DON MacNEIL

I dropped out of grade ten at Lemoyne in March of 1963 and joined the Canadian Navy. Spent three years on three different ships chasing Russian submarines around the Atlantic, Mediterranean, North Sea and Baltic. Made a trip through the Panama Canal to Victoria and back.

After the Navy, I finished high school and started taking a B.A. at Sir George Williams while working for Pratt & Whitney. Over a period of six years with P&W I moved through a number of positions and ended up in a marketing where I managed pricing for many of their aircraft engine parts.

During that period, I met my wife to be when Donna Barret asked me to go to a dinner party with her at the Beaconsfield home of an Anthea Savage. Donna had made it clear that she was only interested in me as a friend even though I had other ambitions about Donna!

Anthea, a head nurse at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and I hit it off and started dating. As she and her family are originally from Britain, she decided to work for a year in Britain to see if she wanted to make Canada her home or not. During that time I ended up dating a Francophone girl from St. Bruno which lasted about a year. Regardless of what they say about learning another language through love, I never did master French!

A year or so later, I heard from Donna that Anthea had returned from England. I wasn't going to lose her again so we married in 1970 at a church in Kirkland, Quebec.  John Kehoe and George Loctie were sides men for me.

Two years later our daughter Tara was born. Not long after that we decided to move out of the province due to the political situation in Quebec at the time. I found an opportunity to work for Bell Canada in Ottawa. We lived there for a few months and were then posted to Cornwall Ont. where I managed Bell's business telecommunication customers in eastern Ontario. In 1974 our son Ian was born in Cornwall. Two years later I was transferred back to Ottawa to work in the new data communication group Bell had set up.

Tara and Ian have been friends since Ian's infancy and have remained close today. Tara's husband Todd (a banking systems consultant with Accenture) and Ian have developed a great friendship and Ian now has Todd hooked on flying.

Tara is a compensation consultant with AON's Human Resources consulting practice in Toronto.  Ian is a mechanical engineer and a commercial pilot. He was just been commissioned as an officer and pilot in the Canadian Air force. He takes after his Grandfather MacNeil who will be the best guardian angel a pilot could have. Ian is engaged and will be married in May 2003 to Amanda Rokosh who he met at university. They'll likely end up living in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan while Ian completes his military flight training.

We have been in Ottawa (Kanata) now since 1976. I have been involved with the development and management of business communications services for Bell Canada and Telecom Canada as an Associate Director - Business Development and Marketing. After 29 years with the company, I had taken an early retirement package at the end of 2002 to enjoy life in the slow lane but that was short lived. An old friend from Bell persuaded me to take a position as a Senior Manager for Product Marketing with Cognos, the leading business intelligence Software Company. I'm glad I did, as it is the dream job I always wanted. I plan to work for another few years or as long as I'm enjoying it. Anthea has been retired since 1995.

Anthea and I love to ski, hike, bike, and travel. For the last five years we cruised our power yacht through the Thousand Islands, Great Lakes and Rideau waterway until we sold her last January. "Beats Workin" was a thirty-six foot, flying bridge cruiser built by Fairline Yachts in Vancouver. The original owner used her to cruise B.C. waters for a year before he shipped her to Ottawa.