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.