Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Devitt, Bruce
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- William John Bruce Devitt
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1932-
History
William John Bruce Devitt was born in Burnaby and grew up in South Shalath before attending the University of British Columbia and completing a Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry in 1957. He then went on to work for BC Forest Service as a professional forester focusing on reforestation projects as well as seed and nurseries of the province. In 1973, he joined Pacific Logging Limited, where he worked for eighteen years in industrial forest management. By 1991, he had become Chief Forester for Canadian Pacific Forest Products Limited and soon after took on the role of executive vice-president of the BC Professional Foresters Association. In 1995, he went into private practice and served as director of Pacific Regeneration Technologies Management Incorporated for fifteen years, retiring in 2002.
Throughout his professional career, Devitt has been active in community affairs and environmental issues related to forestry. He has chaired a local school board, a regional district, and a hospital board in addition to participating on various professional committees at the provincial and national level. In 1982, he was President of the Canadian Institute of Forestry and over the decades received several awards, including the Distinguished Foresters Award (1983), the Western Forestry Lifetime Achievement Award (1991), and the Canadian Forestry Achievement Award (1995). Between 1996 and 2012, he was a member of the Provincial Forest Appeal Commission and in parallel served in the Environmental Appeal Board from 2003 to 2012.
Since 1995, Devitt has been living in the Township of Esquimalt, where he was a Parks and Recreation commissioner and also chaired various committees in charge of the revitalization of the locality’s recreation centre. These efforts earned him the 2005 Canadian Parks and Recreation Association Award of Merit and more recently the Mel Cooper Citizen of the Year Award for outstanding citizenship and public service in the township.