The Hamilton Branch 50th Anniversary of the Institute of Power Engineers was acknowledged in Hamilton in 1989 at the Holiday Inn where many members and delegates from across Canada united to celebrate.
Most of our founding members like Earl Campbell and Jimmy Dunn have passed on, but the Hamilton Branch still remains active.
Our organization has been closely affiliated with different educational institutes in all provinces of Canada. We took pride in being able to lend a helping hand to the Junior engineers in upgrading themselves to 3rd, 2nd and 1st class.
An association began with 12 engineers in the Toronto/Hamilton area and were called the Canadian Association of Stationary Engineers (CASE).
Earl Campbell began a relationship with other engineers from the Toronto area and soon about 55 engineers where meeting in the city of London.
The London Hotel at that time was quite central to the Niagara district, close to Windsor, and close to Hamilton and Toronto.
We had lots of meetings during that period and began calling ourselves the First Class Engineers Association and later the Dominion Association of Power Engineers.
That went on for some time until we decided to change the name and get a Federal Charter. We hired a lawyer and formed a committee composed of Mr Tate, Mr Amber, Charles Umback, Arthur Mason, Francis Walker, Earl Campbell and Jimmy Dunn.
The Institute of Power Engineers obtained their Chartered Membership on the 18th day of March, 1940 and it was signed by the first National President, Clarence Umback at a general meeting in Toronto.
A committee of 7 members was selected in 1940 and Clarence Umback was elected as First National President of the Institute of Power Engineers.
The committee approached the Federal Government for a Charter across Canada. Once the Charter was passed all members received voting power and various areas started to have meetings.
At that time or shortly thereafter Windsor, London, Kitchener-Waterloo District, Niagara, Toronto and Hamilton began Branch meetings.
Other Branches outside of the Province of Ontario didn't start until some time in the 50's. Out West in Saskatchewan they started somewhere around 1952. By then we had branches in Montreal, New Brunswick and Northern Ontario.