Czeslaw Brzozowicz

Who was Czeslaw Brzozowicz?

Czeslaw Peter Brzozowicz was a consulting engineer for the CN Tower, Toronto-Dominion Centre, first Toronto subway line, among many other Canadian construction projects.

Brzozowicz was a structural engineer and visionary who brought sound engineering practices to a young nation not yet known for its building environment. Like many newcomers, he arrived in Canada with a few dollars, his professional training and an inexhaustible appetite for work.

Brzozowicz graduated in civil engineering from the University of Lwow in Poland only months before the Nazi invasion. He served with the Polish army in Poland and France for three years before obtaining a Canadian visa in 1942 under an agreement with the government-in-exile to send engineers for Canada's war industries. His first job was as a surveyor, laying out the highway between Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia. In 1944, Brzozowicz joined Marathon Paper Mills in Toronto, designing their Northern Ontario plants. At the close of the war, sensing Canada was set to boom, he launched a private practice as a consulting engineer. His first client was Canadian Breweries Ltd., whose heady expansion plans - typical for the time - called for several reinforced concrete structures in Toronto, Waterloo, Windsor and Montreal.