Allison Hanes: Polytechnique honouree making her mark in climate fight

At 23, Sophia Roy is this year's "exceptional" addition to the prestigious club of female engineers known as the Order of the White Rose.

Sophia Roy is not only deeply concerned about the climate crisis, the 23-year-old is already well on her way to making a difference in the fight to save the planet.

She is on an accelerated path to a doctorate at Polytechnique Montréal, where her research subject is decarbonizing the energy-intensive process for making steel, responsible for a whopping 10 per cent of worldwide CO2 emissions.

While an undergraduate at McGill University, Roy studied how to reduce the ecological footprint of manufacturing solar panels and published an article in the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering.

If the Quebec government scrapped plans for a controversial liquefied natural gas terminal in the Saguenay, environmentalists may have Roy to thank in part. As an intern working for the provincial Environment Department, she helped develop an emissions calculator to more simply explain the project’s potential impact that caught the attention of the minister.

And to pass along her passion for science, she put on virtual experiments for young kids who missed out on class during the pandemic, tutored her peers and organized events with female engineers for students in her faculty.

For these accomplishments and her enormous potential — deemed “rare” for someone her age and “exceptional” by Michèle Prévost, president of the jury — Roy was inducted into the Order of the White Rose on Monday. She was awarded a $30,000 bursary created in memory of the 14 women who were murdered during the femicide at Polytechnique on Dec. 6, 1989, at an emotional ceremony that aims to bring light from the depths of darkness and defy the misogynist intent of the gunman.

Established in 2014 on the 25th anniversary of the massacre, the honour is bestowed on a young woman who exemplifies the same extraordinary qualities as the 14 victims, who were blazing their own trail in a male-dominated profession when they were killed.

“I want to share my optimism as part of this next generation of engineers, to help develop solutions to the climate crisis, but I think it’s important as well to emphasize that it’s not just technology that will fix everything,” Roy said in an interview. “There’s also the social and political dimension that’s important to resolving the crisis. Everyone within their own discipline has to do their part and can have an impact.”

Beyond the prestige, recipients of the Order of the White Rose join a powerful sisterhood. This includes the previous winners (Roy is the eighth), as well as Nathalie Provost and Michèle Thibodeau-DeGuire — survivors of the shooting who are the de facto godmothers of this tight-knit group.

“We have faith in you. We’re persuaded that you have the courage and the capacity to realize your dreams,” said Provost, who on Sunday showed Roy the room where she was shot.

Thibodeau-DeGuire, who hid under her desk that night, said it is now “a privilege to take part in a joyous event.”

Édith Ducharme, the 2019 recipient, played piano at the ceremony.

Joining the Order also means carrying the torch for those whose hopes and dreams were cruelly extinguished 33 years ago: Geneviève Bergeron; Hélène Colgan; Nathalie Croteau; Barbara Daigneault; Anne-Marie Edward; Maud Haviernick; Barbara-Maria Klucznik-Widajewicz; Maryse Laganière; Maryse Leclair; Anne-Marie Lemay; Sonia Pelletier; Michèle Richard; Annie St-Arneault; and Annie Turcotte.

Roy is conscious of this responsibility.

“We have a duty to remember what happened, but our mission as well is to turn toward the future and encourage new young women to pursue their ambitions and reach for their dreams,” she said. “I think that’s the message of the tragedy for new generations of students.”

Roy may only be 23, but she grew up aware of the shooting that occurred a decade before her birth. Her own mother was in the process of applying to engineering at Polytechnique when the femicide occurred. Though shocked and horrified, the events made Nathalie Sioris that much more determined to pursue her studies.

And when she had her daughter, she not only instilled in her a love of science from a very young age, but talked to her about the tragedy.

“Every year, when we hear about it on TV, it was an opportunity to talk about the events,” Sioris said. “It raises a lot of questions, like ‘Why those women? Why them when all they were doing was going to school, studying in engineering?’ It was an opening to have a lot of discussions about society.”

As her daughter is awarded the Order of the White Rose, Sioris said it’s like everything has come full circle.

“It makes it that much more significant,” she said. “It adds a whole other dimension. I’m proud, but I’m also deeply touched by this. It’s very emotional.”

Roy said her mother, an industrial engineer, is her main role model, helping her to forge a path in their shared field at their shared alma mater.

“Her message was really: live your dreams, don’t be afraid to go,” said Roy. “It was really a positive message and certainly it’s something I think about a lot. It motivated me to go into engineering. It’s something we all think about at Poly, when I talk to other women who study there, we often think of the women who died, even if we weren’t born at the time. It’s just part of the mentality.”

While the Order of the White Rose focuses on securing the place of women in engineering, Roy said diversity writ large is essential to a profession where solutions come from examining problems from all angles.

“Diversity is really important in engineering, not just women, but minorities from different backgrounds as well. So my message is really that everyone in society has their place in engineering if they want to have a positive impact on society.”

ahanes@postmedia.com

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