Photo ©Gary Tramontina. Photo courtesy ASCE.

Our canoe is better than yours: Montreal's École de technologie supérieure came second, besting 20 other teams in the ASCE concrete canoe competition.

After three days of intense competition, two Quebec universities shone in a North American concrete canoe competition. At the American Society of Civil Engineers' (ASCE's) 22^nd Annual National Concrete Canoe Competition, Montreal's École de technologie supérieure (ETS) proved their 86-kg (190-lb), 6-m (20-ft) canoe was worthy of second place, with Quebec City's Université Laval coming in seventh. University of Californiaâ??Berkeley was the top winner.

Held last month at Lake Nicol (Tuscaloosa, Ala.), the competition hosted 22 teams of engineering students from Canada and the United States. The canoe races—both for endurance and speed—accounted for only 25 per cent of teams' overall score. The remaining 75 per cent came from:
• a technical design paper on the canoe's development and construction;
• a formal oral presentation; and
• project display of the end product.

In addition to claiming second place, ETS won one of two special awards—the team was honoured with the Tony P. Chrest Innovation Award for its superior and creative use of technology and materials in canoe construction.

Photo courtesy ASCE

Université Laval unloads their canoe in preparation for the competition. The team won seventh place.