Breaking New Ground—Stories from Defence Construction Breaking_new_ground | Page 32

John E.C. (Jack) Britton joined DCL in
1954. For many years, he was project
supervisor at CFB Cornwallis, Nova Scotia.
Following his retirement in 1980, he
continued to work part-time for DCL.
As luck would have it, the DCL Site Engineer was still
there, working away.
I briefly explained my findings to him and, in view of the
late hour, suggested that we could meet first thing in
the morning. He looked at his watch and decided that
we could have a quick look at the drawings then and
there. He soon became absorbed in the problem… and
came to the same conclusion as I had. He was just as
surprised as I, since it was unusual for the particular
consulting firm to make that kind of a mistake. By the
time we wrapped up, it was almost 7 o’clock. But it was
worth it. We were both happy that we had discovered
the error at this stage and not halfway through the
construction phase.
This was early in the project and as time went on, I
discovered that many of the DCL staff were not clock
watchers and were quite prepared to work well past
quitting time when the occasion demanded it. It didn’t
take long for my twinges of envy to disappear.
22

Christmas cheer…
Camp Gagetown, 1954—Jack Britton
One Christmas, Bob Nichols, one of our DCL inspectors
at Camp Gagetown, managed to purchase a case of
Scotch, wholesale, from the New Brunswick Liquor
Commission. Then, he proceeded to sell tickets on it.
We had, at that time, a very religious painting inspector
who felt that because he worked with Bob, he had to
buy one of the tickets. He was against drinking alcohol,
so he wrote “Salvation Army” on his ticket… When the
ticket was drawn, lo and behold, it was his! The idea
that the Salvation Army had bought a raffle ticket on a
case of alcohol, and had actually won it, came as a
great shock to many of the participants. Bob had to
think fast, so he auctioned each bottle off separately.
They were sold to the highest bidders and the money
was given to the Salvation Army in Fredericton.
The Accelerated Defence Programme did include a
few large projects for the Royal Canadian Navy, too,
including coastal defence installations such as the two
Seaward Defence Bases in Sydney, Nova Scotia and
Esquimalt, British Columbia in the late 1950s.
BREAKING NEW GROUND
DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION CANADA