INNOVATION July-August 2013

f ea t u r e s to campus living and failed his first year. Under UBC’s policy for engineering students, a failed year required a student to wait a year before going back to the program. Faced with uncertainty, he turned to Richardson for advice. “Ed understood that I had just gotten too involved with other things and my head was not into it. He told me I was capable of doing it and

thought I should take a year out and do something that inter- ested me,” remembers Hall. He landed a BC government sur- veyor’s job working on the Coquihalla Highway project and what was supposedly a summer job turned into a full time one. The summer “fun in the field” disintegrated into the mud churned up by fall rains and then, winter in the high country hit. It was a reality check. “I knew this was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he recalls. He went back to university, completing the engi- neering program with honors. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1984, but decided to stay and complete a master’s degree in structural engineering with a special interest in bridges. Nearly 30 years later, Hall is sitting in Richardson’s West Vancouver home, while Richardson watches him unfold a letter dated March 15, 1984. “Ed, you sent me this after I graduated,” says Hall, as it was Richardson who gave him his engineer’s iron ring in the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. Attached is the card bearing the words that Richardson was told to say on pre- sentation. “May it be fortunate to you, oh, my brother in all your works and ways,” it reads. There is also a personal note from Richardson along the same vein: “May it bring you as much good luck as it brought pleasure to me.” Richardson’s words still resonate, as his love of engineer- ing endures 80 years later. “It’s been a fascinating job. There has never been a day that started where I didn’t want to go to work. Richardson started his career in a different world. Growing up in Kitsilano, he graduated from Vancouver Technical School. He had decided he liked technical things and entered UBC’s civil engi- neering program. He graduated with a group of just four others in 1932, the beginning of the Depression. Jobs were scarce. “My favorite story while looking for a job was going to a consulting engineer’s office. The engineer said, no, he didn’t have a job for me and should I hear of anything, please let him know,” laughs Richardson. The only industry really moving at that time was gold min- ing. He headed for Barkerville, taking the Union Steamship to Squamish and the PGE Railway to Quesnel. From there it was travel by jitney, a motor vehicle, which tackled the rural roads leading into the Barkerville mining area where Fred Wells, in 1927, had founded the Cariboo Gold Quartz Mining Company. The last leg was via horse-drawn sleigh. “Fortunately, Wells was going up and the sleigh met him,” recalls Richardson. Wells got off to lighten the load when the horses drew up the slopes and “I made sure I did also,” he tells. He arrived in camp. “The first job I got was piling cords of wood,” he says. He was eventually hired by land surveyor, Major E.J. Gook, who needed an instrument man. There was always something exciting to do,” he says. Early Days and Engineering Opportunities

103-year-old Ed Richardson was granted his P.Eng. designation in 1935. Inset: Richardson was one of five UBC civil engineering graduates in 1932.

Richardson lived in the mine staff house, helping to lay out min- eral claims on the 750 acres that had started the company, which by then had cut into Cow Mountain to intercept veins. A mill had been built and the first gold brick produced in 1933. Company directors saw the opportunity to develop the town of Wells. They turned to Richardson and Gook to survey the town site on a knoll where it sits today and exists as a tourism and arts community. Gook decided to leave as the survey was finished, “the same day he left, the directors asked me to be the engineer for the town.” Richardson had his challenges set out. During the first 18 months, he wrote the exams to become a recognized BC land sur- veyor and also a registered professional engineer. There was much to do. “When you are young you don’t realize what an opportunity you are being given at the time,” he says today. It was a whole new town, and already growing as people came to mine gold. Water systems and sewers had to be laid out as well as roads, a residential area, public and institutional buildings, such as the hospital and commu- nity centre. Over a period of seven years, the town took shape and developed. So did Richardson’s personal life—he married the girl from back home, brought her north and started a family. By 1940, Wells was established and Richardson was starting to feel restless. He soon got the chance to return to the Lower Mainland. “I saw an ad in the paper that West Vancouver was looking for a municipal engineer. While I had a nice job, mines do peter out. I thought it was time to move on.” Richardson had worked summer jobs for the City of Vancouver Water District’s first chief commissioner Ernest Albert Cleveland, (for whom North Vancouver’s Cleveland dam is named) and also William H. Powell, the Greater Vancouver Water District’s chief engineer. Using their references, he landed the job and he moved to West Vancouver, a small municipality undergoing an expansion. In 1947, opportunity again came knocking on Richardson’s front door. The British Properties wanted an engineer. “It was quite a step forward,” he says. After all, the company owned the Lions Gate Bridge, which had been built and opened in 1938, while Richardson was in Wells. It became Richardson’s respon- sibility to maintain the 25-cent toll bridge. As well, the bridge’s opening was creating a boom on the North Shore and new infra- structure of all kinds was needed as more residents and busi- nesses moved to the British Properties area. Richardson again became busy building a new community. In 1955, Richardson started his own survey and consulting company. He landed two major accounts, BC Hydro and British Properties, and never looked back until he retired in 1974.

2 6

J u ly/Au g u s t 2 013

i n n o v a t i o n