Services will be held Thursday in Winnipeg for John O’Connor, a retired former executive director of the Canadian Grain Commission, who died last week on vacation in Mexico.
O’Connor was born in Wainwright, Alta., studied agriculture at the University of Alberta and also earned a business administration diploma from the University of Western Ontario.
By 1956 he was working for the federal department of trade and commerce, first in Ottawa and later in Bonn, Germany, where he dealt with matters of Canada-Germany agricultural trade. He returned to the department in Ottawa in 1962 and later became general director of the trade department’s grain division.
O’Connor moved to Winnipeg to become executive director of the CGC in 1981 and was also a board member with the Canadian International Grains Institute. He retired from government service in 1992.
According to O’Connor’s obituary in Tuesday’s Winnipeg Free Press, his burial mass will be held Feb. 14 at 11 a.m. at Parish of St. Timothy in St. Vital. The obituary added that donations in his name may be made to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
