Principled, hard-working and deeply devoted to family, John (Johann Juergen) Schmidt died on July 22 following a life rich with professional accomplishment, travel, friendship and love.

He is survived by his children Bernie (Ellen), Steve (Louise) and Lisa (Jacques), his grandchildren Eric (Joëlle), Jeff and Dominique, and great-grandchildren Lily and Liam. He is predeceased by his wife of 62 years, Elisabeth (Lisa) Rake

The fifth of nine children born in Leer, Germany, his childhood was shaped by the events leading up to and during WW2. A man of deep integrity, John was profoundly influenced by his father, a chief-of-police who forged the papers of Jews to help them flee 1930s Germany—and by his eldest sister Bernardina, a pioneering entrepreneur in the coal business at a time in which businesswomen were rarely afforded the respect proffered to male peers.

He met Lisa, the love of his life, when both were in their late teens and working as interns at the Hoppe electrical goods and repair shop. Their courtship consisted of long walks, and kayak trips along the Leda river, with Lisa bringing a brandy-filled chocolate or two pilfered from her parents' restaurant. To win over his future mother-in-law, John would arrive at the Rake house with a bouquet for her assembled by stealing one flower from every garden along the way.

When one day Lisa came to him in tears announcing her family was emigrating to Canada, John went to his father to ask permission to follow her across the Atlantic. With his father's blessing, his electrician's certificate, a few words of English and the equivalent of $15 dollars in his pocket, he arrived in Montreal in 1951.

From the early days his first job, shoveling snow off the train tracks at Windsor Station, he took any job and earned every promotion that enabled him to learn, to contribute, and to provide for his family—and importantly for an immigrant, integrate into Quebec society with his hard-won fluency in French. His working life included five years in Gagnon, Quebec, now a ghost town, where his career in mining began in earnest. From there, he relocated the family to Tracy, Quebec where he spent the bulk of his career at Quebec Iron and Titanium (QIT-Fer et Titane).

Here he truly flourished, investing his time and energy to build safety-first systems, processes and practices, all the while becoming an influential leader and mentor whose priority was the wellbeing of his team. He was recognized throughout his career for his thoughtful approach to people and labour relations, and for being a trusted, caring colleague and advisor. Notably, he was the driving force behind the creation of a profitable steel plant at QIT that went into operation in 1986. While his beginnings were humble, he retired as a VP at Rio Tinto (now owners of QIT), a crowning achievement of his remarkable career.

Throughout his many different professional roles, John travelled extensively. For a period of time it was back and forth to Harve-Ste-Pierre, where he managed QIT's iron ore mine, and to Russia, Ukraine, Peru, Madagascar and South Africa, as a mining consultant. He always returned with eye-popping tales, several of which involved slipping several American twenty dollar bills between the pages of his passport to a rifle-carrying 'guard' in a remote area as a tactic to 'speed things along.' With his family, there were camping trips to PEI and Old Orchard Beach in an old army pop-up trailer, which he painted to match the avocado green of the family Pontiac Lemans, as well as many visits to family in Germany.

In all this, he enjoyed a rich social life hosting many a party with his wife Lisa (both of whom loved dancing, hosting friends and large family dinners, and attending costume parties). He also volunteered for a Canadian-German community group, and helped everyone in his circle of friends, be it rewiring their garages, doing their taxes or consoling them through life's difficulties. And in all this, he worked to put Bernie, Steve and Lisa through university, proud he could claim all his kids were graduates of McGill, reminding them all too frequently to keep their heads above water, "because underwater, you can't breathe."

Sadly, his humour, intellect, warmth, opinions on the fortunes of the Montreal Canadiens, and memories were siphoned away from a quickly progressing dementia attributed to Alzheimer's disease in the last year of his life. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Pierre Boucher Hospital Foundation in Longueuil where clinical staff provided sensitive care and comfort in his final days.