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HDD Broker founder Ivan Lauzon died July 22 after a short but valiant battle with cancer. HDD Broker general manager Renée Lauzon-Martin shared this tribute to her father.

Most people knew Ivan as an accomplished entrepreneur. A warm and kind man; one who laughed readily and always had a mischievous glint in his eye. A welder by trade, he started his first company, Lauzon Welding and Oilfield Services, in 1973. It was highly successful, and at one point he employed over 150 people.

In the late 1980s, his entrepreneurial spirit set him upon a different road; he bought his first directional drill, a Straightline 810. Indeed, it was the first of its kind in Western Canada, and so Ivan faced the challenge of introducing the benefits of HDD.

As directional drills became more commonplace, Ivan saw a demand in the market to manufacturer tooling, and Underground Tooling and Technologies was born. Many of the innovations and technological leaps in tooling are thanks to Ivan's ingenuity.

When UTT was acquired by a company out of Edmonton, Alberta in 2000, Ivan looked forward to a quiet retirement. A call from a client looking for a used drill resulted in new idea-HDD Broker-a sideline "hobby" to keep his brain from becoming idle. Ivan hoped for one or two sales a month, but had tapped into a real need in the HDD Industry. He loved the equipment, attended virtually every trade show, and was a real pioneer the industry.

All the things we loved most about Ivan-his integrity, his respect for the industry and the people in it, and his humor-are also the values that we've all sworn to uphold.

We honour his legacy and his contributions to the industry, to the workplace and to our lives.

Published on Trenchless Technology.