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Fred Irwin
I was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, in 1937. My childhood was full of happiness. Both of my parents were orphans and public school drop outs, and wanted me to advance beyond their own dreams....view moreI was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, in 1937. My childhood was full of happiness. Both of my parents were orphans and public school drop outs, and wanted me to advance beyond their own dreams. My father, a first-generation Irish Canadian, has been my life-long hero. He was a gentle guy, an extroverted storyteller, a real character. My mother was mostly silent while unrelentingly tough. My dad was an old-time barber, a union leader, politically engaged, and a great debater, who often sang to customers who came to his shop for a shave and a haircut, but also to go to the back room—read "the racing form and betting on the horses." He was a small-town bookie. My dad taught me about money: from whence it comes and how it circulates through the economy. He placed side bets if his risk was too high that day. We had no car early on, so I sometimes laid off his bets on my bicycle after school. I was locked in to his daily business. He would come home at night and plunk his cash roll on the table for me to count. He took the difference and entered it in his little black book as "takin's." I cherish one of those little black books today. His business peaked in 1949 and our family got its first car, but his heath declined rapidly from that point At 21 my father was off his feet for nearly a year recovering from rheumatic fever. He was left with an enlarged heart that led to his early death at 56. I was diagnosed with early childhood arthritis at 13. We were told that my condition was likely inherited from my father and that I might very well grow out of it. My lifetime drive was to go into business, supported by my dad. After finishing high school, my dad was working only a few days a week, and my summer work, buffing me up to 6'4" and 210 lbs from working on a jackhammer, didn't make it possible to attend a business school. So for the first year I commuted to a nearby university with high school kids and graduated in theoretical physics. I graduated last in the class of 8. All my classmates went on for either Masters or PHDs in physics. By then I was married with my first son on the way and I took a job as a lubrication sales engineer for Canada's largest integrated oil company. I did well in this first career position, but with no way to advance at my young age, I took a leave of absence from the company, moved our young family, then with two sons, to London, Ontario. I graduated there with a MBA from the Ivy School of Business. My undergraduate degree in physics and work for an oil company defined my lifelong attention to energy and the enormous amount of energy in a barrel of oil. After rising to the level of VP of Sales and Marketing in medium-sized companies, I switched to become a Xerox branch manager in Ottawa. This was the key operating position in a fast-paced high-tech company with likely the best employee training in the world. I flourished in this job. The president of Xerox Canada moved back to the US and took me with him. He put me in charge of service education and the systems planning and performance office for 10,000 service technicians and 2,000 supervisors. It was a high-tech, intrapreneurially, intellectually challenging position with no predecessor. It crystalized my performance and behavioral management that I utilized for the rest of my business career. Unfortunately for me, I partially crashed and was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1972. It was my personal significant emotional event (SEE) that led me to call the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis a giant global SEE. My doctor indicated that my RA was likely inherited from my father. My second son was diagnosed with RA in his 40s. I left Xerox, returned to Canada and tried to reduce stress, but became VP of another tech company and was moved to a global position out of the US. At retirement I had spent a total of 18 years working in the USA.view less
Books by Fred Irwin
Now is the Time!: Building Community Resilience in Response to COVID-19 and the Climate Crisis