Quebec’s engineers honour Dufour

The Order of Engineers of Quebec, representing 46,000 engineers in la belle province, has awarded its 2003 Excellence Award to Ren Dufour, long-time educator and present-day chairman of Montreal-based Niocan.

The award recognizes his career in teaching, research and management, and his contribution to the development of the Canadian minerals industry.

A native of Quebec’s Saguenay region and the second of 17 children, Dufour obtained his mining engineering degree from the cole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1954. He then embarked on a mineral exploration career that led him to found three companies offering services to industry and government.

In 1965, after seven years working in senior positions at iron-ore producer Quebec-Cartier Mining, he took a pay cut and became a mining-engineering professor at his Alma Mater, and was much appreciated for helping students acquire their first jobs in the industry.

Between 1988 and 1991, he was director of the mining-engineering department and helped garner support from industry for the endowment of two industrial chairs.

Dufour was the principal driver behind the creation of the Canadian Centre for Automation and Robotics in Mining in 1988, and he helped increase co-operation between his department and McGill University’s mining department.

He also was a part of many mining-related overseas missions, principally in Africa and South America, on the behalf of organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and Companhia Vale do Rio Doce.

Dufour has served in many roles within the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), including: president in 1988-89; president of the CIM Foundation from 1991 to 1997; and president of the 1998 Centennial Celebration from 1994 to 1999.

In return, the CIM has presented Dufour with several awards, including its Past President’s Gold Medal in 1970 and its highest honour, the Distinguished Service Award, in 1995.

Also, in 2001, the cole Polytechnique Alumni Association and its 23,000 engineering graduates bestowed its Merit Award on Dufour in recognition of his career.

Officially retiring from the Ecole Polytechnique in 1997, Dufour remains busy keeping track of his four children (three of whom are electrical engineers) and with Niocan, a company he and a partner founded in 1994 to develop the Oka niobium project west of Montreal.