OFARTS History

I became a member of the Old Foreign Affairs Retired Technicians in September 2002. I have not been able to track down who actually established this wonderful group but know its origin is founded on mutual respect, trust, loyalty and friendships established during employment with the Department of External Affairs, currently known as Foreign Affairs Canada.

Charles (Chuck) Dowsing used to prepare nicely laminated wallet-sized "membership" cards for new retirees but the practice had stopped some years before my retirement. Chuck claimed he did this as a lark but these cards are now prized keepsakes. I suspect that Chuckles actually coined the OLD FARTS name.

I created the first Old Foreign Affairs Retired Technicians presence on the WWW as a lark too, just after my retirement in 2002. The original web pages were hosted by Rogers Communications who eventually "farmed out" their e-mail to Yahoo and their "members" web pages to Geocities. Geocities added pop-up advertising to create revenue and established user access constraints which both annoyed and limited the number of visitors. But it was "free" which was a concept novel to me and to many techs. I still keep a family web presence at Rogers.

By September 2006 the Old FARTs Geocities web site was nearly full of pictures, a good story contributed by Donald Graham (in self defense) and obituaries. BUT, another tale written by Fred Snow just before he died, was being edited by his widow Yvonne. The remaining web space was used to accommodate the very fine finished product. "Passage to India". in the Articles section (formerly Story Land). And more techs were retiring and some needed obituaries. A sad fact.

The response to Fred's tale was a real wake-up call: The Old FARTs web site was no longer a lark.

-----Original Message-----
From: George McKeever [mailto:gmckeever (at) hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 15:50
To: Savant ITC
Subject: RE: Foreign Affairs Retirement Technicians News

The OLDFARTS.CA domain name had already been taken by an "entrepreneur", so we settled on OFARTS.ca. This was acquired and funded by the AFFSC, our communicator colleagues, on October 10, 2006.

The need for a "suitable" web host (read - cheap, reliable and flexible) was met with the "Mini 2" package offered by HostUtopia in Vancouver B.C. Canada. for $120 / year with nearly all taxes included ! The account was activated on October 10, 2006 and I went to work re-learning LINUX.

Unlike the AFFSC, the Old FARTS have never been "organized". We generally agree that, in retirement as in work, we just don't like bureaucracy. Never did.

Maurice (Moe) Rainbow agreed to help with site administration and began studying the "ins and outs" of web design after his retirement in Ottawa and his move to Nova Scotia. Moe returned to Ottawa in 2008.

Raymond (Ray) Fortin is our secretary-treasurer for this venture and is managing the contributions to defray the cost of the server which is located in Vancouver British Columbia. Ray's current e-mail address is raymondfortin (at) rogers.com . He assures me that contributions are still arriving and that we went live "debt free" on December 1, 2006. Ray has made many contributions to the photographic history of OFARTS Canada on Jerry Proc's website. http://jproc.ca/crypto/canadian_comm_center.html is but one example..

James (Jim) Rogers is probably responsible for the rapid listing and relatively prominent standing of the site on YAHOO, GOOGLE and NETSCAPE search engines: Jim quietly suggested the consistent wording used in the footer on each page and provided the "robot friendly" text file we use on the server to attract search engines. Jim has also scanned many of the pictures shown in the retirement area and contributed to the many retirement photographs..

Donald (Don) Butt is credited with offering his Royal Canadian Legion home as the place where we meet. for lunch each Wednesday starting at 1100. Don was usually the first to arrive at lunch and the last to eat. He made us feel very much at home. Unfortunately Don entered hospital on October 31, 2007 with cancer and died on July 7th, 2008. His memory lives with us all..