Goodbye John.

When I was traveling to Canada a lot for work back in 2006-07, I worked with quite a character called John. 

John was an electrician of some 35 years service to a large steel works that I worked on a long term energy reduction project with. He had been there so long that in fact his employee number was '3'.

John spent most of his years as an electrical maintenance supervisor, trouble-shooting problems and responding to breakdowns on the many large motors and electricity supply systems at the site. Towards the end of his career (actually I think it was technically after he retired), John became actively involved in our energy teams, being the implementer for many of the good ideas that were generated. It was a great project and since has become a case study for the work we do over there.

He got so involved that he saw a gap in the market when trying to solve one of the energy efficiency issues on site relating to industrial lighting control - he began building his own automatic control systems that could withstand the incredibly dusty, dirty, tough conditions in a steel melt-shop. He set up his own company delivering these simple robust systems to anyone who would have them.

John and I spend many an hour walking the myriad of switch rooms, investigating pumps and fans and motors and drives across the factory. He would tell me funny stories about how the guy who first build the site, built the huge electric arc furnace on the assumption that he could just plug it into the local grid and faced a 1 year delay in production start up due to having to get a larger supply to the entire township to feed his factory. He would tell me of his ice fishing escapades on the local river, and we would discuss the merits of American trucks and European diesels.

The funniest story I remember, though I cant tell it properly, was about how one of the factory cats (semi feral creatures which are often found in steelworks and fed by the operators - to keep the rats down), got into one of the electrical rooms and electricuted itself across two live circuits and took town the entire factory causing $100,000 of lost production. Feeding cats was banned after that, though I did see a couple of soot covered creatures which I mistook for huge rats myself.

I remember John fondly because he was, despite his age, extremely kind, very courteous,  enthusiastic, friendly and warm. And because he had a real belief in what we were doing. A real deep seeded belief that the work we were doing was important - not just for money saving reasons, but for moral reasons too.

I am writing this post because today I found out that John died of cancer a few months ago.

Goodbye John.