A nonagenarian, Rotarian, Canadian
Rotary Canada -- October 2009
A. Karel Velan at the headquarters of Velan Inc.
V isit the Montreal world headquarters of Velan Inc. on any weekday, and you are likely to find A. Karel Velan, the company’s founder and CEO, hard at work in his office.
Nothing unusual about that, lest you pause to consider that Velan is still working at an age when most people are no longer breathing: 91 years young, at last count. Be advised that you may want to phone ahead on Tuesdays: He could be running late in getting away from the Saint James Club on rue Union after the weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Montreal.
At one such meeting last May, honorary Rotarian and Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay presented Velan, a past president of the Rotary Club of Saint-Laurent–Mont-Royal and a current Montreal club board member, with the Montreal club’s Centennial Award, recognizing more than 50 years of service to the club, the city, and the country.
It has been 60 years since Velan fled Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia with his wife, Olga, and two young sons for Canada, in the hope of finding “freedom and human dignity.” Along with his sense of optimism, Velan carried a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a new concept for the design of a steam trap, a device that opens a valve to allow water to pass but closes to block and trap steam. The young inventor submitted a prototype to the U.S. Navy, and after it survived nearly a year of testing, he had a contract that would put his new company on the postwar path to entrepreneurial success.
Today, Velan Inc. is a publicly held company and a world leader in the manufacture and distribution of industrial valves, with 13 plants around the globe – five in North America, four in Europe, and four in Asia – and applications in industries ranging from nuclear power and space travel to cryogenics. Velan holds more than 20 patents and has received numerous accolades for his professional accomplishments, including a listing in Who’s Who in Canadian Business , a nomination for the USA PVF (Pipes, Valves, Fittings) Hall of Fame, and the designation of Pioneer in Nuclear Valve Technology by the Dutch magazine Valve World in 2004. The one that stands out most for him, he says, is an Ethics in Business and Private Life award that he received four years ago in the Czech Republic.
Ethics and the ideal of service are what drew Velan to Rotary. He says his club has been involved in hundreds of projects since he joined in 1952. One of his favorites involved the construction of a cultural center and radio station for members of the local Mohawk community, who expressed their gratitude by making him an honorary chief.
In his life journey with Olga, whom he refers to as “the boss,” Velan has left footprints all over Canada’s landscape of volunteer service and philanthropic endeavors. Much of that activity has been carried out through the Velan Foundation, which, since 1981, has presented an annual cash award to a Canadian citizen for overseas humanitarian work. Through the organization Herstreet, Velan established Olga House, a support center and shelter for homeless women. He also funded the Camp Papillon Pavilion for the Quebec Society for Disabled Children. In addition to his work with Rotary, Velan has served as president of the Canada-Czech Republic Chamber of Commerce and the Czech-North American Chamber of Commerce and Culture, and as Quebec governor of the Canadian Unity Council.
Like many successful executives, Velan long aspired to write a book, and he finally set out to do so in 1985. But his effort was not simply about sharing lessons he had learned in business; it served a deeper curiosity and an abiding interest that he had developed in his youth. The title may offer some explanation of why the book was not published until 1992: The Multi-Universe Cosmos: The First Complete Story of the Origin of the Universe . The scholarly work expands on the idea of the big bang theory, with an account of how virtual particles were transformed into the elemental particles preceding the explosion. Velan says his theory is explained in more accessible terms in his second book, The Birth and History of the Cosmos , which was published in 2000 and is related to another of his philanthropic endeavors: two interactive museum exhibits, the Velan AstroLab within the Mont-Mégantic National Park and the Pavillon D’Astronomie Velan at Mont-Tremblant.
Velan cites Einstein in explaining the sense of motivation that has made him so comfortable with Rotary for more than half a century: “Any success on earth is worthless unless you share it with others.”