An Edmontonian whose name has been synonymous with construction for as long as Alberta has been a province, has died unexpectedly.
VANCOUVER
An Edmontonian whose name has been synonymous with construction for as long as Alberta has been a province, has died unexpectedly.
John Edward Poole, 90, died of a heart attack while visiting Calgary to celebrate the birthdays of his wife, Barbara, and her sister, Marg Harrop.
While he stopped downhill skiing at 87, Poole was still “going to the office 8:30 to 5:30 every day”, as his 78-year-old wife put it, and was passionately involved in causes ranging from wilderness preservation to the advancement of engineering.
In 1906, only months after Alberta entered Confederation, Ernest Poole, John’s father, founded the construction company that would grow into Poole Construction Ltd., then PCL Construction.
Poole and his late brother George became co-chairs when they bought the Edmonton company from their father in 1948. They built it into one of the country’s leading construction companies before selling it to its employees in 1977.
In an interview with Daily Commercial News last year, Poole was pragmatic about his contributions to the company.
“We didn’t think we would expand the business like we did. We were just hoping to make a living,” John recalled.
“Our father was a good mentor and we had such a talented group of people working with us. We ended up working on projects from Victoria to Halifax. We even worked on a project for Disneyland in Florida.”
PCL is now the largest Canadian company in its industry with interests in the United States and Bahamas as well as across Canada.
Poole remained connected to PCL long after the buy-out, says PCL President Ross Grieve. Poole’s apology for missing an event because of the birthday celebration in Calgary was still on Grieve’s desk when Poole died.
Poole’s first job, in 1934, was as a greaser and timekeeper at a gravel crushing site near Camrose. That’s where he witnessed an accident that led him to create the safety code of conduct he introduced years later at Poole Construction.
He graduated with distinction from the University of Alberta with a B.Sc. in engineering in 1937, and his first project was the design of Pumphouse No. 1 near the Rossdale Power Plant in Edmonton.
Poole also served as president of the Edmonton Construction Association, co-founded and was a director of Oxford Properties Group, was a founding shareholder of Shaw Communications and a director of numerous corporations.
After 30 years with Poole Construction, he devoted 30 years of his “retirement” to philanthropy.
Described by colleagues as a “renaissance man in the truest sense of the word,” Poole supported educational, social service, arts and environmental organizations across Canada.
“My wife Barbara and I have been able to do a lot of things to help our community and we think it’s important to give something back,” Poole said last year. “I’ve done more important things in the past 10 years than I did before I retired, and I still have a lot of things to do yet.”
A patron of the arts, his interest extended to urban design and planning and decorative arts.
Poole and his wife recently contributed $5 million to the Edmonton Art Gallery’s expansion, the second largest private arts gift in Edmonton history.
They were also major partners in the largest private conservation initiative in Canadian history with the protection of 259 square kilometres of wilderness at the edge of Waterton Park in southern Alberta.
He was also a major contributor to post secondary education, particularly engineering, at the University of Alberta. While generally loathe to allow his name to be emblazoned on his good works, the U of A honoured his contribution to the construction of the new engineering buildings on campus with the John and Barbara Poole Family Atrium at the university’s engineering, teaching and learning complex.
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