 Okay, so here we go. So we're beginning the interview with Mr. Barry Strathie, and we are currently in Burlington, Ontario, and the interviewer, as usual, will be William McRae. So here we go. So could you please state your full name? Barry Anderson Strathie. And what year were you born? 1932. 1932. And where were you born? Toronto. Now, town? No, in the north end, what was sort of the blue-collar area in the north end of Toronto. And my parents lived there for good many years, and I went to school down the street from where I lived, and the public school, and I went to Lawrence Park, collegiate. And what did your parents do when you were a child, before living? Well, my father originally was a farmer from Scotland, and he came up to Canada. My mother was from the north of Ireland, you know, she was in hers. And they rented the house next door to my grandmother and her family, and I came along later on, and that's it. So he came here as a farmer still? He came up with his family as a farmer back in 1912, I guess. But he worked as a mechanic for a tea-eating company, repairing the escalators and the elevators. And he was there for good many years and retired from there at 65, and he passed away when he was 71. My mother was a stay-at-home wife, who I'd say, for the most days. There weren't many people, women that went out and worked. They looked after the household. But I have two sisters, and the three of us went to the same public school and mostly to the same high school. And then I went on to U of T with my sister, older. And I was trying to think of why I ever got involved in the method. I was more of a farmer. Okay. Even if your dad had switched to more of the mechanical escalators, elevators, you were still into farming? Well, I was more interested in that than the Eaton's escalators. My parents had a close friend who had a farm, which is now in the nearby Stouffville, North of Toronto. And that was sort of the long trip to drive up there to the farm. But we went most often in the weekends, and I spent a lot of my summers on their farm, which I enjoyed very much at the dairy farm. Okay. You got to milk the cows? Yeah, and I also got to ride the horses, and that was my main interest. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a jockey. Oh, yeah? Somehow it didn't work. I think it was a tough line of work. Yeah, and then the next thing was an RCMP, you know, the mountain. So you were all into the horses? Yeah, when I was that age. But during high school, I began to have an interest in physics and chemistry and sort of math, but physics and chemistry were my two main interests and subjects. When I finished high school, to choose what university I wanted to, and mainly if I got good enough marks, I would go to Toronto if I didn't choose another university around, but I managed to get into U of T. Into what exactly? I went into metallurgy. Right away? Yeah, because you chose your discipline right at the start. If you were into physics and chemistry, why specifically metallurgy, not engineering? Well, metallurgy was an electrical engineer. But why not civil? Well, because I was more interested in physics and chemistry than I was in building houses and roads and so on. But I went on in metallurgy and it was interesting. I enjoyed it as one of the courses or disciplines and I had no qualms about that. I spent most of my summers working in for Incoe and Falcon Bridge, across in B.C. So I had good summer experience in the mining area. So I found no reason to leave that. But when I graduated, I did quite well, but I got tired of the technical things. So I chose a job without the skill in their purchasing department. Not really technical, but they wanted somebody who could calculate the values in the scrap that they purchased. And things like that. So I worked at Alisteele. But that was my first physical job. But I quickly realized that I spent most of my time in the purchasing department buying brooms and dust bane and things like that and not much scrap. Which is a good thing because afterwards I realized that scrap was a difficult thing to buy itself. And there was a lot of under the counter business going on. So I went back to school. I had a chance to go back and do postgraduate work, which I did with Professor Ross, Harry Ross. And I was focusing mainly on the steel industry. That was his interest. And he sort of pokes me into doing a project from my master's. Master's, yeah. On the steel area, which I did. And then after that, the head of the department had a Lord Pigeon, Dr. Pigeon. And his background was magnesium, extracted magnesium. And he convinced me that I should be in the nonferus industry. So that's where I did my PhD. I was in the industry under Dr. Pigeon. In the nonferus. In the nonferus. And looking back, what do you prefer? Well, I like both of them. But probably I chose the ferrous andes things. Because after I finished my PhD and was writing up my thesis, I was approached by a fellow I knew who graduated a year before me. I got his bachelor's a year before I did. Or after I did, sorry. And he was working for DeFascale. And they had a problem with what is called the zits. And zits were little defects that occurred on the surface of tin plate. And of course, if you had those little defects in there, they were a source or an area where corrosion would take place in tin cans. So I went out and tried to help them there. Really, they didn't know what the zit was. It was a non-metallic inclusion in the steel. And I did some analysis with an X-ray machine, which I used for my graduate work. And so I wrote a report for them and identified what the inclusion was. And they hired me before they asked me to come and work for them. And I didn't mind working in Hamilton. I had met my wife at both days. And so she lived in Toronto. She was also from Toronto? Yes, she was from Toronto. We met at the university. And so I was around that area and I worked for DeFascale. And I started there in December of 1969. And I worked in the research department, which was only about three people. And it was John McMulcan, who was my boss there. And so I worked for him. And I did mainly work on identifying this zit, this non-metallic inclusion, and where they occurred and how and where and what could be done to reduce them out. And so that was really the start of my work with DeFascale. Did you solve it? Yes, we did identify it. I mean, it didn't eliminate it, but we reduced it a great deal. But I was the first one that had a postgraduate degree, well, a PhD anyway. In all of DeFascale? Yeah, I think I was the only one at that time, because most of them were the engineers they had, just a basic degree. And most of the employees were from people who had grown up as almost teenagers. They started at DeFascale. But there were some things that I really liked at DeFascale, it was a non-union shop. And so that was very good, because I'll probably get around to discussing it a little more than a couple of years later, but I enjoyed the fact that I could go up in my plant. My research lab was really the plant, because we didn't have a research department at that time. We just had a couple of engineers and me, and that was about it. And my lab was the plant, which worked out quite well really in the long term. It worked with DeFascale for two and a half years. What was your job title then? Well, I was a research engineer in the department, first of all. And when I retired from DeFascale, I quit DeFascale because my wife and I got married in 1962. And it was time to see the world before we settled down with kids. Good idea. And so I got a job at UCNR in France. And I had made a contact with a friend, and Dr. Etienne Speer, who was a consultant for Canadian liquid air in Montreal. And he came in and he was doing some work on porous plugs, which I got involved with. Did you work with Bob Lee? Yes, I involved very well. And I interviewed Bob Lee. I did. I did. Nice guy. Yeah, nice guy. Well, we fell off quite well. Because I installed the first porous plug in a steel-making ladle at DeFascale. And he probably discussed that with you. And there's a picture of us in one of the magazines of Bob Lee and me in the bottom of the ladle. One of the steel-making ladles there. What magazine? I took it with a CIN magazine. Okay. One of them. Bob didn't give you a picture? None of that, no. Maybe I'll ask him. Well, the two of us were in the bottom of one of these ladles down somebody with a camera peered down and took our picture. But that was originally invented by Jim Spear. But Bob Lee was really the guy that did most of the work and the practical kind of things. Yes. And so we got along quite well with him. And he had his boss with Guy Savard. You're here for Guy Grishan. Yeah, welcome. Yeah. Well, I knew him quite well then because we did a lot of work on porous plugs and actually DeFasco was the first North American plant that had used oxygen in steel-making. And that started in Hamilton. And so it had the oxygen came from the area of the queen, Canadian liquid area, the area of the queen. And so we knew the people from the company. Okay, so you worked a lot with that company, DeFasco, didn't you? Yeah. That's what you couldn't make the oxygen in steel without cheap oxygen. And that was why the Bessemer was successful in using air. But if you wanted to make better quality steel, you really needed bulk oxygen. And they could supply it. So when you worked with Bob Lee and Sana, were you working with DeFasco again? Yes. Or with liquid air? No, with DeFasco. Okay. So you started working with him again? Well, sorry. I didn't work with Canadian liquid air mainly right after I came back from France. Okay. I went to France with my wife and through the contact I had with Etienne Speer. Okay. And he introduced me to, we took a loan which was a director of using oil. And so he gave me a job working at the steel plant in Genève. I was in the metallurgical department there. And it was mainly to find out how they made steel and learn a bit of French language. And so it was an opportunity then to see the north of France, which is not the site, the scenic part. It was the industrial part of France. But it was close to the Belgian border and so we could travel across there and see that part of the country. You could go anywhere? Yeah, we could go around Europe. And I had a sister who was a French teacher at that time. And she taught just outside Paris at Louisian. There was a Canadian services at a school there for the Canadians. And my sister was a teacher in that school. And so when I first went to France, we stayed with she and an apartment at Louisian. And it was handy to stay there until I got settled in Genève, the north of France. And that gave us an opportunity to see quite a lot of France, particularly Paris. And I made a lot of friends with their engineers in that and I worked with them in the metallurgical department in Louisian. So it was a learning period technically and also to see a bit of the country and also to learn a bit of the language, a lot of the language. Although I forgot most of now unfortunately. But my wife and I decided that we'd better have a family and my wife didn't really want it in France. So we decided we'd come back to Canada. So how long did you work in France? We were there for just under a year. Okay. And when I was there, John McMulcon, who was my boss at the festival, came over and asked if I could join him for two days and he was going to Luxembourg to visit Arbet, a steel-making facility there in Luxembourg. What's their name, sir? Arbet, I don't know if it stands for... ERBED. And it was a big steel-making organization there in that part of Europe, in Luxembourg and in Belgium. And so I was just there as a visit later on when I came back to the festival. I had more contacts with that company. But when I was there with John McMulcon, I met a few of the people there and his wife was there and my wife was there so we spent some time traveling around. They were out of car at that time and so John and Mark came with Nightingale and me and we went around and did a little bit of touring there. And of course he asked if I could come back to the festival and when we had finally made a decision that we were going to go back to Canada, I guess the fact that we sort of went out was the job that we were going to go back to, or I was going to go back to. And at the end of the year, we came back to Canada and I started back with the festival. I got started there in November of 1993. So I went back there and I was involved with the technical jobs there and mainly to expand the department. And that's where you started working with Alley Kid. Well, yeah, I had no idea. I bet before then. I can't remember exactly when I first met Bob Lee or B. Savard or that, whether it was before or after. But at least I knew them for a good many years and we had a lot of contacts. And when did you install the first... Force plug. Force plug in the... Oh, I can't remember right now. It was probably... Approximately? Oh, I would say in 1964. Around three or four early in that. And you said that was the first in Canada at FASCO? Yeah, it was the first force plug-in and major steel facility in Canada. And by that time we had a little research around the FASCO in the back of the template storage. And we had induction furnace there so we could make small pots of liquid steel and put small force plugs in the bottom and bubble argon up through it and see what effect would be before we put them in ladles of 100 times the number of steel. And then we finally did it at FASCO in the steel making plant, the old number one melt shop. And so we had force plugs there from that on at the FASCO. And it worked out as a good way of stirring molten steel. Because when you pour the steel in the ladle, quite often there will be segregation and things like that. Segregation of chemistry and segregation of temperature. And both were critical to the quality of the steel. It was a good step forward for FASCO. Well, not many people were anxious to put force plugs in the bottom of the ladle. But people thought, well, I'll go with steel. I've actually tried one. But somehow they didn't put it in properly and it leaked through and they had a hole in the bottom of the ladle of steel. Which that stopped them from making one again. Because that's what Bobby was telling me is that he got a lot of adversity when he first tried the idea to even make a force plug in. People were like, no, we don't make bricks with holes in them, right? Yeah. Yeah, that was one of the problems that I had. It's like Bobby was trying to convince the operating people to just make some changes. Yeah, or you just change. Yeah, they didn't want to change. However, I managed to work with them and get some things done over the years that I've worked with to FASCO Research. And I made some notes. I don't know what they're... It's basically the type of work that I was involved with in the department, the research department, not just my department. There were others in the department that worked for John McMulcon. And my main area was iron-making and steel-making and the things. And so as the... Should we just stop for a moment? I came back from France and back to work with the FASCO. And so there I was really... I went back to the FASCO because I really appreciated the way in which the people there worked. They had a very good, sort of like a family relationship with all the employees. They had no union, which was a big advantage because you didn't have such a difficult time getting changes introduced into the company. You weren't arguing on costs and things like that. And the people in the plant were far more willing to try things, which is something that I learned the first time I was working for the FASCO. And when I came back, I appreciated it a lot more just that the people there had a much better attitude and willingness to do different things. And that made my job a lot easier because that's really... When I came back, I was a manager of applied research. And applied research was just finding all the new technologies and information and processes and so on and see if they could be adapted at the FASCO. So my job then with the FASCO encountered that. I got to visit companies all around most of the world. That'd be an incredibly interesting job. It was. I enjoyed that. And of course the fellows I worked with came with me. So it was a very, I think a profitable sort of approach to FASCO's improvements. And the... So I was trying to think if you looked at the area that I was in was... I liked the steelmaking best. And I knew the people in the steelmaking best of all the divisions at FASCO. Next was the iron making. And I did quite a bit of work there and I knew them fairly well. And they were also very cooperative people. Took me a while before I got used to the people in the rolling mills. Hot rolling and cold rolling that meant. And the finishing end. And... But when I first came back to the FASCO I focused on the ironmaking and steelmaking because they were closely sort of tied together. And I had to involve both of them to try and improve the or minimize the cost and increase the quality of the product. We downed the line because a lot of the defects in that originated in the ironmaking, steelmaking, anything. And so that was where I was involved mainly for the next few years. And I visited steel plants and blast furnace divisions. And I also spent a lot of time in universities and research. And the plants and that. I think the first one in the lab was Bezra and Swansea and Wales. And at the also at Sheffield in the middle part of England and got to know quite a few of the people there what they were doing. And it was very useful that you had somebody you could discuss things with. Another reason why I like the steel industry is that it was very open. They didn't hide secrets. The non-fairness. You know, Inco and Falcon Bridge really didn't cooperate that well. Even though they were quite they produced the same metal and things like that they were secretive in their information how they passed it on. Which I don't blame them on, but I found it a little more difficult. And more easily at DeFasco because they talked to other competitors all around. I mean, I know John McCabe way back. Yeah, at Stelco and a lot of the fellas there that I knew Roy Littlewood and some of the fellas that Do you know Jerry Heffernan? You can't meet him Yeah, I met him a few times in that. But I didn't know him well. But I met him really at seminars and discussions at the university and that. But they but again the people that I dealt with were quite open and threw up the steel industry. And I was I've been into most of the labs for steel and and other places. There's more community less of competition. Yeah. You told each other what you did and how you did it. I mean you differed and there are a lot of reasons why you didn't operate quite the same way. But at least you had some idea of why you did it that way and why you did it another way. So that was very worthwhile sort of a situation that I had with the other companies research labs and universities. I've been to most of the universities and so I so I found that it was a good relationship. It's really one of the things that I like best about being the manager of applied research. I enjoyed it. I like the people that I met and worked with and I traveled in a lot of places. I've been to Japan a few times. What's your favorite what's your favorite area you visited? Oh a lot I like Japan. I like to go there. I liked it because people were very organized and really knew what they were doing. Yeah I hear that the first one you're the third one to tell me this week that the Japanese were quite advanced in many facets of the steelmaking industry. Yeah but they weren't hesitant to develop to use others information on that. There's a little story I think of that. When the FASCO got operating in that they were making ingots and the steelmaking shop which was down in the bayfront property and the ingots then were put in these cars with insulation at the ground so about four ingots could be carted from the steel plant while they're still hot so you didn't lose too much energy and over to the soaking pits where the ingots went in the soaking pits and then they were heated up to rolling temperature and then they were taken out there and rolled in as hot melt and squeezed down from 12 to 24 inches down to half an inch or so or even less than that but they were carted in this design of transport and the Japanese came over shortly after and went through the plant so what was going on in this time and the next time some of us from the FASCO went over there there were ingots being trucked around in their plant for a while not too long because they were ahead of the FASCO and putting in continuous casting so FASCO was a little behind the scenes in continuous casting but they caught up and and but getting back where did I leave off on the well you had talked about how well that's an example of how open this deal the industry is so it was very good and so for that reason I liked the Japanese operations the people were very good at taking us around and discussing things with us and a lot of them were and they also came over as consultants to some of the things that went on at the FASCO because they had knowledge in certain areas that we did so that worked out quite well so there was a very good relationship between Japanese and the FASCO but we also had a very good relation with say the German steel industry and most of the plants were in Germany and they were over to the FASCO so it was very good cooperation I think benefit both sides of the ocean and changing information to improve our own plants their side and our side so it worked out well and that's the part that I liked best of all when I was working in the steel industry it was a fact that at least at the FASCO you had some cooperation it seemed much more they were resistance at time but you had much better cooperation there in a non-union plant and it was a family plant because it was a family that started at the FASCO and so the Adjuice and that carried on I don't know how they are now but I've been long gone from the FASCO it's by Marcel the FASCO the FASCO was tacked onto the back of it but in any case that was the part that I liked where I was the manager of applied research and was that one because I have a technical question here you worked on open-hearth furnaces I didn't no because the FASCO didn't have any open-hearth furnaces they had at one time a couple of small ones but no it was mainly electric furnaces in the foundry that they had and I wasn't there to see their what about the LD Converter well that was the first one outside Europe was at the FASCO yeah I didn't do the first one John McBalkin was here for the first one and they adopted the plant from it was an LD Converter called from Linsdawitz in Germany so the FASCO cooperated quite well with Linsdawitz plants that was before I was there and they did some experimenting in the old foundry with lots of ladle and blue oxygen into molten iron from the blast furnace and they got familiar with making steel by that technique back in I think actually in 1952 they actually made small ladle 10 tons, 15 tons with that the first actual functional one in the melt shop was in 1954 that first LD in North America was in November of 1950 so in layman's terms how would you explain that how does it work how does it work in layman's terms well it should take liquid iron from the blast furnaces and you pour it into a vessel that tilts back and forth and rocks back and forth and you pour the liquid iron from the hot metal well first of all you put cold scrap you calculate how much scrap you have to put in depending on the temperature and the analysis of the hot metal you pour the hot meddling into the iron in the vessel the refractory line vessel put it upright and then you lower for blowing pure oxygen into the vessel that's basically the was that replaced eventually by the porous plug no no are those two completely different processes they cooperated eventually but not at that time the porous plug was used only in casting ladle the vessel for making steel the B.O.F. or L.D. it was originally called at one time because of the Lins and Donowitz where the first real plants were tried out but the first one in North America that was a production size plant was at the FASCO in 1954 and I came to the FASCO in 1960 59-60 they already had the L.D. working there but it was still a relatively small furnace and it wasn't the glass furnace or the open-air furnaces which were conventional furnaces for many years were still operating and in fact after the FASCO put in the B.O.F. and L.D. it still put in their big 500 ton basic open-air furnace a basic open-air furnace and it really was the last one in North America so we'll do another excuse me okay and you were saying by the fondest memories from your job the thing you like the most from your job is that it was so open I can't picture there are a lot of things that I felt that I was directly involved in that I was pleased with but in general I have to say really that the organization of the FASCO was a good one it was good for the people and from that point of view I think it's one of the many reasons why the FASCO was such a success and it still is probably the best steelmaking in North America and I know the research department has been very effective and a lot of the well after my turn when Arsalan bought the FASCO it was after I grew up they made use of a lot of the people that were in the FASCO organization to go out and work in some of the other plants that they had and they benefited a lot from that and so there have been a lot of changes in the steelmaking industry since I left but I still have good memories from that period that I could see there particularly that one when I was in management line of research it was a way that I could be useful and that was one of the reasons why I retired because I got into a more bureaucratic job when I was a director of the thing and What's time for research? I had very much research myself and so I left FASCO in 1991 and I stayed on as a consultant for the better part for 6 months I guess and then because I left because I was offered a job at McMaster and you would have tea in their metallurgy department and I would be twiddling in my thumbs or something for me to do and I knew most of it I knew all the guys and I graduated from Toronto so I knew all the staff there so it was a good thing for me because I had a technical job I had a social job and it ended up being some side work for me to do So where did you end up teaching? Well, I just gave lectures maybe to the fourth year class on what do you have to do when you get out of any university what do you do when you're actually working and maybe I gave them lectures on report writing, how do you transfer the information that they get to somebody in the plant that can use that information and so I did that for a couple years and I started a small technical consulting group with some of my friends from DeFasco well no, they were mainly from U of T and from McMaster so we called it a group Tormac pretty unique and so there's Tormac Associates and they're about six of us and we did sort of consulting work with most of the fellows that were there were, you know, occupied on their teaching and research work at the university and another class made in Lime and Rowley Bergman and I did most of the consulting work that we did and most of it was focused on the steel making slags last minute slags and that general area and so and it really was an offshoot of some of the working projects that we did when I was managing applied research at DeFasco but it also left other jobs that I found very interesting and I worked for the government in Ottawa and some of the projects that they had going on up there and they wanted to the other thing but it was sponsored by the government probably getting ahead of myself but I went over to Europe in 93 like I retired from DeFasco in 91 stayed on for a while had the consulting group set up and did some consulting and in 93 I went over to 92 in the end of the year I went over to basically Ukraine because the I forgot EDC whatever that export development committee had a project that they were putting on with the Ukrainian steel industry not just steel but with the technical industries in Ukraine so one of the professors that I knew let me sidestep a bit my wife is Ukrainian she was born in Toronto but her parents came from Ukraine and so she is fluent in Ukrainian and I met her at university and I am not from Ukraine I am a little bit basically not much at all but in any case they asked me if I would join the group and it was put together by a professor was still Yanishevsky he was an electrical engineering professor I knew him to the Ukrainian community my wife and that I was asked if I would join the group for the metallurgy they took a group of eight disciplines and had two engineers from each one and we had to go over and interview some Ukrainian engineers professors and so on and they then they selected the people that they were going to have us interview so that they would come out to work in Canada so I found it a very interesting experiment and so we went over there two engineers from each of the disciplines electrical engineering metallurgy and material science engineering mechanical and green things environment environment got to have some humor in this little thing anyway we went over to Ukraine which I had been there before on technical I had been over to Russia to Ukraine but this time we went around to what was going on there to meet the people that they thought would benefit by coming out here to Canada so early Bergman and I looked at after the professors or engineers in the metallurgy of ferris and nonferris and the things in Ukraine and to see if they would be suitable to come out here so out of that we managed to select some people that would come out here now we were chosen because Rowley was actually from Estonia and he spoke German and Estonian and English got well and I only spoke some French mainly English French wasn't much benefited in any case we interviewed quite a number of people and really it was a good thing that I did fumble around in Ukraine because really the people that we interviewed had to be able to express some communication in English and so that was one of the big things and selecting to get along in English because we didn't have very many people in Canada that could speak Ukraine and surprisingly there are a lot of Ukrainians here yeah lots of Ukrainians I know a lot from them yeah well that's where a lot of them were originally came back here but that was a very good trip and we did select four engineers to come out here we found that usually the best candidates were the women because they were usually better in English oh yeah yeah and so the the first year the four that we selected the first group came from one of them came from the institute in caves in the capital there from the research institute there she was a metallurgist and she was very good she had a a PhD and her English was good and we got another fellow from eastern Ukraine from Donetsk where all the trouble is going on now he came up his English was quite good and so he came and he worked for Alkan at their labs and trial the Ukrainian girl she worked at the FASCAL if it was to get her to come in and one of the professors at the university at cave who was an engineer and a professor in metallurgy and so he came to the FASCAL as well so two of them were at the FASCAL Nikitenko was at Alkan and we had another fellow who worked with Alkan's lab in Kingston so they all came and they had a good experience because each of the places made sure that they got good contacts with what went on in the plants they were at and they were at the universities as well and they each made a presentation before they went home they went back home and about six months later I was back on another trip doing the same thing how long did their placements last? three months well it was two months at industry and then one month at universities and visits and so on so it was a quite well organized set up for them and it was a good experience for them and it gave us an opportunity to see how the first group had made up they really were there in Canada to find out what information they could get how things were done here could they benefit over there in their plants and when we went over with the second to find the second group to do the first group to find out how their trip over here had benefited them well unfortunately it wasn't too good they all had good ideas as to what should be done but they had a great deal of difficulty getting the operators over there to change it was very difficult for them to make any change but we interviewed the second group as well and it turned out much the same we interviewed some people that came we had two a lady who spoke very good English and she was from University at Donetsk Eastern Ukraine and she worked at Lake Ontario Steel along with another engineer from Cave and he worked at the same company Lake Ontario Steel so I was able to get them in there to work in their operations and that was the technical problems and whatever they needed in the plant we were able to are you creating your context in Oshawa we were able to find somebody who had a furnished house available and so the two came in and stayed there and it worked out quite well for them and I'm just trying to think of who else we saw one fellow who was the fourth to sketch it seems like it but there was kind of ice on it there that was our two first and the other I'm trying to think of who was the other person I don't mind but there was a fourth person he came and worked here and I he worked with me with my consulting group and he was the head of the blast furnace at the operation in Donetsk and so he came out his English wasn't that good and that was a problem he had so he made me he tied up with me and Rolly Birdman and we took him around to the places that we had some problems and he was familiar with the blast furnace he was a useful employee for us so anyway we got them out here so they did the same thing they went back and unfortunately they had the same problems as well and they went back and the first thing they wanted to do was come back to camp unfortunately they couldn't come back the first year but was that part of the agreement? well I guess they couldn't leave their jobs as a head so they came the year after but one of them the first one, the first lady that came up one month she eventually came back as a visiting professor at Queens in the metallurgy department there at Queens and she was there for two years her main interest was to she had a daughter she divorced a lot of the war at that time but she had a daughter who was 10 years old she really wanted to come out with her daughter so she would be educated in Canada and that for some English speaking country so she was here for two years at Queens but she had to go back she couldn't stay here so she went back to the university in cave until she found a little job and she ended up in Australia so she and her daughter went out to Australia and they fit it in very well there in English and she was a very clever woman so she was a professor at the university in Melbourne and the other three were here on the second term the one guy that came with me he stayed back where he was he didn't want to come back to Canada as much use as he could but really he didn't benefit that much he was really well up in the organization of the former communist party and he had a fairly good job in the blasphemer association there and the other two the one in Fort Saskatchewan and I went back to his job there I don't recall exactly how he made out but Nicotenko who was here he worked in Ontario Hydro and their research lab and and then he came back he got a job at the faculty he was able to work there I gave him some good names and he got a job there but he was a good person he was a very capable man he's now working for one of the American steel companies doing research and has done quite well there who else? the one, the second one that came out from Donetsk the lady she came out and she got a job and it's an electronics firm just in the north part of Toronto Selica Selica Selica it's as I said it's an electronics firm just in the northeast part of Toronto there and she's done very well there she's in charge of their metallurgical department there and she is her husband came out as well he's a mechanical engineer he was a professor at the same university she was at and he came out and he's now an assistant to the technical person at the University of Toronto that's the right, the fellow who used to be the head of the department who's now a research professor there now and Doug Peralik I don't know but anyway the program worked out sort of okay a lot of people that really wanted to come out came out and they benefited as well but they were very capable people sounds like it was a big part of your life though it was an interesting part you had talked about how like women were actually quite good candidates how women in general if I ask you throughout your career and that's probably changed throughout but from beginning to end how was present or how present or absent were women in your workplace well there were no women in my class in engineering when I was a student there was one in the year behind me though and she went into the metallurgical field for a while but she was the only one that I know at that time who was at least in the metallurgical field but there are quite a number now and in all of engineering in that there are many more engineers that are women and will I go through and of course they've done very well and accepted in that I've interviewed a lot of them I've hired a girl from Queens and we've got her masters there as well and she's at the military college there she's got her masters and somebody else that she got Queens there when I was down I was I was on one of the committees for Queens that interviewed the programs that had Queens in metallurgy and I was down there sort of three year term and I met a lot of the people there I knew most of the professors there anyway and I met a lot of the students and this girl I met I interviewed her for the FASCO and hired her so she was in the research department at the FASCO and eventually she she's now in the energy division there and she's done quite well with the company and there's sort of a side issue to this because she was an equestrian she liked to ride she scored some points she did really if you want to put it that way and as it turned out put her on when I retired I spent more time riding and eventually I leased a horse and along with her we shared a horse and we both rode and eventually we bought a horse together and she was I didn't ride much better than I was but I liked to love to ride and it was mainly the dressage I gave up jumping and that because my daughter and wife wouldn't let me do the jumping and that so it was dressage for me which I enjoyed very much and about 10 years ago I gave up riding when I was with 70 and is and eventually and Karen sold it and she bought the horse from me from her half of it and rode it for a while and then bought another horse and put the original horse Saxony out to pasture I don't know if she'd be putting this on Anyway she's been doing very well and I've still been interested in equestrian events and so on although I'm not doing any physical activity that way now anymore in fact the last couple of years I haven't been doing anything like that so Karen what are you say you're proudest of in life maybe a tough question I think I made a good contribution in the research end of things in an operation from an operation basis getting things introduced into the research to the plant but really actually my best contribution probably got my granddaughters and my family we've lived in this house for 48 years so this house when our son, our second child was I guess we bought the house six days before he was born and so we lived here supposedly for a short period of time so we moved someplace else a bigger house or something else but when the kids got to school age we had schooling in this region so they went to it's a good neighborhood and of course the kids make friends and they don't want to move it was a convenient place for me, for my wife because of the Ukrainian community that we built we're involved with so we're still here the problem we're into now is that we're now old and we're still in a two-story house so it's a problem for us managing with the size of this house and getting around so my wife has to have her pet replacement in another couple of weeks and we're going to find another place to go to and that's one of the problems that we're facing right now however it's been a good I've enjoyed my life here I think I've worked for a good company and I've got a lot of good people and I appreciate it and I think I've been I appreciate it as well I've got a good life and like I say I'm still in contact with the professors at MAC and the UFG the various industries around here but mostly the people that I'm associating with now are the people that I've met through my family and the great community in Toronto and in Hamilton which my wife and I have been and and it's great for us watching our kids grow up and that's about a sum of all the things I've gone through unless you have more questions I have one last question for you and it's probably my favourite question I like asking this one speaking to someone much younger or even if you were to speak to students people like that what would be the most important life lesson or piece of advice you could give them? It's a good question it's hard to choose if I had to do it again I probably wouldn't have chosen metallurgy and material science I probably would have done something else I might have been something more like a question answer than gondrogwealth which was the second option but no my main thing the advice I give them is to try and get the maximum education you can and because knowledge is the biggest thing they have and it is and it really is and so I advise them and it's the advice I give my granddaughters and then we gave our son to get as much education as they can and they have done fairly well so we don't really have to worry about oh we have worries about our kids and grandkids and that yeah but education I think I always tell my granddaughters the first day I walked into Lawrence Park Collegiate for my first day in high school I walked into the auditorium with 200 or so more kids and across the stage with the description the education of youth is the surest foundation of happiness Benjamin Franklin and I've never forgotten it and I've told our kids and our grandkids that that's the main thing I would advise them I can't tell them whether they're interested in metallurgy, civil or whether they want to be a doctor lawyer, Indian chief, whatever it is they have to make that decision but by all means do as best as they can as far as absorbing their knowledge and we've tried that well thank you thank you I've done a lot of talking here that's good thanks for your time