Sunday, August 19, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Santa Claus?
1 Rick Grigg, 2 Ellen Visser?, 3 Ann Clay,
4 ? Ikeda, 5 Stu McKichnie, 6 David McKay, 7 David George
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Stewart McKechnie (Stu)
Stu on a 3-week trip to China April 2012
Can't tell you how thrilled I was to find your blog and names and photos from the early days. Our youngest Grandchild needs a little extra help and Arlene was at a therapist with him in Burlington yesterday and asked if Stelco R&D had changed names and where the old CSG building was. Isn't Google a great tool.
To be honest it took a few minutes with some of the names but because so many were of the early gang they all came back eventually. Has Nick been able to fight his way back a bit?.
A little update: I left R&D in 1975 to join Michel Hone in Mtl to form a satellite R&D east. We lived in Mont St. Hilaire SE of Mtl. Adrianna was 2 1/2 and Alison was 6 months. During our stay 'til 1986 I had 7 different jobs starting with R&D then through a few mills as Met and QC and production jobs as GF Pipe Mill and GF Steelmaking and ended as Service Met for Jack Presho in the east. Arlene worked at a number of jobs in computer science (including giving courses in French) and eventually was a prof at a Community college. Our son Matthew was born in 1977. All three of our kids went to French Primary school..
We moved to Windsor as Sen Service Met with the Automotive Sales office. Arlene instructed at U of Windsor and quickly became bored and looked around for some new challenge. At age 42 she announced she thought she would like to go to Law school. To a mediocre student at best that sounded ludicrous and I said so.... so she promptly enrolled.
I loved the action in Detroit and the small group working out of the Windsor office. When a headhunter called late in 1988 with an offer to work in an Eastern On Rodmill I happily said " No. I'm very happy where I am thank you" and hung up. I told Arlene and she said that she might benefit from finishing law school in Ottawa with job opportunities etc. So I called back to say I was only kidding when I said to stick your job.
We moved in 1989 and there was lots of low hanging fruit as a service met and QA guy to help Ivaco get away from the nail rod mentality. I became Rodmill Super in 1993 and worked toward a major revamp of the RM in 3 phases from 1995 -99. Then I created a job called Manager of Product Performance that sort of dabbled from Production through QA and Service Met and I quite enjoyed that for a few years.
Ivaco got into financial trouble in 2003 and we were bought by Heico out of Chicago. They decided that I should actually work for pay and I became Manager of Operations. The strike from Sept. 2005 to Jan 2006 was all about DB vs DC pensions and we were asked to run the RM with staff. We did it and produced 72,000 tons of great quality rod and came together as a team like few others. Chicago was so impressed they suggested we move to 2 12hr shifts using outside help. Thank goodness the Union folded just as my crew were going to our first night shift.
Mid 2006 I named one fellow to take over production and another to cover my QA side (yes I know of foxes and chicken coops) and watched them grow into much better managers than I ever was and I retired on my 65th B'day.
While I was dabbling with steel, Arlene graduated and fast tracked to partner (at age 45 or so) in Ottawa then quit when our first gr. child was due and work as in house council and retired with me. She is very involved with a charity that educates girls in Tanzania called Project Tembo and has traveled to Africa 10/11 times over the last 5/6 yrs. In 2008 I was there for a total of 3 months building stuff for the project.
I would love to be part of the R&D conversation.
Stu
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
32 Years Ago
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