Some of you asked......and even if you didn't

I thought I would tell you a few more things about myself. my siblings and especially my female mentors. There were also some outstanding male mentors throughout my working life, but today I wanted to talk of 3 very important women that helped me shape my life and succeed in my career..

Everyone is my teacher, some I seek, some I subconsciously attract.,,,,,Oprah Winfrey

Ours was a small family, exceptionally small for those days when there were often 6 or 7 + siblings in a family. I have an older brother Rob, and a twin sister Fern. Being a twin in that rural farming community wasn't uncommon at all, in fact in our small rural school of 200 plus students (these student numbers grew when the oil industry moved in) there were nine sets of twins and this was long before fertility treatments!

Photos = then and now

I had mentioned in one of my earlier blogs that when the drilling industry started in our area my brother Rob started working rigs and continued for a number of years, going back drilling in the winters even after they'd bought their farm, he and his wife Joyce are now retired and still living on their farm in the same community. My sister Fern and her husband Stan, who had worked on rigs for Peter Bawden Drilling, are also now retired farmers and still living on their farm in the same community.

In my early years my female mentors in their order were my mother and my school teacher/principal.

My mother, Kay Muller, was probably one of the hardest working people that has ever been in my life. She multi-tasked long before there was that label and she wasn't much more than 5 foot tall.. When they were dairy farming and it was harvest time, my father said, as they worked side by side that she could do the work of three hired men doing the same labour intense job and at the same speed. She would drive the tractor pulling the binder to cut grain, then along with the men in the field would stook the bundles so the grain could dry. When the grain was ready she was there with the crews pitching bundles into the hayrack with a pitchfork. Once the hayrack was loaded it was then hauled by a team of horses that she drove, to the thresher which was manned by my father. She also made meals for the threshing crews, had a house to run and the three of us to handle, and that same drive remained when they sold the farm and bought a country Grocery Store. They built a very good life through a lot of very hard work and along the way managed to keep a great sense of humour, they were very funny., we as a family laughed a lot...

My second mentor was Stafka Makofka, the school principal and also my teacher for a couple of high school grades. She ruled with an iron fist and could be quite intimidating so you had better pay attention and I did, not to just what she was teaching but who she was, and whether you liked her or not and it certainly was either one way or the other there was no in between, she was a force in our lives and probably still the best remembered and talked of teacher from that school at the time. She dressed well, spoke with attitude and conviction, drove too fast, could be very sarcastic or very funny, and nothing seemed to hold her back - I wanted to be all of it. My first job reference came from Stafka Makofka describing the abilities she saw in me. She set a bar that later on in my life I worked very hard to reach.

My third mentor, who is a bit younger than I, was Julie Robertson and still is, in many ways. In the beginning we both worked for Peter Bawden Drilling, I in Alberta and Julie in Texas. I had heard her name and knew of her but it was a few years before we met and by the time Noble Drilling bought the company her career was flourishing. I met Julie for the first time when she was on a business trip to our office in Nisku. One evening after work the two of us went for dinner, had a nice meal, drank a bit of wine, visited and laughed a lot. We got to know each other on a business level and over the years on a more personnel level. Here was a dedicated, very highly motivated woman that was not only succeeding in a very male dominated industry but rising right to the very top, becoming President, CEO and Chairman of the Board for Noble Drilling. Julie has that strength, determination, confidence and compassion that made these high achievers (my mentors), stand out and have such a huge influence on me. The amazing part was that they believed in me and that makes one believe in oneself.

Winston Churchill said "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give"