Service With Integrity

Ron McCullough (Photo: Ryan Whitefield)

Some people measure success by monetary gain, but Ron McCullough says success is how well you’ve served society

It was April 1959, and Ron McCullough, ’54 BSc(Ag), was 27 years old. He’d been raised on farms and in towns in rural Alberta, and was five years removed from graduating with a degree in agriculture from the University of Alberta. He was sitting in a marketing class in the first year of his MBA at the Ivey School of Business in London, Ont., thinking of the summer ahead. He scribbled a note and passed it to his friend Robin Eccles. It read: “Let’s do something different this summer break!”

Eccles jotted a note back: “Sure, what’ve you got in mind?”

McCullough sent his reply: “Let’s buy an airplane and tour South America!”

Eccles scratched a response, knowing that McCullough was a licensed pilot: “OK, let’s do it!”

Eccles commenced training to be a pilot and received his certificate on departure day. “We would not have completed the trip without his planning, corresponding with embassies, his navigation skills, his Spanish speaking skills,” McCullough says. “And his interpersonal skills in dialing down crisis situations.” Sadly, Eccles passed away recently.

The pair departed Canada on June 6, flying more than 27,000 miles in just under three months. Their southern path took them down the Pacific coastline of the Americas in a single engine Piper Pacer aircraft they called “The Canada Goose.” They crossed the Andes south of Santiago near Curicó, Chile, encountering seriously hairy moments at an altitude that neared the Piper’s maximum ceiling.

Later, in Argentina, they made an emergency landing at an unmarked airstrip, which landed them in jail — it turned out the airstrip was part of an Argentinian military base. Canadian Consular Services sprung them soon enough. The pair continued east into Argentina heading for an airstrip near Buenos Aires that turned out to be closed for maintenance, necessitating a landing on a rocky runway that damaged the plane and forced a repair. They continued north over Brazil, the Caribbean and the U.S., landing on August 25 at McCullough’s home, a ranch on the northern outskirts of Red Deer, Alta.

Radio Flier

McCullough had caught the aviation bug a few years before that South American trip. “I joined CFAC Calgary as farm radio director in the fall of 1955, then shortly joined the Calgary Flying Club to train.”

He started his career in Calgary covering southern Alberta with his daily farm and agricultural reports for six radio stations. In 1955 he was one of the founding members of the Alberta Farm Writers’ Association. In 1957, while he was working as a farm broadcaster with CFAC radio, he spent nearly three months travelling around the world, sponsored by the United Grain Growers to gather program material about Canada’s contribution to the Colombo Plan (a Commonwealth initiative to counteract poverty). The trip took him to places like Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Japan, Thailand and more.

Like a lot of Alberta men in the 1950s, McCullough’s career touched various industries. Ranching and farming? Check. Oil and gas? Check. Education? Check. It’s how the latter half of the 20th century unfolded in the province. And though he graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Alberta in 1954, his education was about more than a classroom. He says his greatest learnings came on the farm and at home, simply watching how his parents operated.

Family Foundations

McCullough’s father, Mac, was born in 1899 and, when he left school at 14, he started his own Angus herd, which he owned and operated until his passing in 1978. In addition to ranching, Mac left school early to work on the family farm near Blackfalds, Alta. At 19, he went back to school, first to Mount Royal College, then Normal School (Alberta’s teacher training program from 1920-1945), then the University of Alberta, then Stanford University and Iowa State University for graduate studies in education. Mac was an accomplished man, at one point serving as both the president of the Alberta Association of School Superintendents and the president of the Alberta Aberdeen Angus Association. He taught at Crescent Heights High School in Calgary with William Aberhart, who would become Premier of Alberta and the founder and leader of the Social Credit Party.

“Sometimes, though, I wonder if my father just got tired of being a school superintendent,” says McCullough, smiling. “I think he had mixed loyalties. I mean, he did well as a school superintendent, but he also did well as an Angus breeder.”

That’s an understatement. Mac built his Angus herd throughout his life and throughout Canada, registering more than 2,500 purebred cattle in 75 years of operation. He established 22 partnership herds in five provinces and two states and numerous livestock awards, including two championships from the Chicago International Livestock Show. Yet for all the success Mac had in the classroom and on the land, it’s fair to say his wife, Ron’s mother Mattie McCullough, ’83 LLD (Honorary), was as impressive. Mattie was born in 1909 in Fort Macleod, Alta., and early on developed a passion for learning and teaching. She completed Grade 8 when she was just 10 years old and received her teaching certificate at 17, before she finished high school. After marrying Mac in 1929, she had Donna, Ron and Robert, and, following various moves around the province, in 1946 the family settled on their 120-acre ranching headquarters northeast of Red Deer. (In 1983, the city expropriated the ranch for its Kerry Wood Nature Centre and Waskasoo Park.)

Mattie was a force of nature and shaped Ron’s life’s philosophy of service with integrity. She volunteered with dozens of boards, associations and organizations. She taught for decades. She did the paperwork on the ranch. She completed Grade 12 at 35, and went back to university at age 86 to study French and science. She volunteered in libraries, trained librarians and was a charter member of the Vanier Institute of the Family. She received the Centennial Medal in 1967, the Government of Alberta Achievement Service Award in 1976, the Order of Canada in 1980 and had a public school named after her in Red Deer. She served on the Senate and the Board of Governors of the U of A and the Board of Governors of Red Deer Polytechnic, the Banff Centre, Westerner Park (a non-profit agriculture society) and was named honorary president of the Canadian Angus Association. In 1983, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the U of A. She passed away in 2002 at the age of 92.

“She was impressive,” recalls McCullough. “She performed flawlessly in her life in everything she did. Dad, too, though he could be a bit of a rebel. But my mother was soft spoken, clever, always managed to weed any unpleasantness out of issues. She was so respected, but had no airs. She’d tackle anything. I remember once we were dipping sheep to get rid of their sheep ticks on our Blindman River farm northeast of Rimbey. Well, she slipped and landed in the dipping tank with the sheep! But we only had three or four sheep left to do, so she just stayed there as we finished up.”

Armed with the wisdom of his mother and father, Ron arrived at the U of A in 1950 to find the campus still in post-war mode. Some tents and makeshift barracks were still being used as classrooms. McCullough recalls legendary agriculture professors such as Fred Bentley, ’39 BSc(Ag), ’42 MAg, ’90 DSc (Honorary), and Laird McElroy ’33 BSc(Ag), ’34 MAg, among his teachers. He spent his first year in residence and then moved to the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity house, near 109 Street and 84 Avenue.

“That was quite a party,” he says, smiling. “I was there second, third and fourth years and the Delta Gamma sorority was down the street. Once in a while, on a Sunday, we’d dress up in suits and go visit them, a very classy group of ladies.”

Working Life

After graduating and going on that 1957 Colombo Plan tour, McCullough returned to Canada to find that, while abroad, he’d contracted yellow fever, a mosquito-borne virus that characteristically yellows the skin of sufferers. Ron had found a highly competent replacement in John Church who successfully continued Ron’s job duties. After recovering from the illness, Ron worked for the Calgary oil company Royalite for a year, then went east to get his MBA from Ivey in 1960.

“I had job offers,” he says. “But my dad was in his early 60s and ready to quit as superintendent. He and my mom offered me a really good proposition: If I worked with them on the farm for 10 years, they’d sell it to me.”

During these 10 years of helping run the farm, Ron also managed to serve on the Red Deer City Council and serve two terms as board chair of the Red Deer Westerner Fair & Exposition (founded in 1892 as the Red Deer Fair). “I remember a few times during those years when there’d be an orphan calf in one of our Alberta partnership herds. I would fly there, secure the calf’s legs, and fly it to Red Deer to be adopted by a mother nurse cow.”

After his decade of running the farm with his parents, McCullough took a position that lasted until 1974 as assistant commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission. “I was told my function was to be ‘the eyes and ears of the agriculture minister,’ among my other duties,” he says. “I visited all 1,500 then-existing Alberta grain elevators, interviewing the operators and reporting the scuttlebutt to the Winnipeg-based commissioners.”

Following that role, McCullough moved into government, as director general for Alberta for the federal Department of Regional Economic Expansion. He stayed for six years, until moving into the private sector to work with Suncor as manager of government affairs. After he left Suncor in 1984, he returned to the family farm to help with the final 1986 dispersal of their Angus herd, then the second oldest Angus herd in Canada.

Giving Widely

McCullough has long supported his alma mater and the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences, which was a big part of the reason he was granted an Alumni Service Award from the U of A in 2019. Since graduating seven decades ago, he’s helped out in various ways. It was his suggestion during the ALES centennial celebrations in 2015 to create the ALES Centennial Club, inspiring 100 donors to give $100,000. He and his wife Brenda Jackson ’74 BEd, ’03 MBA, were married 2006 and, two years later, they established the Lilian McCullough Chair in Breast Cancer Research at the U of A in memory of Ron’s Scottish first wife of 35 years, Lilian, who passed away in 2003. McCullough maintained a connection to his Class of ’54 fellow grads, serving as editor of the “Saggie Aggies” newsletter for 35 years (along with a similar 27-year commitment to his 1960 MBA class at Ivey).

“That was always fun,” he says. “In fact, we all used to get together on reunions and one year, we invited Ralph Klein to join us at classmate Hugh Bradley’s Pelly River Ranch in the Yukon. I told Klein about the Midnight Sun Saggy Aggie Skinny Dip we were planning.” Ron speculates that’s why the then-premier extended his regrets.

McCullough’s contribution to Alberta hasn’t been restricted to the U of A. He and Brenda have been involved in the Rotary Club for decades, especially the Edmonton Strathcona branch. “It may be a local chapter,” he says, “but the Rotary has worldwide influence.” He’s travelled to Australia and South America on Rotary charitable efforts. And he’s had his share of adventures there, too. On a medical mission to Ecuador with Brenda, Ron was in charge of the site finances. When they arrived, they went to a local bank to cash traveller’s cheques to pay bills allowing local hospitals to perform procedures they’d otherwise not be able to afford.

“I remember we went into the bank and there were armed guards everywhere,” recalls Brenda, sitting with Ron in their Edmonton home, recounting the story. “We were talking with the manager, him in broken English and Ron in broken Spanish. We kept pointing to a photo and story of our mission in the local paper. Ron was negotiating pretty hard to get a good rate from this manager because we were a charity.”

Ron’s goal was to have the service fees reduced and he held his ground with the manager. Finally, in the face of Ron’s persistence, the manager gave in and agreed to Ron’s preferred rate. They signed the cheques and went to a teller’s window to retrieve the cash. It was placed in front of them in piles, but before Brenda could put it in her bag, Ron said, “Don’t touch it!”

He suspected the bank hadn’t lived up to the rate they’d promised and, sure enough, after he made them count it, the amount on the counter wasn’t what had been promised. They soon left with a new, bigger pile of cash. They got back to the hotel and as Ron took a nap Brenda counted the money and found that the bank had been so swayed by Ron that they’d handed over the equivalent of $12,000 in exchange for $8,000 in traveller’s cheques! Realizing that they’d pulled an unwitting heist, they put the money in a safe and tried to figure out what to do. The next morning, they called their Rotary contact, who then called the president of the bank. With a police escort, they made their way back to the bank with the excess cash.

“They were very happy to see us,” says Ron, smiling.

Whether assessing Canada’s global agricultural impact, driving hard bargains with South American bank managers or flying Angus calves around Alberta, Ron McCullough has found meaning in whatever he’s done. But he’s always honoured his education and the memory of his parents. His philanthropy isn’t just for show. It’s made a difference in the lives of Albertans and those who benefit from research at the U of A. The list of funds McCullough has contributed to is long, but it includes the Lilian McCullough Chair in Breast Cancer Research, as well as various alumni funds, sports funds, business funds, ALES funds, Indigenous research, international research, nutrition and food research, and more. It’s a demonstration not only of giving, but of how to give. And why. As Ron noted in a 2014 issue of the ALES faculty’s now-defunct Greenhouse magazine, “Success is a combination of many things. It’s hard work, who you know, the luck you have, your timing. And how do you measure success? A lot of people measure it by monetary gain, but what you realize when you get older is that success is how well you served society.”

Migration

Remember the Canada Goose, the Piper McCullough and Eccles flew across South America? McCullough sold it decades ago, only to discover in 2019 that it was still in good condition, in the hands of a retired airline pilot in Edmonton who flew it regularly. “He invited me to fly with him to Rimbey and back,” McCullough says. “He took photos of me in the plane, an old unlicensed pilot!”

Now in his early 90s, Ron McCullough’s life has been full: farmer, administrator, philanthropist, with a dash of Indiana Jones. Of course, if you ask him, he’s just been a bit player in the bigger picture. “My parents were the impressive ones,” he says. “The truth is there’s no way I could have matched what they did.”

One suspects his parents would beg to differ.