Meet Your Board Members

My service on the ADRP board has been continuous since 2007 shortly after I retired as Director of Academic Computing Services at the start of that year, ending a 42+ years at Dalhousie that began as a freshman in 1964.

I was recruited to manage the ADRP web site, but after only a few months I also became the Pension Advisory Committee rep, and after just a year on the Board became president by default when then-president Philip Welch stated “Randy, you’re my last hope!”.

That led to a fruitful first term capped by the forced establishment of the Retirees Benefits Advisory Committee and the refund to retirees of $790,000 in benefit premium overpayments. My next service was as secretary to my successor as president, the late Carolyn Savoy, capped by the ADRP Bursary Fund which Carolyn initiated. A further rewarding experience on the Board was chairing the organizing committee for the 2018 CURAC national conference, an event that demonstrated the quality of research on health, housing, and other seniors’ issues done here at Dalhousie, and at other local universities.

After two 3-year terms as president, and one as secretary I’m now just PAC rep, in my 16th year as observer for ADRP, which followed a previous 10 as the same for DUAG, now DPMG. That’s 26 years, and I’m reminded in Canada that a life sentence is only 25 years! Service on the Board has been an education on retirement, not just of Dalhousie retirees, but those at most other CURAC members associations from my years as CURAC’s pension committee chair.

Away from ADRP, I spend a couple days of leisure time each week improving my 135-acre woodlot on the family homestead in Upper Burlington, Hants County where I have also been active as chair of the trustees of the community hall, formerly my 1-room school in the mid-1950s. In addition, I lead a group that maintains the cemetery on the homestead where five generations of ancestors are buried dating back to the early 1800s. Documenting the lives of many of the approximately 150 buried there has allowed me to explore a lifelong interest in Nova Scotia history dating back to the early 1600s, including that of the Nova Scotia public school system.

Among the interesting threads of family genealogy, I’ve found that my Barkhouse ancestors were among those who founded both Lunenburg and Mahone Bay in the early 1750s. On my mother’s side the most interesting ancestor may be the one who served Oliver Cromwell in Ireland in the 1650s, was knighted and given a 1000-acre estate. His son became a Quaker and gave the estate away! My grandchildren in Ontario and California will have no such outcome to ponder.

It has also been my good fortune to be able to retain a connection with athletics, most recently as an official for the 2022 U-Sports National Cross-country Championships, and upcoming, the 2023 National Indigenous Games being hosted in Halifax.

March 2023