In June 1958, four-year-old Christopher Dufault made a new discovery while exploring a farm field in Waterloo.
I was gathering strawberries with my family next to a farmhouse and was fascinated to learn that strawberries grew on plants and could be picked and eaten on the spot, he recalls.
Young Christopher paid little attention to the frenzy of construction going on nearby, not realizing that the farmhouse where he was picking strawberries would later be known as Grad House and a new building being erected would become Engineering I at a new institution called the University of Waterloo.
Since his early memory of the campus construction, Christopher has continued to make many memories on Waterloo’s soil. His thirst for curiosity and discovery led Christopher to pursue a degree in biology at Waterloo in 1973.
The university offered an excellent program that introduced me to many facets of biology and threw in enough chemistry to make for a well-rounded science education, he says. Also, the fact that my father, electrical engineering professor George Dufault, had been with the university since its inception also made me want to study there.
Christopher particularly enjoyed his fourth-year entomology course, which inspired him to continue his studies in entomology after graduating from Waterloo in 1977. He completed Master’s and PhD degrees in agricultural entomology at the Universities of Guelph and Cambridge, respectively.
Today, Christopher works for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency of Health Canada in Ottawa.
I head a section responsible for assessing pesticide use patterns in Canada, he explains. Our analyses are used to refine health and environmental risk assessments of pesticides.
Though it has been some time since Christopher was a Waterloo student, he still stays connected to campus.
I read with interest the University of Waterloo e-newsletter and magazine, and I have returned to Waterloo to attend the 25th anniversary reunion of Imprint and the 40th anniversary reunion of the Warrior’s Band, he says. My group at Health Canada has also hired about 40 co-op students from Waterloo in recent years; I find they have the biggest and best selection of students from which to choose.
Christopher has also endowed the George J. Dufault Medal for Excellence in Communication.
I believe, as did my father, in the importance of those having a technical bent also being able to communicate well, he says. I also wanted to acknowledge my father’s contributions to the establishment of Waterloo; particularly his role in setting up and heading, in its the first year, the Department of Co-ordination, now Co-operative Education and Career Services.
Christopher believes that giving back to the University of Waterloo community is important.
In just 53 years Waterloo has achieved a great deal, but if we want it to be ranked among the very best, we must do our bit by contributing to its future.