Trailblazer
People skills helped keep career in gear
After decades of valued service to the industry, John Vielvoye is an expert at retiring. He’s done it twice. By Susan McIver
Agriculture in Kelowna.
J
ohn Vielvoye’s considerable impact on the development of the B.C. wine industry was the result not only of his extensive technical knowledge but also his ability to work with people.
His career spanned five decades as provincial grape specialist and later private consultant.
“It’s the people that made my career worthwhile,” Vielvoye said. Born in 1942 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Vielvoye came to Canada with his family 10 years later. “We landed in Halifax and then travelled across the country by train to Vancouver,” he recalled.
Vielvoye grew up working in family- operated landscape, greenhouse, nursery and garden centre businesses. In 1965, he graduated from UBC with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture with specialization in horticulture. Summer jobs as a university student brought Vielvoye to the Okanagan, where he gained valuable practical experience and met pioneering scientists at the Summerland research station, including Lyle Denby, Don Fischer and Alec Watt. He also met his future wife. “I asked Evelyn to dance at a ‘do’ in Winfield,” he said.
The couple was married in 1965. Upon graduation, Vielvoye was a trainee inspector for the federal department of agriculture stationed in Mimico, Ontario, for a year before returning to the Okanagan. In 1966, he assumed the duties of assistant district horticulturist under Frank Morton for the B.C. Ministry of
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“I was responsible for an industry- government operated fruit tree certification program and worked with Doug Christie from Cloverdale and Leighton Lopatecki at the research station,” Vielvoye said.
He also provided advisory services to grape growers. In response to the emerging wine
SUSAN MCIVER
John Vielvoye’s contributions to grape growing in this province have spanned more than five decades.
industry, Vielvoye was appointed provincial grape industry specialist in 1968, a position he retained until retirement in 1997.
He continued the tree fruit certification program until 1980. “There were 1,100 acres of grapes in the Valley, most in the Kelowna area, when I took over” Vielvoye said. As the go-to-person on viticulture issues, Vielvoye had a myriad responsibilities, all with the ultimate goal of fostering the economic growth and sustainability of the grape industry in the province.
He accessed technical knowledge from research settings around the world and recommended how it could be adapted to local use.
Vielvoye either published himself or facilitated publication of a number of milestone papers.
These publications were usually the result of projects over several years involving a number of people and agencies, and included Evaluation of German Grape Cultivars and German
Viticulture Techniques in the Okanagan Valley.
An Atlas of Suitable Grape Growing Locations in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys of British Columbia and the Duncan Report, a summary report of a grape variety trial at Duncan on Vancouver Island, were among the papers that appeared in the following years. In 1991, Vielvoye published Profile of the Grape and Wine Industry in British Columbia, and a year later Evaluations of European Grape Varieties.
“I had the opportunity to visit grape-growing and wine regions in England, Western Europe, Ontario and Nova Scotia as well as several Western States,” Vielvoye said. His retirement started on March 31, 1997 and lasted for three days. While trimming the hedge in his front yard, Vielvoye looked up to see Herb Luttmerding in his driveway. A former colleague from
government service, Luttmerding had come to ask Vielvoye’s assistance in
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Summer 2014
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