'Renaissance man' had great vision

Engineer, telecommunications expert, farmer and environmentalist influenced public policy and improved lives in Manitoba and beyond

By: Bill Redekop

 

Leslie Thomas Routledge was a rarity in that he ran a consulting business not out of a major city, but from his farm near Killarney.

The tireless advocate for rural economic development and progressive government policies died April 10 after suffering a massive stroke. He was 54.

Consultancy is, largely, about being ahead of the curve in economic development and then trying to push, pull and drag government and industry with you.

In his eulogy, Routledge’s brother Barry recalled that Les once predicted the then-government-owned Manitoba Telephone System would be privatized within six years.

He was out by three days.

Routledge, who started in telecommunications in the early days of the internet, wasn’t making a political prediction. He could see where the industry was heading; an entity such as MTS would require the speed and dexterity to adapt.

Routledge was instrumental in numerous initiatives. He conducted studies on a variety of subjects: wind farms, renewable energy, using fibre ethanol and wood pellets for biomass energy, expanding exports through the Port of Churchill and water issues; his work morphed into the creation of the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative. His passion before he died was the viability of a soybean processing plant in western Manitoba.

"I look at him as a bit of a renaissance man," said Peter Holle, president of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. "In terms of big-picture stuff, there was probably no one better that I knew. His public policy jobs were exceptional. He could think at a very high level."

Routledge produced a blog for Frontier. A favourite topic was the need to reform Manitoba Hydro.

Holle said Routledge was unique and an asset to whatever board or committee he sat on because he was fluent in technology, markets and economic policy.

The Frontier president kept a special folder just for Routledge’s emails. "I have a Les Routledge email folder with 761 emails and they’re brilliant," he said.

Routledge had trouble turning off his brain; people would find emails from him in the morning that he’d sent in the middle of the night.

"He said that was his thinking time," his wife Sue said.

"My mom used to ask me what Les is into and I’d say, ‘Oh, he’s into windmills and canola oil and soybeans.’ It was hard to explain what a business consultant did."

Raised on a farm near Virden, Routledge was the youngest of five children and always felt like he was trying to catch up to his older brothers and sisters, said Barry, who continues to farm in the area. Routledge earned an electrical engineering degree at the University of Manitoba and worked with a group that developed the technology to weigh large trucks at road speed. He went on to obtain a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Western Ontario.

He joined the Nordicity Group as a senior consultant and was on the ground floor in the development of the internet. He worked on many contracts in government and private business, including personally advising Ted Rogers, founder of Rogers Communications.

Barry said no one could understand what his brother was talking about back then, but nearly everything he predicted came true.

He became a senior consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers to help bring it into the digital revolution. He also worked in laying the groundwork for cell and internet connection in developing countries, something he found tremendously gratifying.

But at one juncture in his life, he felt he’d become too absorbed in his work to the detriment of a social life, so moved back to his roots in Manitoba. He first became executive director of Westar Group, an offshoot of Brandon University. Then, in the early 2000s, he formed consulting firm Prairie Practitioners Group and became a passionate advocate for rural economic development.

He met his British wife Sue while playing cards online.

"You could talk on the side of this game and we got on for nine months, just chatting," she recalled.

So he travelled to England to meet her, they married and moved to an acreage near Killarney. She had two grown children who stayed in England.

While working as a consultant, he started a small farm that included some fields of peas and barley and 135 goats and sheep. He sold directly to end consumers, mostly new Canadians from the Philippines, Africa, the Caribbean and Arab countries.

"When he put himself into something he really put himself into it," Sue said.

Part of his work at Westar was to secure international development consulting work and find solutions and efficiencies for delivering assistance. That included projects such as delivering broadband to the Commonwealth of Dominica.

Another was figuring out how to transfer surplus medical equipment to the Caribbean and African nations. Canadian hospital beds ended up replacing sheets of plywood in those parts of the world, as well as surplus Canadian surgery units, IV systems, and even ambulances.

"He was a very gifted man in the sense of being ahead of his time in a lot of areas," said Manitoba Sustainable Energy Association secretary-treasurer Wayne Digby. Routledge helped found the organization in the early 2000s.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca