Engineer.
Born at Wainwright, Alberta around 1917, son of Samuel Howard Templeton and Florence Porteous, he graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology with a diploma in Mining Engineering. His working career started at the Madsen Red Lake Mine in northwest Ontario where he was Assistant Assayer, Boat Boy and Post Office Manager. He later obtained a BSc in Mining Engineering from the University of Alberta. During the Second World War, he was seconded to the Canol Pipeline Project and later worked on the construction of the airports along the Alaska Highway. In 1948, he was appointed Assistant Chief Engineer of the Fraser Valley Dyking Board.
He came to Winnipeg after the city’s 1950 disastrous flood, as Chief Engineer of the Greater Winnipeg Dyking Board. In 1955 he formed Templeton Engineering Company, which did the engineering estimates for the Royal Commission on Flood Cost-Benefits that resulted in the construction of the Winnipeg Floodway. In 1966, the firm merged with Montreal Engineering and Shawinigan Engineering to form Teshmont Consultants Limited.
He served as President of the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the University of Manitoba, was a board member of the Children’s Hospital in Winnipeg for 14 years, and was Engineer for the Rural Municipality of North Kildonan (1956-1964, 1967-1971). During the 1970s he was Chairman of the Alaska Highway Pipeline Panel and Chairman of the Environmental Protection Board that pioneered the hearing process for Environmental Impact Assessments for the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (Berger Commission), work for which he was inducted into the Order of Canada, in 1978. He received a Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Manitoba in 1982. In 1980 he was chosen by the Inuvialuit people to become the Chairman of the Environmental Impact Review Board for the Western Arctic.
He died at Victoria, British Columbia on 6 October 2004.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 10 October 2004.
We thank Jim Smith for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 7 June 2019
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