Philip Gruchy (1892-1967)

Philip Gruchy (1892-1967)

Based on Val Ford's Gruchy, Footprints in The Sands of Time

Philip Gruchy (1892-1967), was born in the fishing village of Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, son of Jesse Gruchy and Lucy Marion Langmead.

Paper mill

In 1905 he began to work as an office boy for the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, which had been formed to secure a new source of pulp and paper for newsprint, before the Great War. Their pulp-and-paper mill was completed and opened at Grand Falls, in 1909. He remained with the company for the next 52 years.

He was employed in different posts, at Grand Falls, Botwood, where he helped with the construction of the railway linking the seaport on the Bay of Exploits to the mill, and worked in the shipping department; Millertown, a major logging centre, where he was involved in wood operations; and at Bishop`s Falls. He entered senior management as assistant general manager in 1941, at the company`s head office. His promotion to general manager in 1946 marked the first time a Newfoundlander had held this post.

Home Guard

He served in the Home Guard during the Second World War and was a member of the Newfoundland Industrial Development Board. In 1948 he was awarded the OBE for services rendered to shipping during the war.

In the same year, he was appointed by the Commission of Government as a member of the second Newfoundland delegation to Ottawa, to negociate the final terms of Newfoundland`s union with Canada. He was one of the signatories of the Terms of Union on 11 December 1948.

He married twice. His eldest son, Philip Gruchy, a Pilot Officer, RAFVR, was killed serving with Fighter Command in 1942. A younger son, David Gruchy, was a supernumerary judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.

Philip Gruchy senior died in 1967.