Gilles Daigle

Stinson:

My name is Mike Stinson. Today's date is 5th of November, 2018. We are at the NRC campus, National Research Council of Canada, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Time is 10:30, and I'm about to interview Gilles Daigle for the Acoustical Society of America, Technical Committees on Physical Acoustics and Noise. Gillles, what is your present address?

Daigle:

[Redacted]

Stinson:

Your present telephone number?

Daigle:

[Redacted]

Stinson:

Who is your present employer?

Daigle:

I'm currently self-employed in a small company called MG Acoustics. We're only a two-person company, really.

Stinson:

Is that a full-time thing?

Daigle:

No, it's thankfully part-time. I'm rigorously semi-retired. But sometimes it's almost a fulltime job and then we get a lull where we don't get any business and then business picks up again and it's 10 hour days, something like that.

Stinson:

Okay, what is the business of this MG Acoustics?

Daigle:

MG Acoustics was described as a small consulting R&D firm. I say R&D because we tend to take on projects that have a more research component. For example, some of the results are publishable. We do do some routine consulting, but we tend to focus on more R&D issues.

Stinson:

And what is your present job title?

Daigle:

I'm currently a partner. We're two, as I mentioned. For income tax purposes and banking purposes, I'm officially registered as the Chief Financial Officer.

Stinson:

Okay so and you're also the principle...

Daigle:

Yes, a partner and principle with the company, yes.

Stinson:

How long have you been with this company?

Daigle:

MG Acoustics was formed about 10 years ago in 2009.

Stinson:

And generally, what do you do there?

Daigle:

Just about everything. With only two people, we write proposals, we do the work, we write the reports, etc. In a project that has an experimental component, I tend to focus on that. My partner usually does the theoretical work. And then any MATLAB coding or any MATLAB, we tend to share that.

Stinson:

Okay so that's sort of the baseline. I'm going to move on now to Acoustical Society of America.

Daigle:

Sure.

Stinson:

And some questions related to that.

Daigle:

Sure.

Stinson:

So first of all, what year did you join the Acoustical Society of America, ASA?

Daigle:

That would have been in '77-78, I'm not sure exactly which year, but it would be one of those two.

Stinson:

Okay and at that time, what was your age? And what was your profession?

Daigle:

I would have been 24 or 25, and I was a master’s student at the time.

Stinson:

Okay so what area of acoustics were you interested in?

Daigle:

I was interested in outdoor sound propagation. I have to say, after my third year, I got a summer job in the National Research Council, and I worked in acoustics. And I followed up on that after graduating, after my fourth year. And basically, for reasons we'll get into a little later on, I did my thesis work in outdoor sound propagation and I continued working in outdoor sound propagation after graduating.

Stinson:

So that's mainly physical acoustics?

Daigle:

Physical acoustics and noise.

Stinson:

And noise.

Daigle:

Yeah.

Stinson:

So why did you join the ASA?

Daigle:

I started to work with people like Tony Embleton and Joe Piercy at the National Research Council. Everybody in that group was a member of the Acoustical Society. I was enrolled in a master’s program doing work in acoustics, and it became clear that if I wanted to have a career in acoustics, I needed to attend meetings of the Acoustical Society, and then it was a natural thing just to join the ASA. Which I did.

Stinson:

Okay. Who in particular encouraged you to join the ASA?

Daigle:

That would have been Tony Embleton. He was one of my thesis supervisors and he strongly encouraged me to join.

Stinson:

And at that time, was he president? He left, or he was...?

Daigle:

Not during my-- not when I was a graduate student. He became ASA president a few years after that, in the early 80’s I think.

Stinson:

So, he was motivated to get you to join and carry on.

Daigle:

Yeah, exactly. I mean it was a natural-- not joining the ASA was not an option, let's put it that way. It was a natural thing to do. It was the thing to do.

Stinson:

Okay. In many ways, you followed his footsteps.

Daigle:

Yes. Yes. You'll see along the way I will mention Tony Embleton quite a number of times in this interview. He really did have a strong influence on my future and my career.

Stinson:

Alright, so what ASA committees were or are you a member of?

Daigle:

Oh geeze...quite a few. I've been a member of TC Noise and TC Physical Acoustics off and on for 30, 35 years. I served on Medals and Awards representing physical acoustics. I've served on the nominating committee, committee on meetings, and Committee of International Research and Education. I also served on rules and governance.

Stinson:

Okay, I'm just following up, what positions in the ASA did you hold or presently hold?

Daigle:

In more or less chronological order, I was chair of the physical acoustics technical committee for a three-year term. I chaired the committee on meetings. I chaired the Committee of International Research and Education. I was the general chair of the spring meeting in 1993 held in Ottawa here. I was associate editor for Noise. I was elected to executive council, followed by vice president, and I served as president from 2007-2008.

Stinson:

That's quite a list.

Daigle:

I could be busy. I was kept busy.

Stinson:

So, you went to a lot of ASA meetings.

Daigle:

I attended just about every spring and fall meeting. I missed very few during when I worked in the earlier years.

Stinson:

Okay. Was it always easy to get there? Was there funding available?

Daigle:

Yes, the National Research Council usually provided funding for a number of people to attend both the spring and fall meetings of the ASA.

Stinson:

I think there were a couple that you had to kind of pay your own way?

Daigle:

Not when I worked for NRC, no.

Stinson:

Are there any particular ASA meetings that stand out as being something special or humorous or different?

Daigle:

Well, I have to say there is one meeting that really stands out. That would be the joint meeting in Paris with the European Acoustical Association. You look at the statistics, that attracted more than 5,000 people. That's more than twice the size of the biggest meeting before then. And people came out of the woodworks. It was a huge meeting. It was particularly interesting. I was the president of the ASA at the time, and therefore had to coordinate and interact with the president of the French Acoustical Society and the president of the European Acoustical Association. So that was an interesting time.

Stinson:

And who were they at the time?

Daigle:

I believe the president of the French Acoustical Society was a guy by the name of Jean Kergomard, I think. And Michael Vorlander, I think, was the president of the European Acoustical Association.

Stinson:

Do you think there will ever be another meeting that size?

Daigle:

There... well, the recent joint meetings have not been of that size. The first meeting with the European Acoustical Association was in Berlin. It was not that size. And another meeting in Boston. Do you remember what size that was?

Stinson:

Not exactly. Nowhere near that big.

Daigle:

Nowhere near 5,000.

Stinson:

3,000 maybe.

Daigle:

Yeah. And there was a joint meeting in Hong Kong. I don't think it ever came near. Maybe it was Paris, I'm not sure. It was just huge. Over 5,000 people at once.

Stinson:

I remember. I was there as well. And I had poster boards set up in the hallways, because they had no room to put things.

Daigle:

Nowhere, it was just a meeting stretched at the seams.

Stinson:

So, you were ASA president at that time. I guess, was that a difficult meeting to be involved with?

Daigle:

It was just a lot of coordination. It was also events and speeches and receptions, a little bit more involved. Somebody said "stressful" but also quite a pleasant experience.

Stinson:

Mmhmm. Okay well let's move on. Are there any ASA members that you met over the years that had specially influenced your future?

Daigle:

Well, the people who influenced my future are people at NRC. Again, people like Tony Embleton, Joe Piercy, and Edgar Shaw. Both Edgar and Tony were ASA presidents, and that had a strong influence on what I did. If you go outside the section, there's quite a number of people who influenced my future. To start naming some would be to forget some. But I think there's one person that stands out, and that would be Henry Bass at Ole Miss. I interacted with Hank Bass over many years. Hank had the knack of seeing the big picture. For example, he organized a symposium on outdoor sound propagation. Really on long range outdoor sound propagation. In addition to inviting people in the field, he invited people outside the field. People from the underwater community. Ken Gilbert, for example. That got the introduction of numerical models, like the fast field program and the parabolic equation introduced to the field of atmospheric acoustics.

I think eventually, the fast field program and the parabolic equation would have made its way in the atmospheric community, but it would have taken us quite a number of years before people woke up. And it was true of those symposiums. The earlier symposiums that we got these numerical models would really change the field and our ability to predict long-range sound propagation.

The other thing that I did with Hank is, we both served on a NATO research study group on the use of acoustics to detect military activity. Detect, identify, and locate low-flying helicopters, for example. Low-flying helicopters are invisible to radar. They're invisible to radar behind a hill. But they're easily detected by acoustics. After the introduction of the fast field program and the parabolic equation, people started making presentations at the NATO research study group. And results didn’t agree with each other, and quite clearly, some of the results being presented were nonsense. And so, Hank took the initiative of formulating and defining what are called benchmark cases. Either a standardized set or major parameter values, and ground propagation. He invited all the users of these models to run through the benchmark until everybody got agreement that both the parabolic equation and the fast field program agreed with each other, and the different versions of the fast field program and different versions of the parabolic equation agreed with each other. That was a tremendous step forward. If I recall correctly, a few years later, the underwater community adopted a similar approach and defined their benchmark cases. So, that really influenced my technical work in the area of outdoor sound propagation.

Stinson:

So that benchmark paper’s…

Daigle:

Was published in JASA.

Stinson:

And what authors?

Daigle:

Yeah...

Stinson:

Keith Attenborough was the lead author.

Daigle:

Well, there was nobody to lead. They were all just put in alphabetical order. Well, there’s more than a dozen authors. Basically, every lab that used a parabolic equation and a fast field program at the time was invited to participate, and most of the authors were involved in the NATO research study group at that time. And right now, that paper is in the journal. Anybody who writes a new code or different versions of the same code, the first thing they need to do is run through the benchmark. If they don't do that, nobody's going to listen to them. So, it really solidified the field.

Stinson:

So, you've had a lot of experience with ASA, and you should have some perspective. Is there anything you care to say about the ASA past, present, and future?

Daigle:

Ooh boy. I think the first thing I have to say is probably what everybody else says. The ASA is a very friendly society. Probably more friendly than other societies... I listen to other people talk to other ASA members of other societies, and the same thing keeps coming back, the ASA is a very friendly society. I'm not quite sure why, but it is. Maybe part of it is based in a tradition of volunteer work. Small staff and volunteerism, so it's not somebody defining the society. It's the members themselves doing the volunteer work that define the society. Maybe that's what makes a close-knit society.

It's also a society that is able to respond to changes over time. This was before my time, but eventually they established a concept of technical committees, which I think was a good step forward. When something controversial comes up, like a group wanting to form a technical committee on signal processing. That became quite a bit controversial, and so you define a technical specialty group, and you change the rules to allow that. So that flexibility... A large percentage of the membership is outside the United States and Canada, and in reaction to that, the ASA is holding joint meetings. We've had joint meetings with the Japanese over the years, but we started having joint meetings in Europe, and the first meeting was in Berlin and then in Paris, this large meeting of 5,000 which I mentioned. I know there was a joint meeting in Hong Kong and another joint meeting with the European Acoustical Association in Boston. I believe there's one planned in Australia in the future. And so, the ASA is responding to the international nature of its membership.

In terms of the finances, I think the Acoustical Society is in good shape. It was in good financial shape when I was president, so I assume it's still in reasonable financial... you can contradict me. You've been a recent president, so you can contradict me on that. Recently the permanent staff has increased. Probably because of the... it's a more complex world, more difficult to get things done. Pressure in the workplace probably limits the amount of volunteer work that members can do and so it's probably a good thing to have some more permanent staff. Let's see, the financial situation is probably still sound, so there shouldn't be any problem in the future. It's a rapidly changing world. But we’ve had a strategic leadership forum a few years ago, defining what the society is, where the society should go and what should it do to get there? As far as I can see, the society is implementing that, and that's a good thing.

And everything-- the membership has been stagnant at about 7,000 for many, many years. I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe it's because the people retiring from the field and people entering the field are about the same. So, membership stays about the same. I say this because it's estimated that there are about 50,000 to100,000 acousticians out there in the world. So, one sort of wonders. But on the other hand, the size probably makes the society the friendly society that it is. If the ASA grows too much, it might cease to be a friendly society and that would not be a good thing. The last thing I would say, when I was first on executive council, I lobbied to have the logo of the ASA changed. It hadn't changed since 1929. And I see that it has finally changed. And I think that's a good thing. It's really a symbolism, maybe, but I think it's an important symbolism. Maybe not everybody agrees that it's a good change, but I think it's a step forward. So, it's an important symbolism.

Stinson:

Excellent.

Daigle:

Maybe I forgot, probably forgot to say a number of things, but that's probably enough.

Stinson:

Oh, I think that's good. Well, besides the ASA, are there other professional organizations that you belong to?

Daigle:

Yeah, I belong to the Canadian Acoustical Association and INCE, in the USA. I also served on the board of the International Commission for Acoustics for many years, including serving as its president for a three-year term. I'm currently on the board of International INCE, and I've just very recently completed a four-year term as one of their presidents.

Stinson:

Can you explain what the International Commission for Acoustics is? The ICA?

Daigle:

The International Commission for Acoustics is a scientific associate of the International Council for Science. The International Council for Science reports to UNESCO. The Council has different unions and associates representing the various fields of science and falls under the umbrella of UNESCO. Which is the United Nations. The ICA hosts the International Congress on Acoustics every three years around the world. The International Congress on Acoustics came to Montreal recently, in 2013 I think. Jointly with the Acoustical Society, for example. International INCE is a spin-off from INCE USA. It's basically... it's an umbrella organization just like the ICA. The ICA is an umbrella organization that has its members in the acoustical societies around the world. The ASA, the Canadian Acoustical Association, the Institute of Acoustics, DEGA, the French Acoustical Association, etc. International INCE parallels that. It's an umbrella organization that has societies that are interested in noise as members, so the Acoustical Society is a member of International INCE. So is INCE USA. And societies worldwide. In both the ICA and International INCE, there are about 40 or so member societies. Plus or minus. The member societies pay dues to be a member. International INCE member societies organize the inter-noise series of congresses. Inter-noise is held every year, it rotates around the world between Europe, the Americas, and Asia Pacific. Usually when it comes to the Americas, it's INCE USA that takes the lead. But there's no reason why, for example, the Acoustical Society couldn't organize an inter-noise at some point. I don't think it ever did.

Stinson:

No. Not that I know of. No.

Daigle:

And we've had a few inter-noises here in Canada.

Stinson:

Which you helped to organize?

Daigle:

Hmm?

Stinson:

Would you have been--

Daigle:

The last one was in 2009, I think, in Ottawa. Yeah. Trevor Nightingale was the general chair, and I worked on the committee, on the meetings committee for that meeting.

Stinson:

Have you provided an oral history interview for any other organization?

Daigle:

Not yet, but I'm scheduled to do an oral history for International INCE. As I mentioned, I've been one of their presidents. And as an action item in the last board meeting, at an inter-noise in Chicago, somebody has been mandated to do an oral interview of both myself and Hideki Tachibana who was the president before me. But the second president of International INCE was Bill Lang, and there is an oral history already done on Bill Lang.

Stinson:

Oh interesting. Okay we're going to move on now to past history, and we'll talk about your early years and pre-college.

Daigle:

Yeah, you're going to test my memory, aren't you?

Stinson:

Yes.

Daigle:

Oh, okay.

Stinson:

Okay so first of all, when and where were you born?

Daigle:

I was born on the 29th of June, 1953, and I was born in Moncton, NB. NB is one of the Atlantic provinces on the East Coast, and Moncton is a small town about 15 km from the Atlantic coast.

Stinson:

Okay. And it's a mix of French speaking and English speaking.

Daigle:

Yeah, it's about half and half.

Stinson:

So, you started out speaking French.

Daigle:

Yes, my mother tongue, yes.

Stinson:

When did you start learning English?

Daigle:

In high school.

Stinson:

In high school.

Daigle:

In primary school we had “speller”, but I didn’t take it very seriously. It’s only in high school that, well we’ll get into that, I think I started getting interested in science, and it was clear I needed to learn English. So, I read a lot and I'm mostly self-taught.

Stinson:

Yeah, because I think you're probably the only president of the ASA who started out with French, or a non-English mother tongue.

Daigle:

Well, certainly the only Canadian, French-speaking Canadian, who was the ASA president. That's certainly true.

Stinson:

Something to have as a distinction. Before entering college, where were some of the places you lived?

Daigle:

I think before coming to Ottawa, I lived all my life in Moncton.

Stinson:

What were your parents' occupations?

Daigle:

My father worked in the commercial printing business. He started out as a linotype operator but moved into sales. And before he retired, he was the advertising manager for the local newspaper. My mother was an accountant for many years. She was the office manager of a barber school. And just an anecdote to that, I always got free haircuts. I had hair in those days, for those who know me. And the talk in the school was that you don't graduate until you cut my hair to my mother's satisfaction. If she's satisfied with the haircut, you graduated. She then moved on to the accounting department at University of Moncton, which is the local university.

Stinson:

You have some mathematical talent. Did that come from either parent, or...?

Daigle:

Well not that I know of. My mother was good-- and she was an accountant, so she was good in numbers. It was probably from my mother's side, I would think. I picked up different skills from my father. My father was an amateur carpenter, and I picked up those skills there. So, I would say carpentry from my father and math from my mother.

Stinson:

Oh. How would you describe yourself during those early years?

Daigle:

As a kid, I think I was just a normal kid and I hung around with other kids and we played baseball, we played football, in winter we played hockey. I started downhill skiing. We just ran around on bicycles and went to the local store to buy popsicles and that's just a normal kid, I think.

Stinson:

So, as a youngster, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Daigle:

I had not a clue. I think in primary school, we had very little science, so I never really got into it. So, I don't know, I think it was when I entered high school that things started defining themselves. But before that, I did not, I didn't have any idea.

Stinson:

Did you have any hobbies at that time? Special interests?

Daigle:

Well, I collected stamps. I did some oil painting. I drew cartoons. In fact, I drew cartoons when I was a graduate student. I joined the editorial board of the journal of the Canadian Association of Physicists. They publish a journal called Physics in Canada, which is the counterpart of Physics Today, and they started publishing my cartoons. In fact, as I recall, there’s a cartoon of you in there somewhere. (laughs)

Stinson:

We don’t want to talk about that.

Daigle:

Okay, we won’t talk about that then.

Stinson:

But we can.

Daigle:

Yeah. Michael did some sound level measurements at a local fair and I have him having a sound level measuring the oink, oink of the pigs.

Stinson:

It kind of looked like me at the time.

Daigle:

And it kind of looked like you, and it was a good cartoon.

Stinson:

My hair was dark at that time so...

Daigle:

It was a good cartoon.

Stinson:

Did you have any heroes at that time?

Daigle:

Not really, no. No one I would recall.

Stinson:

When you were in high school, what subjects and activities did you enjoy the most?

Daigle:

Well, that's when my interest in science started. We started an informal science club in high school, and it was about six or eight of us. We worked in the labs, puttering around in the chemistry lab, physics lab, biology lab. One thing though, one of the biology professors would rescue stray animals or abandoned animals. Dogs and cats, he would bring to a rescue shelter. But smaller animals like guinea pigs and gerbils and hamsters, he would bring into the lab and I took care of them. That was fun. I always liked animals.

Stinson:

That would stimulate your interest in biology, perhaps?

Daigle:

It did. Yeah. Did stimulate, and for a long time, I thought I would, I might try going to biology. In fact--

Stinson:

Why didn't you?

Daigle:

Well, maybe we can move on to the next question where you can get into any persons during that timeframe that had a strong influence on my future.

Stinson:

Sure, yeah, you just asked the question.

Daigle:

I just asked the question. So, if we can get into that--

Stinson:

Done.

Daigle:

The particular high school that I went to had only opened for a couple of years. It was a new high school. So, they had to recruit a lot of people from grade 9 to grade 12 in a hurry. So, I found myself in the situation where a lot of the professors had masters and PhDs in their field. And that made them have initiative. One of them was very stimulating, which is probably one of the things that got me into science. One of the things they did, one of the initiatives that they did, is they created a course which is really like a fourth-year project in undergraduate. This is in 12th grade. They made arrangements with the University of Moncton, which was a short walking distance from the high school. They recruited some of the university professors to be mentors. They gave us a list of subjects to work on, and as I had worked mostly in the biology lab by then, I decided to choose a chemistry project. Just to do something different. I worked with a professor in the chemistry department, and I learned how to synthesize a rubber polymer. I learned that if you added sulphur in the process, the process called vulcanization, you would extend the elasticity of the rubber and it would also extend the elasticity of the compound to lower temperatures. At the end of the project, we wrote a small dissertation, and from that point on, I liked chemistry. In fact, I preferred chemistry to biology at that point in my life, chemistry was where I was heading. I already had a mentor in the chemistry department, and that's where I was headed.

Stinson:

Okay. Now you did change later. Do you want to talk about that now, or...?

Daigle:

It'll flow.

Stinson:

It'll flow later, okay. So, we're going to move on now to your college years. Let's start at the undergraduate level. Where did you first go to college, and what was your major?

Daigle:

Well, I went to the University of Moncton, and my major was chemistry.

Stinson:

And when was that?

Daigle:

That was in 1971.

Stinson:

And what made you choose that college?

Daigle:

Well, it was a natural choice. The University of Moncton was a local university. It's also the only French-speaking university in the Atlantic provinces. So, I could stay home, save some money. My mother was working at the university at the time. So, I can't remember if it was free tuition, but it was certainly significantly reduced. That allowed me to buy my first Volkswagen Beetle. After all, I had to get to and from the campus, and I've had several Beetles after that. I'm a Beetle maniac.

Stinson:

And your major was chemistry?

Daigle:

I enrolled in chemistry, yes.

Stinson:

Okay. So then as an undergraduate, did you ever change college or your major?

Daigle:

I'm afraid I did. In first year, the one thing that I found enlightening was calculus. In high school, the math classes were...we didn't do calculus in high school in those days. And math in high school was restricted to maybe algebra and trigonometry. With calculus in the first year of university, it really opened up my eyes. The math department and physics department were coordinated. One week you learned something in math, like a derivative, and then you applied it in physics. And when you start learning integrals, the week after you start applying it in physics. It went along like that throughout both semesters. Unfortunately, the first-year chemistry course was somewhat disappointing, and so to the dismay of the chemistry department and my mentor there, I switched fields in the second year and changed my major to physics.

Stinson:

Well, we're glad you did.

Daigle:

Well, we haven't gotten to acoustics yet, and that's another tortuous path. (laughs) We can look into that a little later.

Stinson:

So, as an undergraduate, did you belong to any special clubs? Did you participate in any special school activities?

Daigle:

I was a member of the chess club. I played chess. I wasn't the best, but I was pretty good at it. Other than that, I tended to spend my time in one of the labs. Which we'll see in the next question.

Stinson:

So okay do then you can tell us about your undergraduate college days. Was there any particular person, teacher, professor, or someone special that had a strong influence on you or your future?

Daigle:

Yes, yes there was. One of the professors ran a small nuclear physics lab, and starting in second year, he hired me as an assistant. I worked in his lab doing the experiments. He worked on positron annihilation, which is a spectroscopy technique. You take a material sample, you bombard it with positrons, and they annihilate with the electrons and they emit gamma rays, and if you measure the rate of decay of the gamma rays over time, you can then deduce material properties. So, for three years at the university, I worked in his lab, I conducted the experiments, and I analyzed the data.

Another thing he did for me, after second year he helped me secure a scholarship to spend a summer in the physics department at Dalhousie University. There I worked in a lab that specialized in Mössbauer spectroscopy. And that opened up my eyes quite a bit too. When an atom emits a gamma ray, it recoils just like a gun when it fires. And so, the energy level of the gamma ray is not right to be absorbed by a target atom. But if you doppler shift the emitting atom, when the velocity is quite right, you get the resonant absorption in the target atom. The east coast has a lot of offshore oil deposits, and the seabed has a lot of ferric oxide and magnetite. Magnetite is just another ferric oxide, it’s just heavier... And the relative ratio, the presence of one of these oxides relative to the other, is a good indicator that there are some oil deposits under the seabed. When I got to Dalhousie, they were working on using Mössbauer spectroscopy to do that. Because one oxide is heavier than the other, their resonant absorption is going to occur at a different doppler velocity, and so by doing that, you can then deduce the relative ratio of ferric oxide to magnetite. I wrote an abstract and actually went to a meeting and presented the results. That was my first publication and first scientific presentation. It was after second year.

Stinson:

Did that result in locating any oil fields?

Daigle:

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I think it's still used today. It's a very simple technique compared to what we've done previously.

Stinson:

You didn't get rich off this, though.

Daigle:

No, no. I went into acoustics. (laughs)

Stinson:

Okay and we'll find out why shortly, I suppose.

Daigle:

But from that experience, at that point in my life, nuclear physics was what I wanted to do.

Stinson:

And did you ever participate in a rally or protest or cause?

Daigle:

No. No, I never got into that.

Stinson:

During that period of your life, who was your inspirational model?

Daigle:

Again, it's probably the nuclear physics professor at the university as a scientist. This is in the early 70s, when Pierre Trudeau was the Prime Minister. That was probably the longest-serving Prime Minister in Canada. He served for about 10 years. He was very refreshing as a politician. He wasn't shy in telling people to fuddle-duddle when he had to. I found that interesting.

Stinson:

Yeah well, he was probably the most popular of Prime Ministers, initially.

Daigle:

Yeah, I think he was. I think he was.

Stinson:

Was he one of your inspirations, or was he...?

Daigle:

Inspiration, yes. A person who spoke his mind, and he was a very intelligent person. He was a very influential politician for Canada. As he was a French Canadian he did a lot for French Canada. That's probably why I sort of have a penchant for him.

Stinson:

Which means?

Daigle:

I don't know, you tell me. (laughs)

Stinson:

I'm not sure. Respect?

Daigle:

Yeah. Yeah.

Stinson:

Well, looking back would you go to the same college and take the same major, if you could start all over again?

Daigle:

I would do exactly the same thing. I haven't regretted. I made a lot of changes during this period, but I haven't regretted any of them. I would go back and do the same thing.

Stinson:

If you'd started off in physics, you might have switched over to chemistry.

Daigle:

That could very likely have happened.

Stinson:

Okay, well that's good. So now we move on to graduate level. Your master’s degree. So first, did you go on to graduate training for a master’s degree, and if so, where?

Daigle:

Yes, I went on to a master’s degree. I enrolled at Carleton University. Which is one of the universities in Ottawa.

Stinson:

What led you to that choice of school?

Daigle:

Well, by that point, nuclear physics was what I wanted to do, and Carleton was the place to do it. That was the leading school in nuclear and particle physics. For example, the professors there had time at accelerators in Stanford, in Chicago, and CERN in Geneva. So, if you were really serious about nuclear physics and particle physics, Carleton was the place to go.

Stinson:

Huh. Well, you followed your tortuous path up to nuclear physics. So as a graduate student let me ask, did you ever change your field of research?

Daigle:

(laughs) Yes, again. After third year, I got a summer job with the division of physics at the National Research Council. I accepted that position and I ended up working in acoustics with Tony Embleton and Joe Piercy. This was the early years when Joe and Tony got involved in outdoor sound propagation. So, I spent the summer studying something that is now called the ground effect. I measured the impedance of the ground. There were very little measurements of ground impedance at that time. And so, we modified an impedance tube, stuck it vertically along the ground. We also deduce impedance values at grazing incidence, which is relevant to sound propagation. And the following year in 1975 after I graduated with my degree, I returned to work with Tony and Joe, again on outdoor sound propagation.

At the end of that second summer, Tony Embleton said, "If you ever want to continue work in outdoor sound propagation and pursue a career in acoustics, you can come and do your work with us and we can make arrangements with the university." Well, I sort of mumbled my way out of that one and quickly ran to Carleton University to do my nuclear physics. But another thing that Tony mentioned before I left is that, he said, "You know, there's a shortage of people trained in physics working in acoustics. And so there are good employment opportunities." And then what I found in the fall in my first-year master’s degree at Carleton was an oversupply of nuclear physicists. All these young people trying to find employment in nuclear physics and a lack of jobs. And so, I ran back to Tony Embleton and instead of mumbling, I told him I'd be very interested in pursuing my work in outdoor sound propagation. And so, we arranged this with Carleton University, I completed my coursework, and then in the summer of '76 I started my thesis work with Tony Embleton and Joe Piercy.

Stinson:

Well that-- so the future job process seemed to be a big part of this, but how about just the subject matter? Because you were really thrilled with nuclear physics initially.

Daigle:

With working with Joe and Tony on sound propagation, what you realize is there is very little difference between sound propagation in the atmosphere and propagation of gamma rays in a nucleus. It's all wave phenomenon, and the same equations. Equipment would be a bit different. The analyzers. One of the analyzers is dB versus frequency. The other one is energy versus bins, for example. So, it's very, very similar. But I quite enjoyed the--

Stinson:

It's also not a new field, necessarily, but things were really opening up at that time.

Daigle:

Oh yeah, it was really quite a new field-- It was opening up. Not necessarily a new field, there had been a few papers on sound propagation, but not that many. But noise was really becoming a problem and there was a need to have more information on sound propagation. So, the field was really opening up, and a lot of opportunities to do novel work. That's probably one of the things that made me change my mind. Well, that and money of course. (laughs)

Stinson:

At that time, how were you supported?

Daigle:

The Canadian federal government has a competitive funding program. It's run by the National Science and Engineering Research Council, and on a competitive basis, they award scholarships to master’s students and PhD students. So, I had a master’s scholarship for two years.

Stinson:

Is that the NSERC scholarship?

Daigle:

Yes, that's NSERC. That's National Science and Engineering Research Council, or NSERC for short.

Stinson:

What was your master’s thesis on?

Daigle:

Well, I continued working in sound propagation, but focused on the effects of atmospheric turbulence. Turbulence was well-understood at that time, a very well-developed topic. Particularly in the Russian literature. Atmospheric sounders were in common use in those days, but all that theoretical work really didn't apply to ground-to-ground propagation with receiver and microphone close to the ground, and propagation distances of only a few hundred meters to maybe a kilometer. Although the big structures were known in the upper atmosphere, very little was known about the micrometeorology close to the ground and how it affected the propagation. And so, we started measuring. We bought some rapid anemometers and temperature thermometers to measure the rapid fluctuations in temperature and wind speed, which is really what turbulence is. From those measurements, deduced the strength and scale of turbulence. We developed a theory to use those parameters, to incorporate those parameters, into a propagation model. We did some experiments outdoors under controlled conditions, compared the theory based on the meteorological measurements and the acoustical data. And things sort of worked out and I eventually got a master’s thesis out of that.

Stinson:

So, this was work that was done while you were at the National Research Council?

Daigle:

I was at—I did my schoolwork at Carleton University. I was enrolled in the physics department at Carleton University, but I did my work in the physics division of the National Research Council, with Tony and Joe.

Stinson:

And you had an office there?

Daigle:

I had an office here, so I worked on the NRC campus. I always kept an office at Carleton, but I had an office at NRC.

Stinson:

Okay. So, who at the school or NRC had the greatest influence?

Daigle:

Again, it would have to be NRC. It would have to be Tony Embleton and Joe Piercy. Those are the people who keep coming back. At the school, they were all nuclear and particle physicists and I wasn’t going in that field anymore. So, they just basically... “Go do your acoustics.” (laughs)

Stinson:

Both of them? Which... they were quite different.

Daigle:

Tony and Joe?

Stinson:

Yeah.

Daigle:

Yeah, I think probably Tony had a more, a greater influence. He had a bigger vision. Joe was a very good scientist, but he didn’t participate in the Acoustical Society as much as Tony. Tony did everything within the society. He’s a past president and chaired many committees. He was chair of previous Ottawa meetings, the technical program chair for the joint meetings with the Japanese in Hawaii. So Tony was very heavily involved in the Acoustical Society. And so, it's probably Tony that got me involved at the ASA. Had I stuck with Joe Piercy, I probably would not have been involved with the Acoustical Society as much.

Stinson:

Okay so then after your master’s degree, did you continue on for a doctorate?

Daigle:

Yes, I did. And I continued with Carleton University and the National Research Council.

Stinson:

And why did you stay there? You could have gone down to the United States at that time. The University of Mississippi probably might have had a home for the kind of research that you were doing.

Daigle:

Yeah, but it would have been more difficult to get funding. Again, I had an NSERC scholarship, and I would have lost that had I gone to the States. I would have had to find additional funding. The arrangement was already made with Carleton University. The arrangement was already made with the National Research Council. I enjoyed working with Tony and Joe. And so, it was the natural thing for me to continue. Also my wife was working at that time in Ottawa, so that would have been a disruption. So, we decided to stay. Decided to continue on.

Stinson:

Okay. Well, there's two questions. Were there any specific projects that you worked on? And then what was your doctorate thesis? I think those might be the same?

Daigle:

Yes..

Stinson:

Okay so here, yeah.

Daigle:

Yeah.

Stinson:

Okay, I didn't scratch that out. So yeah, let's--

Daigle:

Yeah, we didn't have any special project. The way Carleton University worked in both the master’s and the doctorate program is you did your coursework and then you did your thesis work. So, in terms of the doctorate, the first thing I had to do was to write the qualifying exams. And then I had some course work, and that was pretty heavy course work. For a year, I did nothing but course work. Then we had a comprehensive exam, and once you passed the comprehensive exam, then I started doing my thesis work.

Stinson:

What was your doctorate thesis on?

Daigle:

Again, it was the effects of turbulence on sound propagation. But there, by that time noise barriers were being built along various highways across the United States and Canada, and their performance was very often disappointing. Tony and Joe speculated that maybe the atmospheric turbulence was responsible for that. The atmospheric turbulence was scattering energy behind the barrier and degrading the shadow. So, I took that up as my thesis project. Again, we made meteorological measurements. I adapted a theory, basically the same theory that's used for atmospheric sounders. I adapted that to estimate the amount of sound that's being scattered by atmospheric turbulence behind the barrier. We built a small model barrier in the parking lot at NRC and did some experiments. We were able to show that yes, indeed, the atmospheric turbulence does degrade the performance of the noise barrier.

Stinson:

Enough that it's not worth having a barrier?

Daigle:

Oh no, it's worth having a barrier, but it doesn't perform as theory would predict and there are several things that degrade the barrier. They do work, but there's a limit to how much they work. I wrote a report for International INCE a few years later that shows that barrier performance is somewhere to the order between maybe 3 – 9 dB, and you'll never get more than 6 - 9 dB of insertion loss of a barrier, largely due to atmospheric turbulence and other effects.

Stinson:

Okay and what is insertion loss?

Daigle:

Insertion loss is the amount of reduction in sound level before and after the barrier is installed. So, you measure the sound levels before the barrier and you measure the sound level after the barrier, and the insertion loss is the difference. For example, 6 dB insertion loss, to put in simple terms, would be if you take the traffic and you double the distance, or you take the receiver and you would double the distance from the source. That's what 6 dB insertion loss represents. So 9 dB would be a bit more than that, and 3dB would be a bit less than that. So. there is benefit. One of the main things is that it removes a lot of the high frequencies, and so it leaves the low frequencies where our hearing is less sensitive. So, there is benefit and people are still building noise barriers. If nothing else, it has a psychological effect on people.

Stinson:

So, there's a lot of practical applications that come of this.

Daigle:

That's why I've always been involved in both the physical acoustic technical committee and the noise technical committee. Physical acoustics was the physics of the problem. And noise for the application. Noise barriers being one and noise models to predict noise propagation from aircraft noise, air traffic noise, industrial noise. Lots of practical applications of the propagation models, and the knowledge that's generated by studying the physical mechanisms.

Stinson:

Well while you were doing your doctorate, was there anyone who had a particularly great influence on your future?

Daigle:

Same people.

Stinson:

Same people.

Daigle:

They're…

Stinson:

The same place, so it kind of makes sense.

Daigle:

Yeah, the same people.

Stinson:

While you were a student, did you ever conduct any classes for the college or university?

Daigle:

No, I never did. No.

Stinson:

Okay. Well, that's...now we move on to another section. Other training. First is military. Were you ever in the military?

Daigle:

No. I never had any association with the military. Other than eventually I joined a NATO research study group and worked with military people on that committee for many years. But I myself never served in the military.

Stinson:

Well, you're Canadian. Canada does not have the draft, so there's no requirement. So that whole section we don't get into.

Daigle:

No, I don't think we need to get into that.

Stinson:

There's technical business trade school. Did you ever attend any of those?

Daigle:

No, no.

Stinson:

Correspondence courses?

Daigle:

No, I never did any correspondence courses. I guess I'm dull in that respect.

Stinson:

Okay, Gilles, now we're going to be talking about your professional career. So, we'll start after college. What was your first place of employment and your first title, and what did you do there?

Daigle:

The first thing after college is not quite the right way to phrase that question in my case. Halfway through my PhD I got a job offer from the University of Moncton to teach physics. After debating this with my wife, we decided it might be a nice thing to move back to Atlantic Canada. And so, I accepted the employment. This would have been in the... early 1979. So, I went from a full-time PhD student to a part time PhD student, we moved back to NB, and I started teaching physics. Part time I still worked on the theoretical part of my PhD thesis, and I came to Ottawa in the summers to complete the experimental work. And so that lasted about three years, the time I was at the university. I started at the University of Moncton as a lecturer, and of course, I taught physics.

Stinson:

Have any research projects at the time there?

Daigle:

That would have been my PhD. I mean during these semesters I worked on the theory. And as I mentioned, during the summer I moved back to Ottawa to do the experimental work.

Stinson:

Okay so any special accomplishments, developments, or projects? That would relate to the NRC.

Daigle:

Yeah, that would have been my PhD thesis, really.

Stinson:

And again, was there anyone there that had an influence on you? So not just NRC, but the University of Moncton.

Daigle:

Not really. Not really at that time.

Stinson:

Okay, I've forgotten already. How long did you stay there? You said three...?

Daigle:

About three years.

Stinson:

Three years. What year did you leave?

Daigle:

I left in 1981. I was assistant professor. I left the university because I completed my PhD and I got a job offer with the National Research Council to continue work again with Tony Embleton and Joe Piercy.

Stinson:

So, you made a decision with your wife to move back to...?

Daigle:

We decided to move back. It's not that I didn't like teaching. But I realized that I wouldn't be able to do as much research at the University of Moncton than I could at the National Research Council. I did not like grading papers. I found that boring. I didn't like doing that.

Stinson:

Did you like the teaching?

Daigle:

I enjoyed the teaching, that was not too bad. But I think I enjoyed research more. Especially there, you had to teach not necessarily only physics students, you had to teach premed students and well, premed students, all they wanted was a good grade. They’re not interested in physics. That was probably another reason. So, I accepted the position at the National Research Council, came back and continued my work with Tony and Joe.

Stinson:

Okay so I think that gets us to loop around again. So, in your second place of employment.

Daigle:

Second place of employment was again the National Research Council. I started as an assistant research officer, and what did I do there? Well to summarize a 30-year career, initially I continued doing work in outdoor sound propagation, mostly the effects of turbulence again. Then moved on to other aspects of propagation, over an impedance discontinuity, propagation over a snow layer. I continued to work on noise barriers, absorptive barriers, parallel barriers. I started using the fast field program and the parabolic equation.

During the first decade at NRC, I was appointed adjunct professor at the University of Sherbrooke. I did teach a course on acoustics there. But I also supervised a number of graduate students, which enhanced the amount of work that was done in outdoor sound propagation. During those years, too, we had a number of guest workers coming through the lab, both from the US, from Japan, and then from Europe. So, I worked with them. By 1990, Tony Embleton retired, and I became the group leader. And that really put a halt to a lot of my scientific work, didn't it? The burden was a lot more than had been described to me. I kept my finger in the pie, so to speak, but the administrative burden was something.

But by those years, Mike Stinson and Dave Havelock started working in outdoor sound propagation. All three of us were members of the NATO research study group. We attended the meetings of the research study group, which sort of influenced the research that we did. We deployed a... it became more complex to do experimental work. One had to be more sophisticated in the experiments. So, we deployed a 64-microphone array. We bought a meteorological tower. Measured wind and temperature and used similarly-scaling theory as input to the fast field program and the parabolic equation.

Stinson:

Where did you deploy this array?

Daigle:

We deployed that at a private airfield between Ottawa and Montreal. It's a private airfield with gliders, and Dave Havelock had some contacts there. So, he made arrangements so we could do some experimental work there. By the end of the 90s, our program started to change. The group did a lot more signal processing. We also started to do a lot more work in the telecommunications area. And by the end of the 90s, we more or less discontinued doing work in outdoor sound propagation to concentrate on other things. I said telecommunications is one. The group started doing some beamforming for hands-free telephone applications, for example. We did work in hearing aids. The effect of handset proximity on hearing aid howling. We started making detailed measurements of the sound field within a model ear canal that's occluded with a hearing aid. In order to do that, we had to develop a... , had to redesign the B&K probe microphone. The probe of the B&K probe microphone has a diameter of about 1.25mm. And that's too big to probe the sound field in an ear canal, so we designed the probe tip and ended up with a probe tip that's 0.2mm in diameter. That's about the diameter of a hair. And we showed that we had enough signal to noise, and we did some measurements.

Stinson:

You probably broke a few of those.

Daigle:

Yeah. But surprisingly few, actually. Surprisingly few. We had a system where when we inserted the probe, we could see the model ear canal and the probe on a computer screen, magnified. We had a camera to do this. And so, we were able to position the probe so that it could be inserted into the ear canal, without damaging it.

Stinson:

So, going back, when you first started, you were... just finished a PhD with Joe Piercy and Tony Embleton, and then you're starting to work with them. At that point, you must have taken over as the lead scientist on some of this project. Is that...?

Daigle:

Probably when Tony Embleton left and I became group leader. That would have been in the 90s. That's when I said I had a lot of administrative responsibilities.

Stinson:

I think you were probably leading the project before then, though.

Daigle:

To some extent, yeah. That's probably-- I was the one supervising the graduate students at Sherbrooke, and very often worked with the guest workers. Before then, Tony Embleton was what was then called a section head, so he had the administrative responsibilities at that time.

Stinson:

So, was there anyone during that time that had an influence on you or your future?

Daigle:

During NRC, and in the early years, it was Tony Embleton again, there was Henry Bass and working with Mike Stinson and Dave Havelock. That had a strong influence at that time.

Stinson:

So how long was this phase of your career?

Daigle:

I stayed at NRC for 30 years.

Stinson:

So, what year did you leave, then?

Daigle:

Left in 2009. When I left, I was a principal research officer.

Stinson:

And why did you leave?

Daigle:

At that period, the federal government conducted a comprehensive review of programs at the National Research Council. As a result of that review, a number of programs including ours were disrupted, and we were given the choice to either redeploy with other parts of NRC or the suggestion that maybe some of us should spin off. So, Mike Stinson and I retired from the National Research Council in 2009 and we formed MG Acoustics. I also should add that shortly after our retirement, we were appointed as researcher emeritus with the National Research Council, the position that we still hold today, and we're still associated with the National Research Council. But as of 2009, MG Acoustics became our main employment.

Stinson:

That was a difficult time.

Daigle:

It was a stressful time. But in the end, when we started MG Acoustics, we basically started doing the same work that we did when we were with the National Research Council. Some of the work that we did, we continued working with the telecommunications industry. We did the acoustical design work for a large telecommunication firm here in Ottawa, and that more or less continued for ten years. We did some work on novel hearing protectors. We did work on speech, intelligibility, and things like the acoustical applications of graphene. We measured headsets and earbuds on KEYMAR.

More recently, we had a large project with Help Canada to look at the propagation of wind turbine noise. That work has recently been published in a journal. Even more recently, we've been doing work on the audibility of aircraft and a paper was written on that subject. Part of the work was given on that subject at inter-noise in Chicago. And there are two more abstracts submitted for next year. So, it's been quite a variety of things, and as you see, it's almost the same type of work that we did when we were at the National Research Council, except we are doing it in the private sector.

Stinson:

So, I guess we covered the special accomplishment, developments, and projects. Anything further? Going back to the NRC part, when you were there, is there anything we missed that you would look back on and say, "This is a special accomplishment"?

Daigle:

Well, you know when you say, "special accomplishments" maybe there's two things that I should mention. During my graduate work, the parameters to characterize the strength and scale of turbulence, was the first time people actually measured those things. The results were subsequently replicated by other labs, and the values that we found during those years are still in use today as input to the various propagation models. The second thing I probably should mention is working with a graduate student, we developed a hybrid ray tracing model for long-range sound propagation as an alternative to the parabolic equation and the fast field program. Except that it runs much faster. It compared very well during the benchmark cases and it was eventually adopted by the Nord200 Project in Europe and subsequently during the HARMONOISE Project of the European Union.

Stinson:

That's heuristic retracing?

Daigle:

Yes, that's the heuristic-- heuristic means it's a hybrid between a physical model and an empirical model. It's sort of a marriage between the two. So, I think that brings us to today where I am still working with MG Acoustics.

Stinson:

Somewhere along the way you got a silver medal from the Acoustical Society.

Daigle:

Yes, after the Lindsay award, I was awarded the interdisciplinary silver medal in physical acoustics and noise. Quite a mouthful, that medal, isn't it?

Stinson:

The Bruce Lindsay Award is for a young...

Daigle:

Under 35.

Stinson:

Professional under 35.

Daigle:

Under 35 years old.

Stinson:

At the time. It's changed now.

Daigle:

Has it?

Stinson:

It's now, I think it's 10 years post-PhD.

Daigle:

Okay yeah, that's right, I remember that.

Stinson:

But you also had a medal from France.

Daigle:

Yes, I had a silver medal from the French Acoustical Society. I collaborated with French scientists over the years. There were two who came to the lab to work for a year. And to some extent, the heuristic model that I described earlier was a factor. As one French scientist described, "If it wasn't for the work of NRC, and your work and your model, we would have been lost in the European Union." And it’s probably in recognition to these, that the French awarded me a silver medal.

Stinson:

Are there any other distinctions like that that we've missed?

Daigle:

I don't think so. Not that I know of. I mentioned being appointed researcher emeritus at NRC after retirement, and that is, in effect, a distinction.

Stinson:

It's supposed to be a distinction.

Daigle:

It's supposed to be a distinction, yes.

Stinson:

In practice, not... no. Okay, I think we are finished this section.

Daigle:

Yes, I think that's all.

Stinson:

Publications. You've had many publications. Written any books?

Daigle:

Not written any books, but I've written several book chapters. And quite a large number of journal papers and papers in proceedings. Most of them, of course, in sound propagation or noise barriers. Recently, the papers have been on hearing aids, telephony, beamforming, and stuff. There's three chapters that maybe stand out. They're all on outdoor sound propagation or atmospheric acoustics. There's a book chapter in the Aeroacoustics of Space Vehicles, edited by Harvey Hubbard. There's a book chapter in the Handbook of Noise Measurement and Noise Control, edited by Cyril Harris. And a chapter in the Encyclopedia of Acoustics, edited by Malcolm Crocker. I also was convener for two ANSI standards working groups. One on ground impedance and one on basically how to measure noise in the atmosphere, or a standard measure to make sure that you get repeatability and reliable results.

Stinson:

Any papers of note? I know there are several, but...

Daigle:

I mentioned a few book chapters. I think that probably summarizes the main...

Stinson:

It would reference the--

Daigle:

It would reference all the papers and proceedings.

Stinson:

Very good. Let's move on to something a little more personal. Your family. First of all, your present marital status.

Daigle:

Yes, I am married.

Stinson:

For how long?

Daigle:

Ooh... I think we got married in '75, so it's over 43 years, isn't it?

Stinson:

Congratulations. And to whom are you married?

Daigle:

Nicole St. Laurent.

Stinson:

And her occupation?

Daigle:

She worked as a translator for many years. She's now retired, but she worked in translation for many years. She specialized in technical translation from English to French, which is quite a challenge sometimes. But as I said, she's now retired from that.

Stinson:

When and where did you meet your spouse?

Daigle:

At the University of Moncton during our undergraduate years. The student council and the physics and math departments organized social activities between the nursing school and the nutrition school. I don't think I probably-- I probably don't need to explain the rationale behind that. But during these social activities is where I met my wife. My future wife.

Stinson:

When and where did you get married?

Daigle:

We got married in Nicole's hometown, which is a small town in northern NB called Saint Quentin, and that would have been in 1975 at about the same time we both graduated with our bachelor’s degree at the university.

Stinson:

Do you have any children?

Daigle:

I have one daughter.

Stinson:

Her name?

Daigle:

Annick.

Stinson:

And were you there for the birth?

Daigle:

(laughs) Interesting that you ask, since you would remember that.

Stinson:

Yes.

Daigle:

So, to both our dismay, Carleton University organized my PhD defense when my wife was expected to deliver. I desperately tried to change that, but the university was adamant it was that date. We had a person coming up from the States as my external examiner, and the arrangement had already been made and there was no way they were going to change that. So, I made my way to Ottawa, and sure enough, my wife went into labor and my daughter was born without me.

Stinson:

I thought that would be interesting to recall.

Daigle:

All right. I would have forgotten that. (laughs)

Stinson:

And is there anything special about your daughter Annick that you would like to mention?

Daigle:

I wouldn't say anything special. I think she's doing just fine. I can mention an anecdote, though.

Stinson:

Of course.

Daigle:

Starting in January, she starts a new job with the Canada Revenue Agency, and you might be interested in knowing what she's going to be doing there. She's going to be auditing small businesses. If ever MG Acoustics gets audited, I hope my daughter isn't assigned to the project. Because she does my income tax, and she is one tough cookie. (both laugh)

Stinson:

Well, it may not come to pass. It depends.

Daigle:

Hopefully she would be declared a conflict of interest. (laughs)

Stinson:

Okay your personal interests. What is your favorite form of entertainment?

Daigle:

Oh god. Well certainly I read a lot. That's probably what I do most. I usually do a puzzle or two every day. Other than that, I usually watch TV. That's about...

Stinson:

Try to keep the brain active?

Daigle:

Yeah, the puzzles keep the brain active, yeah.

Stinson:

Your favorite authors, then, if you read a lot.

Daigle:

I don't really have any favorite authors as such. I sort of have some maybe... I read just about anything. I have a certain preference for science fiction. Rather than an author, any book to has won the Hugo award or Nebula award, I tend to pick those up. I read books that's on the New York Times bestseller list. And I also read the classical and contemporary French literature. So, I can't say one particular author per se, but generally, that general literary area. The leading classical novels from the Russian literature, German literature, Italian literature, English literature, have been translated, and I tend to read those from time to time. Things like Dickens, Dostoïevski, Tolstoy, Günter Grass, people like that.

Stinson:

Impressive.

Daigle:

That's how we learned English.

Stinson:

And how about movies?

Daigle:

Yeah I... I don't go to movie theatres, per se, but if I watch TV, I usually watch movies. I don't have a-- I have, again, a knack for science fiction movies, but I'll watch good movies. Movies that are rated from 0-7, I try to avoid 6 and 7, so I tend to focus on movies that are a 5 or less. I don’t know actors very well. I don’t have any favorite actors. I know some actors better than others. Some actors I just don’t know their name. I recognize by face. I know some actors more than others probably because either they starred in more movies, or the TV shows their movies more often. So, I can’t say any particular movie stars, but movies in general.

Stinson:

How about music? Popular singers, old singers?

Daigle:

I tend to focus on classical music. When I was a kid, Radio Canada always played classical music on the radio on Sunday mornings. So, we would come home from church, and my parents would turn on the radio to Radio Canada and we listened to classical music during the morning and during Sunday lunch. I more or less continued that. I mean I did listen to rock music in the 70s and 80s and... 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Stinson:

When your hair was longer?

Daigle:

When my hair was longer and when I had hair. But I always had a liking for classical music. I still listen to music from the 70s. From the 60s and 70s from time to time. Especially when I’m driving. Don’t ask me who the rock stars are today. I never listen. I never listen to them.

Stinson:

Are you musical? Do you play instruments?

Daigle:

No, I don’t play any instruments. I don’t play any instruments. And again, I don’t have any really favorite classical composers. I know some better than others. I have Sirius FM in my car, and so they play the very well-known composers and lesser-known composers, and I enjoy them equally. If you pushed me into a corner, I could cite maybe three of my favorite pieces. That would be Four Seasons by Vivaldi, Canon by Pachelbel, and Boléro by Ravel.

Stinson:

Ah.

Daigle:

Ask me why? I don't know, you pushed me in a corner.

Stinson:

I pushed real hard.

Daigle:

You did. I had to give you something.

Stinson:

TV programs? You said you watch movies on TV.

Daigle:

Yeah, I tend to watch movies. If I really can’t find a decent movie, I’ll watch whatever’s on. I watched Doctor Who for many, many, many years. Even from the very beginning, I think I saw the first Doctor Who episode. So, I still watch Doctor Who from time to time, and if I can find a rerun of a Star Trek episode, I'll tend to watch that.

Stinson:

Well now Doctor Who is a woman.

Daigle:

Now Doctor Who is a woman. I don't know how they justified that. Not quite sure. I don't know how they pulled that one off.

Stinson:

Well apparently they did. Sports? Sports teams, anything of that--?

Daigle:

No, I don't watch sports. When I was young I played sports. You know, football, baseball, hockey. I can't say I have any sports fan...

Stinson:

You're not a big fan of the Montreal Canadians?

Daigle:

No. No, I'm not. I rarely watch sports on TV. I played sports when I was young, but I rarely watch it on TV. In the early 80s, I took up golf. That was when Jack Nicholas was at the height of his career. So, he sticks out, and then after that, people like Tiger Woods. I can mention maybe a hockey player, Rocket Richard in the Montreal Canadians would be someone that I remember.

Stinson:

Well, you are a bit of an athlete, aren't you?

Daigle:

Well, I played sports rather than watching them.

Stinson:

But your golf game is--

Daigle:

Oh, my golf game is actually, oh it's phenomenal. Really phenomenal. I think I might have broken 100 twice in my life. (laughs) I really suck at it.

Stinson:

And your snooker skills are--

Daigle:

Oh, they're on the-- I'm the undisputed snooker champion.

Stinson:

I've seen the trophy. You have a trophy.

Daigle:

I'm the undisputed snooker champion of the Acoustics group in NRC. There's no question about that. Undefeated.

Stinson:

No one comes near you.

Daigle:

They call me Gatineau fats. (both laugh) And of course I downhill skied for many years. I don't anymore, my bones have become too brittle and the hills have become too dangerous.

Stinson:

Mmhmm. Understood. Art? Artists that you particularly like? Are you into that?

Daigle:

Yeah, I'm into art. As I said, I took up oil painting when I was a kid. So, I know a lot of classical artists. If I had to say I had a favorite, it would be the group of seven. I really enjoy the work of the group of seven. There's a gallery north of Toronto that has many of the group of seven paintings.

Stinson:

The McMichael Gallery.

Daigle:

The McMichael Gallery. And I've gone there a number of times. Really enjoy that gallery.

Stinson:

Any favorite quotes?

Daigle:

No, no. I can say there was one, but I've forgotten it. Something to do with how when we start making progress, we get reorganized, and we have to start all over again. That seems to have been the experience with NRC.

Stinson:

I remember you had a cartoon with that quote up on your wall.

Daigle:

Well, I can't remember exactly how it goes. Something like, “We trained hard – but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized… and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.” Anyway something like that

Stinson:

What are your hobbies today?

Daigle:

Well as I said, I'm semi-retired. When I'm not working for MG Acoustics, I always...there's always something to do around the house. So, I always have a renovation project on the go around the house. A few years ago, I took up nature photography. Which is almost now exclusively bird photography. That brings us to travel, all over the east of Canada and the United States. Every other year we go further abroad. We've been to California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, BC, upper Washington state. Yeah.

Stinson:

This is with both your... So, the bird watching, is it with your wife, or with your daughter, or both?

Daigle:

With both. Locally we go all three. If it’s a long trip or to stay overnight, I do it separately with my daughter or separately with my wife. We have two big, very, very spoiled cats at home. And there's just no way we can leave them unattended, and they'd just die if we put them in a kennel or something. So, when we go abroad, I tend to do it separately with my wife and then separately with my daughter.

Stinson:

I understand that you have a bit of a competition with your daughter about who has the most photographs?

Daigle:

Oh yeah, oh yeah. So far, I'm winning, but not by much. By about, maybe ten, ten birds.

Stinson:

What are your future plans?

Daigle:

Well, my future plans are to continue what I’m doing now. Eventually we’ll retire MG Acoustics. I don’t know when, but eventually. I’ll continue the bird photography. There’s about a little over 700 birds in North America. Currently in my albums, I have about 400 of them. So, I strive to increase that. It’s getting more and more difficult. You know, sort of one bird at a time, so to speak. Maybe if you’re lucky, you get four or five new birds per year. In the years to come, I have trips planned to Cape May, to the Outer Banks, probably return to Texas and Arizona at some point because those are really great birding states. They're great birding states because of their habitat. Birds tend to be very habitat specific. They're very fussy. Some birds, like crows, you find them everywhere. A lot of birds are very habitat specific. It has to be the type of vegetation, the type of food. Both Texas and Arizona have that habitat, and they're also close to the Mexican border, so you get a lot of Mexican species. Especially in Texas, because Texas really goes south into the Gulf Coast when you're almost side to side with Mexico. So very rich in Mexican bird species. So that's probably what I'll continue doing in the coming years. As long as my health allows me.

Stinson:

Is there anything else you'd like to add at this time? Before we sign off?

Daigle:

Yeah, yeah. A couple of things that I can add. I think being a member of the Acoustical Society has been one of the more enjoyable things of my career. The Acoustical Society has certainly been very good to me. I've had many responsibilities there, and they gave me two awards. They've certainly been very good to me. I made a lot of friends within the Acoustical Society. The second thing I would like to say, the group I worked in was a small group of people, about always seven or eight, and it was really an honor and a privilege to work with the colleagues at the National Research Council. And that small group of people produced four ASA presidents, two Bruce Lindsey awards, three Silver Medals, and one Gold Medal. I don't think any--very few groups of that size can boast as much.

Stinson:

You have to look pretty hard.

Daigle:

Mmhm, yep. I would say it was a very rewarding career. It's a privilege to work with people like that.

Stinson:

Well, thank you Gilles, that's very interesting, and it was fun to hear some of this. I know a lot of this from being working with you for so many years, but it was always interesting to hear it again, and now it's there for posterity.

Daigle:

Yeah. You also learned a couple of new things.

Stinson:

I think I did. Okay thank you very much.