Yolles: A Canadian Engineering Legacy

James A. Love is a professor of architecture in the Faculty of
Environmental Design and an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering
at the University of Calgary. His latest publication is the Illuminating
Engineering Society’s Recommended Practice of

Morden Yolles is renowned in Canadian architectural circles for his
ability to carry engineering work beyond technical adequacy to esthetic
triumph. Within three years of receiving a degree in civil engineering
from the University of Toronto, he became a partner in and then
principal of a structural engineering practice. His firm’s projects
included many of the premier works of modern Canadian architecture that
are discussed by the authors: Toronto (now Pearson) International
Airport’s Terminal 1, which opened in 1964, the Canadian Pavilion at
Expo ’67, the Metro Toronto Zoo, and Trent University (Ron Thom was
the architect for the latter two).

The authors—Beth Kapusta, an architecture critic, and John McMinn, an
assistant professor at the University of Waterloo School of
Architecture—tell the story of those projects, of Morden Yolles, and
of his firm in relation to the postwar development of Canadian
architecture. Unlike many books about architecture, in which the
discussion remains at the visual level, this work explains the technical
approaches used to achieve the expressive intent of the architects.