
Fairch Fairchild
Honor Code SignatorySigned 15 Mar 2018 | 2,635 contributions | 62 thank-yous | 1,684 connections
When he was born July 8, 1945 at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Barry's parents were living in Longueil, QC in a small frame house that his father and uncle had constructed. The house was very small, especially with Elva pregnant again, so the family bought 2 adjoining lots of land in Lachine with the intention of building the bungalow that Elva had always wanted near the airport where his father worked. But material was hard to come by after WWII so the family moved into a house in LaSalle. And that is where the family was when Donald was born. Eventually they realized that the bungalow could not be built so one lot was sold and the family moved into an apartment for a year while a cottage was being constructed on the remaining lot.
Kindergarten for Barry was at Van Horne school while the family lived in Snowdon, before moving to Lachine in 1950, where he attended Summerlea Elementary School. When his arms collapsed during a handspring demonstration of the Gym team and he was knocked out, he decided to quit the Gym team. He was in both Cubs and Boy Scouts with the Summerlea United Church troop.
In 1958, after Air Canada transferred his father to California on assignment, the family moved to Lakewood, California. That was where 'Barry' morphed into 'Jim' - he decided he preferred his 1st over his 2nd name. So Jim went to Herbert Hoover Junior High School, where he participated in the school spelling B and was in the Drama Club. It was only in later years that he realized the value of having taken typing as an elective. It was in California that he developed his ongoing love of Mexican food. He delivered newspapers and after a dispute with his division manager, almost started a union for paper boys. In 1959, a non-malignant tumor was removed from his chest. Thank goodness, his father was considerate enough to deliver his papers for a month!
He joined the American Boy Scouts and found the same traditions of friendship, teamwork, good deed every day and earning merit badges for various newly-acquired skills as he had at home in Montreal. However, he did feel there was a different attitude regarding scouting's purpose on the two sides of the border. He concluded that Canadian Boy Scouts, in Lord Baden-Powell tradition, prepare to live off the land if they should ever find themselves in some remote woodland area with little more than a Swiss army knife; in the USA at the peak of the cold war, Scouts prepared boys to survive if they found ourselves behind enemy lines.
His father had spent time with many of his grandfather's family and the big farm when he was young and before and after his time at Boeing School of Aeronautics. During their two years in California, the family now had a chance to visit with his dad's family from San Diego to Bishop. In later years when he was spending time workiing on the Farrington Family history, it was nice to be able to 'put a face' on the kin that he had met in those two years. They meant something to him; not just names and pictures in an album or statistics on the internet.
In 1960, the family moved back to Lachine. At the time, the Montreal Protestant School Board was not using subject promotion - if you failed you repeated a year, not just a subject. According to that antiquated reasoning, even though he had not failed any subjects, Jim was forced to repeat 9th grade due to having missed two years of the obligatory French taught in all the schools of Quebec. But 9th grade was where his 2nd name morph occurred. At Lachine High School, he joined in extracurricular activities, including track, working in the cafeteria at lunch and joining first the Glee Club, and later the Lachine High School Singers. He graduated in 1963 and went on to get his Senior High School leaving certificate from the High School of Montreal in preparation for pre-engineering the next year. One friend started calling him 'Fairch' and he has introduced himself as 'Fairch Fairchild' since then. Of course, the nickname was not used by the family since his brother's nickname was also 'Fairch'.
The following year was a mixed blessing. It was spent away from home at Carleton University in Ottawa, enrolled in the Engineering faculty. Academically the year was a disaster. With little interest in the courses being taught and, as yet, no direction in his life, the academic year was a failure. On the other hand, it is the first year away from home and parental control. He had a girlfriend for the first time in his life. He spent time with his aunts, uncles, and cousins in Ottawa, where each of his parents had grown up, getting to know them better. He visited Toronto and Quebec City by himself, hitch-hiking between locations. Socially a great year, but - oh, the cost!
After returning home, he did various jobs. They included being a learner mechanic at Air Canada in the accessory and finishing shops, and as a cleaner of hubs and brakes in the wheel and rubber shop. The smell of varsol and magnaflux permeating his clothing and body, even after a bath or shower, convinced him to return to school. Eventually he received a Bachelor of Arts from Concordia University with a Mathematics Major in 1977, after attending in the evening for a number of years.
In 1969, he went to work at Canadair, an aircraft manufacturing company, first as an inspector in electrical receiving, then as a quality assurance analyst, reporting the status of the company fortunes on a department-by-department basis. The tasks which occupied all his time can now be done in minutes on a PC spreadsheet and e-mail. Month after month, the graphs followed a decidedly downward direction and eventually he also became a statistic, one of about 10,000 people let go from the plant over the course of two years. He was terminated approximately one month before his wedding.
He and Barbara Jean Fleming, daughter of Bill and Helen (Mills) Fleming, were wed on the 23rd of May, 1970 in Summerlea United Church by Reverend Miles. To entertain the flock while papers were signed, the Glanllyn Singers performed. It was special to the bride and groom since they had both been members of the 30-piece acapella choir.
About one month after his marriage, Jim found a clerical job at Midland-Ross but when the president flew in with budget cuts 7 months later, he found himself as one of the 13 people laid off from the 200 person plant. Fortunately, his mother-in-law pointed out an advertisement in the newspaper for retraining in computers subsidized by a federal government program. He applied and was accepted. After 51 weeks he received a diploma as an intermediate programmer, one of the first to be certified in Canada.
His first job in computers was with a consulting company, Bonaventure Design and Programming. They assigned him with three other trainees to a skilled analyst, Judith Walley, who helped to train him, not so much in the theoretical, but in the practical side of computers and associated business practices. After a year and a half, much of which was spent at the Bank of Montreal helping to implement their first online system, Fairch heard that Air Canada was hiring computer personnel and, with some regrets, he left some good friends at Bonaventure Design and Programming to take up the new challenge. He worked first on a conversion team from IBM to HONEYWELL computers, as a backup for the person who decoded data from the flight recorder, and later for the marketing people. After receiving his 5-year service pin, he was coaxed into returning to Bonaventure Design and Programming, where, after one week he was assigned to Domtar Chemicals Group to implement systems on their new HP3000 computers. After working at Domtar as an analyst for 9 months, he accepted his first management job, the position of Supervisor of Operations which included the responsibility of maintaining the HP3000 system software. After about 5 years at Domtar, he left to go to Bombardier Inc. The company had just purchased 9 HP3000 computers and the challenge of helping to implement them was very appealing. The work was interesting and challenging; the most difficult transition was that of working primarily in French. After 5 years in Siege Social (Head Office), supporting HP3000 computers and data communications, he went to work in the Groupe de Transport en Commun (Mass Transit Group) in Boucherville, on the south shore of the island of Montreal. In 1993 he was maintaining VAX and UNIX computers for the Research and Development department, working with end users to maintain the computers and networks that they required. However, after 13 years with Bombardier, it was time to part company.
Fairch went to work at MBFoster Associates, a small software company in rural Ontario, owned by a friend he knew from Domtar days. His work involved implementing an EDI product, as well as training and supporting clients all over North America in its use. EDI is often referred to as e-commence. Fairch watched the company grow from about a dozen to almost 50 people before the twin towers in New York caused the North American economy such pain that short-term business dropped off to the point where significant layoffs at MBFoster were required. They decimated the workforce and six months later Fairch became a consultant, doing the same function in a much-reduced capacity from home.
While working in the HP3000 environment, Fairch discovered the value of working with people from other companies using the same type of computers. He got heavily involved in the HP3000 Users Group (Interex) in 1979 after attending a meeting in Denver. In fact, he became involved to the point of becoming president of the Canadian group (CCRUG), by running on a platform to eliminate CCRUG and replace it with regional groups in major Canadian cities. Over the subsequent 16 months, he arranged the first HP3000 User Group meeting in Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, and Vancouver, B.C. and regional user groups were formed in each city as well as Toronto.
In April 1983, Montreal hosted the annual North American Interex (HP3000) meeting with 1300 persons in attendance. Fairch was the conference manager for that event, working with 2 other HP3000 Managers. The simple rule they followed: any two can outvote the third. Fairch received excellent support from his management at Domtar and Bombardier head office for the User Group and the number of people willing to volunteer to support the meeting was astounding.
Fairch ran for office twice on the ACSC, a standing committee of the board of directors of Interex and spent one year as chairman and another as member of that group. In his speech before the election he meant to close with "Anyone from this group of candidates is capable and would serve us well". It came out "I'm sure I could do the job as well as any one in this group". Not quite the same. However, each of the 26 members voting got 3 votes, one for each position being filled and Fairch got 25 so apparently it worked out!
At age 64, he decided to return to school for 6 months and won a seat on a Quebec-sponsored training program. Forty years after receiving a diploma from Dawson College as an intermediate programmer, he returned to Dawson as a full-time student to learn about Linux [a competitor to Microsoft's offerings] and Cisco networking.
Fairch and Barb have no children but have had at least one dog much of their married lives. Their last dog was an ornery little black cocker spaniel who accepted people but lived to threaten other animals.
19530723 - Family return from Barbados
This profile was entered and is maintained by myself, James Barry Fairchild.
Connections to Super Bowl halftime show performers: Fairch is 23 degrees from Prince Nelson, 15 degrees from Dan Aykroyd, 21 degrees from Garth Brooks, 28 degrees from Chubby Checker, 26 degrees from Ella Fitzgerald, 21 degrees from Dusty Hill, 30 degrees from Whitney Houston, 20 degrees from Mick Jagger, 19 degrees from Paul McCartney, 19 degrees from Tom Petty, 20 degrees from Chris Stapleton and 19 degrees from Shania Twain on our single family tree. Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members.
https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1051106/doris-mclean-seeks-family-marjory-mabel-dycie-whitmore-ottawa
edited by Karen Lowe
edited by Karen Lowe
edited by Fairch Fairchild
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