With $25 in his pocket, he immigrated to Canada, 1951, from Baden Baden in the Black Forest region of West Germany as a 22-year-old engineering school dropout. An immigrant with a vision, by 1953 Robert Schad and several partners had formed a company called Husky Manufacturing and Tool Works, a business operating out of a small garage in Willowdale, north of Toronto. It was not long before a Husky snowmobile was buzzing up and down Toronto's Yonge Street, and turning lots of heads. This was six years before Bombardier patented its famous Ski-Doo. Although the ambitious venture failed, Schad took control of the company and has never looked back. Turning to custom designing and precision manufacturing, Schad received his first major order for a mold for manufacturing plastic parts, 1959. Envisioning rapid growth in the plastics industry, Schad and his company turned to specializing in molds. Soon Schad was developing and building high-speed injection molding machinery to produce vending cups. Because his processing apparatus was so fast, Schad was on the verge of cornering a great portion of the market share and took the company to accelerated growth. Relocating operations to Bolton, Ontario, 1969, the company made several major breakthroughs in automated machinery for counting, sorting, stacking, and preparing plastic products for packaging with minimum labour. The company's growth ever since has been phenomenal. A hands-on founder, Schad’s skills at handling people are just as legendary as is his business acumen. Robert Schad’s company, now called Husky Injection Molding Systems Limited, generated 1999 sales in excess of 700 million U.S. dollars. With customers in over 70 countries, Husky’s state of the art equipment produces a wide range of plastic products. Some 2,800 employees worldwide work together as the result of a German immigrant’s leadership skills, corporate culture values, and proactive concern for the environment. [Photo, courtesy Husky Injection Molding Systems Limited]