ANCASTER, Ont. — Joe Kalinowski had a remarkable talent for bringing out the best in people, be they bankers, truck buyers or freshly hired floor sweepers.

"He was a happy man," recalls Emilio Sabetta, who worked with Kalinowski at Timberjack, the world-renowned forestry equipment company that’s now part of the John Deere empire.

"He [Kalinowski] would never impose any concept or idea arbitrarily," Sabetta says. "He was able to extend his vast experience to others in a natural way and was always open to listen and accept new ideas if they would make sense or be better than his."

Joe Kalinowski, the open-minded but determined engineer who became a familiar face to many in the Canadian trucking industry, passed away peacefully on Thursday, Dec. 10, after battling Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) for more than half a year.

Joe Kalinowski is by all accounts a man who made the most of every single one of the 71 years he spent on this planet.

Born in Lwow, Poland, he moved as a child with his parents to England, where he studied engineering and met Christine. They married, she gave birth to their first daughter Teresa ("Tess") and in 1963, moved to Windsor, Ont., where Kalinowski started working with Chrysler Canada.

"We were like everybody else," Christine told todaystrucking.com, "looking for a better life."

Eventually along came their second daughter Katherine then the twins Mark and Mathew. 

Smart, determined, a relationship-builder,
and a gorilla on skis, Kalinowski was.

The Kalinowskis — married 49 years at the time of his death — also have six grandchildren; Olivia, Claire, Eliza, Henry, Rowan and Illyana. ("Joe praised the ground his grandchildren walked on," says his friend and colleague Jim Koziak.)

Life, for the Kalinowskis, meant movement. From Windsor, Kalinowski transferred to Sainte-Therese, Que., where he helped Paccar build Kenworths.

That’s where he met Koziak, a vp at the time. "We played hockey together, we went to sugaring-off parties, I even remember singing, not very well, in our French-language classes," Koziak, now a Bay Street consultant, says.

It was in Quebec that Koziak’s wife Jean and Chris Kalinowski started their close friendship that has survived all the years since.

Sainte-Therese was also where Koziak first witnessed his colleague’s muscular determination.

"He was a big man. At time he told me he wanted to lose 100 lbs., and that’s exactly what he did. But he was big. When we went skiing together, he’d come down the hill like this huge gorilla," Koziak affectionately recalls.

Later, after Koziak left Kenworth to work at Western Star Canada, he headhunted his old colleague Kalinowski. Together — and bolstered by a strong team across Canada — they helped grow that brand from what amounted to an afterthought of the White Truck company into one of the continent’s most familiar badges.

Kalinowski eventually became president of Western Star Canada, but not before wrestling his and the company’s way through a recession that Koziak says out-devastates our current economic crisis.

"Don’t forget, the interest rates were much higher; in many ways that recession cut much deeper than the current one," Koziak says.

When Kalinowski started with Western Star, Koziak was president and CEO. Kalinowski tended to the manufacturing end, which at that time, primarily meant the facility in Kelowna, B.C.

That’s where his formidable people skills came into the fore.

"He’d go out there once a month or more frequently and get the workers to be enthusiastic and build a certain efficiency that simply wasn’t there before," says Koziak.

John Nelligan Sr. was vice president of marketing and sales at Western Star when Kalinowski started his visits to the plant.

"We had a lot to do out there because we were working on a new cab, and Joe would go out and be walking up and down the line and getting everybody involved with the process.

"I think he was responsible for the good relationship between labor force and management which resulted in as good quality control on the product as we could have had.

"He liked to think of himself as an innovator and probably was one."

Among Kalinowski’s innovations was a bonus program for the factory workers who came up with time- or money-saving ideas.

His passion for ideas permeated his personal life, as well. Says his eldest daughter Tess, currently the transportation reporter with the Toronto Star: "He knew people all over the world; he was an avid political observer and was always very good at quickly seeing the good side of people.

"Whenever somebody would leave the room, behind his back Dad would say what amounts to ‘what a nice person he was’.

"He wasn’t," she says, "a big believer in wasting time with acrimony."

A celebration of Kalinowski’s life is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 17, at Dodsworth and Brown Funeral Home, 378 Wilson St. in Ancaster, Ont., with reception to follow at the Ancaster Old Mill.

Donations in his memory to the ALS Society of Ontario would be appreciated.