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I'm from cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. After completing a general drafting course at Cape Breton Vocational High School, I moved to Toronto in 1964.  My first job was at Universal Drafting as a detailer and I have been in the business ever since. In the late 60's, I joined the steel fabricating firm of John T. Hepburn and then moved on to Ontario Structural, a detailing office throughout the 70's.

When recession hit Toronto in the early 80's, I split my time between Toronto and Vancouver, as a self employed detailer, spending summers and autumns in Toronto at Dominion Bridge, and winters and springs in Vancouver at Candraft.  I enjoyed my winters in Vancouver, doing lots of skiing and sailing, and went back and forth for eight years until Dominion Bridge picked up a huge project – Sky Dome, probably the most interesting job I have ever worked on. This project needed a lot of temporary steel for erection and Dominion Bridge fabricated much of this work on site. I had the opportunity to work in the field, out of a trailer for about a year and a half, and often steel I detailed during the day would be fabricated and erected by the time I went back to work next morning.

In the early 90's, I worked for Robert Moss and Associates for a couple of years and Central Drafting for two more years.  Then I joined Total Structural Detailing in 1996, Detailing has changed completely over the years and manual drafting has become a thing of the past.  As computerized detailing is taking control, it has become more interesting and this may have resulted in the recent merger of Dowco and TSD.  They say a change is as good as a vacation…I think they’re right.

I still ski (cross country now) and enjoy sail boat racing in dingys.