Aubrey McIntosh:
By Norman Jennings

+ We honoured Aubrey's contribution to Moriyama and Teshima during the 2003 Christmas party at the Noor Cultural Centre. I had a chance to interview Aubrey to discuss his time here.

The 1960's was a time of change. Aubrey McIntosh, who had come to Canada from Jamaica in 1954, was the Office Manager and Credit Manager at the Head Office of Pet Milk in Toronto. They were the Canadian subsidiary of the American based parent company located in St. Louis. Pet was the second largest food processing company in North America at that time. Products they produced included chocolate, cheese and powdered milk.

Across town, Don Cooper had worked at Raymond Moriyama Architects and Planners since 1960. Don's wife at that time Barb worked at Pet Milk with Aubrey. In 1966 Ray had hired management consultants Reynolds, Vair and Partners to advise him on how to organize, manage and run his expanding young architectural practice. The office had recently been working day and night on the contract documentation for the Centennial Centre for Science and Technology (Ontario Science Centre) and had just moved into the newly renovated and expanded 32 Davenport Road location. Ray asked Aubrey to cast his experienced eye over the consultants report and provide suggestion as to how the recommendations could be implemented.

Aubrey completed his review and gave his feedback to Ray and David Vickers. Ray must have liked what Aubrey told him. He asked Aubrey to join the firm and Aubrey accepted the offer. Aubrey's first day was December 12, 1966, which happened to be the infamous opening party for 32 Davenport where the Chief Architect for the Province of Ontario was tossed into the fish pond.

There were about 20 people working at M&T in 1966. Aubrey had left Pet, a large manufacturing company with fairly rigid operating policies that were set out by the American head office, to join an enthusiastic, perhaps bohemian bunch of young architects with an office on the edge of Yorkville when it was still the main hangout for hippies and flower children. Much of the rest of the neighbourhood was made up of quiet residential streets and a selection of art galleries. It was nothing like the upscale Bloor-Yorkville area of today.

Before Aubrey came on board Mrs. Complin had performed both the secretarial and basic accounting duties. He became the firms first Financial Manager. The office worked with the public accounting firm known at that time as Starkman, Kraft, Rothman, Berger and Grill - an earlier version of same firm we deal with today.

Of course everything is those days was done by hand. Architectural drawings and accounting. Large ledger books and spreadsheets were filled in manually. Staff submitted their hand written time sheets, Aubrey would then take the data and transfer it to project cost sheets producing progress reports for each active job. By the time one month's reports were done it was about time to start on the next batch. Aubrey did most of the work himself so it was very difficult for him to get away on a vacation for any length of time.

In the early days, M&T would receive calls from prospective clients who liked the work the office had done. They would come in to the office to meet Ray and other members of the staff, then decide to give you a project, or not. You would be paid according to the standard OAA fee schedule. Aubrey worked closely with Ray and later Ted Teshima during contract negotiations. No RFP's or RFI's. No complicated proposals to write. Long-term relationships were developed with clients based on trust and good quality work. Many of these relationships continue today with clients that include York University, Brock University, Metro Library and the YMCA. Aubrey's tough but fair and reasonable approach has been invaluable as negotiations with current day clients have become more complicated.

On a snowy day in 1960's Ray and Aubrey went up near Orangeville to look at an old cattle farm. It was a beautiful location but it was hard to tell exactly what was under that blanket of white stuff. Aubrey went back and forth with the owner negotiating the price. The deal almost fell through but Aubrey told Ray he was confident it would be a good buy. The deal closed and in the spring when the snow melted, Aubrey had made the right recommendation! The farm was used as a getaway by the M&T staff for many years. Aubrey still has some of the early logs in his files showing who went up and when.

Mary Sabat joined the firm as Ray's secretary in 1966, the same year that Aubrey started. There were an endless string of receptionists until Pat Vieira made the position hers in the early 1980's. This created the unbeatable "Front Office" team that we all relied on for so many years. Mary retired at the end of 2002 when Rosmarie Shanks joined the team.

It wasn't until the 1980's that Aubrey got full-time accounting help when Tim Klauck joined him "out front". Tim and Aubrey worked together until 1995 when Tim moved to Yolles. Howard Sayles joined on a part time basis after Tim left until Carlos Correia took over in 1997.

Up to 1995 the accounting at M&T was still done mainly by hand. Data was gathered from hand written time sheets. Tim would go up to the Loft and punch it all into the computer. On Saturday mornings Tim would print off reports, which took hours to output on a dot matrix printer, that he and Aubrey would use to track projects.

When Carlos arrived he had never done any manual accounting, He had always used a computer, so Aubrey had to show him how it was really done! In 1999 the SEMA4 computerized accounting and project reporting system was introduced. The big manual input ledger books were finally retired.

Over the past couple of years Aubrey has been gradually reducing his number of days in the office each week. He is not completely retiring from the office quite yet, but the time is near.

One thing we have always valued and may miss the most when Aubrey is not here is the fact that Aubrey's door was always open. No matter if our concern was big or small, important or seemingly insignificant, Aubrey would listen and do what ever he could to resolve the problem.

Aubrey told me he has had a wonderful time working at M&T. He would get up every morning looking forward to coming to the office, meeting it's challenges, and working with the people here and our clients. Maybe that is why he still looks and acts so young!