Find 63 www.Wednesday-Night.com pages citing John Jonas

2007

Wed1305 7 Mar 2007 Tributes to David and Diana on this auspicious event [25th year] were read from Governor-General Michaelle Jean , as well as Jean Charest and Stéphane Dion—both of whom have attended Wednesday Nights—as well as other luminaries. inc JJJoans

2003 GHENT NEWSLETTER

With the arrival of the New Year and the realization that John and I are soon reaching the midway point (unbelievably) of our Ghent stay, I am resolved to send to our e-mail family and friends a brief account of our life here.

October was inevitably a period of setting ourselves up for our 8-month sojourn in Europe, raising our comfort level in our modest, minimalist apartment, adapting to our new environment, and learning to get around our medieval, canal-filled town. This for me meant largely using the little trams that maneuver around the city core, with John using the Volvo to reach his university office on the edge of town. The fully leaved trees and parks made our surroundings look very attractive, in spite of the inevitable damp and gray skies. Jumping to December, this month was concentrated on preparing for Christmas and for the arrival of three of our children along with two grandchildren and daddy Leonard. (We did not score Jeremy this time.) Jodie and Jonathan came in through Amsterdam and had a little Ghent time with us, whereas Jennifer and family flew into Geneva to meet up with us for a ski week in the French Alps (Les Trois Vallées & Meribel) over Christmas.

It is the month of November I now want to talk about! A month that I usually dread, I have never passed through that month so painlessly! In spite of intensifying gray and damp weather, it is to the credit of the Belgians and their deliberate approach to that point in the fall season that the month seems to speed by. How? Almost every weekend is transformed into a “long weekend”. November 11th, Armistice Day, commemorating the victims of both World Wars, provided us with the long weekend that enabled us to visit Alan Held in Switzerland. The Belgian tradition of honoring various saints days caused us to be able to travel to Metz and Aachen (former sabbatical homes), kicking off with All Saints Day on Nov. 1st, followed by the patron saint of universities, the Saint of Metallurgy (!!) Saint Helier, not to mention the addition of Saint Nicholas Day on Dec. 6th, when Belgian children receive their Santa gifts. Our Canadian non-observance of saint days sure robs us of a lot of holidays!

Magical moments? I’d have to include sighting Jodie through the Amsterdam Airport glass at her baggage carousel and her smiling return wave (and ditto for Jonathan the following day), blowing soap bubbles with my two grandchildren on Christmas day, joining the adult skiers of my family at a mountaintop restaurant for lunch, encircled by 360 degrees of top-of-the-world mountain summits (still innocent of the fact that in my descent I would be trapped for one hour in my cable car because of high winds!), re-visiting with Jonathan his hospital of birth in Metz and positioning ourselves back on the second floor at the door where Jono passed his first week of life with me and hearing the cries of newborns all down the corridor, our New Year’s Eve dinner at a canalside restaurant with hundreds of years of history and witnessing the midnight fireworks launched from the nearby Kornmarkt. And, of course, all our visits to Brugge.

In closing, I should add that John and I are faithfully training at a very nice Fitness Centre (John is in the Perfect Butt program so that he can watch all the girls!) and also that we have just learned that my book featuring Canadian choral conductors has been honored by the Conseil Quebecois de la Musique by shortlisting it for the BOOK OF THE YEAR category. We both wish you all the best for 2003 and thank all those loyal souls who sent us Christmas cards in good faith in spite of not knowing for sure where we were.

Love, Holly and John

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Order of Wednesday Night II - John and Holly Jonas

The spotlight then turned on John and Holly Jonas. David Nicholson thanked them for their many contributions to Wednesday Night, in recognition of which they have been awarded the Order of Wednesday Night (OWN). John and Holly leave on September 30 for Ghent in Belgium, where John will be on a Franke Fellowship until May 2003 – they will return to Montreal on May 31st. All those present wished John and Holly all the best for their stay in Europe. Mike Fox was then asked to put on his BCC hat and interview John. He asked about John’s Order of Quebec, Order of Canada, the Humboldt and Franke awards and what John has contributed in the area of steel. John replied that steel is important to Canada and more important as a fraction of the GDP than it is in the States. Canada has the raw materials needed and the energy to convert the ore to steel. Steel is used in bridges, roads, railways, buildings and many other applications. Steel is inexpensive at about 25 cents a pounds. Aluminum and other metals are much more expensive as they require much more electricity to be refined.

When asked why he got into metallurgy, the first part of answer was that John enjoyed playing with toys such as Mechano - the predecessor to Lego. The second reason was that he was poor at drawing! In most engineering disciplines, there was a requirement for drafting and a steady hand to draw bridges and gears, but not in metallurgy.

Mike asked what specific contributions John had made. While there were a number of patents resulting from his work, most of the improvements were incremental in nature.

Since the Second World War steel has become twice as strong and weighs less. Would a Third World War make any further changes? Steel is used in guns, tanks, and boats. There is good engineering and bad engineering, but how the engineering is used is left to the leaders and politicians.

Holly was asked about her background. She said she was five years old when she first came to Westmount. Her father, Ben Higgins, a renowned economist, held the Bronfman Chair at McGill.

Thursday Sep 26, 2002

'Man of Steel' John Jonas bestowed Wednesday Night award
By Martin C. Barry

McGill professor John Jonas, sometimes referred to as the 'Man of Steel' because of his world-wide reputation as a steel expert, is leaving his home in Westmount for eight months to teach in Belgium.

But before his departure, Dr. Jonas has become the second inductee to the Order of Wednesday Night for his contribution to the weekly salons hosted by David and Diana Nicholson of Rosemount Avenue. Besides Dr. Jonas, only former Westmount Mayor Peter Trent is a member of the Order.

"We felt this was a very worthwhile thing to do for people who have been beneficial to Wednesday Night-who have first of all been loyal supporters, and second, more important perhaps, who have brought some wisdom to the table," said David Nicholson.

In an interview at the Nicholson home last Wednesday, Dr. Jonas explained that he will be travelling to Ghent in October with his wife, Holly.

A member of McGill's mining and metallurgy department for the past 43 years, Jonas will be teaching at three universities until June next year. Holly Jonas, author of the acclaimed book 'Canadian Choral Conductors: In Their Own Words,' published last year, will be pursuing interests related to her own work.

Dr. Jonas is known internationally for ground-breaking studies that he and students and colleagues carried out at McGill on hot rolling behaviour of metals. Their work resulted in major improvements in the understanding of the softening processes involved in steel processing, which led to more accurate computer models for the control of industrial rolling mills.

Dr. Jonas and his colleagues were granted five sets of patents associated with steel rolling, three of which have been assigned to the sponsoring companies. He has previously served as a visiting professor in several countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, the U.S.A. and the former U.S.S.R.

During last week's conversation, Dr. Jonas revealed some interesting facts about steel. While he admitted that Canada's economy (based largely on raw materials) is not as advanced as that of the United States, Jonas pointed out that steel remains important to this country.

"The steel industry in any country is very basic to industrial development and construction of roads, housing, bridges, cars, ships, railways," he said.

Dr. Jonas also pointed out that steel is dirt cheap because it's based on iron which is the third most common element under the earth's surface. "If you go to the garden centre and try and buy earth for your garden, it'll cost you more per pound than if you buy steel," he said. "You can buy steel for 25 cents a pound."

According to Dr. Jonas, the steel produced today is nearly twice as strong as the steel of 30 years ago. With that in mind, he was asked whether the outcome of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City would have been different if the World Trade Centre had been built today of stronger steel.

It wouldn't have a chance, he said. "When steel is red hot, it's a tenth as strong as when it's cold," said Jonas. He added, however, that the outcome might be different today for another reason. "What they would do today is put much more fireproofing around (the steel)," he said.

1995 Prix Marie-Victorin

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The Prix Marie-Victorin is an award by the Government of Quebec that is part of the Prix du Québec, which "goes to researchers in the pure and applied sciences whose work lies in fields outside biomedicine. These fields include the natural and physical sciences, engineering, and technology, and the agricultural sciences". [1] It is named in honour of Marie Victorin.

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Dr. John J. Jonas was born in Montreal and graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical Engineering in 1954. He later attended Cambridge University on an Athlone Fellowship and received a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Sciences in 1960. On returning to Montreal, he began teaching “mechanical metallurgy” at McGill and built up a research laboratory that includes a number of specialized testing machines and is particularly well equipped for experimental investigations in the field of high temperature deformation.

Dr. Jonas is known internationally for the ground breaking studies that he and his students and colleagues have carried out at McGill on the hot rolling behaviour of metals. Their work has resulted in major improvements in the understanding of the softening processes involved in steel processing; these have led to more accurate computer models for the control of industrial rolling mills. They have published over five hundred technical papers dealing with the scientific and engineering aspects of metal shaping and forming. They have received numerous awards for this work, including the Réaumur and Gold Medals of the French Metallurgical Society, the Hatchett Medal and Award of the Metals Society (U.K.), the Dofasco and Alcan Awards of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the Gold Medal of the Canadian Metal Physics Association, the Michael Tenenbaum Award of the American Institute of Metallurgical Engineers, the Hunt Silver Medal of the US Iron and Steel Society, the Barrett Silver Medal of the American Society for Metals, the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (Germany), and the Sawamura Award of the Iron and Steel Institute of Japan. Professor Jonas has been elected a Fellow of the American Society for Metals, the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

He is an Honorary Member of the Iron and Steel Institute of Japan and of the Indian Institute of Metals. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1993, a Chevalier of the Order of Quebec in 2000, and received the Quebec prize for science (Prix du Québec - Marie Victorin) in 1995. He has served as a visiting professor in a number of countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Mexico, South Africa, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.

In 1985, Dr. Jonas was appointed to the CSIRA/NSERC Chair of Steel Processing at McGill, a position which was funded jointly by the Canadian Steel Industry Research Association and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. In this capacity, he worked closely with the Canadian steel industry, and collaborated in the solution of a number of important processing problems. Dr. Jonas also holds the Birks Chair of Metallurgy and is Co-Director of the McGill Metals Processing Centre. He and his colleagues have been granted five sets of international patents associated with steel rolling, three of which have been assigned to the sponsoring companies.

Professor Jonas served on the Quebec Science Council (Conseil de la science et de la technologie) from 1987 to 1990, and as Chairman of the AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited) R&D Advisory Panel in 1992 and 1993.

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