• Born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.

• Married for 30 years to Debbie and has three daughters — Ashley, Jena and Beaujana — and a four-year-old grandson.

• Enjoys fishing, riding a snowmobile and playing hockey.

• Describes himself as someone with a good work ethic who likes to plan things and see everything go smoothly. He also has a good rapport with the linemen he works with.

• Is the first in his family to work in the utility industry. His father was a land surveyor, fisherman, hunter and pilot, and all of his siblings chose occupations other than line work.

• Can't live without bucket trucks or battery-powered equipment. Also needs off-road utility vehicles to handle the rugged countryside in Ontario, where a lot of the lines do not follow any roads or trails and traverse rock, swamp and trees.

Early Years

When I was younger, I worked road construction and was out of town a lot. When I was newly married, my wife saw an advertisement for an apprenticeship at Ontario Hydro (now Hydro One). I am an outdoors type of person, so I was looking for outdoors-type work. I started as a line apprentice in a four-year apprenticeship program. I was hired in my hometown, and then I set out on a rotation for two years to go to three different locations throughout northern Ontario. I worked on the line maintenance crew in North Bay, and I have been there since 1981.

Taking the Lead

During my apprenticeship, which was from 1981 to 1983, I worked on a line maintenance crew; we set poles, hooked up services and built new transmission lines. I started running crews fairly early in my career. After about six or seven years, I began looking after crews, and about five years ago, I became a crew foreman. Now I look after the whole main crew in North Bay. I just took on a new position as a project supervisor for a line maintenance crew of 26 apprentices.

Day in the Life

Now that I am on a project crew, my job has changed. I now decide which workers go on which crews and which jobs they go out on. When it comes to planning the work for the crew, I need to know about how many hours each job will take and how many trucks we'll need. I then visit the job site to see the work before the crews arrive so they don't go into it blind. I also order materials, schedule truck inspections and maintenance, handle the time sheets and send out deliveries.

Challenges and Rewards

One of the main challenges I'm dealing with right now is the streamlining and the cost cutting. We now have to do more with less. I used to work on a large crew with a support staff and clerks, and now we're down to skeleton crews.

Safety Lesson

When I took on my job, it was made quite clear that safety is always number one, training is second and production is third. While not everything on paper works out in the field, you have to maintain a safe limit to how much you deviate from the rules.

I learned a valuable lesson about safety early on in my career when I first starting running my crew. There were only three of us on the crew, and we made electrical contact with a boom truck. Fortunately, no one got hurt. That happened more than 20 years ago, and since that time, none of us have been in that situation or let anyone get in that position. When you come that close to an accident, you learn from it.

Working Hard

I am a workaholic, and I missed a lot of good times with my girls when they were growing up because I was restoring power or off working on a job. I love my work, however, and I wouldn't change a thing if I had to do it all over again. It's a very rewarding job and it pays well. Our company has gone through quite a few changes over the last 10 years, but we're still keeping the power on to the people of Ontario.

Future Plans

I can retire in just over two years at the age of 53, but it all depends on my health and how things are going at work. I haven't had this much fun since I started working. It's quite a challenge with this group of apprentices, but I have a great group of supervisors working with me. Also, since I'm now fairly experienced, I enjoy passing on knowledge to the new guys. I'll probably keep doing this kind of work until I'm not physically able to do it anymore.