Lawrie Duff. My life Part 2.
Our speaker today was our own Lawrence Duff.
When Lawrie Duff returned from the Second World War, he was all of 21 and had already had a career in the Canadian Royal Air Force specializing in aerial photography. When he returned to Calgary in ’46 he rejoined the large printing company where he moved the technology of the 20’s to the cutting edge of the 50’s. In 1953 he started Duffoto Process Company – the product etched was printing plates.
With technological change and a new downtown building (1960’s), the complete graphic arts service kept expanding to include photography, artwork, typesetting and lithographic and printing plate-making production. His customers were advertising agencies, department stores (The Bay, Eatons, Woodwards) and printing companies. In the 70’s, Duffoto opened a branch plant in Edmonton. He was involved in many building projects in Calgary: houses, apartments, a hotel and office site, dinner theatre, and he was greatly affected by Calgary’s boom and bust economy. The Trudeau National Energy Plan of 1982 hit Alberta particularly hard. In the 90’s Duffoto merged with a Saskatchewan graphic arts group “Printwest”.
In addition to technical trade and business associations, Lawrie joined (Calgary downtown) Rotary in the 60’s (which had 285 members) as a 2nd generation Rotarian. Calgary Rotary had many great members and projects and Lawrie keeps in touch with lifelong friends there. He and Betty moved to Vancouver to be close to their three daughters and families living on the westside of Vancouver. He is very happy advertising for over 10 years to have joined the Arbutus Rotary Club about 3 years ago, with its wonderful new friends and projects.