7965
7965 Al Hurd
1969 Review
Colonel Edmund Heard was one of seven male siblings raised in New Hampshire in the latter half of the 1700’s. His six brothers fought on the American side in the 1776-84 Revolution but Edmund sat it out. As a consequence of this he was hounded out of the US in the Post-Loyalist wave of 1790. He and a colleague walked 120 miles through the bush and settled in Quebec, not far from the current location of Sherbrooke.
We don’t know what Edmund did to acquire the title of Colonel prior to the revolution. In any case, he was the last military man in the Canadian Hurd family (the spelling was revised in the 1850’s) except for an uncle of mine who served as a navigator on Lancasters in WWII. So family military tradition had nothing to do with my application join the Air Force in 1964. My family was struggling financially at that time and the ROTP program became my ticket to a university education.
Despite initial bouts of abject homesickness, I found that life at CMR agreed with me. It seemed to be an astonishingly good deal that one could get a free university education (and get paid to do it) in return for keeping one’s pants pressed and shoes shined.
Al November 1968 football team photo after knee
injury in game with Loyola
On graduation in 1969 I was ejected from the bosom of RMC and posted to a Communications Squadron in Montreal as a 22-year old CELE Lieutenant. In this role, my Warrant Officer saved my bacon many times but he completely failed in his efforts to teach me to play golf.
After a 3 years stint in the Communication Squadron, in 1972 I was posted to the DND computer Centre in Tunney’s Pasture in Ottawa. At that time the Canadian Forces were desperately short of computer specialists and were hoping that electrical engineers might be able to fill that void. I found, however, that I was ill-equipped to contribute meaningfully in the IT field so I got myself back to RMC as a graduate student from 1973-75 to study computer system engineering in the EE department. Those two years made all the difference and set me up for the rest of my career.
From 1975 to 1980 I was on a steep IT learning curve working in a variety of positions at Tunney’s pasture. A particular highlight of this period was my posting from September 1977 to March 1978 as CO of CFS Alert. This was, bar none, the best job I ever had. The teamwork in isolation was outstanding and the variety of types of issues that arose was fascinating.
1980 spelled the end of my time in the CF. When I received a posting to the radar site in Moisie, Quebec, I was reluctant to abandon my 8 years of IT experience. I was still enjoying life as an officer in the CF but it was clear that the most promising professional and economic future for me and for my family lay in exploiting my IT experience and capitalizing on my wife’s (Marie-Andree) promising career with the Ottawa Board of Education. So I left the CF and joined the IT department at CMHC in Ottawa. In 1986 I moved to the Department of Supply an Services to help set up their new datacentres and lead the IT operations group.
Another pivotal change for me came in 1990 when I left the public service and joined a private sector IT services firm. This led to my joining EDS Canada (the Canadian subsidiary of Ross Perot’s firm) in 1992 as the director of their office in Ottawa. Over the next 3 years, my new colleges (two of whom included Ernie Wallace and Paul Hession from our RMC ’69 class) and I grew EDS into a major player in the Ottawa IT services market. Paul’s older brother, Ray Hession (RMC class of ’62? and at this time a highly-respected strategy consultant) played a key role with us in developing our gameplan and in providing hard-nosed advice on survival in the federal government IT market.
In 1995 I moved to Toronto to become Vice President of Operations for EDS in Canada and remained in variations of that role until 2005, consumed with the challenges of growing the firm in Canada. One of the most interesting of these included combining the former Systemhouse business (which EDS acquired in 1999) with EDS Canada. This addition made EDS Canada an $800M/year nation-wide IT services company, giving us presence in virtually all Canadian cities.
Late in 2004, EDS Canada won a very large outsourcing contract with the BC government. In early 2005 my wife (Sue Wilson) and I moved to Victoria, BC to allow me to lead the team setting up a subsidiary of EDS Canada called EDS Advance Solutions to deliver the newly won business. Two years later I returned to the lead operations role in EDA Canada but Sue and I still live in Victoria. In 2008 HP acquired EDS and I led the combined service business of EDS and HP in Canada for a year following which I retired from the company.
In my first year of retirement I collaborated with my daughter, Annie-Pierre, on a book entitled The Carbon Efficient City . The book was published by Washington University Press in 2012. Subsequent to that, I helped my sister, Cynthia, put together and publish a cookbook called Cooking Kariwak Style. Somewhat to the chagrin of Annie-Pierre and me, the cookbook has sold more copies that our book on managing climate change.
After my foray into the publishing business, I drifted back into IT consulting until it became a nearly full-time job beginning in 2013. In 2017 when I turned 70, I shut down my consulting business and quit working (for pay) all together. For the next 3 years until COVID hit, Sue and I focused on travel, including taking a river cruise in Normandy where we connected by chance with Keith Reid (a RMC ’69 classmate) and Judy Lundhill who both also live in Victoria. Post COVID, Sue and I have become quite heavily involved in local politics with the Victoria Federal Liberal Party, something that is new and quite challenging for both of us.
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| Al and Sue in June of 2023 at his 76th birthday |
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Al with granddaughter Em and daughter
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Annie-Pierre in the rain at Em’s camp July 2024
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