 GilliesA day in the life of Paul Gillies takes him all over campus driving a heavy dump truck or aging backhoe.
Gillies is an equipment operator for the grounds department of facilities management. He started in the department 30 years ago and has worked on everything: trees, shrubs, lawns, flowers, drains, irrigation, composting and waste water management. “Three or four of us comprise a team taking care of ‘public works’—a catch-all phrase for almost everything: drainage, roads, gutters, signs, curbs.”
Every day is different for Gillies. He works for other shops and provides support for contractors, perhaps excavating for the plumbing shop to repair broken water lines or preparing sites so the contractor can lay paving. In winter, he may get a call at 3:30 a.m. for snow removal or spreading sand and salt.
“More and more of what we do revolves around being environmentally and ecologically sensitive,” he says. “This summer, we started putting soil on roofs.” Gillies picks up screened soil with the backhoe, loads it into a slinger truck with buckets; a crane takes the buckets to the roof, a trap door opens, spreading the soil.
While Gillies says he is a small cog in a big wheel, he feels he is doing something people really appreciate. “UVic has one of most beautiful campuses in Canada. The original vision—over 40 years ago—was that landscape would predominate and buildings would be secondary. UVic is lucky to have so much lovely green space that hasn’t been developed, including Finnerty Gardens and Mystic Vale. By the time UVic started to grow, people were more aware of the importance of green space.”
Raised in London, ON, he came to BC to live on Cortez Island at the Cold Mountain Institute (now called Hollyhock Farm). “After I discovered Victoria I realized I could never go back to the hot humid summers and bitterly cold winters in Ontario.”
Gillies says he has been fortunate to live in such a beautiful city and to work in the parklike setting of UVic. “UVic has always felt as if it were more than just a job; there has been a real sense of community here.”
Gillies has been a student of Buddhism for 40 years and he is looking forward to retirement when he can devote more time and energy to this pursuit.
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