Six and a half years ago Alex Thompson (AT) approached me for work from the back pews of Central Presbyterian Church – an apt location for a Pastor and former IML employee to hit me up for employment, albeit the wrong denomination. He had worked faithfully as IML Hamilton manager for ten years, then was scooped by our biggest competition, our only competition as far as he was concerned – the Baptist Church.
Alex Thompson
There’s been a lot of symmetry in Alex’s life and circle imagery is particularly apt in this case. Alex left 15 years ago and returned to us. Now he’s leaving us again and returning full circle to fulfill his mission with the Baptist Church where he will lead its congregation until he retires in two years. While it’s no consolation to us, Alex defended his decision to leave IML with the claim that the Church offers an unbeatable completion bonus and a defined benefit plan that lasts an eternity…
I have always felt, rightly or wrongly, that Alex was the company’s closest embodiment of those cherished IML verities of honesty, integrity, transparency and fairness to contractors and acting on principle with clients above all, even when a more expedient solution to a problem was readily available. I’m very privileged to have worked closely with Alex for so many years, and I have benefited enormously from his great generosity and kindness, his maturity and stoicism, our mutual fascination with ancient Greek and Roman history (he can read original Greek), and his best attribute of all – his zany off the wall sense of humour.
Alex’s special brand of humour is something I’ve being trying to understand and define for decades but if pressed I would describe it as a combination of throw-back, squeaky clean, conventional life on the farm type humour combined with a totally bent out of shape, theatre of the absurd cutting edge parody of modern life and civilization as we know it – if that makes any sense, which it couldn’t. He’s a very intellectual and conflicted person and Sigmund Freud would no doubt have had a special lab devoted to AT. We’ll miss his ingenious calls into the Toronto or Oakville office – one of his most memorable being a call to an unwitting recruiter, Alex posing as a hiring manager for a major local consulting firm. Alex provided multiple and detailed orders for civil, marine and hydraulic project engineers with experience in large scale earthworks, dredging and flotation engineering. The Consultant’s client was the Toronto Island Residents Association, who were attempting to detach and float the island further out into Lake Ontario, away from the influences of political corruption in the GTA and a threat to their peaceful, if smug, autonomy.
See Alex, a couple of his kids and some long serving employees (including Cam Youngson) in this short film from a 1981 company pool party.
We will miss Alex and wish Pastor Thompson every success with his new congregation.
