G.Keith Pickard Team

G. Keith Pickard's Team

Designing vs construction – you can draw plans but on site the contractors have to deal with reality

Keith developed a strong team of individuals with specialized skills and they worked together to design a wide variety of buildings across Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Through their dedication, contribution and willingness to constantly take on new projects in the evolving world of construction, the team accomplished an incredible amount of work. 

Keith’s first Charlottetown office was located at 100 Fitzroy Street, on the second floor of the Palmer Electric Building. As his workload increased, he added more draftsmen, an office manager and a young architect. Linda Smith Drake ably filled the dual role of secretary and bookkeeper.

Lou Barry graduated from the Provincial Vocational Institute (PVI) with a diploma in Architectural Design and Drafting and started working with Keith in 1959. He experienced the transition from the classroom to the reality of the work world with its expectations and deadlines.

Lou Barry said “I had a great teacher and mentor in Keith who had the patience of Job and who always took the time to answer my endless enquiries as to how something should be done never once brushing me off.

This was my first exposure to Keith’s demeanor which over the years never ceased to amaze and inspire me. Never once over the 20 some odd years I worked in his employ did I see him lose his temper or berate any of his staff or individuals he encountered and God only knows there were many occasions in which he was justified in doing so.”

It was a different world in the late 1950s – all plans were drawn by hand, correspondence was by letter and the postal service, adding machines were used rather than calculators. The secretary had a manual typewriter with multiple layers of carbon paper; long distance phone calls were very expensive and often telegrams were used to purchase products or confirm order information.  Each draftsman used a triangle, a parallel rule on wires, and mechanical lead pencils. He sat at a huge drawing table (slanted at a 45 degree angle) and worked on huge pages of tracing paper. There was also a slide rule, 12 inches long, for the span and load of beams. The work required absolute attention to detail and was very time consuming. The engineer used a slide rule and a complicated-looking set of pulleys.  

By 1960 Keith’s workload and staff were expanding. He needed more space and moved to the third floor of the Norton/Security Building at 92 Queen Street. In this location he was able to increase his complement of draftsmen and expand the team to include an engineer and a designer. With the added expertise, Keith could offer a fuller range of services to his clients – from site plans to completely furnishing and decorating the new buildings.

Roger Balderston worked with Keith for over 25 years. Roger was still in high school when he and his father consulted Keith as to future prospects in this field of work. Keith advised Roger to take the course in drafting at PVI and then come back to talk to him. Linus Gallant was the teacher and there were six or seven students in the class. In the fall of 1965 Keith had an opening for a draftsman and Roger joined the team. Roger says he thought he knew everything, fresh out of school, and George Smith gave him a hard time, was always on his case.

George Smith trained at London Tech, City & Guilds, and moved to PEI to work with M.F. Schurman Company Ltd. He also took evening courses at Prince of Wales College. George was a perfectionist who checked all drawings and trained draftsmen to do the work his way, to add electrical wiring so it could be read by the contractor; he was good at his job. He was working with Keith in February 1959 and became second-in-command at the office – managing the draftsmen’s workload, meeting with salespeople and suppliers, conferring with Keith. Both Keith and George were aggressive in pursuing new work. There were many issues that influenced the boom and bust swings in the construction industry – the economy, government-funded projects, issues of supplies and labour, weather.

The Planning Process

The initial meeting was always between the client and Keith – to get the scope of the project. Then Keith would meet with the draftsman and give instructions, sometimes a small project, a hand drawn sketch from client – occasionally on the back of a calendar or cigarette package. Keith would ask “draw this up – at least get it to scale”. There were also large projects such as the Prince County Vocational School and the medical centres. These required extensive plans and specifications.

The experience of a draftsman was one of lifelong learning: there were the improvements and changes in materials, advances in steel. Keith gave his draftsmen responsibility to come up with solutions to “how are we going to do this?” and “making it work”. The draftsmen did much more than drawing plans at the drafting table. Before Brian Potter arrived (1965) and Delta Surveys Ltd. was formed, the draftsmen took measurements for site plans – they were troublesome and required visits to the property with survey poles. They needed to get the elevations, different grades, and contour lines of the property before designing the layout. The question could be, if there was a big variation in elevation, should the building be constructed in two sections with connecting stairs.

In 2021, Roger Balderston compared the manual vs computer process and commented that on a large sheet of paper you can see the whole picture and know if it won’t fit. It’s quite a change with computers, in the early years you didn’t see the whole picture of the building on the screen. Now screens are bigger. 

Sometimes more than one draftsman worked on the same building – one doing the floor plans, another doing the finish schedules, etc. It took the team four to five months to complete a set of drawings and meetings with the building committee – it was a disaster when big changes were requested late in the process.

Roger Balderston also spoke about meeting with the owner of Rogers Hardware Store. Tom Rogers gave him a good understanding of the wide variety of sizes and styles of hinges, locksets, door swings and everything needed for a building.

Along with a full set of drawings/plans, there were detailed specifications for each project. The printing and compiling of these was carried out by Jean Smith who spent hours working at the huge printing machine in a room full of the smell of ammonia.

Once the plans and specifications were completed, the job was advertised in the newspaper and tenders or bids were received from construction companies. Keith met with the clients to open the bids and make decisions on awarding contracts. 

An integral part of the building project was the job meetings – Keith would meet with the contractor and all the trades (electric, plumbing) before the job started to go over the plans. The owner might be there too. Sometimes it was a situation where the drawings met with the realities of contractors and problems needed to be worked out. Keith always worked toward a solution and getting agreement. On big projects the architect, contractors, trades would meet weekly to address any issues that arose or could be foreseen.

When the building was under construction, draftsmen visited the site to ensure progress was on schedule. Depending on the complexity of the project, Keith’s staff might visit every day. Keith instructed his staff not to hold a job up: if a decision was needed, they were to make it, to keep the job going. They were to come back to discuss the problem with Keith and were assured he would back up his staff. Keith was a master at finding workable solutions to problems and always brought a common-sense approach.

Lou Barry commented that “Although Keith was a graduate Architect and went on to receive the Honor of F.R.A.I.C by the Architectural Institute of Canada one would think it was because of his design prowess as exhibited by most Architects but the truth is Keith never really enjoyed that aspect of the profession but rather relied on members of his staff who were gifted in that regard to provide design under his tutelage. Where he did shine however in the less glamorous but equally important side of Architecture that being mediator, facilitator, negotiator and implementer which he exhibited “par excellence”. In my time in his employ I never witnessed a time when he was unable to complete a project regardless of the challenge and at times there were many. This did not go unnoticed by his peers as there were numerous times he was called to mediate and facilitate the completion of a project even though he was not the original Architect or Engineer and a lot of the times without remuneration.”

Lou said “Although Keith was involved in the construction of many projects on the Island ranging from schools, churches, apartments, residential housing etc., as I mentioned earlier, he did not enjoy the design aspect of the profession but rather assigned that to other staff members whom he felt had a artistic flare, I fortunately being one of them and one of the projects that left an everlasting impression on me was the construction of the Lucy Maud Montgomery Elementary School in East Royalty. Keith being aware I was a long-time resident of that village gave me the honor of taking the lead in the design, planning and coordination of the project including the inspection process during construction. Naturally he oversaw every aspect in the process and offered suggestions where needed, needless to say I was thrilled by the honor and even more so when the East Royalty Village Council nominated their oldest citizen Reg Parkman and my daughter Vanessa (one of the first students to attend) to lay the corner stone. I had a strong suspicion but could never prove otherwise that Keith had a hand in my daughter’s involvement, he was that type of giving individual, regardless my family will be forever grateful.”

These are some snapshots from Lou Barry and Roger Balderston who were longstanding members of Keith’s staff. We only know the names of some of the other draftsmen who were integral parts of the team and we are searching for help from everyone who reads this. 

In the 1980s the decision was made by three of the draftsmen Lou Barry, Roger Balderston and Robert Peake to form their own company – Island Drafting Ltd. Keith was downsizing- both as a result of dealing with heart issues  and also a slow-down in work. The draftsmen continued to work for Keith on a contract basis and these projects were done with Computer-aided Design (CAD) – a new system that Keith did not attempt to conquer. Irwin Balderston recalled that Keith would come to him with a perfectly drawn building, all layouts and measurements indicated, and ask that it be transferred to a computer drawing for the client.

In the later years of his practice, Keith appraised buildings for insurance and mortgage purposes, was an expert witness in a number of court cases and continued his lifelong contribution on the advisory boards of planning committees.