Picture of Jack Loucks

Photo courtesy of Dave Boyd.

What do you like to do in your spare time? "Puttering" (as my wife calls it). Playing guitar. Camping.

What inspires you? Witnessing our DHC volunteers in action.

Why are you in nonprofit work? What emotional reasons? I grew up in a family that helped those in need, volunteered and gave back to the community. Seeing people's genuine, heartfelt, reaction when you've helped them without expecting anything in return, is a pretty good reason.

Who is a hero of yours? Terry Fox. Every-time I think about what Terry accomplished, I'm very humbled.

What’s something quirky about you? I am a retired Drum Corps member of the Ottawa Police Services Pipe Band.

 

Malcolm Vant

I have been interested in trains ever since I can remember.  I have lived in Ottawa most of my life and being born in the early 50s, experienced the dismantling of rail in the area.  I recall vividly leaving on trains with my mother from the old Union Station and riding on streetcars.  I do recall seeing the Ottawa West yards and roundhouse near the end of their lives in the mid-60s, as I rode by on the number 52 bus to Carlingwood, and I remember visiting the coal sheds that lined the hill near Mann Ave with my Dad. Unfortunately, during those early years, I was too young to have a camera and take photos.  My earliest photos are in 1967, taken with a Brownie, of the tracks of Union Station just after it closed, and then of the museum train as it arrived at the former Morrison Lamothe Bakery, now the Museum of Science and Technology, bringing several of the locomotives now in residence there.  I was, and am again, an avid model railroader, interested in particular in prototype modelling of the CNR and CPR branchlines that once radiated out of Ottawa.  Since retirement in 2009 from a busy career in Research and Development, I have combined my interests in railroads, local history, and cycling, and have cycled parts or all of the rail trails that line the former railway spokes out of Ottawa and the surrounding area, such as the Maniwaki, Waltham, Carleton Place, K&P and M&O subs of the CPR and the Cataraqui sub of the CNR.  I love trying to imagine what was there and in some cases finding traces of what existed.  I have been reading online, following fora, and participating in the Bytown Railway Society to learn as much as I can about railway infrastructure and operations in the area and as a member of the Ottawa Railway Circle to contribute and to learn more.

Photo a text from Ottawa Railway History Circle.

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