In ’71 yours truly George Menzies was President and during the year, we worked on a petition from 20 members in the London area for a chapter in be setup there. I had the opportunity to present this petition at the Regional Conference in May of ’71 and it was approved by the Society’s winter BOD Meeting in New Orleans in January 1972.
The London Canada Chapter was presented with their charter which was presented May 8th, 1972 and a large delegation present from the Hamilton Chapter.
Also at that ’71 CRC meeting, as Chapter Delegate, I argued that the Society research fund raising campaign in Canada was at a disadvantage as Canadian investors in ASHRAE research could not get a tax receipt. Hay Murray, the Regional RP Chair from Montreal who recently died while in retirement in Oakville, took up the challenge and had his company’s legal department prepare a request to Ottawa for the formation of a corporation in Canada devoted to ASHRAE research. It was accepted in 1972 by the Feds and was called ARC – ASHRAE Research Canada. Its sole role is to give Canadian members a taxable benefit when money is contributed to ASHRAE deductible under Section 37.1 of the income tax act. Today ASHRAE through ARC is spending millions on research in Canada through the generous contributions by ASHRAE members round the world.
Ed Vance followed me a President in ’73; George Buckler in ’74. George eventually rose though ASHRAE ranks to become Society Vice President, the highest position anyone has reached in Society from this chapter. Hugh Crowther may do better… but is now a US citizen.
In ’75 Roland Clee was President and we relocated our meetings to Roberts Restaurant on King St East because of the need to improve food quality while holding costs down. Tom Poolton was the next President. But attendance was dropping and we were looking around for a good location for the next year’s CRC. So in ’76 we relocated to the Royal Connaught on King East, where we held the spring Region 2 CRC and our all our chapter meetings.
It was a great CRC conference with delegates from every province in Canada and many visitors from the US. It also taught us a financial lesson. We overspent. We commenced a new policy to put funds away every year so when the next Hamilton CRC in ’86 would be held, we would have sufficient funds to cover an outstanding event. Most of the chapters have now followed this format.
In ’76 Frank Spina was President; in ’77 Carl Ljungberg and for the first time we had a repeat President in ’78 with Frank Spina again leading us. This was a significant year as in ’78 we sponsored a new Student Branch Chapter at Niagara College. This branch operated very successfully for a number of years under the leadership of George Takata and produced many current Hamilton chapter members such as our golf director David Rasmussen. It dissolved a number of years later when HVAC was dropped as a course.
In 1979, we had Jack Keon as President and this was also our 20th Anniversary year as a Chapter. We had a well attended meeting at the Connaught with Society President Morris Backer in attendance. He presented the Chapter with the Presidential Award of Excellence for our performance. It was in this period I served on the Society Board of Directors for 3 years and was Regional 2 Chair as well. Unfortunately, ASHRAE had chartered too many chapters in some regions and commenced a discussion period to divide up the chapters into new smaller more manageable regions. I fought hard to retain Canada as a single region based on the input I was given at the CRC conferences as I represented chapters from Halifax to Edmonton. However, Society elected to split Canada into 2 regions with Region 2 now only having about 9 eastern Canada chapters. Other Directors were Gerry Kowalyshyn Pres-elect, Geo Tanaka VP, W. Korolenchuk Secretary, Pete Bevan Treasurer. Dinners were $10.00