Nearly a century – and three generations – of service

Growing up, Dave Popiez was always grateful and proud to be in a Dofasco family. And now, after being recognized for 25 years of service at our company himself and learning about the work histories of two generations before him, Dave is prouder still. 

Dave’s father, John Popiez worked 34 years at Dofasco, a number matched by Dave’s grandmother, Mary Anne Bell. With Dave’s total years of service at 37 years, the three generations have amassed more than a century of years at Dofasco.  

The coolest thing he was able to confirm through Dofasco’s employment records is that Dave, his father and his grandmother all worked at our company at the same time, something that has happened for many other “Dofasco families.” 

For Dave, it happened in 1981, during Dave’s first summer as a student when he worked in the janitorial department cleaning offices.

And now, with Dave’s son Lucas having completed a year-long co-op in Research and Development in April 2023, the Popiez family is another true Dofasco dynasty. 

Even as a kid, Dave knew he was lucky to be part of a Dofasco family. He started playing Dofasco Minor Hockey at the age of eight and played well into his 40s. He and his two brothers also relished the toys, treats and spectacle of the annual Christmas parties.  

“It was my favourite day of the year. Those parties were just amazing.” 

Dofasco has loomed large throughout Dave’s working and personal life. After stints as a summer student, he was hired as a casual employee in Central Shipping in October 1984. He had just graduated from electronic data processing at Sheridan College. He was hired on full-time three years later, but in 1993, he was laid off during a recession-era downsizing of 850 people. 

Through the company’s transition program to assist those who had been laid off, Dave enrolled in Mohawk College to do a three-year co-op program in computer science technology. For his final co-op term, Dave returned to Dofasco in Coke & Iron.  

From there, Dave landed a job in IT Solutions in 1998. 

That was a big year for Dave. He married Tammy, now an educational assistant with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, and they bought a house on the Mountain a year later. It was also when the clock officially started ticking on his years of service.  

In his early years at Dofasco, Dave did IT projects for Coke & Iron and was part of the Test Lab Rebuild project, modernizing the company laboratory system, the latter of which was commissioned in April 2000.   

Other large projects he has worked on include the multi-year implementation of the Manufacturing Execution System (PSI-MES System), where Dave was the application Remediation Lead for the Lab application and responsible for the integration of the Lab system with the new MES system.  

It launched in 2010 and after that, Dave shifted to his current role of Lab & Operations Management IT Service Owner. He oversees the Lab System that is used to do steel testing and certification in Hamilton, the Coteau de Lac plant in Quebec, the ArcelorMittal Windsor Galvanizing line, as well testing and reporting in our Coal and Coke, Environmental and Chemical Labs. The system is critical to our business, as it validates compliance with customer specifications and government environmental regulations. 

Dave’s role has meant carrying a pager for off-hour support since 2000 so he can jump in to make fixes where required. Most of these support calls and troubleshooting can be handled remotely from his computer at home. 

The blend of work and home has been a fixture throughout Dave’s life and career at Dofasco. 

As Dave and Tammy’s son grew up, Lucas also played hockey and soccer at the F.H. Sherman Recreation and Learning Centre, while Dave took on coaching duties. Those Christmas parties possibly meant even more as a dad, seeing it all through Lucas’s eyes. 

In the process of preparing this story, Dave learned plenty about his dad’s career. Many of the details are fuzzy for John, who is now 84.  

“I didn’t know the jobs he did. I only knew him as a crane driver,” Dave says. 

According to his employment record, John was hired in 1958 as an 18-year-old casual labourer in the blast furnace, earning $1.79 an hour. That would have been No.1 Blast Furnace, as our cokemaking and ironmaking facilities were first commissioned in the early 1950s, which kicked off our foray into basic oxygen steelmaking. 

He then worked as a yardman/third helper in the melt shop of the electric furnace (did you know that Dofasco’s first furnaces were electric?). He started as a crane learner in the Cold Mill in January 1962 and became a crane operator in February of that year.  

“My dad loved his job. He retired as a foreman at 52 in 1992. He still talks about his days in the crane.” 

While he knew his grandmother once worked at Dofasco, Dave says everything in her employment record was new to him.  “My dad doesn’t remember any of it: when she started or how many years she worked there. She passed away in 1997. She talked about her time at Dofasco and said she was a seamstress. I remember her saying she worked in the tin mills and that she sewed uniforms.” 

According to her employee file, Mary Anne Bell began at Dofasco on Jan. 16, 1948 and was assigned a very early perm number of 1815. (For context, today’s new employees are being assigned perm numbers in the 71,000s.) 

She retired on Feb. 19, 1982 with 34 years of service. Over that time, her records show she was a coremaker’s helper and a coremaker (foundry positions that were part of the mold-making process), an “assorter,” a “janitress,” a matron group leader, and over the last 11 years of her career, she worked as a seamstress.  

Dave is philosophical about his career and his family’s deep connection to ArcelorMittal Dofasco. 

“I feel like I am right where I was meant to be. The layoff was really hard for me at the time but it meant that I went back to school and then got hired again in this job.” 

And Dave says he might not have met Tammy had all that not happened. She was a bartender at Rankins Bar & Grill at the time where Dave and work friends would gather every Thursday after work. “It has been fantastic for me,” Dave says of ArcelorMittal Dofasco. “I have met my best friends at work. Getting to my 25^th year was a big deal for me. I’m quite proud of that accomplishment.”  

The service milestone celebrations dinner in January 2023 was a special occasion.  

“Ron (Bedard) came around to every table and wanted to know about each of us. That was really great. He was very interested in my family history at the company.” 

That history has the potential to become the future, too. 

Lucas will be studying throughout the spring and summer and will officially start his fifth and final year of Engineering Management at McMaster University in the fall.  

Dave would love to see his son join the “family business.” 

“It’s a different world now. You don’t see many lifers like me anymore. (Lucas) has never once had a bad day at Dofasco. His group went golfing and curling and does lot of social stuff and they include him. That is one of the reasons it is a special place and he’s seeing that for himself.”