Legacy and Legends
We all have our favourites. In hockey we are eager to watch the top players – McDavid, Crosby, Matthews, and Malkin. We remember the legends that preceded them – Howe, Gretzky, Lemieux, Mahovlich, Bossy, MacDonald, Toe Blake – the ones that paved the way for all the others. In CAPL we too have our legends and what a legacy they have established for all of us. The Herb Hughes Memorial Award was created for us to honour the best of our best. In a like manner we announced at the May 2017 Merit Awards that CAPL would be naming its largest classroom after another one of our legends – Mr. Jim O’Byrne. On October 25 we did so as a group of Jim’s invitees that evening reignited the passion for educators in our business and to say a hearty thank you to the man that made our path as landmen easier instead of perilous, as the driving force behind the creation of a Canadian form of Operating Procedure and the chairman of the committees that created of the 1971 CAPL Operating procedure and their replacements up to the 1990 version. We also paid tribute to Jim’s family, as Jim’s wife Leone, and two generations applauded a career that still extends today. As one with 37 years in the business I can say Jim’s work on those early Procedures were the greatest teaching tools I had in addition to the fine landmen I had around me during my career. Congratulations Jim – and to the successive generations of landmen you have enlightened, and to our industry which benefited immensely from the production of those model agreements. Bravo!
