musical sense when it came to reading music or keeping a beat—there was something in my brain that just rebelled against it. While in the choir, I met a girl for the first time. She was lovely, but passive and not particularly smart. After going out a few times, I decided to end it, as it wasn't very satisfying. Though I sang in a few other choirs later on, frequent and severe throat infections eventually forced me to stop singing altogether.
The only other notable experiences during those years were my summer jobs. I initially tried being a playground leader, which proved to be a complete disaster. Later, after choosing the Geophysics option in my third year, I was lavishly recruited by an oil company that flew me out to Calgary. I was treated wonderfully until the man who hired me suddenly passed away. To make matters worse, the entire oil industry crashed that same summer. From our office windows, we watched whole floors in neighboring buildings being cleared out as companies went under. Seeing that incredible crash, I resolved never to go into the oil industry.
Instead, I chose to pursue my Master’s degree in Civil Engineering, focusing on excavations, tunnels, and using geophysics to model and quantify construction projects. I thoroughly enjoyed that work. After completing my Master's, I entered the next chapter of my life by joining Ontario Hydro. After going through several interviews, a great manager hired me just as the company was beginning its expansion into nuclear power.
Next chapter
The Workforce Phase
The next phase of my life involved preparing for the workforce. I had decided to pursue geophysics, though I resolved not to go into the oil industry—a common path for geophysicists at the time. Instead, I pivoted to geotechnical engineering, following a solid piece of advice my brother often shared: If you have a certain level of intelligence, don't go into a field where everyone is much smarter than you. This meant avoiding pure geophysics or academia in favor of an engineering path where I could maintain a natural advantage. It is good advice for anyone.
Eventually, I came to a realization about my own character: I was intellectually sharp and prone to overthinking, but also thoroughly lazy, without a speck of traditional ambition. I intended to drift along while remaining successful enough to avoid poverty.
I enrolled in a Master's program, which proved to be a great experience. I enjoyed the camaraderie of my peers—mostly mining engineer types and grounded, practical people. Even the faculty felt relatable, though one professor who taught soil mechanics was remarkably inventive. He created countless innovations, operating on the strategy that he would invent something and promptly sell it to a larger corporation capable of defending the patent. Defending inventions against infringement was always a major hurdle, but his ideas in geotechnical engineering were brilliant, and he must have done quite well for himself.
I had no desire to follow that path. My focus was simply running computer programs to analyze seismic waves around tunnels, ultimately evaluating their seismic response. In those days, we had access to massive mainframe computers, but your entire program and life's work existed on physical punch cards. The constant goal was to optimize your code to fit into a single box of punch cards rather than two or three. We were constantly walking back and forth to the card reader to feed them in—a process that has improved dramatically since.
After earning my Master’s degree in Geotechnical Engineering, I joined Ontario Hydro, which was actively managing massive geotechnical projects. Today, specialized geotechnical engineering has largely faded as a distinct discipline; many assume anyone can do it. Consequently, we see endless engineering and geotechnical failures, followed by lawsuits over cost overruns and defects. The root cause is the shift toward "design-build" contracts, where clients simply demand, "Build me a tunnel," without adequate preliminary analysis. The traditional bread and butter of geotechnical engineers—such as retaining walls—has been replaced by pre-fabricated systems engineered to be excessively conservative, allowing almost anyone to erect them without deep technical knowledge.
I entered the workplace as a professional engineer, focusing on the design of underground structures. My early projects included an underground nuclear power plant design and, later, deep geological repositories for nuclear waste. We conducted extensive rock mechanics testing, field designs, and site characterizations for both specialized nuclear waste containment and routine tunneling projects.
One notable assignment involved expanding the capacity of the Niagara power generating stations to utilize excess water allocations granted under historical treaties. I conducted field surveys and geophysical investigations around the Niagara Gorge to evaluate the feasibility of routing a new tunnel through the area. The geology there was unusual and highly challenging, characterized by high-stress rock subject to continuous horizontal creep. Excavating a tunnel, shaft, or even a deep trench into this formation triggered severe rock movement, which would gradually crush the support systems and collapse the opening—a problem that had plagued older power stations in the region. We developed specialized engineering methods to mitigate these stresses.
Years later, developers revived the Niagara tunnel project and constructed a massive tunnel without proper engineering oversight or adequate consideration for the high-stress, creeping rock conditions. Predictably, it turned into a costly technical disaster—one of many modern projects compromised by the absence of proper geotechnical engineering. They simply closed it up and moved on, adding another chapter to the growing list of avoidable engineering failures.
That experience defined the first two years of my career.
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