GODFREY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-13 published
Gordon Kenneth
FLEMING/FLEMMING
By Jack FORTIN
Thursday,
February 13, 2003, Page A30
Musician, husband, father. Born August 3, 1931, in Winnipeg.
Died August 31, 2002, in Scarborough, Ontario, following a stroke,
aged 71.
Gordie FLEMING/FLEMMING was a remarkable music talent, known internationally
as a master of the accordion, especially in the jazz idiom. He
was a life member of Local 149 of the Toronto Musicians' Association.
In show-business vernacular, Gordie was "born in a trunk." He
began playing accordion when his older brother gave him lessons.
His musical ability was such that he began performing publicly
at the age of five. His schoolteachers often saw him being whisked
away in a taxi to perform at theatres and radio stations in Winnipeg.
By the age of 10, he was a working member of various bands in
that city.
In 1949, Gordie lost his accordion in a fire at a Winnipeg hotel.
With the insurance money, he headed for the bright lights of
Montreal where he soon became an important part of that city's
musical life. His accordion ability was complemented by the fact
that he was also a gifted arranger and composer.
He had a marvellous ability to improvise and could string out
complex bebop lines, leaving his listeners in awe. He often slipped
a jazz phrase into ballads or commercial tunes, confirming that
jazz was indeed his first love.
One of Montreal's busiest musicians, he wrote for local orchestras,
shows, radio and television. He had perfect pitch and often wrote
without reference to a keyboard. He was at home in every type
of music from classics to jazz. For several years, he worked
at the National Film Board as a composer and musician.
In Montreal, Gordie performed with many show business headliners:
there was a wealth of home-grown talent in Montreal, such as
Oscar PETERSON and Maynard
FERGUSON, as well as other jazz musicians
who were beginning to be noticed.
Gordie had said that when when he first heard bebop it was like
entering another world. As his career indicates, he had no trouble
in that world. He worked with many personalities including: Charlie
PARKER, Mel
TORMÉ, Hank
SNOW, Lena
HORNE, Englebert
HUMPERDINCK,
Dennis DAY, Gordon
MacRAE, Cab
CALLOWAY, Nat King
COLE, Cat
STEVENS,
Rich LITTLE, Billy
ECKSTEIN, Pee Wee
HUNT, Arthur
GODFREY and
Buddy DEFRANCO.
He also performed with Tommy
AMBROSE,
Allan
MILLS, Wally
KOSTER,
Tommy HUNTER,
Bert
NIOSI, Wayne and Shuster, Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation jazz shows with Al
BACULIS, and many other Canadian
jazz musicians.
On Montreal's French music scene, Gordie performed on radio and
television with Emile
GENEST, Ti-Jean
CARIGNAN,
André
GAGNON
and Ginette
RENO. He was a featured soloist with the Montreal
Symphony Orchestra on several occasions.
Internationally, Gordie toured France in 1952 and performed with
Edith PIAF and Tino
ROSSI. He had the honour to perform for former
prime minister Pierre Elliot
TRUDEAU at a Commonwealth Conference.
He participated with other top Canadian musicians in a Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation tour to entertain Canadian and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Europe in 1952 and 1968.
For me, a memorable experience was playing in a group with Gordie
for several winters in Florida. A popular member of the Panama
City Beach family of musicians, Gordie looked forward to his
winter trek south. Many of the American musicians will miss him,
as will the many snowbirds who looked forward to hearing him
each year.
His extensive repertoire allowed Gordie to author a book called
Music of the World, in which he wrote the music to 280 songs
from more than 30 countries.
Gordie leaves his wife of 47 years, Joanne, and seven children.
Jack FORTIN is Gordie's friend.
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GODFREY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-20 published
Ex-politician and war hero
FLYNN dies
Was chairman of Metropolitan Toronto
By James RUSK Municipal Affairs Reporter Wednesday, August 20,
2003 - Page A17
Dennis FLYNN, a war hero who parachuted into France on D-Day
and eventually rose to be chairman of Metropolitan Toronto, died
yesterday morning as he was preparing to observe an army reserve
exercise at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa.
Mr. FLYNN, 79, who had been in poor health in recent years, collapsed,
apparently of a heart attack, at his hotel in Pembroke, and was
pronounced dead at Pembroke General Hospital, the Canadian Armed
Forces said in a statement.
Mr. FLYNN was mayor of Etobicoke from 1972 to 1984, the longest-serving
mayor of the Toronto suburb, and was chairman of Metropolitan
Toronto from 1984 to 1988. He continued to serve on Metro Council
until the 1997 amalgamation that created the new City of Toronto.
He served on the Toronto Police Services Board and was awarded
the Order of Canada in 2001.
Major Tim LOURIE, public-relations director of the exercise,
said Mr. FLYNN travelled to Pembroke on Monday to observe a reserve
exercise in which the Toronto Scottish Regiment (the Queen Mother's
Own,) of which Mr.
FLYNN was the honorary lieutenant-colonel,
was participating.
"Unfortunately, he didn't even get out to see us here," Major
LOURIE said. The regiment received the call that he had collapsed
in the hotel just before a group of honorary colonels was heading
out to observe the exercise.
Mr. FLYNN, was born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1923. When he
was two years old he migrated with his family to the Kensington
section of Toronto, long a melting pot for immigrants.
In 1938, at age 15, he joined the Toronto Scottish and volunteered
for active service at the outbreak of the Second World War. In
1942, he joined the joint Canadian-American unit that came to
be known as the Devil's Brigade, and in 1943, he transferred
to the 1st Canadian Parachute Regiment.
He jumped into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, where he was
wounded by German fire. After recovery, he rejoined the regiment,
jumped into Germany on March 24, 1945, in Operation Varsity,
the crossing of the Rhine River, and was wounded again when part
of his leg was shattered by machine-gun fire as he escorted two
German prisoners across the Rhine.
As a result of the wound, Mr.
FLYNN walked with a cane for the
rest of his life. "One of his most self-deprecating comments,
when talking to young soldiers, was that he had made only three
jumps. One was for practice, one was on D-Day, and the third
and last was across the Rhine," commented Lieutenant-Colonel
Mike TRAYNER, commanding officer of the Toronto Scottish.
After the war, he joined the City of Toronto's clerk's department,
and rose to be protocol officer. He failed in his first run for
mayor of Etobicoke in 1969, but upset the incumbent, Doug
LACEY,
in 1972.
In 1984, he was elected chairman of Metropolitan Toronto, replacing
Paul GODFREY, now president of the Toronto Blue Jays, who was
then leaving Toronto politics to become publisher of the Toronto
Sun. His career as Metro chairman ended in 1988, when he lost
to Alan TONKS, now a member of parliament.
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GODIN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-10 published
Programmer was a 'people person'
Computer consultant advised clients not only on technology, but
on the psychology that made the technology work for the company
Harvey GELLMAN was the first person in Canada to get a PhD based
in computer studies.
By Marina STRAUSS
Saturday,
May 10, 2003 - Page F11
He broke new ground in the computer field long before most Canadians
even knew what a software program was, or that computers would
so profoundly change their way of communicating and doing business.
Known as the dean of computer consulting, Harvey
GELLMAN had
a hand in purchasing the first computer in this country in 1952
he ran one of the first software programs and was the first to
get a PhD based on computer studies. Last month, Dr.
GELLMAN
died suddenly in Florida at the age of 78.
He made his name as a consultant who advised clients not only
on technology, but on the psychology that made the technology
work for a company -- with a knack for matching people's skills
to the job at hand, colleagues say.
Most important, Dr.
GELLMAN put the clients first, always looking
out for their best interests rather than simply the consultant's
bottom line, says Jim
HAYWARD, his partner at Toronto-based Gellman
Hayward and Partners for 18 years until it was sold to Montreal-based
CGI
Group in 1992.
What particularly distinguished Dr.
GELLMAN as a consultant was
his departure from others in refusing just to analyze a problem
and deliver a report to the client, Mr.
HAYWARD says.
Instead, Dr.
GELLMAN would find out exactly how far the client
was ready to go in implementing any change recommended in a report
and then guide the client through the change process.
This fundamental shift took root in the mid-1970s, when Dr.
GELLMAN
became frustrated that too many consultants simply handed over
a report and then walked away from the problem, Mr.
HAYWARD says.
"The trick is to work beside the client and walk with them, but
don't take the problem away from them, " he says. "It's like
therapy."
Together, they applied this form of business therapy at Gellman
Hayward, which grew from four partners to about 100 employees
before it was sold, boasting a client list that read like a Who's
Who of corporate Canada.
Indeed, the firm at one time or another advised all the big banks,
Bell Canada, Imperial Oil, Labatt Breweries, Eaton's, Hudson's
Bay, Spar Aerospace, TransCanada PipeLines, Noranda, Falconbridge,
Inco, Atomic Energy of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
"It was all the big names, says
CGI president Serge
GODIN,
who worked closely with Dr.
GELLMAN after the 1992 acquisition
and credits him with helping to manage its huge surge in staff
mostly through acquisitions -- by integrating and streamlining
the various systems.
"Harvey GELLMAN is a brand name, Mr.
GODIN says. "He was quite
something, very strong, brilliant -- with a big heart."
He was a man of few words, with a deep-seated respect for and
interest in people, colleagues and family.
"He would say, 'The janitor and the president are the same, '
recalls Paul
GELLMAN, the younger of his two sons, who also
is a computer consultant. "He believed it and he lived it."
From the security officers at Dr.
GELLMAN's apartment building
in Florida, where he lived half the year in his retirement, to
the secretary in his doctor's office -- all were touched by him
and upset by his death, Paul says.
Born in 1924, Dr.
GELLMAN was the middle of five children of
Polish parents who immigrated to Toronto in 1928. His youngest
brother Albert says nobody in the household ever quarrelled:
a calm reigned in the family and reverberated in the future computer
guru.
Still, Dr.
GELLMAN's life threatened to take an entirely different
course early on, when he dropped out of high school to work in
an electrical manufacturing plant and help the family make ends
meet.
The factory had an electrical test set that only Dr.
GELLMAN
was able to figure out, Mr.
HAYWARD says. The budding tech whiz
realized that he wasn't so dumb, went back to school -- and the
rest is history.
He attended the University of Toronto, graduating with a bachelor's
degree in mathematics and physics in 1947. The following year,
the university's newly established Computation Centre, headed
by Professor Calvin (Kelly)
GOTLIEB, invited him to join and
study electro-mechanical devices.
Dr. GELLMAN subsequently was involved in purchasing a huge Ferranti
computer from England for $250,000. It was the first computer
bought in Canada, sponsored in part by one of the centre's clients
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
"The machine would fail every five minutes, Dr.
GELLMAN was
quoted as saying years later when he was inducted in the industry-sponsored
Canadian Information Productivity Awards hall of fame. "We would
sit at the monitor and watch the diagonal array of dots, and
when a dot dropped, we would stop the machine, reset it and carry
on."
He wrote a small program on punch paper tape to help users print
efficiently from the computer, one of the first software programs
to be run in Canada, and soon he produced the first printout
for a computational problem, according to information supplied
to Canadian Information Productivity Awards.
In 1951, he obtained his PhD in applied mathematics, the first
doctorate in Canada for which the theoretical calculations depended
on a computer.
That same year, he became head of computing at Atomic Energy
of Canada Ltd. and, by 1955, he founded H. S. Gellman and Co.
Ltd. in Toronto to advise the growing number of companies seeking
his help.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. was his first client and remained
one throughout his consulting career.
"He was doing a lot of pioneering work on operating systems,
and operating systems that deal with controlling nuclear-power
plants, says Bob
BANTING, manager of information technology
security at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. "He understood the programming
and the technical stuff, but he also knew how to manage people....
He was very good at assessing skills."
He hired top talent, sizing up job candidates in minutes, and
was able to move seamlesslessly from being a good programmer
to a good "people person, Mr.
BANTING says.
Dr. GELLMAN's early work was computing based on mathematical
equations, but the firm quickly moved into what became known
as information technology.
His busy consulting firm was swallowed in 1964 by a subsidiary
of de Havilland and subsequently by
AGT
Data
Systems before he
left with Mr.
HAYWARD to form Gellman Hayward.
But by the early 1990s, the firm was "stuck" and started to seek
a buyer, Mr.
HAYWARD says. "We didn't know how to get to the
next level."
When CGI acquired it in 1992, Dr.
GELLMAN stayed on as a senior
vice-president until he retired six years later.
In 1997, he co-wrote Riding the Tiger, a book that helps business
managers use information technology effectively. He was often
quoted in the media on managing information systems, and wrote
articles on the topic for The Globe and Mail.
In addition, he received many honours during his career, including
being named International Systems Man of the Year in 1967. He
was a founding member of the Canadian Information Processing
Society, among other professional bodies.
In his personal life, he was a private man and a steadfast father
and grandfather nine times over. He was devoted to Lily, his
wife of 57 years. They were teenage sweethearts, best of Friends
and "a model of how we all should live, " says his son Paul.
When Paul's older brother, Steven, decided to pursue a career
as a composer and musician, Dr.
GELLMAN had some reservations,
aware of the risks of such an unconventional and insecure profession.
"Before I left home to study at Juilliard, he said to me, 'I
understand you wanting to become a musician. Become the best
musician you can be; but I am concerned that you don't become
just a musician, ' " Steven says.
"Dad was reminding me to become a full human being, to develop
many facets of my life, just as he did."
Dr. GELLMAN and his wife spent a lot of time in Israel, where
they had family. In the mid-1970s, he took a six-month sabbatical
from work for an extended stay.
He was also part of a small discussion group called the Senge
Circle, started more than a decade ago among business colleagues
to discuss Peter Senge's management book, The Fifth Discipline.
It evolved into regular breakfast meetings to chew over different
business tomes.
The last meeting was in October before he went to Florida when
the group delved into the Peter
DRUCKER classic, The Practice
of Management. Dr.
GELLMAN was struck by how relevant the book
was almost 50 years after he first read it.
Dr. GELLMAN, who died on April 23, leaves his wife
Lily, sons
Steven and Paul, and siblings Dorothy, Albert and Esther.
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