The Daniels Faculty would like to extend its congratulations to Professor Emerita Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, who was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from McGill University in May and an achievement award from the Château Ramezay — Historic Site and Museum of Montréal, in collaboration with the Heritage Montreal Foundation, in April. An accomplished architect and educator, van Ginkel was Dean of the University of Toronto's faculty of architecture and landscape architecture from 1980 to 1982. She was the first woman to be appointed Dean of an architecture faculty in Canada.

Because she wasn't able to attend the ceremony in May, 2013, McGill's Faculty of Engineering presented van Ginkel with the honorary Doctor of Science on May 29, 2014.

From McGill's website:

In partnership with her late husband, Sandy. Blanche van Ginkel played a key role in preserving Old Montreal during the 1960s and courageously led the charge to protect the south slope of Mount Royal from urban developers. Later, the duo helped design Montreal’s Expo 67, the immensely successful international exhibition that came to symbolize Canada’s cultural effervescence in its centennial year. Her work at the Atelier Le Corbusier in Paris included the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, which is considered a masterpiece of European Modernism.

Château Ramezay and the Heritage Montreal Foundation honoured van Ginkel and nine other Montrealers who have "contributed to protecting, conserving, developing, and promoting Montreal's heritage." (Click here to download a PDF of the press release.) According to the selection committee, each of the recipients — which included Monique Barriault, Jean Bélisle, Georges Coulombe, Maurice Desnoyers, Sylvie Dufresne, Julia Gersovitz, Phyllis Lambert, Bruce McNiven, and Father Claude Turmel — "demonstrated an outstanding and long-standing commitment to the cause."

Above photo: Blanche Lemco van Ginkel pictured in 2010 with then-retiring Assistant Dean Komala Prabhakar, U of T President David Naylor, Dean Richard Sommer and five former Deans of U of T's Faculty of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Design, including: Anthony Eardley, Larry Wayne Richards, Jacob Spelt, George Baird, and Peter Wright.