The 29th Annual Inorganic Discussion Weekend (IDW) was held at the Department of Chemistry, McGill University in the heart of downtown Montréal, QC, from Friday, November 1 to Sunday, November 3, 1996. Approximately 230 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members from Carleton University, Concordia University, Dartmouth College, Lakehead University, McGill University, McMaster University, National Research Council (Ottawa), Queen's University, University of Guelph, Université de Montréal, Université du Quebec à Montréal, University of New Brunswick, University of Ottawa, Université de Sherbrooke, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario, University of Windsor, and York University participated in this weekend extravaganza. The Conference opened with a mixer on Friday, where everybody enjoyed the beverages, including the most famous one from our local brewery, The End of the World.

    The oral presentations on Saturday began with a Plenary Lecture by Robert G. Bergman (University of California, Berkeley, CA) entitled 'Metal-Mediated Carbon-Oxygen and Carbon-Nitrogen Bond-Forming Reactions'. The latter was followed by 44 oral presentations on Saturday and Sunday in two parallel sessions. The poster session on Saturday evening attracted 110 presentations, and it was fun to discuss chemistry in an informal atmosphere.

    The traditional Saturday night conference banquet was held at the Faculty Club, a favourite hangout place for McGill professors. The Best Oral Presentation awards went to graduate students, Rania Dghaym (McGill University), Ralph Ruffolo, MCIC (Queen's University), and M. J. Duncan (University of Waterloo). The Best Poster Presentation awards were received by graduate students Philippa Lock, MCIC (McMaster University) and Zhen Pang (University of Toronto).

  We owe the overwhelming success of this Conference to our graduate students and especially to those at McGill. I would like to thank the following for their tireless efforts to make the 29th IDW a memorable event: Rania Dghaym, Heather Gass, Virginie Guillemette, Maria Petrucci MCIC, Russell Tuling ACIC, and Stephanie Warner. We wouldn't have pulled it off without the financial support of the following at McGill: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, Dean - Faculty of Science, and the Principal. Our corporate sponsors included Innovative Technology, Fisher Scientific, Perkin-Elmer (Canada) Ltd.

    The 29th IDW was a Conference that will remain in our memories for a while, and we are looking forward to the 30th IDW which is scheduled to be held at the University of Toronto.

Ashok Kakkar, MCIC
 
 

Canadian Chemical News/L'Actualité chimique canadienne -, February 1997, p.43
{Reproduced, amended, with permission of the copyright owner}