Ray was smart. He was hard working. He was kind and polite. Above all, he was a person who was passionate about the things he did.

Anyone who has ever met Ray will tell you that he was a likeable person; a genuine person; a person you knew you could trust. He was always a loyal friend.

Ray was a real positive force on all of our lives. I have known him for 11 years, and looking back at all my memories of Ray, I can’t remember a single time he wasn’t positive and optimistic. Thinking back on him really put a smile on my face – and I think that’s how Ray would have wanted it.

Ray’s passion and dedication to everything he did – his hobbies, his interests, his athletics, and his academics – that passion was what really defined him as a person.

Since I first met him in grade seven, I have been in nearly every single one of his classes. I’ve shared at least one class with him in every year, from middle school to high school through even the first two years of university.

All this time, I have never once seen him do anything that wasn’t out of love or passion. For Ray, there was only ever one way to do things – that was to give it 110% of his effort.

Ray was the kind of dedicated person who never took “no” for an answer, and if you ever told him that he couldn’t do something, he would try twice as hard to do it – not out of spite so he can later say “I told you so,” but because he genuinely believed in constantly challenging himself to improve as a person.

Once, in grade eight, when we were still kids, somebody once teased him for being chubby. Being a late bloomer, he still had some baby fat. He didn’t retort back with an insult – he never did things like that. In response, he just challenged himself. He spent two weeks over the summer running up and down the stairs of his house to get fit. That was the kind of person he was.

Ray and I were great friends. But we were also great rivals. We were rivals in everything: in math, music, and athletics. He wrote in my grade 12 yearbook, “I would like to thank you for all the help that you’ve given me, for all the times when we competed against each other, continually setting the bar higher and higher ... it’s been an inspirational experience having you in my classes.”

I would say the exact same thing about Ray. We drove each other to do better things – and we had great fun doing it.

The first class on the first day of high school was grade nine math. Ray and I sat together, because we didn’t know anybody else. The first thing we were given was an exercise in speed math – a pop quiz of sorts. As soon as we got it, we just looked at each other, and without saying anything else, just said, “Go!”

We just knew we had to race each other to the end – and we furiously wrote down answers in the silent classroom. Just a few minutes later, Ray slammed down his pencil and yelled “I’m done!”

The rest of the class just stared at us like we were crazy.

That moment really defined both our friendship and rivalry.

It was no different in music. We both played the trumpet. One day in music class, he showed up with bright red swollen lips. When he sat down beside me, I asked him what that was all about. He told me he spent 8 hours the night before, practising, because he had heard me play some high notes, and said he could do better.

I admired him for that. I don’t think I ever told him that – but that’s what I thought, all the time. I wish I had his work ethic.

In grade 12, we played together on the high school lacrosse team. By then, he was one of the fittest people I knew, because he would regularly bike the 30 or 40 minutes it took to get to school rather than take the bus. Sometimes he would even run that distance when he felt like it (even with a trumpet strapped to his back). That distance was 10 km in each direction.

I was never the greatest at lacrosse, but Ray and I started at roughly the same level at the beginning of the season. By the end, Ray was a starter, while I sat on the bench. I recall vividly, during a game, our coach said to us on the sidelines – “You see Ray? You see the way he’s playing? He’s playing now because I know how hard he’s worked – I see him practising every single day behind the school, even when nobody else was around. You should all follow his example.”

Those words really stuck with me. That’s who Ray was.

Even the university experience and the difficult Engineering Science program didn’t change Ray one bit.

Ray was never afraid to speak up about his ideas, and his ideas were always well considered.

He became something of a legend in our EngSci class because he once argued with our Calculus Professor about the “true nature of infinity”, proposing his own theories all during a lecture. Some jokers in our class gave him the nickname “infinity Ray”, and that’s how he came to be known in first year when none of us knew each other very well. But Ray was never fazed by this – he always spoke up about the things he believed in.

He took his competitive streak to university, too. In first year, he told me: “Kevin, I’ve decided – I’m going to become the best foosball player in EngSci.” I laughed at him because I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. I should have known better, as many of my EngSci classmates will agree. He practised non-stop until he actually did what he set out to do. He taught me a few tricks along the way, too. He was competitive, but he was always willing to help and teach.

My enduring image of Ray is that he was always deep in thought. Maybe it was about his latest theory, or maybe a new strategy for his favourite game. He was always full of thought, and it was always interesting to find out his latest thoughts and to unravel his latest ideas.

I will never forget the passion and enthusiasm Ray exuded. He could have achieved anything he set his mind to.

That’s the memory I want to leave you with. Ray was taken from this world at far too young an age. In his passing, we might begin to reflect upon ourselves and think about our own mortality. We might ask ourselves what we’ve done, and what we’ve accomplished.

But none of those things are important.

Life is too short to worry about accomplishments and achievements. We should all follow Ray’s example – in everything we do, we should put our hearts into it, and find the things we are truly passionate about. We should never waste a moment of our precious lives – I know Ray never did.

Rest in peace, my friend.

What follows is a story I have told only to a few of my closest friends (and probably not in its entirety), because of its complexity, personal nature, and my own confusion. It’s taken me a long time to formulate this into a coherent message to share. I think it is worth reading for anyone who is considering a career in (or at least an academic foray into) the field of Engineering.  I apologize in advance for the length, as this may read more like a journal than an essay. I hope, though, that you will appreciate the sentiment behind the words.

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High School Blues

It was the final year of high school. Some say it’s the best year of their life – not yet an adult, but old enough to do all the cool things you never could when you were ‘just a kid’.  I, however, spent most of this year in confusion and stress. Up to this point, I had been fairly academically accomplished. I’d been regularly getting those revered 90’s in all of my classes. I’d written all the toughest math contests and placed well. I’d just placed in the top 60 in the Canadian Computing Competition. Actually, I was really bored by school. It provided no challenge, and it gave me no direction.

I was stressed because I needed to make a choice that I had been avoiding for years. What is it that I want to do? I sought advice from friends, teachers, family, and anyone else who would listen. None of it helped, and all of it was contradictory. My mom wanted me to do Biology; my dad was indifferent; my friends thought I made a great programmer; other friends thought I should take a stab at business; my teachers suggested Engineering.

The last of those seemed intriguing. Engineering? What on Earth was Engineering? It intrigued me because it seemed so foreign. What do Engineers do? Why should I have anything to do with them?

Engineering, according to my high school teachers, was the place where the smartest people gathered. All the students who had the best math grades and the best science grades and some desire to get a real job went into Engineering. This is, of course, a terribly short-sighted view of the diverse profession.

I had no particular desire to save the world, or to invent the wheel. I just took the suggestion because it seemed like a good fit. Math grades? Check. Science grades? Check. And then I was off. But like all things I do, I didn’t start with the easiest of paths. I chose the most difficult. I entered the vaunted Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto, upon the suggestion of my Calculus teacher.

Engineering Science – A Proving Ground

The Engineering Science program is no cakewalk. When you hear the oft-repeated ‘horror’ story of a professor telling you to look to your classmates to your left and right, and saying that only one of you will make it through four years in the program, there is no doubt in my mind that such a story could only be true here. It is an unadvertised fact that first year Engineering (and especially Engineering Science) at the University of Toronto is tougher than all other Canadian undergraduate programs, bar none. There is nowhere else where the material will be as challenging, the courses more packed, and the workload more demanding, than here. It’s even been said that first year of EngSci, as it is known here, is more challenging than its counterpart at the more famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I took on this challenge with glee. I had never failed to meet a challenge.

So it was with this intention of ‘proving myself’ that I entered into the toughest period of my academic career. My previous math and science training had paid off. I had no problems transitioning into university-level courses, and met the challenge with gusto. I was able to do most of this without much thought, without much hard work. I wasn’t used to doing hard work. I had gone through all of primary, middle, and secondary school without doing any hard work. At the end of the first term, I was ranked 18th in a class of over 300. In a class that started with 334 students and would eventually dwindle to just over 170, I considered that one of the greatest accomplishments of my academic life.

A Slippery Slope

It all went downhill from there. It turned out I was just ahead of my time, and it would all catch up to me.

You see, I had always been told that at some point in my life, I would actually have to work hard for results. I’d been told that natural intelligence would only get me so far. Being the arrogant kid that I was when I first heard this in elementary school, I ignored the advice. After all, it had gotten me results in the past, and it had worked until even the first year of university. I never believed otherwise.

Then second year came, and where everyone else had by now fully adjusted to the work, I had just begun to reach the limits of what my so-called intelligence could handle. I could no longer spend just an hour or two reviewing for an exam the night before and expect to get my 90’s. Nor could I afford to skip doing homework and expect to remember anything of value.

It was during this turbulent second year that I encountered numerous personal troubles as well, further eating into my academic life. I entered a funk, and into a greatly reflective mood.

I decided that I hated math and everything associated with it. It was so dry, and tedious, and mechanical, that I could find no joy in doing this for a living. I was greatly depressed by this because the one thing that everyone had told me I was really good at – math – turned out to be something that I hated. I never realized this before, because I never really had to work at it. This is incredibly selfish, I realize too, but alas, I cannot be everything to everyone.

Second, I was not enjoying my time at school by focusing only on academics. In my entire first year, I lived inside this protective shell, meeting only a few new people whom I kept touch with regularly. I had joined little to no extracurriculars, despite my extensive involvement in various activities throughout high school, and most of all, I felt I was wasting my time with university. I asked myself, what does going to university contribute to my life? Why go through all this trouble?

A Search for Passion

It was at this point that I reached out to some friends in various places, began talking to lots of upper years, and some grizzly old professors. What was generally acknowledged was that school is sometimes a necessary evil on the way to a career – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be evil. Having never thought of school as much of a chore, I had never really thought much about this problem.

I began to get out of the academic shell, and look for other things to do. This, in itself, was not a solution to the academic problem I was having, of course – you may even think it would exacerbate the problem. However, my goal at this stage was not to be ‘the #1 student’ – marks were now a secondary concern, and my main purpose was to meet as many people as I could.

The result was a newfound perspective of my situation. While I had always lived in the upper echelons of academia, I had been completely ignorant of, well, everyone else. I had set such high standards for myself that I had been unable to see where I really was.

At some point, everyone gets lost. We get lost in the midst of our midterms, or in times of personal crises. What sets you apart from everyone else is how you choose to play the cards in your hand. Sure, I could complain about life, or get all depressed about everything – but these choices are mine to make, and I could now see how I could turn things around.

Having met so many people, I found that I was not unique. Engineering is tough. But everyone here has a reason to go through the trouble.  What sets Engineering apart from almost any other profession, is that while most people claim to be doing the world a service, only Engineers can really say this with any conviction. If Engineers don’t go through the trouble, who will?

Engineers are immensely practical – we can see through lies, and we know what we want. Underlying the philosophy of Engineering is that we can not only learn about nature’s forces, but also that we can use it to our advantage to improve humanity. Thus, engineers can invent awesome machines, design more efficient systems, and construct civilizations. I had come one step closer to figuring out why I was in engineering.

A Choice and a Path

One more decision had to be made. After 2 years of Engineering Science, we were expected to choose an Option (or a Major, so to speak). Of these, I had identified Computer Engineering and Infrastructure Engineering as my frontrunners, but for extremely contrasting reasons.

I was interested in Computer Engineering because my entire life, I had been fascinated with computers. They are so essential to our daily lives now I can hardly imagine anything without them. I had learned most of my knowledge through computers, and spent a great deal of time with them. I was good at all things computing, and this should have been an easy choice. I could probably excel in Computer Engineering without much trouble – it would probably even solve my academic issues.

But then there was Infrastructure Engineering. Nothing in my first two years of university had stoked my passion as much as this field of Civil Engineering – of bridges and buildings. In my reflection, I had found that I had the most fun in my Civil Engineering design projects – those involving bridge designs and such. I had spent countless hours with these projects, and it felt like no time at all. It was one of the few things I enjoyed in my coursework.

So here we were, at another crossroads. Should I choose what I was ‘good at’, or should I choose what I can be passionate about?

There were many factors to consider, of course, like coursework, class sizes, difficulty, career prospects, and such – but for me, there was one last motivating factor. What impact do I want to have with my education?

This made my solution clear. I could learn computer engineering anywhere. In fact, I was well on my way through my adolescence in learning all this, without the help of school anyway. But if I really wanted to do something useful with university, and to not make the same mistake I had made two years earlier in high school, this was it. This is how I decided to be an Infrastructure Engineer.

In retrospect, I probably should have chosen the more direct path through Civil Engineering to begin with, rather than go through the charade of Engineering Science – but naturally, I hadn’t gone through this whole thought process in high school. I had no such guidance, and no such experience. Part of the reason I was so enthused by Alex’s idea of the RHHSAA was that I probably could have benefited from something like this in my own days as a student. Alas, we had to start somewhere, and now was as good as any.

Having said that, it’s not as if my studies are going perfectly as planned. There are still courses I don’t enjoy, and subjects I cannot comprehend, but at least I know why I want to do it. And that is the biggest lesson of all – I found a good reason for making a choice, and having such a reason, I can deal with the hardships that might come of it. Motivation is thus created by the mind.

It is true that engineers have an understated and sometimes negative public image. Much of the public does not understand what it is that engineers do, or what engineers stand for. The public perception of engineering is that of a profession occupied by nerdy folks who spend their days tinkering with gadgets. In the media, engineers are never mentioned. In schools, where science and math are taught, there is little to no mention of engineering. "Engineering" is never taught as a subject at the elementary and secondary levels of education. There are famous scientists and mathematicians that every schoolkid can name, but not one famous engineer is ever remembered.

The question is, should engineers remain behind the scenes? On the one hand, engineers do indeed have to deal with many technical details which the public knows little of (and likely does not need to know). On the other hand, engineers have a moral obligation to serve the public interest. Building a bridge over a deep valley, while a feat of modern technology to be sure, is no feat of engineering unless it truly satisfies a societal need.

Often, though, engineers feel estranged from their surroundings by a blissfully ignorant public. At the recent Engineering Society meeting regarding the proposal to separate from the University of Toronto Students' Union, many engineering students voiced their opinions on university culture. Many students felt that it was necessary to separate from UTSU simply because they do not understand "us". We are misunderstood and portrayed as rebels, often isolated by the rest of the university. It was said that UTSU rarely acknowledged our needs, and treated us with little respect.

While it was not my intention at first to join this particular debate, I have since developed an opinion opposing that of the Engineering Society's. In my view, it is a waste of financial and human resources to isolate ourselves further from the rest of the university. It is exactly this kind of view that demonstrates a lack of holistic thinking that engineers ought to possess. While this students' quarrel is not in itself a symptom of the engineering profession at large, it should still be noted that engineers should be embracing, not rejecting, the public. Our attitudes towards the rest of the world need to be fostered at an early stage in our professional development, beginning at the university level.

Engineers, of course, have good reason to be intimidated by public consultation. Faced with equations and schematics, we have no problems getting our hands "dirty". But when confronted by politicians with agendas to push and lobbyists with special interests (just the kinds of people most likely to show their faces at a public consultation), we feel uncomfortable and out of place. Like a partial differential equation, many of society's complex problems cannot be solved using tried-and-true formulas. Engineers often have no background in the sociological or economic issues that underscore most of the situations they deal with. This lack of understanding leads to public distrust, making engineers seem to society as aloof.

Regardless of opinion, we live in a democratic society - and public consultations are one of the many checks and balances needed to make everything fair. For the public, these consultations are one of very few opportunities to talk to engineers. For the engineers, these may be a necessary "evil" of the occupation.

Yesterday, amidst a rather empty convocation hall, I attended the Engineering Science overture lecture for the 2007 Winter Term, themed "Systems and States". Giving the lecture was one Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon. The director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and an MIT graduate, Mr. Homer-Dixon's lecture for the day had a sobering message. By all scientific accounts, modern human civilization is heading towards collapse in many different directions. The time to act against it is now. Yes, climate change is occurring. Yes, population growth is at an unprecedented high. Yes, energy production is slowing down. There are numerous factual evidences that support these phenomena. It's happening. Now.

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Not too long ago, I was contemplating what I would do after high school. For me, there was almost no doubt I was going to be doing something science-related. Being practical, I chose to study engineering rather than purely theoretical science. I wanted to do something with knowledge. Learning is exhilerating, but alone, it serves no greater purpose.

Something else had always been troubling me for a while. Why aren't the smartest people in the world making the decisions about the world?

Our world, for the large part, is run by the great democratic political machines of industrialized western nations. Yet this same political machine regularly fails at recognizing what I feel are the most important issues of today - the human impact to environment.

Now, I've never called myself a tree-hugger, or anything of the sort. I don't have that sense of activism. But, I do maintain that many governments of today seem only to be concerned, with great hubris, about their own infinite 'economic' growth.

I am fascinated by politics. I read the newspaper regularly, just to catch up on the latest political scoop. I am fascinated, by the way politicians continue to sidestep real and important issues, with great deftness of words. Politics, to me, is nothing more than a play on words with some basic economic management.

So I figured long ago, that democracy is broken. Sure, if you ask me now, I'll tell you that I'll go out to vote, but for me, the impact of government is too slow, and too little. There are things going wrong with the world today, and political manuevering is not the way to solve it.

I was shocked, one day, about a year ago, to learn that there were still a great many important international figures who contest the notion of global warming, or even climate change. (Here's a list of some: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_sceptics) It shouldn't take so much work to convince the public. And it sure as hell shouldn't be so hard to realize how it's bad for the Earth.

With my faith in politics and the media shaken, I resorted to the conclusion that the only way to get things done is to do things yourself. Of course, it's a long road, and it's hard to see where to begin on something so monumental.

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Professor Homer-Dixon listed the problems, and offered a great many solutions. He articulated what I had been thinking, unconsciously and in abstract. But now I see it more clearly.

As an engineer, in the 21st century, these problems will be up to us to solve. So we can avoid a catastrophe in the future (near or far). Will we be able to engineer ourselves out of this problem? Well, we can only try and see now.