Derek Drummon. Portrait by Harry MayerovitchDerek Drummond, OAQ, FRAIC, William C. Macdonald Emeritus Professor of Architecture at McGill University, died on November 17, 2023, three days before his 85th birthday.A Montrealer by birth, Derek studied architecture at McGill. He graduated in 1962 and soon co-founded the architectural firm Donaldson Drummond Sankey, which became well-known for the design of the Town of Mount Royal Library and a series ofinnovative elementary schools.He returned to McGill as a lecturer in 1964. For the next 40 years, without a single sabbatical or leave of absence, he taught in the School of Architecture while serving the university, the profession, and the community in a dazzling variety of roles.Derek was appointed Director of the School in 1975, quickly established his credentials in the international community of North American Schools of Architecture, and completed two terms, stepping down in 1985. He was reappointed to a third term in 1990, and had started his fourth when Principal Bernard Shapiro invited him to join the Universitys leadership team as Vice-Principal Development and Alumni Relations in 1996.Derek was a gifted administratorimaginative, wise, and compassionatewith a legendary sense of humour and a contagious laugh, often punctuated with a double thigh-slap that students and colleagues used as the basis for convincing impressions over the years. His sense of humour was usually characterized as irreverent, especially by senior university officials and the faithful attendees of the 75 Leacock Luncheons and other public events that he moderated over 25 years. However, those of us who worked with him every day saw it as evidence of his intelligence and creativity: a mechanism for establishing connections and a tool that he used with amazing dexterity to defuse a difficult moment in a conversation or a meeting.His leadership style was simple. He was the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at the end of the day, and his office door was always open. He preferred hand-written notes to email or phone, and he used our offices, not his, for face-to-face meetings, especially if he was sharing bad news. He was unflappable, scrupulously fair, and never expressed anger or even raised his voice in a meeting or conversation.The accessibility, grace, and interpersonal skills that made him so effective as an administrator also made him a great teacher. Throughout his career, including the years as Director and Vice-Principal, he never stopped teaching. He was best known for the first-year design studio and two popular elective courses, Civic Design and Site Usage, that attracted students from across the University. He attributed a large part of his success as Director to his commitment to teaching, especially the first-year design studio, because it gave him an opportunity to get to know every student in the program from their first days in the School. Almost all of the tributes shared by former students in the weeks following his death thanked him for having shaped their careers and in some way transforming their lives.Derek was also able to maintain his involvement in practice, at least in the early years. He had a lifelong commitment to research, including through his association with the Livable Cities Group, an international consortium of academics, design professionals and municipal officers. His research, teaching, and many of his public lectures shared a single compelling theme: the city. He studied the use and abuse of public urban space, trends in urban and suburban design, and the behaviour patterns of pedestrians on our sidewalks and streets. His laboratory was the streets and neighbourhoods of Montreal and his methodology was to spend hundreds of hours in patient observation, with a fine-pointed pencil and pocket-sized notebook in hand.American urbanist William H. Whyte shared Dereks interest in the city and pedestrian behaviour. In his 1988 book CityRediscovering the Center, he acknowledged Dereks observational skills with a twinkle in his eye. Another tough bunch of pedestrians are Montreals, wrote Whyte. They have much to contend with. On Ste. Catherine, the principal shopping street, the sidewalks are as mean as Lexingtons: twelve and a half feet. The sidewalk flows are prodigious: during the busy period, some 5,000 to 7,500 people an hour. Intersection behavior is understandably anarchic. Derek Drummond, director of the school of architecture at McGill University, has studied the pedestrians patterns extensively. The most striking feature of pedestrian traffic along Ste. Catherine Street, he reports, with some pride, is that so many people pay no attention at all to the traffic lights.Not surprisingly, Dereks concern for the quality of the built environment included active engagement in capital project development on the McGill campus. As a member of McGills Building and Property Committee and long-time Chair of the Architectural Advisory Committee, he was responsible for significantly improving the project review process, and raising the level of critical conversation about the design of our buildings and grounds.Additional evidence of his lifelong commitment to community service is the long list of other organizations that benefitted from his time and wisdom in government, education, health care, industry, environment, and amateur sport. These include the Westmount Architecture and Planning Commission, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the McCord Museum, Marshall Drummond McCall, the McGill University Health Centre Foundation, and the Province of Quebec Society for the Protection of Birds, to name just a few.In 2005, at a point in his post-retirement career when he was looking forward to writing, sketching (he was an accomplished watercolourist), and spending more time with his grandchildren, Principal Heather Munroe-Blum made him an offer that he couldnt refuse. He cheerfully assumed his last administrative position: Interim Director of McGill Athletics and Recreation. In his two years in that job, he attended the practices and home games of as many of the 49 varsity teams as possible, and quickly developed an enduring relationship as team advisor to the womens hockey program. When he stepped down in 2007, he observed that his time in Athletics had given him two of the most rewarding of his 50 years at McGill, and he continued to support varsity sports as an unofficial-but-expert photographer at the home games of the varsity teams.Few of our colleagues have served the University, the profession, and the community with such distinction in so many different roles. Dereks was a long, exemplary and impeccably balanced life, marked by his dedication to his family, his friends and colleagues, and public service.Derek was predeceased by his wife of 60 years, Anne (Lafleur), and is survived by four sons, Colin (Jyoti), Gavin (Kate), Rob (Linton), and Louis (Vikki); nine grandchildren, Kayde, Grier, Charlotte, Francesca, Alice, Trinity, Veronica, Thomas, and Roxane; and his sister, Barbara Brodeur.David CovoAs appeared in the September 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazineThe post In Memoriam: Derek Drummond (1938-2023) appeared first on Canadian Architect.