Gordon Hills, Vermilion, AB

After graduation I stayed at the university and completed a masters degree under Dr. Peter Kondra in the Poultry Department. After completion Dick Allen found me a job with J.H. Hare and Associates Limited. The company’s primary business was developing agricultural products and marketing them for companies whose main business lay outside agriculture. I was responsible for the marketing of the “ChemStor,” a liquid feed grain preservative produced by Canadian Celanese Limited. This included all phases of the marketing process from farm calls on customers, to creating advertising copy, to coordinating the research into the use of the product under western Canadian conditions.
The job ended when the Celanese folks decided that the market for the product wasn’t large enough.
From there I moved to the now defunked National Grain Company where I was Director of Quality Control for about a year. I was responsible for the quality control program for the company’s five major feed mills and numerous mixer mills attached to the elevator system in western Canada. This involved development and implementation of a sampling system for ingredients and finished product. I was also responsible for all of the proximate analyses carried out by our consulting laboratory. I also modified various laboratory techniques to meet specific company requirements. The company nutritionist and I developed one of the first liquid feed supplements for cattle to be successfully marked in western Canada. This was the first such supplement to be based on beet molasses.
This was followed by a return to school. From 1971 to 1979 (that’s right eight years, there’s a story and I’ll tell you at the reunion) I worked on a Ph.D. under Dr. Bob Christopherson (an other Manitoba Grad 66 I think) at the University of Alberta.
Following graduation I stayed at the U of A as a research associate was responsible along with a postdoctoral fellow for the conduct of a number of research projects at the Metabolic Research Centre of the Department of Animal Science. One of these projects determined the metabolic cost of sucking to both the ewe and her lamb. Another project developed an accurate means of calibrating oxygen analyzers used in making metabolic determinations in large animals.
In 1981 I took a temporary teaching position in the Agriculture school at Lakeland College in Vermilion, Alberta. The job turned permanent and I never left. From 1981 until my retirement in 2005 I instructed technology students in two year diploma courses in animal science, animal health, and herd health.
Some of you may remember me running about campus in an army uniform.
Concurrent with much of my civilian career and education, I served in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve (Militia). I enlisted as a private soldier in the Winnipeg Grenadiers in 1963. On entering university, I transferred to the Canadian Officer’s Training Corps (C.O.T.C.). I graduated from the program in 1969 (the last cadet to complete the program before it was discontinued) and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Winnipeg Service Battalion. I was promoted to Captain in 1970 and to Major in 1976 (being at that time the youngest officer in the peacetime Canadian Forces to attain field rank). I graduated from the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College, Fort Frontenac, in 1977 and served in many line and staff positions throughout Canada. I was promoted Lieutenant Colonel in 1980 and assumed command of the 15th Edmonton Service Battalion. Following completion of a normal tenure of command I retired to the supplemental list in 1983..In 1996 I was appointed Honorary Lieutenant- Colonel of the Battalion. Following three appointments and nine years I asked that my appointment not be renewed to give another deserving officer the position
On a personal level I married Cicely Langille a social worker for the city of Edmonton in 1975. Our only child Heather was born in 1981. Heather is now grown and married. The present centre and joy of our lives is our 6 year old grandson Tyvale and his 3 year old sister Kataya Mae both of whom live a block away from us.