It's a pretty safe bet Lloyd Johnston's teachers wouldn't have picked him to be the first from his school to attend university. That he went on to become a successful consulting engineer, helping SaskPower turn a page in its history, would probably have surprised them. That he leveraged his considerable business, engineering, and social intelligence to make a great contribution to science education in the province - who could have foreseen? That fidgety young boy went a long way before cancer claimed him on Nov. 15.
Lloyd Johnston was born in Welwyn, Sask., on June 7, 1923, the third of four children of Annie and Archie Johnston. An active youngster, he struggled in school despite his obvious intelligence. Throughout his life, he would pick up interesting things in nature, or useful widgets found abandoned. He would repair or repurpose broken-down old things, and do calculations longhand just for fun.
He was drawn to the concrete, the quantifiable. On his deathbed he whispered, "I have three days left," later revised to "two" - and he was right, almost to the hour.
A local doctor encouraged him to go into medicine, but he thought he wasn't smart enough and opted for mechanical engineering instead, graduating from the University of Saskatchewan in 1946. After a couple of years with Canada Packers in Edmonton, he returned to Saskatchewan, where he farmed his father-in-law's land during the summer and both taught and studied at his alma mater during the academic year, ultimately qualifying to consult in mechanical, electrical, geo-technical, structural and architectural engineering.
It was as an independent consultant that he became involved with SaskPower's Boundary Dam project near Estevan in the late 1950s. The reservoir the dam created furnished water to cool an enormous coal-fired power station, the first units of which were commissioned in 1959, about the time Johnston was transitioning from farming and teaching to full-time consulting. The plant's construction created a challenge and opportunity new to Saskatchewan: an abundant supply of coal ash, most of it in the form of fly ash, which does not settle to the bottom of the furnace but goes up the chimney and must be trapped and disposed of.
Fly ash can be held in containment ponds, or used as landfill; but toxic chemicals in it can create health and environmental problems if leached into groundwater. Happily, it had been discovered that fly ash can replace as much as 20 per cent of the cement powder in concrete, where chemical bonds tie up the toxins, rendering the ash benign. Since the ash is much cheaper than cement, and since the production of cement itself has an enormous carbon footprint (accounting for 7 to 8 per cent of annual global carbon dioxide emissions), using fly ash is both financially and environmentally advantageous.
Moreover, it improves the quality of concrete: Whereas cement particles are jagged, fly ash functions like tiny ball bearings, helping concrete to flow into small spaces behind reinforcing bars, improving its strength and structural qualities. But each source of fly ash is a bit different, reflecting the particular composition of the coal from which it is derived. Somebody needs to study and test each local type of fly ash to determine how much to use and what it is best suited for. Lloyd Johnston did that for the ash from the Boundary Dam plant.
The first use of Boundary Dam fly ash in concrete was in the construction of SaskPower's E.B. Campbell hydroelectric station, begun in 1963 in northeastern Saskatchewan. But the company produced more ash than it needed for its own projects, and so Johnston also served as the precursor to what is now a large fly ash marketing department.
He continued to consult for SaskPower among many other companies, as well as becoming involved in his community through the Kinsmen and Assiniboia Clubs. After the untimely death of his first wife, he remarried in 1971, adding three teenage daughters to his own two; he also became a kind of surrogate parent to other young folk.
In 1978, SaskPower phased out the Powerhouse that had long stood on the shores of Wascana Lake in Regina, and began looking for another use for the handsome building. The city's Junior Service League suggested that it be converted into a science centre, and soon a board was charged to bring this to fruition.
George Hill, president and CEO of SaskPower at the time, immediately thought of his trusted long-time consultant. Johnston agreed to serve on the board, and soon was chairing it. He grasped the possibilities of a "Powerhouse of Discovery" for making science fun and accessible, instead of the drudgery it too easily becomes in the classroom. So for five solid years he volunteered about a third of his time to turning the science centre dream into reality.
Well-connected and persuasive, he developed a broad base of support, raising $12-million from civic, provincial and federal governments, private and Crown corporations, and individuals.
He was also actively involved in the design and eventual staffing of the Saskatchewan Science Centre, which opened to the public - on time and on budget - in April, 1989. Two years later, Saskatchewan's only IMAX theatre was added to the centre's attractions, again thanks in large measure to Johnston.
In the mid-1990s, when he could have been retiring, Johnston earned consulting qualifications for Alberta, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories in order to respond to requests for his assistance in those places. He worked on hospitals, nursing homes, rinks, abattoirs, and a mosque, not only across Western Canada but as far away as Dhaka, Bangladesh and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He continued consulting until 2009.
When he passed away, his memorial was held at the Science Centre, in the IMAX theatre. Some wanted to hold it in the large main-floor gallery that had been named for him in 1991; but a Titanic artifact exhibition was there at the time, and as the joke of the day went, "not even Lloyd could raise the Titanic."
But perhaps some youngster intrigued by the centre's exhibits will some day pick up Johnston's work with fly ash and figure out whether there's a problem, and what to do about it, when that "green concrete" eventually erodes.
Johnston leaves his wife, Delia, five daughters and their families, many friends, and a great many happy children whose scientific imaginations have been awakened.
