Thinking Outside the Box: 35 Years in Kitimat and Terrace, Working for Alcan, Raising a Family, and Living the Good Life

Sequel to Riding in Style; the First Twenty-Five Years. A memoir of a life "thinking outside the box." 230 pages. 42 photographs and drawings. Alan McGowan's stories of solving problems, inventions, daring feats of driving in the North.

Sequel to Riding in Style; the First Twenty-Five Years. A memoir of a life "thinking outside the box." 230 pages. 42 photographs and drawings. Alan McGowan's stories of solving problems, inventions, daring feats of driving in the North. At the end of his first memoir, Alan McGowan was newly married and had moved up to Kitimat to work for Alcan. In this memoir he continues the story from the chaos of those first days, when over a thousand men showed up in the wilderness to run an aluminum smelter and create an instant town.

McGowan stayed with Alcan for more than three decades, raising a family, working in all areas of the plant and learning a lot about smelting and even more about people. With a sharp eye for detail, he writes about the men and women of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds who arrived in Kitimat in 1954: men who ten years earlier had fought on different sides in the Second World War, others who were on the run from trouble in their home country, some who went "Bunkhouse Happy" after too long in the bush, and always those working the angles to get something for nothing from the company.

Over the years, McGowan also learned the value, and danger, of thinking outside the box--whether that meant setting up the Early Riser Cooperative Bus Line, then getting a class one licence so he could drive the workers from Terrace to Kitimat in all weathers himself; or working with colleagues to figure out how to smelt aluminum more efficiently and with less pollution. McGowan also describes creating and launching his own inventions through Alcan and on his own, after retirement, including his most successful invention, the curling aid, or curl stick, a device that allows curlers with disabilities to play the sport standing up. The device is now used around the world.

As McGowan says about his life, "I relished the challenges and thoroughly enjoyed myself." That joie de vivre is clear on every page of this memoir.

Alan McGowan was born in 1930 in Port Alice, B.C. Growing up poor during the Depression, Alan moved with his family from Vancouver Island to Vancouver and then to Princeton, attending twelve different schools in as many years. When he was ten his parents separated, and he taught himself to raise chickens and hunt for grouse and deer to feed the family. He started working as a farm hand at 14 and by 15 had made enough money to help his family and to buy an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle for a solo road trip through California. After finishing school, Alan worked all over B.C. as a ditch digger, miner and logger, and eventually qualified as a journeyman painter. At 24 he decided it was time to settle down. He married and with his bride, Mary, moved to the new city of Kitimat in 1954 to work for Alcan. They raised three children, Joe, Sharon and Skye, and Alan worked for Alcan for 36 years, ultimately becoming a respected project planner of large-scale innovative and ground-breaking engineering projects. When the family moved to Terrace in 1971, Alan founded the Early Riser Cooperative Bus Line between Terrace and Alcan and became well known for his daily radio reports on Highway 37 road conditions. After retirement, Alan pursued his passion for inventing, his love of storytelling, and his hobby of restoring old vehicles, completing work on a '38 Ford truck just before he died in May 2019. He skied until he was 80 and rode his beloved motorcycle until he was 87.