Contractor remembered as compassionate and generous
When the late Gerard Joseph Cahill found two men loafing on the job — during the construction of the Avalon Mall in the 1960s, for which Cahill’s contracting firm did the electrical work — he told them to get back to work.
They promptly did. “People knew he was committed to getting the job done,” said Cahill’s son Fred, now president of the Cahill Group of Companies.
The next day, according to Fred, G.J. found the same two men at the same time in the same place, the mall’s electrical room, taking an unauthorized break. So he fired them.
“They looked at him and said, ‘Mr. Cahill, you can’t fire us,’” said Fred. “He said, ‘What do you mean, I can’t fire you?’ They said, ‘We’re with the telephone company.’”
G.J. Cahill died Saturday, surrounded by his family, following a bout of pneumonia.
In 1953, Cahill founded G.J. Cahill and Co., a firm that today has more than 200 full-time employees in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Alberta, and has a peak workforce of more than 1,200 tradespeople.
In its six decades of operations, the company has worked on the Avalon Mall, St. Clare’s Hospital, the Health Sciences Complex, the House of Assembly, the Newfoundland Hydro Building, Prince Edward Island’s Confederation Bridge and Hibernia’s gravity base structure.
G.J. Cahill’s daughter Moya, the president of PanGeo Subsea, said her father was a very compassionate and generous person, especially when it came to children, often checking on them playing in the neighbourhood.
“He’d always go out and want to make sure the kids were doing OK and if they needed anything,” she said. “When our neighbours would leave the street, he always wanted to stay connected.”
Fred Cahill said his father was known as a straight-shooter.
“He was a hard worker, and he knew what it took to get it done, and people respected him for that because he had done it himself,” he said.
“He was a very giving person, and he told me, ‘Fred, it’ll come back to pay itself back in spades.’”
Cahill’s wife of more than 50 years, Nora, died in August. Moya Cahill said her father missed his wife terribly.
“Dad was forlorn. They were married for 57 years, and he never thought he’d be left,” he said. “It broke his heart to be away from her, and all he wanted was to be by her side.”
Moya Cahill said she once asked him if he had any regrets, and her father was proud — if surprised — at how large the company he founded had become.
“He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t have a regret in my bones. I’ve done more than I’ve ever, ever, ever thought I could possibly do, and we’ve achieved so much with the company.’”
Gerard Joseph Cahill was 91 years old.