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The Hamilton and Region Chapter has a very large geographical area located in Southern Ontario between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The southern portion starts at the Canada – U.S. border along the Niagara River from Fort Erie to St. Catharines. Our Eastern border follows along Lake Ontario in a northerly direction through Grimsby, Hamilton and ending at the Oakville/Mississauga border. To the west, we follow the Lake Erie shoreline through Cayuga and Dunnville.

Within our location, there are various welding and metal fabrication companies from small custom fabrication, to boiler and pressure vessel shops, structural steel fabricators, wind tower manufacturers, rail car fabricators, integrated steel industry, ship repair and machine shops, completing a wide variety of alloy fabrications, rebuilding and repair.

Our chapter has been in existence for well over 40 years initially as CWS (Canadian Welding Society), then WIC (Welding Institute of Canada) and presently CWB Association.

Chapter Executives:

Ian Mehlenbacher- Chair
Don Hutt- Co-Chair
Franco Piccoli- Treasurer
Jonas Sykula- Highschool Liaison
Sam Gamble- Secretary
Mark Sitko- Vice Chair
Brian Smith- Industry Liaison
Jake Boekestyn- Industry Liaison
Yasser Elmasri- Industry Liaison

Our fiscal year for our meetings and events commences in October and concludes in April with our meetings scheduled for the first Wednesday of the month. We currently have six meetings per fiscal year and an annual golf tournament in June. These dinner meetings are held at the Burlington Holiday Inn and Conference Centre which is very convenient and centralized for the membership. We usually begin with a plant tour in October followed by topics and presenters selected by our members, or from our executive team, ensuring that we are continually providing the most recent up to date health and safety, process or productivity changes within our industry. At our November meeting, we issue safety supplies, consumables, and equipment to our local High School partners to assist them in the daily operation of their welding programs. The final dinner meeting of each year in April is reserved for our annual Industry/Education forum which consists of static industry displays along with the local High School displaying their projects. We also have students from the High Schools and Colleges complete presentations to our members along with speakers’ gifts and student awards for each participating High School.

The entry fee for all of our dinner meetings is $35.00 for members, $40.00 for non- members and $20.00 for students.Ìý