Bernard Clovis Michel
Inventor, optimist, fly fisherman, visionary. Born on May 31, 1930, in Chicoutimi, Que.; died on Jan., 3, 2015, in Quebec City, of pulmonary complications, aged 84.
Bernard Michel believed you make your own destiny, and twice proved his determination to do just that. The first fight of his life came when he was 20, when he overcame tuberculosis after a two-year stay at the sanatorium in Roberval, Que. His second fight for life came when he was 62, after a devastating heart attack left him in a coma with severe brain injury. As he recovered and rewired his brain to cope with the debilitating loss, he proved again, against all odds, that he was his own master.
At the sanatorium, he met Mariette Boivin, whom he married in 1954. They then set off for Grenoble, France, where he earned a postgraduate degree in hydraulics. His specialty, and his passion, was a somewhat unusual one – ice mechanics.
In 1955, he returned to Quebec with a first-born daughter, and a keen appetite for everything ice. He worked first in industry, before beginning to teach at Université Laval, where he became a full-time professor at 30.
As a civil engineering professor for the next 32 years, he influenced a generation of engineers and shared his passion with graduate students and colleagues, establishing groundbreaking principles and innovative applications in ice science. As his youngest child, I learned early on about all kinds of ice. Frazil ice, for example, forms in turbulent waters, accumulates to create ice jams, and contributes to flooding come spring melt. For Bernard's children, it was family tradition to chase ice dams and river breakup every spring.
At our family farm property near Saint-Raymond de Portneuf, he developed an extensive network of well-groomed trails, complete with sign names such as the Eagle's Nest Ascent. He also enrolled, in addition to his four reluctant sons, a company of Boy Scouts who planted 15,000 pine trees, part of an overall planting of more than 50,000 trees, now grown to maturity.
Bernard's professional life was filled with achievements and distinctions, including appointment in 1982 as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and being honoured with the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering's Casimir Gzowski, Camille A. Dagenais and Thomas C. Keefer awards. In 2001, the Canadian Geophysical Union created the Bernard Michel Award, recognizing his lifetime contribution to the field of ice science and engineering. His work took him around the world for conferences and research, including travelling to Lake Baikal in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Incredibly bright and industrious, Bernard was a man of vision and action. He invented and patented various ice structures for flood remediation, navigation and offshore activities. He met his passion for salmon fishing by improving designs for migratory runs, and even carried out ice-formation experiments at home.
He would develop his ideas as he paced our house, amid a cacophony of classical music, Hockey Night in Canada, and six energetic children. His achievements were always rooted in his positive outlook on life, in seeing opportunities even when disguised as adversity.
Christine Michel is Bernard's youngest daughter.