Meet the Staff - Ian Moore

I see a lot of happy people. A lot of good appreciative smiles and a lot of thanks. Like giving somebody a Christmas present every day. Where they finally hand a job over and they're looking at it 'Oh yeah' it's so like they're opening up a something they've wanted for a long time and it's a really good feeling. Hi my name is Ian Moore. I'm a scientific machinist for the Physics Department at the University of Guelph. I make toys for scientists for a living so quite often when there's something that is required for research someone would come down and approach us and generally whatever you can't buy we make. Our services are available to everywhere on campus so besides Physics we also service the OVC, the Veterinary College, Engineering quite a bit anything that you can imagine. Last year at the end of the summer I rescued a baby squirrel on campus near the cannon area. Long story short the young baby lived in my pocket for a few weeks and eventually I made a box for her and put it up in a tree and she lived in there. Survived, she survived the whole winter on her own. I'd seen about a month ago that her health had declined slightly so I put a little camera inside her box to see if there was any conditions in there that would explain why she wasn't doing so well and I saw pictures of baby squirrels. So the squirrel now that I rescued is a mom and she's now still living in the same area so we get to visit every day and this is what I do when I'm not working. I come out here and see my squirrel friends. So I've become known on campus now as the squirrel guy by pretty much every Department including the grounds and so they've endorsed her little house that I made and she moved out last week and she's also moved out with her baby somewhere. So I'm looking now to see where her nest might be. When I was a kid I wanted to be a veterinarian. I was always an animal person when I was young. Wildlife particularly. We had pets but I always was rescuing something. Birds, squirrels. I once I hit High School I decided to focus a bit more on the mechanical side of things and my high school shop teacher, Mr Ralton, he really inspired me. Took me under his wing. I was a very shy kid and and he helped me grow a lot personally in the two years that he was my teacher and we even stayed in touch. I decided to do what I do for a living because of his inspiration. I just enjoyed the class so much, he inspired me. After he retired we stayed in touch and he retired to Guelph and so we stayed friends for 20 years after, 30 years after. I think I have the best job in the world. Particularly the creativity that we have. There's a lot of artistic license. If someone comes and asks for something based on our own experience and advice we may suggest they tweak a design so something's more practical. I love that it's different every day. It's not a mundane job there's a lot of creativity and I work for a very appreciative Department. I think Physics is the best department and I get a lot of feedback as well. Most jobs when the work goes out the door you don't know what happened and that's happened in other jobs before I worked here. But now when I'm here I can see. Hey Steve how did so and so work and I get a lot of feedback on how well the equipment held up. One of my favorite things about University of Guelph it's got a small town feel everybody's looking out for each other and it's always nice to share your experiences with people that care and there certainly isn't a shortage of that around here.