VANCOUVER—Father’s Day was a travel day for me this year, so this post is as close as I’m going to get to talking to my dad. That’s just as well, in a way, because I can’t think of a better way to start bringing our blog back up to date than by tracing some of the early advice and good examples that got our company started.
This year has brought an unusual number of Father’s Day blogs and columns, and on Saturday we heard some soaring, heartfelt tributes to a friend and colleague’s dad. (We’re with you, Kate.) So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve learned from my father, and realizing what a large share of the firm’s principles and foundation come from him.
My mum and Reuben met in 1975, when I was 17. They married two years later, long after he had given up on having children, long after I’d accustomed myself to life without a father. By the time we began spending time together, he’d worked a quarter-century as a consulting engineer, and I was on my way into what I thought would be a life-long career in journalism. Which is a roundabout way of saying we were set up to test each other’s limits.
Communicators and engineers have some interesting cultural differences. As a wannabe newshound, schooled in the triumphs of Woodward and Bernstein against the evils of the Watergate scandal, I insisted that technologists had a duty to explain what they were doing—in plain language, mind you—so that anyone with an interest could have a say in the decision. He pointed to the rigorous standard that obliged his profession to keep the building, bridge, or power dam operating safely for decades after it was commissioned…and argued that if it took the obscure precision of technical language to get the job done, the public could buy a dictionary.
I still think I was right about public accountability. But I also know that Reuben was right about the need we all have, the obligation we all share, to put a solid, factual foundation under everything we do.
It isn’t the easiest path for a niche business, or the best way to make yourself popular in a time-challenged industry. But whenever we build a conference publication to reflect the very best knowledge a group has to offer, or recommend that a workshop program favour substantive content over motivational fluff, that voice you hear in the background belongs to Reuben. When we try to pull and cajole our industry toward a more science-based approach to challenges as varied and urgent as climate change, green building design, and pandemic preparedness, that comes from Reuben, too.
My dad will be 89 later this year. He’s an avid Skype user, writes regularly for the newsletter at the seniors’ residence where he moved last year, and has just been invited to serve another two-year term on a city planning committee for his neighbourhood. So after everything he’s taught us about science, evidence, and intellectual honesty, he isn’t nearly done: now, the lessons are about persistence, longevity, and keeping on against any obstacle.
So from all of us, Zayde—thank you for so much of what we are, and for so much of what we do. Hey, and Happy Father’s Day.
And this just in…from The Daily Number, a data feature produced by the U.S. Pew Research Center: “74%: Nearly three in four adults say they feel ‘close’ to their fathers—but America’s dads shouldn’t feel too smug. Not only do moms outpoll them on the intimacy scale, but the family dog tops both.” Reuben, don’t give it another thought. Whoever answered that poll obviously never had you for a dad.