Hanes: Polytechnique scholarship has inspired engineering student to become an ambassador for women

When she stood in a crowded room high up on Polytechnique Montréal’s mountainside campus last summer, Ruby Sinclair knew that receiving the first-ever Claudette MacKay-Lassonde Excellence Scholarship for undergraduate women in engineering was a great honour that would go a long way in helping her achieve her goals.

What the 20-year-old finishing her third year of mechanical engineering at Queen’s University didn’t anticipate was everything else that has come along with the $25,000 award. In the last eight months, Sinclair has done speaking engagements and had people in high-level positions seek out her opinion. She has written a magazine article and made a network of contacts she has leveraged for the benefit of her fellow students.

“I’ve never felt that special in my life — ever. And the reason I felt that way was not because of the actual $25,000, which was definitely incredible. … It was more so that these really powerful and influential people believed in what I stand for,” said Sinclair, who describes her credo as engineering with empathy. “If there’s one takeaway from this, it’s that I just have so much credibility and recognition from receiving this.”

And she is using it to make a difference.

With applications now open for the next Claudette MacKay-Lassonde scholarship — which will be announced in June and given out at Polytechnique in August — Sinclair took a moment to offer her advice to a new crop of candidates while reflecting on a whirlwind year.

As soon as she got back to her Kingston, Ont., campus in the fall, she noticed how professors and students she had never met, industry players and dignitaries, started soliciting her views.

“They would ask my opinion on women and engineering and a lot of conversations about AI, involving technology. And that was very new to me,” Sinclair said. “It felt very empowering because being in a position where my opinion can have influence on the community and the people around me, that is something I’ve seen can have a really big impact.”

She also returned to her old high school to talk to Grade 11 and 12 students about opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math.

Ruby Sinclair teaches at a summer camp for young people at Polytechnique Montréal in August 2025. Allen McInnis / Montreal Gazette

“It was a full-circle moment,” Sinclair said. “I am that mentor for so many of the students now. I’m not that much older than them, but to see how I was able to come back and have that impact.”

Giving back and serving as a role model for others — especially girls and women in engineering — was one of the criteria for winning the prestigious prize.

The Claudette MacKay-Lassonde scholarship was established in the name of one of the first women to graduate from Polytechnique, who went on to become a fierce champion for other women in a male-dominated profession during her distinguished career.

After 14 women were killed by a misogynist gunman at her alma mater on Dec. 6, 1989, MacKay-Lassonde helped establish the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation to offer bursaries in memory of the victims.

MacKay-Lassonde died from cancer in 2000.

When the CEMF wound up its administration of the scholarship last year, the endowment was transferred to Polytechnique.

Funds MacKay-Lassonde helped raise three decades ago along with money from the Pierre Lassonde Family Foundation were combined to create a new scholarship for female undergraduate engineering students from across Canada to further her legacy.

Polytechnique has long made promoting and supporting women in engineering part of its mission to counter the gunman’s evil intent.

On the 25th anniversary of the massacre, Polytechnique inaugurated the Order of the White Rose, offering an annual bursary now worth $50,000 to female graduate students in engineering from across the country, and also creating a sisterhood among the laureates.

Last December, Polytechnique amassed the funds to expand the Order from one to 14 women a year in honour of the victims of the tragedy.

Valérie Bélisle, the vice-president of philanthropy and alumni relations at Polytechnique, said that while no one will ever forget the horror of the past, these initiatives seek to bring light that will guide future generations of engineers.

“We need more role models. We want to see more women in engineering. We want to have more female profs in engineering. We need to have a more diverse body of engineers in companies working on innovations if we want the innovations to represent more what society looks like,” Bélisle said. “It’s a true privilege to see how it’s flourishing and where it’s leading. And Ruby is such a fantastic ambassador.”

“We need to have a more diverse body of engineers in companies working on innovations if we want the innovations to represent more what society looks like,” says Valérie Bélisle, seen at the Claudette MacKay-Lassonde Pavilion at Polytechnique Montréal on Feb. 4, 2025. Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

Sinclair is incarnating this hope. She spoke at the Queen’s Women in Applied Science and Engineering conference alongside industry leaders including Annette Bergeron, a past president of Professional Engineers Ontario, an organization MacKay-Lassonde once headed herself, sparking an instant connection.

Sinclair also gave an address at the Dec. 6 commemoration at Queen’s where she spoke about the responsibility not only to remember, but to act to fix inequality.

She penned an article for Maclean’s annual higher education edition — her first foray into journalism — on the pressure cooker of the high-stakes engineering school admissions culture at Canadian universities, which she said generated a widespread response.

“I have that in my room now framed, which is amazing. But what was incredible about that is that I’m someone who’s always loved to advocate and wanted to advocate but have struggled to have my voice be heard,” she said. “My voice has really been heard this year.”

Sinclair has also weighed in on how the engineering profession can attract and retain more women through mentorship, instilling egalitarian attitudes from the first year of studies, and offering more generous maternity leave benefits in the industry to minimize the penalties many female engineers’ careers suffer if they become mothers.

For Sinclair, it’s discouraging that only about 15 per cent of engineers in this country are women, despite a goal of 30 per cent by 2030 set by Engineers Canada. But it’s something that she wants to help change.

On top of her schoolwork, Sinclair served as chief technical officer for the Queen’s biomedical innovation team this past year and will present one of its designs at a competition in Vancouver in May. The group of 150 students — 57 per cent of them women — worked on three major projects: a prosthetic arm; an iodine-deficiency diagnostic tool that uses a microfluidity chip; and an optics-based apparatus for detecting jaundice.

“The beauty of this team and what I got to do on this team was help connect students to a broader network,” Sinclair said. “And having the credibility and momentum from the Polytechnique community really allowed me to leverage that network, so it wasn’t only a benefit for me, but a benefit for so many other students around me.”

This summer, Sinclair will complete a 10-week internship at consulting firm McKinsey & Company in Toronto before returning to Queen’s for her fourth year and looking into graduate schools. She will also volunteer as art chair for the Queen’s science formal, a year-end prom-like event for engineering students, a position that will reconnect her with her passion for drawing and painting.

Her advice to applicants for the next Claudette MacKay-Lassonde scholarship — who have until April 22 to submit — is to not be afraid to be unconventional.

“It is better to be memorable than to be perfect — and this is a universal piece of advice that I follow for every single opportunity that has come my way,” Sinclair said. “People are going to love you for what you’re strong at, what you bring to the table and what makes you shine.”

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