ASQ Montreal Achievement Awards
By Eric Hosking, Section Treasurer, Membership Chair, CQA, CQE, CSSBB
In January of last year we were pleased to acknowledge two of our leadership teams members, Jean-Pierre Amiel and Raymond Dyer for their extraordinary contributions in 2020. As much as we wanted to acknowledge the achievements of the year just gone by, we could not present the ASQ achievement award trophies because COVID restrictions prevented us from getting together for a ceremony. So this was done in a virtual format, preceding our regular monthly Webinar event. In that virtual world we could only show an image of the award trophy each of them had earned.
We also had to admit that we did not even have the trophies. ASQ headquarters staff had no access to the storage area that the trophies were kept in. They were restricted to working from home. The trophies did not become available until late summer in 2021.
As COVID restrictions eased through the late summer and fall, we planned an event for late November where we would finally be able to do justice and, in a second presentation of the award, actually hand over the trophies. This too was not to be: Omicron reared its ugly head and other personal emergencies arose that prevented our awardees from attending the event.
I ultimately decided that the awards would be put in the rightful hands, COVID and other events notwithstanding. So I made home deliveries as you can see in the photos.
The award to Ray is in recognition of all the things he did in 2020 to keep us going. In particular, the things he did to keep our monthly speaker program going with very severe COVID restrictions in place, while we were driving to make our presence fully bilingual. You all should recognize Ray as the voice and face of our monthly webinar series. He also collaborated with other ASQ Canada Sections to form a Webex training group to support ASQ Canada’s virtual needs, and he contributed to the Canada Conference hosted by Toronto in 2020. This is outside other contributions in his role as Section Secretary and as member of our Student Outreach Committee.
In 2020, J.P. took on the challenge of getting us functioning in not one, but two myASQ sites, making us the only ASQ section to have sites in two languages. He also updated our historical website to give it a more modern look. He joined the Webex training group, he contributed to the Canada Conference hosted by Toronto and he was the master control behind our webinars as we converted to the COVID imposed virtual world. This does not come close to describing all the other things he did as well.
Congratulations again to Ray and JP.
These are very well deserved awards.
(2021-12-14)