Fred - The Canadian Years

So Kira thinks I should eat more fiber. Actually, I have been eating fiber every morning for a while now. I remind myself of Dad. I remember him eating his bowl of bran every night before he went to bed. At the time I figured it was his excuse for an extra bowl of cereal but now I understand. So I'm happy to report that this morning I weighed in at 210.6 pounds for a reduction of almost a pound. I know it is only a pound but you have to start somewhere. Now for Fred Leavitt part III - The Canadian Years. As I approached graduation in 1983 it was right in the middle of the biggest recession I was ever aware of. There were no jobs anywhere. I figured I'd end up in the oil and gas fields as a welding expert but there were no jobs available anywhere. While in school I worked on a research project for one of my professors developing submerged arc welding processes. One day I was riding up the elevator at the U of A and one of my professors stepped in and when he saw me he said, "how would you like to live in Bassano?" I asked him what country Bassano was in? It turns out there was a small company in a small rural town in Alberta called Global Thermoelectric. They were a spin off from 3M company who used to make thermoelectric generators for the space industry (I'll bet you thought they only made tape). In fact the thermoelectric generators that the Apollo missions left on the moon were made by 3M and used the same technology that Global had. That is a thermoelectric generator sitting on the ground in the picture. The astronaut pulling the plutonium fuel rod out of its shield and he will insert it into the generator. 3M heated their thermoelectrics with Plutonium-238 but Global just burned propane. Since they ran off heat and had no moving parts these generators could run for years with no maintenance and so powered things like microwave repeaters and cathodic protection systems. Since Global brought their technology from 3M with them they had the recipes but they didn't have anyone who understood them. I was the first materials guy they hired and they showed me a dozen boxes of files and said that for the next six months my job was to read the files and learn what was in them. What more could you ask for than that? I was hired by Global and I was the only person in my graduating class to get a job right out of college. It was a stressful time since I graduated in June and didn't get my job offer until July. I started work August 2, 1983 (Aug 1 is a holiday in Canada). It was pretty scary. Bassano is a town of about a thousand people and we rented there for a year at which point we bought a small house in Rosemary. What a wonderful place to live. Someday I will have to describe Rosemary to you but that would take a book. It was a great place to raise our kids while they were young. Rosemary had 317 people (Lisa did the census so we know) and two of their ten streets are paved. I worked at Global from Aug 1983 until Jun 1992 at which time I accepted a job in San Diego. At the time I was the Engineering Manager at Global. It was a good job and I owe them a lot. Sometimes I feel guilty about how I just up and left them but I needed to move on. Tears were streaming down all of our faces as we drove out of Rosemary on July 1, (Canada day) 1992. We still have many good friends in Rosemary.