Obituary of John Warner Hoag

HOAG, John Warner, B. Arch, (Univ. of Toronto 1955), Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (1984), Order of da Vinci (1987) and Honorary Membership (2004) granted by the Ontario Association of Architects. Born February 21, 1930 in Brantford, Ontario, predeceased by his parents John Arliss Hoag and Kathleen Warner Hoag and infant brother Peter. Died on September 11, 2005 at South Muskoka Memorial Hospital in Bracebridge, Ontario. Husband of Sarah Mansfield Dunn from New Rochelle, New York and father, friend and greatest supporter of their children Hannah Margaret Hoag (Omer Rashid) of Montreal, Quebec and Matthew Warner Hoag of Vancouver, British Columbia. Members of the family who mourn this unexpected loss are his brother, William Arliss Hoag (Patricia James Hoag) of Oakville, Ontario and their children: Peter and his wife Jennifer Wells and their children Chris, Jake and Will of Toronto; Janet Hoag and her husband St. Clair McColl and their children John-Michael, Noah and Keegan of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia and Laura Hoag and her husband Fred Rose and their children Adam and Claire of Kingston, Ontario. He also leaves his cherished cousin Doris Chatham of Mill Valley, California, and brother-in-law, Tom Dunn of Boston, Massachusetts. The family is grateful for the support of members of the Rashid family of Kingston, Ontario and Etobicoke, Ontario. John was a good friend to many, a mentor, a raconteur and a bon vivant with a love for anything relating to France. He was an outstanding father, husband, son, brother and uncle. John grew up and attended schools in Preston (now Cambridge), Ontario. He graduated from the University of Toronto and worked for architectural firms in London, England and Boston, Massachusetts before joining the firm of Skidmore, Owing and Merrill of New York City. He worked for nearly a decade as their Resident Architect located in Owensboro, Kentucky; Greenville, South Carolina; and Des Moines, Iowa. He was project manager for the Master Plan of the State University of New York at Buffalo and Job Captain for the Fine Arts Building at the State University of New York College at Oswego, New York. While at Skidmore he also researched and designed a moveable partition system which later became an industry standard. In 1966 John returned to Canada. He worked for Marani Rounthwaite & Dick in Toronto prior to joining the University of Waterloo (Ontario) in 1967. He was at Waterloo for 25 years, until his retirement as the Architectural Program Administrator for the Co-operative Education. He found great delight in challenging and mentoring the architectural students in the practical side of architecture, encouraging them to take co-op positions in locales far from home, such as Scandinavia, England, Europe, the Caribbean, and with some of the most successful firms in the United States. He advised the Nova Scotia Institute of Technology and Texas A&M University on the establishment and development of cooperative educational programs. He maintained a small private residential practice, designing homes in Waterloo, Flesherton, Talisman Ski Resort (Ontario) and in Boone, North Carolina. He also designed renovations in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario, one of which received an Award of Merit from Heritage Cambridge. John was very active in the architectural profession and in his church. He was known for his sense of fairness and professionalism. He had been Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Toronto Chapter of the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA), member of the Committee of Examiners of the OAA from 1973-2001 and its Chairman from 1976-2001 (now the Canadian Architectural Certification Board), and Chairman of the Committee of Examiners, Ontario Advisory Committee, RAIC Syllabus; he chaired the 1970 Convention of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada held in Toronto. He was a member of the Commonwealth Association of Architects Educational Panel. His many years of leadership and service brought him two awards of which he was very proud. In 1984 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the highest honour a Canadian Architect can receive. In 1987 he was the 3rd recipient of the Order of da Vinci awarded to those who have made "significant contributions� to the profession in Ontario. He served as a member of the Board of Managers of Rosedale Presbyterian Church (Toronto), a church he had attended since university. While in New York, John had enjoyed being a member of the Mendelsohn Men�s Chorus and thus was thrilled when Rosedale invited him to join the choir for a performance of Handel�s "Messiah�. John had been Chairman for 19 years of the Committee on Church Architecture for the Presbyterian Church in Canada, which won a Premier�s Award for Accessibility (1986) for their handbook of standards and accessibility guidelines for church architecture. A funeral service will be held at ROSEDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 129 South Drive (corner of South Drive and Mt. Pleasant Road - tel: 416-921-1931) on Saturday, September 17 at 11 a.m. A reception will follow in the church hall. (TTC: Sherbourne Street; street parking or at Branksome Hall parking lot, southeast corner of Elm and Mt. Pleasant). There will a visitation held at the church on Friday, September 16 from 7-9 p.m. A private family interment in the ancestral (Warner family) plot in the Wilton Cemetery (Ontario) is planned for a later date. John�s corneas have been donated for transplant and the family encourages you to consider organ and tissue donation and to donate blood at a time when supplies are low. If desired, contributions to any of the following would support John�s lifetime interests: Rosedale Presbyterian Church; KNOXFRA Fund, Knox College, University of Toronto; Evangel Hall (a mission of the Presbyterian Church in Canada); the Scott Mission or the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital in Bracebridge, Ontario.