 I entered McGill in 1942 towards the end of World War II, and our first assignment there was to have all our COTC, EU uniform and boots and so on, and we had to go west harvesting because all the available men were out to the war. Okay, and how old were you at that time? Oh, I can't remember, but that's insignificant. I landed in a town in Saskatchewan called Osinaboya, and I didn't know anything about farming, and I was in charge of a team of mule, and we would wake up before dawn to get fed, and then I had a team of mule which I brought out to the field to do some stooking and gathering of wheat and so on. That was my first assignment at McGill. I didn't know what McGill was all about. Would you consider that your first real job? Oh, no. I started to work in a Chinese restaurant four or five years before then when I was a teenager. Where were you born, exactly? I was born in Montreal. I was brought up in Montreal, graduated in Montreal, worked in Montreal, and retired in Calgary. So this was my early part of life when I decided to leave home. And at school, what were you taking exactly? What was your degree going to be? In the old time, they called it the Meteorological Engineering Department, but now they call it Materials Engineering. Some of my work that I did while I was at university, I prefer not to talk about them. Why not? The greatest thing that I did there was to introduce our Meteorological Engineering Department to a material at Christmas time we call it Purple Jesus, which is grape juice and alcohol. And we use the very pure alcohol, the 99 plus percent, which we need for polishing metallurgical samples, so they will not stain. And that's what we use to spray our grape juice with. Makes for quite a party. Purple Jesus, yeah? Yeah. So that was my highlight at McGill. Nice. I like it. And you entered metallurgy. When did you think to yourself that's what I want to do? What was your first interest? Well, I backed into metallurgy because I looked at electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering. Those are the three great things then. And I said, doesn't seem to interest me at all. I'll try something that I don't know a thing about. Okay, yeah. That's how I got into metallurgy. Wanted to really learn something completely new? Completely different. And you liked it from the get-go? I liked it right from the beginning. And the greatest thing, too, was that the chemistry lab was two and three floors all above us. And they use a lot of mercury for their measuring and testing. And we had to sump up in the basement. And around Christmas time, we would gather the mercury in the sump up and we sell it to buy our alcohol. Your purple Jesus. Purple Jesus. I don't think you will get another interview like this. Where they start off by talking about purple Jesus. I don't think so. But let's get started. It's a great start. Well, when my graduate graduated, jobs were very hard to come by in 1947. A firm from Paris wanted to set up a lab here because their labs around Paris and France were devastated by the war. And they sent three people into Montréal to set up a lab. Montréal is a good place for it because it's French speaking and so on. And I landed up with a job with Air Leak It that's Canadian liquid air. And I worked for them all my working life. Your entire career. Yeah. Okay. Yes, I've heard you've done a lot of work with that Leak It. All my work was done with Air Leak It from the time I got my first job there until I retired over 25 years ago. I was walking down the street last night and I saw there's a building on this street where the Weston is on 4th Street with Ali Kidd on it. And I think there's offices there. Yes. Yes. Did you ever work there? No. No, okay. Every 25 years ago, they don't even know we except I would go in from time to time and get a free cup of coffee. Okay. There you go. There you go. A few perks. So what was your first job with Ali Kidd? It's dealing with heat treatment of steel. The reason for it is that to make some of the atmosphere for heat treatment of steel we reform some of the gases to get a neutral gas and some oxygen is required there. So that's how we got started. And then it came up in time when I said, gee, there must be some industrial gas requirement in refining of molten steel. That's where I got into pyrometallurgy and you will see one of my reports there on the porous plug where they would have a lathe of a steel and they would have an ingot to plunge into the molten steel to mix it up so they get a uniform bath of steel so that they can cast a steel with uniform properties from the start of casting to the end. And I said, that is backwards. That is dangerous. So that's when I developed the porous plug and you will have a report of that. Which I just gave you. And if you could explain it quickly in layman's terms, how would you explain it? I said, it's dangerous to get an ingot and plunge it like that. Wouldn't it be nice if we can use some gases in a porous brick and place in the bottom of a ladle and put gases through to stir the bath up. That would be a very good way of doing it. And that's how, as you will see in the report, how I developed the porous plug. Okay, so more of a from the bottom approach and less from the top. So I went to brick manufacturers and I said, I would like a porous brick and I said, not only porous but continuous porous so I can put some gas through under pressure. Well, they showed me the door and said, we want to make our bricks as dense as possible so they can last as long as possible. And then the government in the old days, they call it the Department of Mines and I had a refractory lab there and I approached them and they said, well, we'll help you to make a porous brick and we were successful in developing a porous brick, which was usable and now it is used throughout the world. It changed the world of metallurgy. So you not only came up with the idea of finding a new technique, but you also developed the actual brick. The actual brick. You will read in that little report that I showed you. Okay. Yeah, no, which I'll let you know. And no one knew about that. My wife said, you developed that 60 years ago. Why don't you tell the people how it came all about? And then that was the time I was sitting in the bathtub and I released some flatus, they call it a fart. That's the idea. That's how it came from. Yeah, exactly. So that's how I got the highest award of the AI. From farting in the bathtub. Farting in the bathtub. Hey, you've got to get ideas somehow. Okay. Right on. Well, I don't think you'll be able to use too much of this in your formal presentation. I like it. This is what we want. This is what we want. I made that presentation to around a thousand people. Why can't it feel more heritable? Exactly. Exactly. That's what we're... There is one thing which I can tell you. If it is not fun, that project gets delayed. Any projects? Any project where I think it's fun and my staff will enjoy it. They get the first choice. Okay, because you'll be more productive. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And what would you say throughout your career with Ali Kidd was your... What was the most difficult project for talking about projects? The most difficult project was at the time, at the beginning, there was this technology for refining steel where they use a supersonic oxygen lines from the top of the bath. And I said, see, that's the backward way of doing it. We should find a way to putting oxygen through the bottom. And that was a big project and it took many, many years and we were successful in developing a nozzle which can stand the reaction between oxygen and molten steel where the theoretical reaction temperatures is around 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Don't ask me what centigrade it is because that's new stuff. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, it's true. So your entire career you worked with that system. So I developed a technology where I can use submerged oxygen to refine more molten steel and keep the integrity of the injectors in good shape for commercial use. Okay. Yeah, the project, the process is called the OBM oxygen bottom bed metallurgy which was commercialized in Germany at a plant called Maximilian Hoota. And then USDU would like that technology and they had to get a license from Maximilian Hoota so USDU can use it in North America. And the USDU called it the Cubob Quick Basic Oxygen. Cubob Quick Basic Oxygen? Yeah. The normal process on top line is BOP, the basic oxygen process and then they change it and call it Cubob Quick Oxygen bottom blowing or something like that. Was it named after you, Bob? That's just a coincidence. The only thing is that we've got some royalties from it. There you go. So how long was that project? And you said many years? It started in 19, we developed that injector technology in 1974 in a little lab in a town in Quebec called Cap de la Madeleine. Just on the other side of the river from Torre River over here. Okay. That's where we developed the bottom injection technology which eventually went commercial. Yeah, excellent. And you got royalties from it. No, early kid got the royalties. Yes, okay. The only thing that you did right after that is what else are you going to do for us? Well, you didn't stop. Apparently, we'll get to that a bit later, but you had plenty of patents and inventions, not just the ones you had mentioned. Other than Aldi Kid, are there any, you said your entire career was with Aldi Kid, but are there any organizations or even committees or other companies you worked with or joined or founded? Yes, I got involved with a firm called Hydrogenics which developed the hydrogen fuel cells. And, you know, it is used in hydrogen electric cars and so on. The reason why I went there was that they needed someone to help them to get some funding so that they can continue their work. So, I got involved with them and we got investment or maybe a hundred million dollars so they can continue their research work. And the name of the company is called Hydrogenics, which is still in operation and they're still doing quite well. I was just going to say, hydrogen cells are still just the beginning, I'd say. And we were there before they had cars or anything like that. It was just the actual cell that they were developing. Did they have, do you know if they had any, what was going to be their idea for its first use? If they did develop a hydrogen cell, what was going to be the first use? Today we think of cars. They were thinking of cars and we actually put it in a few of these cars which came from Jura, I mean, these little gold cars. So that, and they were successful powering the logo cards? Oh yes, but the unfortunate thing is everybody jumped into the bandwagon, GM jumped into the wagon, Toyota jumped into the wagon and how can a small firm like Hydrogenics compete with them. So we use these two to produce H2 for these cell phone towers. They use H2 there. Okay, so there was another use. Well, at least you, even though it became, I can say monopolized in a way, really helped start the hydrogen cell industry, yeah, for sure. So like the steel making technology, I ended up collecting zero royalties. Zero royalties? You win some, you lose some, eh? That's for, so your entire career with Ali Kidd, what were the social activities or other than purple Jesus when you were a student afterwards within your career? You and all your colleagues, what was, other than work, what was a popular thing to do? Well, at that time, it was the only thing that I really did. So you lived for your job? Yeah, we had a very, very good team, a small team of about 20 people in our research department. And every project that we did, we have the safe safety boys involved, the gas technologies involved, and the scientists. So every project that we had, we got them all involved because you can get an input from each of those groups, even though it was a very small group, we were very, very successful. And we were so successful that the industrial gas department asked for our help anytime they had programmed them selling something to a client. And the head of Ali Kidd Canada said that our involvement in technology transferred to our commercial department is so great that it more than pay for our research department. So we had the cart launch. At any time we had a new, a new, say, research grant that we need for a new project, management just sends it off. They were so confident. Yeah, they were so confident. As you guys were so productive. Yeah. Well, these were with boys whom we trusted. And I had one manager who started off this department. And even after I became the head, I still had him because his knowledge of French was superb and he translated everything in French for the French folks. He's a very, very, and he spoke French much better than the average French person in Montreal. His name is Guy Savard, whom I had a partnership with him all my life there. I think you might actually be on my list in the future to go interview. So at that time, what was your position? What was your title? My title is all in my CV there, depending on the time. And it's been a long time. I can't say it over 25 years ago. How can I remember? It's all in my CV there. I will look. As for, I had asked about the social activities, but you seemed to say you were pretty, work was not only work, but that was part of your social time too, was work. And was there a big, I said it was a small team. Was there a big turnover? Or was it always a very constant, those 20 guys? They loved to stay, they loved to stay. We had a few boys, which went to the commercial department because they can progress faster in the commercial department than in our research group. So they went, not because they were doing a bad job, but they can see their career increasing faster. Yeah, for sure. And maybe getting into the big, grittier question. Were there, in that line of work, maybe not necessarily just with your specific group, but in Ali Kidd or even metallurgy in general, did you see any kind of social problems, trends, whether it was alcoholism or drug use or infidelity, anything of the sort? Well, there's one thing about alcohol there. There's a company known internationally, completely called Seaagrams. They had a technician which went to Russia and they said they heard that Russia was doing some work on using oxygen in some of their high alcohol content stuff. And they asked us whether we knew anything about it. We said we don't know anything about it, but if you want to do some research work there, we will help you. So we developed a safe technology for them to introduce pure oxygen using the porous plug to infiltrate oxygen in the alcohols which they have in the barrel to Asian. And we managed to lower the time it requires to age the alcohol. But unfortunately the law says that when you age alcohol, you have to age it for a certain length of time. So anything that you do to accelerate the aging process would not help you on the commercial way. Because you have to age it for a certain length of time. But what if you could have sold the alcohol that was aged saying it was age with oxygen or artificially aged? Could you sell it then or still weren't allowed? No. Okay. So it had to be a specific amount of years. But we eventually developed a technology for accelerated ageing of port. Of port? I love port. Port and wines. But mainly in ports because the alcohol content is higher. They accelerated ageing of port, which is used commercially. Okay. So you were involved in... I was involved to help the boys out in the field. Okay. Yes. That's interesting. Yeah, that's my involvement in alcohol and that there was a very, very sad thing. The Distiller Seagram, which is the Seagram group, gave us two dozen bottles of an age of alcohol for our lab to try out. Okay. And the boys put it on a sill on a window. And when we had a store in Montreal and the window blew open and knocked the two dozen bottles over, we lost the two dozen... You lost every single one? Lost two dozen bottles in their lab. The window got blown open. That's too bad. What was the... Was that port as well? No, that would be the un-age whiskey. Whiskey, okay. And changed a bit of pace here. In your career, you seemed like you were quite a leader, quite a mentor, quite a an ingenious person. But did you, at least when you started, have any mentors or do you remember someone specifically in your career that really pushed you or taught you many things? There was one person by the name of Frank Curie, F-R-A-N-K-E-R-R-Y, who had been a liquid, technical person for a long time. And he was the one who got me started in metallurgy. So did he convince you even before Miguel? He convinced me when I started with liquid air. Okay, at the beginning of your career. And he was the first one who used oxygen for accelerated combustion of the flame in the open-heart furnace for refining steel. That was before our submerged injection of oxygen or top-lighting of pure oxygen in the old-fashioned old open-hearts at the steel company. And what they call Stelco, which is now a division of U.S. steel. So he started me off and I give him credit for my interest in metallurgy. Was he much older than you? Or did he start, he was much older. Okay, so you had a fruitful career after him. And when he left, he went on to New York and he started up our company in designing and selling in industrial oxygen plants. Okay. You know, a brilliant chap. And he just died last year. Oh wow. Yeah. How old was he? In the 90s. Okay, well. Now. Being 90s, I can tell you, is a young age. Is young? I'm 91. Nice one. Still look good. Well, my mother passed away at 103, so I'm going to beat her. You're going to beat her? I believe you. I wasn't even sure it was you downstairs, because I thought you looked too young for 91. Thank you. For real. Now as for the, you talked a bit about your inventions, your ingenuity during your career. So if we can get the more into that, I see here you hold over a dozen inventions and over 200 patents. According to you, I don't know if you've already mentioned it. So can let us know, but which of the inventions are patents or big changes like that, do you consider to be the most important to you, for you? For me, there were one for steel. It started off with steel, and then we used that technology for, it's a combination of technology, the porous plug and the lancing and so on. And that eventually translated into copper and deco refining and so on. And you said that affected the entire world. That's how they do it everywhere now. Oh, yes, right. Yeah, that is a big deal. So that would also be not only according to you, but if you were to look at the world of metallurgy itself, that's probably the biggest contribution you gave. And different companies will use the oxygen technology to develop their own little twists to make it work for their own plant. So in pyromanic metallurgy, the thought of using oxygen is not considered dangerous now. And we also developed this to use oxygen for enhanced recovery of oil. How does that work? Well, enhanced recovery of oil, one person started to use air and he found that the temperature of the reservoir increased in temperature. So there must be some combustion of the oil taking place. So that fellow by the name of Phil White from Texas came up and talked to me. He says, can you use pure oxygen? I said, I don't know, but let's try it. So we got the company Husky, Petrol Canada, Duomo Petroleum to try it out. And we had four projects out in Northern Alberta here and we tried it and it worked. And then when we were ready to go commercial on one of the plants, the oil price plunged from around two, three dollars per barrel at that time down to less than one dollar per barrel and everybody pulled up. That was in the early 80s, way before you were born. Yeah, a bit, a bit. I was born in 1990. So this was an early, I think we started there 81, 82. Okay. And that, so it seemed to work, you were saying, but it seemed canceled because of money. That's a shame. Operation successful patient died. That's right. Operation successful patient died. Yeah. That is what transpired when you are trying to forge a new technology. It is, they always look for a reason why they shouldn't do it. Now, as someone who's been with liquid air his entire life, but not only that, graduated in 47, you were saying. And I know after World War II, the oxygen industry was dominated by a company called Lindy, right? And Ali kid pierced through that, basically, industry that was monopolized by Lindy. You were part of that movement. I was part of that movement by developing new technology for the use of O2 gas, but I had nothing to do with the price of oxygen or the sales of plant. But do you think Ali kid kind of burst into that market post World War II because in part of how ingenious Ali kid was being? Yes, we develop new processes for use of O2 gas. And that's really what differentiated you with Lindy. Now, throughout your life, what would you say is the proudest? What are you proudest of in life? Develop the technology for pyro metallurgy. Just all of them. And if you had to pick one or two, what's the biggest lesson you've learned in life? The biggest lesson? Or you could give to someone younger like me. Well, the biggest lesson I learned in my life is mainly in the field of research and technology. The most important thing to do is to not let your technologies and scientists working for you to go into the computer and say, oh, look what I just found. Our competitor is doing this. Our competitor is doing that. They say we should do some work along that line to catch up. I said, you're wasting your time. You should not be trying to catch up. You should do something to leapfrog them or do something different. And I had a hard time convincing them not to do what our competitor is doing, because when they let you know that they're doing this in the internet, they're onto something else. Yeah, by that time it's too late. You do something novel new. Don't try to catch up to what your competitor is doing. This is the main thing which I always tell my scientists and engineers. Use your brains. And I give them 10% to 15% of their time to do whatever they wish to do in our lab, even if they have a poker game among themselves. It's all okay. Yeah, let the creativity fly. Yeah, you see that more and more actually with many companies, especially if you look at tech companies now, they do that a lot. Like Google, a monster company, that's what they do now. It's all about kind of living to work, but making work your life. But at the same time, while you're at work, just letting creativity roam free. This is one reason why I never learned how to use a computer, even though in high school I learned how to type. I used to type 60 words per minute. And now I don't even know how to type. I don't even know how to get into the computer. My wife does all that work for me. Because I feel that's a waste of time. Because I learned that when I was in research work, when all my scientist and engineer was going into the computer to find out what our competitors were doing. So I said, I don't like the computer. So I'm ignorant of knowing what the computer can do for me or how to use it. Well, it definitely didn't slow you down from what we can see. So you really were more of a, you kind of work with your hands, try things out, right? Did you read a lot instead? You said a lot of your team, they'd follow inventions or are they coming through the internet? But did you instead, were you a big reader or more with your hands? I'm a slow reader. And reading is very boring. Not unless I see one paragraph. Yeah, I got you. I'm kind of like that. It has to be really good. And I can tell you right now, I only try to read something which is novel and new. And I have one pro-ajay where I am thinking of using aqua, oxygen, and steam for enhanced recovery on oil. Okay. So not that. I am not going to tell you at a company, I'm trying to convince and try it on. So kind of you're going to try to tackle again what you had done years ago in the 80s? A little bit. Yeah. Using, we'll see, in the old days they only had holes where you drill into the reservoir, vertical holes. But now they have a horizontal component that can go one or two miles long. And that they use steam now, what they call site steam assist gravity drainage site and they have two horizontal pipes. Pipes, yeah. Steam in the bottom and oil recovery in the, no, steam recovery in the top, oil recovery in the bottom. And I'm trying to convince one company to try. So I started up with aqua, oxygen, get the reservoir nice and hot and then gradually stop the steam and use pure oil or two gas to generate the heat and not steam. Because when you use steam, you generate the steam above in the steam generator. It's the 30% efficient. You bring it down one, two, two miles. You lose heat and then when you get into the reservoir, a lot of your BTUs are lost. Whether you generate the BTUs right in the reservoir, you will get a very high efficiency, 100% because there's no place for the heat to go except in the reservoir. So what I thought I'd say, start off with steam and then cut off the steam and then use pure aqua, oxygen only because I can know how to do it so that it will be safe. Safe and less energy consumption. Your energy is all consumed in the reservoir to heat the reservoir, to heat the oil and you will be 100%. Yeah, no waste on the way down. No waste on the way down or generating your steam with steam reformers. There you go. 91 years young, still not done. Started off in the early 80s and I can tell you, this is my last try and then I'll retire. Right on. And then I'll just read about someone doing it. Oh yeah? You'll pick up a book this time? Yeah. All right, thank you very much. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me or add to our interview or any message? No, my great contribution to the industrial gas industry is in metallurgy. But we also did quite a bit of work on using other types of gases. But the main thing is solving no problems with the commercial D apartment need to have solved to have a gas contract with a possible client. And I think half of our work was to help you in a part of the company. And for this, we had carte blanche on doing what we want to do in research. And I said, I don't think I could find a more profitable lifetime of work, the type of work that I was involved with early kid. Yeah, well, that's excellent. I think everybody would like to end a career and look back and think and say exactly what you just said. And I can still walk into their office in Calgary here and have a cup of coffee and walk out without then questioning me what I want there. Well, there you go. Well, you're a legend now. So this is part of my life. Yeah. Oh, clearly. Very great part of my life. It's been very interesting. And as I told you, the last project that I'm going to go on, and I'm not going to do any more successful or not. Are you sure? Yeah. Successful or not. Or not? You're done after this one? I'm done. Got to spend more time with my wife at home. Yes. Okay. That's a good choice too. Well, we're all in the late 80s, early 90s and our time on this earth not going to be as long as yours. True. Just going to take it easy. True. Good. Well, Mr. Lee, thanks a lot for this. Well, I'm awfully sorry I have to jump around a little bit because when you get to my age, your brain is very, very fleeting. Things come back, things disappear.