ICBA celebrates 50 years of serving open shop construction this year, and we are looking back every week at some of the significant moments, milestones, and people who helped ICBA become Canada’s largest construction association.
Today, we wind the clock back to the late 1970s to learn more about how the early ICBA was made up of local chapters.
The interviews and other original research on which the ICBA50 series is based were conducted by writer Kevin Hanson. We appreciate Kevin’s work capturing the people, events, and milestones that shaped ICBA’s first half-century.
Today, ICBA employs more than 60 people, spread across offices in Surrey, Prince George and Calgary. Our team connects through technology to stay unified in our effort to build up the open shop construction industry.
But in the late 1970s, before smart phones and video calls and instant messaging, ICBA relied on in-person gatherings to build momentum. The association, with president Ralph Purdy leading administration and advocacy, operated initially from Purdy’s apartment in Burnaby, and later from an office on 86 Avenue in Surrey
ICBA was originally very decentralized, but local chapters were the association’s lifeblood in its early years. At the time of the third annual convention in Kelowna in 1977, chapters included: Creston, Fort St. John, Fraser Valley, Greater Vancouver, Kelowna, the Lower Mainland Equipment Owners, Penticton, Trail-Castlegar, and Vancouver Island.
Most chapters were purpose-built by local ICBA members, and community media and others took note as they proliferated. Fraser Valley was the seventh chapter to be formed in quick order after the founding convention. The Abbotsford, Sumas & Matsqui News introduced this new group to its readers as: “an organization of contractors and businessmen who believe in the preservation of the free enterprise system as the best means of maintaining equal opportunity and a stabilized economy.”
Bill Kerkhoff, a driving force behind ICBA
Some chapters were pre-existing groups that affiliated with ICBA, such as the Northern Society of Oilfield Contractors. Its members unanimously decided to join ICBA after Ralph Purdy addressed their annual general meeting in May 1977. Former NSOC President Vic Brandl says oilfield contractors didn’t typically face the union issues other ICBA members did, but that there was commonality on other issues such as employment standards. NSOC subsequently became less active and its affiliation with ICBA lapsed. But Brandl kept in touch with and sought help at various points from both Purdy and his successor Philip Hochstein.
“We certainly seemed to be on the same wavelength all the time,” he said. NSOC’s successor organization – Energy Services BC – would re-join the ICBA fold in 2017, with a few dozen companies from the Fort St. John area.
By November 1978, ICBA had 476 member companies. But ICBA relied completely on membership dues to fund activities (and Purdy’s salary), and faced consistent financial challenges throughout its early years.
An urgent appeal to the chapters in March 1977 from Ken Funk, then chair of the Finance and Budget Committee, cites monthly deficits averaging well above $3,000, and outstanding dues of well above $10,000. “We just couldn’t seem to collect the money and, you know, it was a young organization, really unproven in a lot of ways,” Funk says. The situation didn’t improve much over the next year, with one of his treasurer reports from 1978 opening with the succinct assessment: “Simply – we’re broke!”
Bill Kerkhoff faced the same challenges during his term as treasurer. “I remember phoning these guys,” he said. “Okay we need some money, send 150 bucks, send 200 bucks. Let’s keep this thing going.”
The association wrestled well into the 1980s with its dues structure – attempting to find a balance between sustainable financing and member affordability. It was often only through the generosity of individual members that operations carried on. A $10,000 advance from Rempel Bros. Concrete in 1975 “to eliminate bank over drafts until membership dues are received” was typical of such gestures. And even as late as 1984, 11 members released funds they had previously allowed the association to use as collateral to offset operating expenses, thus enabling it to clear its debts at that time.
Despite the financial challenges, the association and its leaders certainly did not lack for vision. An aspirational org chart, hand-drawn by Board chairman Elmer Verigin in early 1977, plotted out a doubling of the membership over the coming five years, the addition of multiple staff, and the possibility of parallel organizations in other provinces and nationally. Such ambitions would eventually come to pass, but for now the need to solidify and grow the still modest provincial organization would be challenge enough.
