 So, we're about to begin an interview with Mr. Alex McLean. The interviewer, as usual, will be William McCray. It is July 23, 2015, and we are at the University of Toronto. So, let's begin. So, could you please state your full name? My full name is Alexander McLean. Generally, people refer to me as Alec. Excellent, excellent. Just like William and Will. Exactly. And your age? My age this year, I'm 78, and I'll be 79 next month. And where exactly were you born? I was born in Hamilton, Scotland. That's about the town of Hamilton. It's about nine miles south of Glasgow, and was very much close to the heart of the steel industry in Scotland. The big town there, about three miles from Hamilton, was a place called Motherwell. And Motherwell was the equivalent of Hamilton, Ontario, which is the steel centre of Canada. And Motherwell was really the steel centre of Scotland. So, I grew up really within three miles of the steel industry. And as a child, what did your parents do? My mother just was at home looking after the family. How many siblings? Myself and my sister. My younger sister was five years younger than me. Just the two of us and my father, he was a foundryman, worked in a foundry all his days. From he was 14 till he retired, 65. He worked in the same foundry in a little village called Blantire, which is about three miles from Hamilton. Blantire was the birthplace of David Livingston, the missionary that went to Africa. So Blantire, just a small place. The foundry that my father worked in made equipment for coal mines, because at that time coal mining was a major industry in the centre of Scotland. So they supplied mining equipment. So I used to visit my father in the foundry and see the casting of metal there when I was just a youngster, really. So that probably had some influence. Yeah, for sure. And was it something as a child you just did because your father did, or was it really something that piqued your curiosity and interest? Yeah, it's an interesting question, because I can think back to when I was in high school and my last year of high school, and I remember my father coming in from his work and we had our evening meal together. What we called over there our tea. That was our evening meal, our tea. And I remember he was sitting at one end of the table, I was sitting at the other end. I remember him asking me, what do you think you're going to do when you leave school? Because I was one year away from leaving school. And I said, I think I'd like to be a painter. And he said, do you mean an artist? I said, no, no, just a painter. Oh, I said, maybe a sign writer? Because that was one of the jobs folks had in those days, was painting signs above shop doors. I said, no, no, just a painter painting walls. Why do you do that? He said, so you start at one end and you get to the other and you look back and you can see that looks good. Made a difference. I said, I like the smell of paint, too. He said, well, you really don't need to go to university. You just want to be a painter. What do you like in high school? He said, well, I like maths, chemistry, physics. He said, well, you should study mythology, as they say over there. Here we say mythology, but over there they say mythology. And I said, what's mythology? And he said, I'll arrange for you to visit the local steel plant. So he did. And I remember visiting the company there. It was called Colville's. It was before it was British Steel Corporation. It was this company called Colville's. And sure enough, I got a chance to see molten steel being made and molten steel being poured from the furnace into a ladle and into moulds. I said, boy, this is interesting. Chemistry at 1600 centigrade and all the smoke and fire and flames and dust. I was probably a bit of a pyromaniac or something. But that was my introduction to mythology. I thought, yeah, this is what I'd like to do. So that really, looking back on that evening discussion at tea time, can I set me off into the world of mythology and particularly in the area of iron and steel making. Okay. And so then you did decide to go to university? That's right. I went to university. Glasgow, as I say, was about nine miles away from where we lived. Glasgow University had a department. It was kind of an interesting thing. They had a department of mythology, but it was actually located not at the University of Glasgow, but at what was called the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, which was a couple of miles away from the university. It's now called the University of Strathclyde. So the mythology department for Glasgow University was actually located at the Royal Technical College. So I studied at the Royal Technical College. It later became known as the Royal College of Science and Technology. And then the University of Strathclyde is now one of the top universities in the UK. But at that time it was known as a college. But the chair of mythology and the department was actually located there. So that's where I studied. I took my bachelor's degree there. And then the prof that was in charge of the department, the customers, they would invite one or two people each year that they want to go on and do graduate work. So I did. I went on and did my doctorate there. And then I got what was called an assistant lecturer's position, teaching ceramics. So I thought, Oh, this is good. I'm starting off a career right here at Glasgow. And I guess I did about two years into that program, which I was doing while I was still doing my doctorate, completed my doctorate. And then the man I was working with over there, Professor Harry Bell, he got a letter from a prof in Hamilton, Canada, saying we're looking for a postdoc to work in steel making chemistry in conjunction with the FASCO. The FASCO support with the research. Do you have anybody that might be interested? So my prof there said to me, what in Glasgow? Why don't you go over to Canada for a couple of years? Oh, that sounds like an interesting thing to do. So I did. So in 1963, I moved to McMaster, Hamilton. First time in Canada? First time in Canada. That was the first time I had been in Canada. I thought I was just going for two years. And here we are. Yes, yes. A few years later, I'm still here. And what was your first impression of Canada? Well, that's interesting because when we came over to Canada, we sailed from Glasgow to Montreal. We sailed in a small passenger cargo vessel, which carried about 50 passengers. That was the last sailing of the season. And they had about 25 passengers on board. Because during the winter, although the ship still sailed, it didn't sail all the way to Montreal because of the ice and so on upriver. So it would stop in Halifax. So you only carried passengers in the summer, not in the winter. So we, on the last sailing of the season, came over in Thine's Giving Time, October 63, and sailed up the St. Lawrence. And while you're on board ship, you're still with people from because the ship was from Scotland. So you're serving with people from Scotland. But then when you get off the ship in Montreal, suddenly you realize that this is a different place. And we took the train from Montreal to Hamilton, through Toronto to Hamilton. And I can remember looking out on the highway, the QEW, and seeing the cars going by. And I mean, to us, it was really busy. In comparison to what it is now, it was nothing. But I remember looking at the train and seeing these cars whipping back and forth in the QEW and thinking, boy, we'll never drive in Canada. This is so different from back in Scotland, where I'd grown up all this traffic. So that's a kind of impression that stays with me. The busy traffic that I wasn't used to really living where I did. It's funny too, because driving in Scotland, or at least in the Highlands, isn't that it's different, but it's not necessarily easy either. Well, that's right. That's true. That's right. Over there, you sometimes have single track roads, and they twist and turn and they're up and down. And it's interesting you say that because after we spent five years at McMaster, and then we moved to the States, to Pittsburgh, and I worked with a steel company in Pittsburgh. But I say that just to say around Hamilton, as around Toronto area, very flat. Yes. But when we moved to Pittsburgh, we moved south of Pittsburgh, a little town called Peters Township. And it was Hills and Valleys. And it was like Scotland again. Okay. And our daughter, who was born in Hamilton, Canada, she was two year old when we moved to Pittsburgh and moved down to Peters Township. Suddenly she became car sick, driving around because it was up and down and round about. And, you know, we were fine. My wife and I, because we were used to Scotland, this is lovely. It's like being back in Scotland. But the little girl boy, the motion was something that was totally different for her. I hadn't realized how it can affect people. So you so you made your way to Hamilton. And so and then you did your postdoc? That's right. I spent a couple of years there as a postdoc funded by DeFasco. So I used to visit DeFasco regularly, because they were sponsoring the research. And the profile was working with that that time was a man named Bob Ward, who was an Englishman, and had come over from Sheffield and held what was called the first Stelco chair at McMaster. It was in 1963. So it was kind of interesting, he held the Stelco chair. But the research I was doing at that time was funded by the folks across the road from Stelco, DeFasco. I can remember it would have regular visits to DeFasco, to the research department there, as well as operations. But the vice president of research at that time was a man called John McMulcan. And John McMulcan had really been the power behind introducing the new technology at DeFasco. About 10 years earlier when they introduced the process known as LD steelmaking, which would convert the steelmaking with a top lance. So John McMulcan had had a big influence and did have a big influence on DeFasco. His wife was Scottish. So I like to pull my leg a little bit about that, you know, I have a lot of problems with people from Scotland. My wife is Scottish, you know, and so would go. And I remember after two years, because postdoctoral fellowship was for two years, visiting John McMulcan with Bob Ward. And Bob Ward said to McMulcan, well, McLean will be finishing now because the appointment is for two years. And McMulcan said, why is it not stay for a third year? Because the work that he was working on was to do with inclusions in steel, the cleanliness of steel, quality of steel. Okay. He said, why don't, why doesn't he stay for another year? And Ward said, well, postdoctoral fellowships and postdoctorals are only for two years. If he stays an extra year, you've got to stay in a different capacity. So I can remember McMulcan saying, what does that mean? Is that going to cost me more money? And Ward, good man that it was, Bob Ward said, oh, yeah, it would become a research associate. And you need to pay more money. As a postdoc at that time, I was getting $5,000 a year, which was a lot of money. I mean, $5,000 was great. So McMulcan said, how much more money? Well, I need to pay him if he's a research associate. Oh, Ward said, you need to double it, go to $10,000. Never in my life have I ever had my salary doubled in one go. But that was a real raise. That's right. But he did it. So I stayed on a third year as a research associate. And then Ward left to go to Australia. He was invited to go to Australia and join BHP Steel Company in Australia as their director of research. And he said to me, how'd you like to come with me to Australia? And you can look after one of the labs there. But I thought, oh, no, Bob, no, no. Here in Canada, I can get back to Scotland in about six hours. If I'm in Australia, oh, I might only get back every four or five years or something. So I decided to stay on. And when Bob left, that created an omen. Now, he was a full professor. But it did create an omen. And I got a job there as an assistant prof, following on in steelmaking chemistry. And I stayed on for another couple of years. I got promoted to associate prof. I was very happy. But then I got a call from a steel company in Pittsburgh, asking me, would I be interested in joining their research department? We'd met each other at conferences and got to know the folks there. So I thought, boy, that might be an interesting thing to do is to leave academia and spend a couple of years, three years in industry. But I wasn't at all that sure if that was the thing. I'd just been promoted to tenure. After thinking about it, I decided that that's a good thing to do. I'm going to do it. I had an interview with the fellow at the steel company in Pittsburgh, another Englishman. I said, here, I'm Scotsman. I'm working for another Englishman. I've got here. He came from Imperial College in London, by the name of Bill Dennis. And I remember Dennis saying to me, what have you got to lose? Because I was still in two minds, should I leave university? I've just been promoted. I've just got tenure. Should I leave? He said, if you come here, he said, you spend some time here, maybe you'll decide you like industry better than academia. It's a good job. You find that out. And he said, suppose you come here, and you spend some time here, and you still feel academia is where you want to be. Are you going to be a poorer professor or a better professor because you spent a couple of years in industry with us? And the logic was kind of impeccable, you know? And I thought, that's a good thing to do. So I decided to leave. But the interesting thing was, a couple other profs within about three years left McMaster department for different reasons to go to different places. Bob Ward, I mentioned, went to Australia. Another fella called Ham, he went over to Cambridge. And now I'm leaving. So folks began to wonder, is there something wrong? And I got a number of phone calls before I actually left once the word got out. What's wrong with the department at McMaster? There was nothing wrong with the department at McMaster. It was an excellent department. I remember getting an interview before I left with the vice president. And he said, you know, you've just been promoted. And you've just got tenure. Why are you leaving? And I explained, well, I have this opportunity to get some experience in industry. And I don't think it's what I'm going to do ultimately. But I think it'll be a good thing for my future in academia, if I spend time, because I'd never really worked full time in the steel industry. So then I moved to Pittsburgh and spent a couple of years there. And then after that, they said, I'd like to get back to academia and wrote to a number of schools. So you realized academia was more for you? Oh, I felt that was what I really liked was academic. I enjoyed that. But I didn't regret the time I spent in industry, because I made a lot of contacts and friends. And what did you do exactly for industry? Well, while I was an industry, I was in the research center there. And my background was chemistry, the chemical reactions that go on in molten steel, and particularly factors affecting inclusion formation defects, and what we call the cleanliness of steel, the quality of steel. So I was in charge of what was called a deoxidation and casting group at that steel company. And one of the things I liked about that company particularly was that it was called Jones and Lochlam Steel Company, J&L Steel. One of the things I liked was that when they presented papers at conferences, their papers were generally co-authored by people from research and people in production working together. And I liked that idea of the research and the production people sharing in a particular problem area. And I never regret had gone there and made good friends. And the fellow that hired me, Bill Dennis, another Englishman. And then when I left there, he came back to academia to Toronto. The reason I thought of Toronto was another Englishman, by the name of Ben Alcock, moved from Imperial College in England. I just moved over to replace Pigeon. Pigeon had been the holder of the chair, the head of the department here at Toronto from 1944 through to 1969. Pigeon retired in 1969 and the chair was taken over by this man, Alcock. So I thought, I knew Alcock only by reputation. I didn't know him personally. But I knew him by reputation at Imperial College because Imperial College in England and the Royal College in Glasgow where I studied, there was always rivalry between the two. The Scots and the English thing again. You have it in football, in academia. And we used to say in what we call the tech, technical college, the tech in Glasgow. Imperial College, that's really empirical college, you know, very derogatory. But if there were any external examiners coming up from Imperial to examine the students at Glasgow, everybody was very, very nervous of these imperialists coming up from London. So I said, I knew Alcock by reputation. And when I heard he had moved to Toronto, I thought, boy, because he was moving from a full chair at Imperial College, which was a pretty powerful place. And he is moving to Toronto at his age. You know, he was in his mid-40s I guess at that time. I thought, well that's a major thing he's doing. And if he's moving to Toronto, probably some great things are going to continue there because Pigeon had really made his mark in the place. With Alcock coming in, I thought, boy, that sounds like a great continuity from Pigeon to Alcock. So I wrote to him, and was there any possibility of a job? And invited him for an interview. But it was so much simpler then to go through that process for employment in academia than it is now. The interview consisted of me meeting him on a Saturday morning and we chatted together. And he said, yeah, we'd like to have somebody here with a background in steelmaking. He said, we'll have a Harry Ross here. And Harry Ross was a well-known prof at that time. He said, his background is in iron making, making iron, glass furnace, iron oars. But it would be good to have somebody with a particular interest in steelmaking and compliment. So that was it. That was how it was. Today you have to advertise the job, you have a search committee, you have to aid the applicants, and so on. So much more difficult. And it was the same with tenure. After I had been here a number of years, I got tenure. And I walked in one day and said, glad to tell you, McLane, you've got tenure. I didn't even know, you know. Today, oh, guys have to prepare something like a PhD thesis and letters from abroad and you see all kind of process to get tenure. So life was very much easier then than it is today. But that's how I ended up at Toronto. Okay. And I've been here ever since. Yes. And just quickly, what's your, what's the chronology of your work in Toronto at U of T? Chronology. Well, I started off, you know, obviously with a steelmaking research group. I built up a steelmaking research group. And in the mid-80s, that was, I came here in 1970. In the mid-80s, working closely with industry and research, folk companies like DeFasco and Stelco and some other companies abroad, we established what was called a Ferris metallurgy research group. And that was recognised by the American Iron and Steel Institute in the States because they used to fund research at different universities, set amount of money to do industrial or related research. You would make proposals to them and select them and fund them. But in the early, early 80s, but 1982, AISI, American Iron and Steel Institute, they decided to establish two, what are called AISI distinguished professorships. And they interviewed a number of folks. And I was very fortunate. I got one of them and the other one went to Professor John Elliott at MIT. And that was a big boost to the operation here at Toronto because what that professorship carried was $100,000 a year for five years for research. So that allowed us to kind of expand their research activities in the mid-80s while I held that so-called distinguished professorship. Remember one of the students saying at the time, you need to remember after distinction comes extinction, which was a nice, humbling thing to remember. You only have these things for a certain amount of time and these chairs only existed for five years. But it gave a real boost and brought a lot of attention to the activities of the department, not only within Canada but internationally. So we subsequent to that paid, I guess from the beginning of the 80s on, there were quite a number of people came from Japan, from Japanese steel companies, as well as academia to spend one year or two years with the group. And that was always a great thing because for the local students to have these people come in for a year or two years from abroad, friendships were established that never died, they lived on and it was just good for us here at Toronto to have these people coming in from abroad. And Japan in those days was quite advanced in some facets of metallurgy, weren't they? Well, I saw absolutely right. Well, at that time Japan was number one in the world in terms of steel making capacity and had major research endeavors going on. So it was very good to have these relationships with Japan and have people come from there and spend time here. And subsequently I had opportunity to spend time over there based at Kyoto University as a visiting professor there. So, particularly after I retired, I was able to spend more time over there, two or three months at a time, based at Kyoto and visiting the steel plants and so on and contacting again people from there who had been over here. So these friendships when you look back are very meaningful, very meaningful and even today, you know, I can contact them either by phone or email and the time just disappears. So I think relationships when I look back were very important. I still have a small research group as a professor emeritus, the university allows me still to have an office here in some labs and some students and what's called a senior research associate that looks after things on a day-to-day basis and keeps the group running and we still have good contact with Japan of course, some other countries. Are you still full-time or? No, I don't do any teaching anymore. Okay. So it's purely a voluntary thing. Okay. But enjoy doing it and enjoy coming in. I tell my wife it keeps me young, meeting these young people, you know. Absolutely, no matter how old the gentleman I interview are, it's a recurring theme. They're always retired but they're never actually retired. That's the kind of situation, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, enjoy and obviously you wouldn't do it if you didn't enjoy it because you don't need to do it. Nobody's asking you to do it. You do it because you enjoy it. You all enjoy it. It's a great privilege really, a great privilege. What can we young people want? What was the out of all your years of teaching, what was a subject or specific class that really stands out that was your favorite or you think impacted people the most? Well that's an interesting question. Well what one do you think impacted them the most? Well I used to teach a first year introductory course and it was called an introduction to metals and then over the years it changed introduction to materials and that was taken by students who were registered in mythology, chemical engineering students, mineral engineering students, they would take that course in first year and I thoroughly enjoyed that because here were students, most of them, first year right after finishing high school and they're in university and it's a totally different kind of environment. The whole learning process is different and it was a big class from my point of view in the sense they were maybe about 120 or so students whereas normally in the metallurgy program we had a couple of dozen students so I was normally teaching maybe something 20, 22, 24 students but that first year course was a big one and the interactions are quite different you know but I thoroughly enjoyed it and later on I heard from a number of students that that kind of introduction so called to metals, materials had an influence in their subsequent decisions because quite often people come into engineering they're not necessarily sure what the different branches all mean there's electrical and that's pretty well defined and civil and you're involved in civil, mechanical, but metallurgy that's a kind of strange one a little bit for some people unless they're relatives have been involved in it but my dad wasn't a foundry they haven't had any contact so that introduction course called introduction to metals, an introduction to materials I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think it had a positive influence in some folks and helping them because the way the thing was set up at Toronto first year was a was a common year in the sense that you were not locked into any particular department and at the end although you registered in the department you never really followed that program until second year so at the end of first year you could decide I'd rather do this than that so it was a kind of influential program in that sense for people deciding what do you want to do some might have said oh that's better last thing I want to do is that that's okay you found out you don't want to do it you do something else so you asked me what was a favorite course I enjoyed all my courses but I look back in that first year course has been one that was enjoyable. So what can affect people the most? Well I think that was that's right you were very much aware that that's people in a transition mode have just come from school high school most of them they're just into university and they're going to make some decisions going into the second year as to where they're going to go and so it was an important an important course in that sense and looking back was there any specific job or project that you worked on that you'd say yeah that was pretty dysfunctional yeah it's an interest in what do you use well dysfunctional I'm not sure if I can respond to that dysfunctional you can counter with another word too well another word maybe I found difficult okay a job I found difficult and that was when not so much when I was in academia but when I was in industry it was a time in the end that was late 60s 1968 1970 there was a turn down in the industry and there were a number of cutbacks and so one of the I had this research group I also had under my mandate people that looked after what we called pilot plant facilities small scale furnaces and small scale rolling mills where you did a kind of modeling of the operation on a small scale and that at that time we had to cut back in the number of employees so each supervisor had a number of people under them and they were told okay here's a certain number of folks we've got to get cut back got to let them go and I found that very hard because here was I coming in from academia and I'd only been there about a year or so and here were people who had worked there sometimes 20 30 years I had to say and we've got to let you go and that was not easy I personally for me I did not find that easy at all but that was one of the things we had to do at that time and ultimately you know there were a number of cuts along the way and the time came when it came my turn and my boss Bill Dennis the Englishman and he's a great it was a great friend he said I'm awful sorry Ali but we're going to have to eliminate your group so we're going to have to let you go that you've got some months to look around and see if you can find a position back in academia well I'd been thinking of going back to academia anyway but that accelerated it but what it did do it gave me a feeling for how these folks felt I think when I had to tell them I'm afraid your jobs going to disappear that happened to me and at first it was hurtful and I took it personally thought what am I doing wrong well in hindsight and looking back in subsequent discussions I wasn't doing anything wrong but certain things had to be curtailed and eliminated and other groups brought together and so it was my turn to look for another position and that's when I started looking back in academia again but I'd always wanted to go back to academia so I let when I did leave about five months after four months after I'd heard I was on this list for departure and got this job at Toronto I should never regretted the time I had spent with that company because they were so good to me really but it also in addition to technical stuff and working in production facilities in addition to that it gave me a kind of feeling when I was subsequently working with students particularly during the 80s and 90s and where we are today although I don't work quite as much with them now to say to them look remember the job you go to you may not have for life now my father he joined the Foundry of the Mitsubishi 14 and they had it till they retired at 65 now when I left Glasgow to go to Canada you thought why are you doing that you've got a job at Glasgow when I left Canada to go to the States oh man he says you'll never amount to anything you're nothing but a drifter and I remember him saying that to me what was fear in his voice you're nothing but a drifter then when I left the States and came back to Canada I think that just confirmed it but all of that to say that was so foreign to my father and folks like him and folks that worked at that time at DeFasco and Stelco and other companies they were there for life absolutely but now and it gave me an opportunity to say to students subsequent year don't expect that the job you start with will be the job you finish with you may actually be asked to leave it through no fault of your own and don't try not to take it personally it's do the best you can wherever you are absolutely but we're ready to make moves if you need to and of course that's well that's what that's the trend today that's the trend today that's right a job basically where you work from the age of 19 to retirement doesn't really exist anymore no that's it's extremely unusual today I would say extremely I'm sure it happens occasionally but back then it was very much the thing you know so that was another experience that I went through at that time it wasn't enjoyable but when I look back in it boy I don't regret it I don't regret it having gone to industry you know and then come back to academia in fact I would say to my own graduates that are thinking of academia boy if you can spend some time in industry first it'll be a great thing to do and I remember one particular student I had he did his bachelor's degree here then he spent a year in industry then he came back did his masters he went back to industry for a couple of years then came back did his doctorate then left and now runs his own company but that back and forth between industry and academia there's so much you can learn because they're totally different environments you know so I think it's very important for our graduates coming through here at any university it's pretty much an engineering to try and spend time where it happens before the teaching side change a little change of subject here have you have you been a member or are a member of any organizations or committees or yeah that's an interesting point well an interesting aspect when I was in when I came to McMaster I became a member of the metallurgical society of CIM and also the ironman steel society in the States and then when I moved to industry I continued with these affiliations and attending the conferences and that for me was a very important part of professional development going to these meetings presenting papers listening to papers meeting people sitting on committees it was a great way for establishing networks it sounds frivolous but if I had not been involved in professional societies and there was a whole dimension that would have been missing and one of the things we do here in other metallurgical departments material departments do the same thing encouraging students to be members of professional organizations because there's so much that can come from it so I'm still a member of Metsoc CIM and iron and steel society and a number of other societies as well and the friendships that develop for these are so important I come back to that again friendships and relationships you know and you can pick up the phone and say I have a great graduate student here just finishing off I'd like him to send you or her to send you the resume and you have a look at it and see what you think and it's so easy to do that and people establish these relationships that just influence you for the rest of your life so members of professional societies has been a good thing for me and here's a could be could be actually an interesting contrast or not but between your life in academia and your life in industry how present or absent were women in your field and you can answer it in both parts yeah well when I was in industry there were very very few women engineers very few I'm having trouble I'm trouble even thinking of a woman engineer that was in our research department I don't know if there was one the librarians were women secretarial support staff but engineering no whereas now oh that's a major shift even when I came to university at first the number of women in engineering relatively small but that percentage has increased drastically over the years and in some departments of engineering today over 50 percent are women which is an amazing thing you know and in the research group in iron and steel and nonferrous metallurgy process metallurgy one of the other profs in our department works close by and an association with me he has several women and he's doing a doing a doctorate in engineering and that 40 years ago was very unusual so women are playing an no question an increasing role and being more accepted obviously and in leadership roles as well but it has taken time you know yeah absolutely you must yeah just the contrast you've seen from your early teachings to yeah yeah now 50 percent you say and what were your go to social activities or again it could be very different as you moved a lot but what were you go go to social activities or the groups who were involved with what did you and them tend to do who would we tend to well a major area of activity I had outside of academia I was very much involved in church activities so I would teach Sunday school don't do it now but years ago I would teach Sunday school teenage college career class and then young adults and adult classes I was involved in lay preaching my father did that and my uncle did that and that probably had an influence in me so I spent quite a bit of time involved in church related activities and social related activities like that in terms of interaction with the university and things we would do there although the typical kind of things where we would have Christmas parties together and during the summer time we would meet at home and in the backyard and I still look back at some of the photographs 20 30 40 years ago and see some of these graduate students in their swimming costume or swimming pool where they are now in industry some are now retired from industry you know so again it's friendship you know time spent doing that in company with people and just relaxing and chatting and doing things I have an interest in music and enjoy listening to music my father he introduced me to back in Britain was called British brass band music and he used to go to hear the brass bands playing in the park in Glasgow and I really wasn't interested in doing that as a boy growing up I prepared all brass bands you do I do oh there you go well I used to say to my dad I'd rather play football soccer as I say here rather play football and my mother would say to me why don't you go for an hour or two with your dad to the park and listen to the bands and these top brass bands from England would come up as well as Scottish brass bands and gradually over a period of time I began to enjoy this music and my dad said one time would you like to go to a brass band contest where bands compete against each other and yeah I'd like to do that we would go through to Edinburgh to the Scottish brass band championships of Princess Street Gardens where they had a Princess Street brass band contest and then we went down to England to Manchester where the British open championships were held so I became very interested in brass bands although I didn't play and even after coming to Canada I would occasionally go back to London for the British open the British national brass band championships and also the open championships where the bands play a particular test piece for about 12-15 minutes in duration and each band plays exactly the same thing and you sit there with a score and you hear the pages turning the score you know and people are following and if a band makes a mistake you're all rigid oh man I have to do so oh that's it I've always enjoyed brass band music at first I didn't but again my dad introduced me to something so that has stayed with me and I still love brass bands and you mentioned football soccer here I'm just curious when you were in Pittsburgh did you ever see the Steelers play? American football no I never did I was never a natural game to see them I don't know Steelers well of course and see them on television but I was never actually a game to see these guys play that's right but of course Pittsburgh very much a strong Scottish influence there as well and of course we talk about Carnegie who came over from Scotland in Dunfermann and had a major role in the steel industry there leading up to US Steel Corporation so Pittsburgh to me I felt very comfortable in Pittsburgh as I did in Hamilton because there were steel towns and I had grown up within a kind of steel environment you know so I always felt very comfortable in these places and even today although Pittsburgh is no longer a steel center it's going through renovation hopefully some business city now I still love going back to Pittsburgh with the hills and the three rivers there and the bridges across and really all of that I say that the two years I really spent an industry there influenced me in a number of ways again people relationships friendships that were made that would never have been done otherwise so I thoroughly enjoyed it thank you I'm just going to so how have engineering education and academic research changed over the course of your very lengthy career university career yeah well when I look when I look back well when we'll be doing research projects they were very much focused on experiments measurements photography for example we would take high speed movies 2000 frames a second of pouring streams the furnace into the ladle from a ladle into what's called a tundish into molds because the character of these streams can change it's like water coming out of a tap you can have a very smooth stream of water and you look at it going into this sink into the pool and there are very few bubbles but if you've got a spraying stream a flaring stream it entrains air and suddenly there's a lot of bubbles well the same thing happens in steel making and if you entrain air into the steel you contaminate it to oxygen and nitrogen so taking photographs of streams was important for us at one point and I say that to give an example of observation watching looking at things today that still goes on and it's very important that it does but it's complimented with modelling because of the availability of computing power so we can model systems and can do so much more with the aid of the computer that we could never do 40 years ago the computer would just begin into 50 years just begin to kind of come into vogue but we didn't have the modelling abilities so today we can combine measurements and modelling and combine that with manufacturing operations observations and measurements from manufacturing to develop information on a particular project so if you ask me what do you think one of the biggest differences is now it's the availability of computers to model but at the same time well that's a great thing there's a kind of cautionary side because if we simply take the modelling by itself and there's a great temptation particularly for young people and by young people I'm thinking children two three four five six they're doing things with their fingers and computing it's so natural to them so to do research based in modelling is a very natural thing for them but there's a danger if we don't combine that with some measurements and observations the models may not be representative of reality so it's very important that the measurements and the observation continues in line with the modelling and folks that are involved in modelling are very much aware of that but just occasionally you can get a younger person that gets so caught up in the modelling they forget the reality and the two really need to go together but that's a powerful tool now that we didn't have then absolutely it must save incredible amounts of time as well oh it does that's a good point well it saves enough money for modelling right yes probably money as well that's right oh yeah yeah you've uh I'll ask you to not be bashful for this question but you have received many prestigious awards including the Queen Elizabeth Dimon Jubilee metal in recognition in fact of sustained contributions to the materials engineering field in Canada so looking back what how would you describe these contributions ah people have been very kind to me will over the years people have been very kind because obviously these things don't just happen mass and folks obviously write recommendations and letters of support and put your name forward for things so you it's not just a draw no yeah yeah obviously I have a lot of good friends that's what that says you say contributions I think I think in terms of contributions well distinct from particular technical areas I think the biggest contribution if you say what do you think you've has been the opportunity to work with people and to see what because really really it's the students working with me in the research team that do the work that brings publicity and then I'm very fortunate to get recognition for that hopefully these students as they you get recognition as well and well awards but that's where it comes from it's working with people in younger or earlier days and it's probably true more today even than then publication is so important papers and when a person is young I think there's a real drive I've got to publish I've got to get papers out and that can can doesn't need to but it can become an all-consuming passion publish I've got to publish looking back and thinking at the end of the day I'm convinced that people are more important than papers now that's not to say you shouldn't publish but people who are behind the work that generates the papers and the people that then go into industry or academia and carry these ideas out there are far more important than the papers themselves you know I've been very fortunate in the sense that in my capacity I get opportunity to speak and give papers at different places my doctor said to me one time she had been asked at school this is when she was 16 she's a lot older now but when she was 16 the teacher had gone around the class and asked the different students what does your dad work at and my doctor told me she said I told them dad you don't work you just talk other people do the work and I never forgot that and I thought about it I thought you know there's a lot of truth in that I just talk but I cannot talk about things if people are not doing the work and it's these people working with me really really they're the folks that are doing the work and generating results and then together papers are published so are there other key things you and your students and your teams have worked on that really stand out in the metallurgy world? oh you know the areas that we've worked and really go back to where I started off the cleanliness and the quality of steel and that has never diminished in the sense of demand for it in fact it has increased there's been an increasing demand for better quality steel cleaner steel stronger steel lighter steel all all the way through these years so a kind of central thrust of our research still is focused on how do you keep steel clean because in the process of making steel you make it in a number of reactors you use a furnace you transfer metal to a ladle you transfer it to what's called a tundish like a bath shaped vessel which then distributes it into molds and during all of these different reactors reactions are taking place and the question is are you destroying quality that you generated in the previous reactor? you know you've got a certain quality here and you take it to the next reactor do you improve the quality or does it deteriorate? so the big challenge is to try to make sure you're improving quality all the way through the system so a lot of our work really has focused on what can you do to make sure you get good quality and once you have quality to keep it and make sure it's not destroyed by contamination with the atmosphere because unfortunately we're making steel in this atmosphere which is air oxygen and nitrogen and in a humid day moisture hydrogen so you can pick up oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen during transfer operations and that can destroy the quality of steel so what do you do to prevent that? and if it does happen how can you try to recover and it's always tough to try to recover if you've lost something so I can a major theme of our research has been to do with that and I think that's probably where we've maybe had a where the group has had a we had a big impact has had an impact yeah and if I'm not mistaken you knew a bit of consulting today? well I don't do as much consulting now I'm still serving some boards of companies and I enjoy that I enjoy working on the board with people I don't do quite as much nearly as much travelling as I used to I used to do quite a bit of travelling but work with different steel companies I don't do that to the same extent now but it was been a great experience over the years and it was a great source of information I guess my question is what kind of consulting have you done? well again it was going back to the research that we would do it would be based on what we had done in the lab and companies, steel companies such as Inland Steel in Chicago did quite a bit of work with them and ultimately I served in one of their technical advisory boards looking at what's going on in the operations and what kind of research might be done within industry and what might be done in academia because certain types of work are better done in one location than another but you sure don't want to do them in isolation and if they can be linked together and make use of the strengths in each of these places then it can have an impact so generally my research focused around the kind of things that we've been talking about steel quality factors that affect the chemistry of liquid metal when molten slags I remember one time over in Japan there was going to be a one-day course or symposium on slags, molten slags and the Japanese gentlemen said think of another word slags is a very bad word here slags people think is contamination and adversely affects environment is there another word for molten slags you could use and the phrase we come up with oxide melts oh we said that's what we'll use the term oxide melts that sounds much better but that's just what molten slags are they're molten oxides and the chemistry of these oxides is very important the steel making addict used to be look after the slag and the steel will look after itself because if the slag is not properly designed chemically it can contaminate the steel when in fact they should be refining the steel so these aspects weren't very much part of consulting activities chemistry of slags and metals and interaction with the atmosphere casting operations well I have just a few last questions for you sure so this often people see this as difficult question so we can maybe divide it in in two parts but it's just it's a general question what are you proudest of in life and we could divide it in in life and also in your professional life well I appreciate you dividing at that age that's a good way to because I think what I'm proudest of I think I'm proudest of my family my wife who has looked after me all these years and put up with a lot when I was working strange hours and going to odd places and being away she's been extremely supportive and then our children with a son and daughter and they in turn have a son and daughter so we'll afford grandchildren and I'm very proud of them and what they're doing and their interests in life and how they're going so I find that a very satisfying thing professionally I think I guess it's obvious the thing I'm most proud of professionally the students that have worked with me and I see them out there now as I mentioned before some of them have reached the stage where they've now retired but when I see what they've accomplished and the relationship that they've maintained with their alma mater I'm back to people again the friendships they never disappeared and I'm very very proud of what they have accomplished and of the nice relationships that they in turn have had with others so I feel good about that and probably one of my favorite questions and I have a lot of experience in answering this but what are the most what is the most important lesson or piece of advice you could give someone much younger like a student for example and this doesn't necessarily have to do specifically with metallurgy it could but in general as well what's your go-to piece of advice well it's an interesting question it is well and I'm sure there are there are a number of different ways to answer I remember when I first came to Toronto back in 1970 and it must have been in the early 70s not that it's been born but somewhere around 1774 there was an Englishman again I've been very much affected by Englishmen all during my career I've been working for an Englishman all my time that tells you something but it was an English gentleman came over and he spoke here in Convocation Hall his name was Malcolm Muggeridge and he was very much a philosopher he was also the editor of a magazine which was very well known in Britain years ago Punch, Punch Magazine, Malcolm Muggeridge and he gave a talk in Convocation Hall and he said something then that stuck with me he was about 72 or 73 at that time when he gave this lecture and maybe this is the kind of advice I would pass on to others he said he said when I was young there were some things that for me were very important and there were other things that didn't matter at all then he said now that I'm old and as I say he was in his 70s now that I'm old those things that seemed very important to me then don't mean so much now and the things that didn't matter at all have become the most important things of all and in that context again I think when we're younger at least I speak for myself and I definitely speak for myself big thrust was publications results get things out research funding push but gradually I think progressively over the years I find while these things are important that they have a place and the the challenge is to make sure they don't take first place because if they take first place life is out of balance in the last analysis and I'm not sure how some folks in the university might respond our primary objective here is not to do research university is not a research institute it's a training place it's a place where people come to think and to learn and prepare for the future and research is a means to accomplish that but it's only a means it's only one for many others so I think at the end of the day especially when we're younger is to try to analyse what are we really making our priorities in life what are our priorities because that's what will demand our attention and we have to be careful what these priorities are and as life goes by I think perhaps naturally we'll become maybe better aware of what's really important but the sooner we can realise that I think the better and there's a little aside when I left academia to go to industry it was in a sense a turning point because when I was in academia I had this desire well I want to have the top steel making group in Canada which was a very self-centred position and it was becoming all-consuming and family was becoming less and less of a part of my life when I left university and went to industry it was a totally different environment a totally different set of goals and objectives but it helped me to get rid of that perspective where work had become my god and I say that deliberately work had become number one in my life and that was my god when I came back to academia I did come back with a different perspective having spent time in industry and I think looking back that had a big influence in how I then subsequently worked with people people far more important than papers and relationships between people far more important than results not to say that papers of results are not important but to try to get a perspective most important of all are people and that within the university really is what we're involving people I used to say a little bit kind of lightheartedly but what's the truth then de Fasco's motto was our product is steel our strength is people de Fasco would say lovely motto I used to say here at Toronto product is people their strength is steel but the emphasis is on people I think I would stop on that all right well thank you very much you're very well thank you Will thanks so much appreciate it