Post Naval Service Biography

In the fall of 1964, I made a decision that a career course-correction was in order. I decided to leave the navy and look into pursuing a career involving electrical work. I had worked closely with LM mates (electricians) onboard my three ships and had really enjoyed their work tasks. I had thoroughly enjoyed my three years of service out on the Atlantic discovering things and having great experiences, but, it was time to move on.

Following my release from the HMCS Stadacona Naval Base in Halifax in the summer of 1964, I gave a few months of thought to my way forward, before deciding to enroll at George Brown College in Toronto, in courses to pursue an electrical career. Over the next four years I participated in classroom lessons and fieldwork involving largely industrial projects and became a certified construction and maintenance electrician in 1969.

Shortly thereafter, an opportunity arose to join the staff of the Alcan Aluminum plant in Kitimat, BC as an electrical/mechanical technician, working in their high-voltage power station – having three years as an engineering mechanic in the navy helped immensely. My new wife and daughter jumped at this opportunity to relocate and we immediately drove west, exploring Canada along the way. This turned out to be a dream job, but after a few years of dealing with Kitimat's annual 56 feet of snowfall (and when it didn’t snow, it rained in buckets) we’d had enough. We headed back to Ontario where I had found a job as a construction manager constructing high voltage electrical sub-stations for a private electrical utility company in Toronto. This position lasted four years, but ended as my family tired of the reality that most of the projects were not local and my requirement to constantly travel and be away from home was not acceptable.

Fortunately, another stroke of good luck occurred. A position which was perfect for my skills became available. I responded and was hired by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in their electrical department. In this new job I would not be required to travel. Splendid!

Over the next twenty-eight years my position there was primarily a project manager of nuclear projects. I enjoyed every year of this work immensely and finished my last few years as the Branch Manager of Prototype Projects Start-up.

The day finally came that my wife and I, who both had careers at AECL, decided to call it quits and we retired just before Christmas in 2008. For a year or so we enjoyed a long-awaited retirement life.

One and a half years went by when I received a call from a former AECL colleague asking if I was up to a six-month term job to write some technical documents required to obtain funding for an AECL Mega Project, the Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI), which was urgently required to clean-up the Ontario city of Port Hope. Port Hope had been the site of the accumulation of low-level radioactive waste from the El Dorado Reactor Nuclear Fuel Rod Fabrication Plant over many years. The project objective was to clean-up the parts of the town affected and restore those areas to their original state. The project was expected to take approximately 15 years to complete.

I took the job as a consultant. After six months, documents required were written and the project was approved. I was then offered a job to continue and write further documents supporting the new low-level waste storage facilities, and environmental testing procedures, and to stay for another year.

I agreed, and stayed on to produce the necessary documents for the field staff. But that was it. I had no desire to work for another 14 years through to when the project was scheduled to be complete. That would have been A Bridge too Far.

Soon after, my wife and I moved to British Columbia to be near the kids and grandkids and within walking distance of the Pacific Ocean south of Vancouver. Recently, (April 2025), my wife and I wife visited Vancouver Island for my 81st birthday celebration. I was able to cross-off an item on my bucket-list doing our stay there. That is, to visit the Esquimalt Naval Base in BC. I wanted to see the Base where my father, James Stevenson of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment, had trained in 1944 as a soldier for his eventual deployment to Europe to fight the Germans. He was deployed later that year following the D-Day invasion by the Allies.

He returned safely in 1945 and met me when I was 1-1/2 years old. Who knew I would grow-up and become a crew member of HMCS Huron and HMCS Haida, ships that had participated in Operation Overlord, the allied landing by troops in France on D-Day in 1944.

All in all, I have had a wonderful life (and it still ain't over). I still follow a course which speaks to my view on life: DAMN THE TORPEDOS . . . AND FULL-SPEED AHEAD!!