Do you have any friends or family who are engineers or work for engineering companies? I got a summer job in an engineering firm the summer after high school through a friend of my mom's. It's the best way to get a job. Otherwise keep trying to talk to firms. You will probably only be doing administrative work, more like a glorified secretary, but be willing to do anything.

You wouldn't know them, very small firm in Alberta. Did some really cool forensic engineering sort of stuff. I mostly did administrative work but got to poke around a few car crashes and whatnot taking notes for the engineers. Also was trained to do some material testing.

Also, I highly doubt you have no connections whatsoever. The friend of my mom's was barely a friend, in fact it might have been a friend of a friend. She just sent an e-mail out to everybody she knew asking if they knew anybody, and that's how it happened.

I did co-op as well in Gr. 11 in a hospital. My co-op teacher helped me find that placement so I don't know if you've asked him/her first. If your teacher can't help you, I recommend firing off emails to any and every engineering firm you can find.

Most high school students who want to do research fire off over 300 emails to researchers for a job. You likely won't have to do that many, but you need to persevere. Write a standardized letter, attach your resume and send it off individually to people who you think are responsible for recruiting.

Many of these people are very busy and will quickly read your email and if they don't have a position they will delete it. I once tried sending personal tailored emails, but they took so much time to write, I only managed a dozen and got no responses. Then i took advice and just made it standardized and was able to send off 100 emails and I finally got responses.

Try architecture firms too, maybe. I got a placement at one and mostly did drawings on AutoCAD, so it's still relevant experience. I also did some things involving a bit more creativity, but the majority was various tasks on AutoCAD. My placement led to a job with an engineering firm that the architecture firm worked closely with. I worked there for about 7 months before heading off on a year abroad, but I got loads of experience throughout the whole process.

Even if you're not interested in Architecture, you could likely get some good connections there.