In 1999, CHC Helicopters Corporation, with Mr. Dobbin as CEO and chairman, took control of Helicopter Services Group ASA of Norway, making CHC Helicopters the largest provider of global helicopter transportation. Along with his business success, Mr. Dobbin is chairman of the Ireland Canada University Foundation, located in Dublin, which assists and promotes Canadian studies in Irish universities, and honorary consul of Ireland for Newfoundland and Labrador. Mr. Dobbin will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. TOP Oration honouring Craig Lawrence Dobbin William Pryse-Phillips, university orator From its beginnings in the murk of the pond bottom, the dragonfly instinctively ascends, escapes the bounds of water and luminously traverses the domain of air, looking and sounding like a miniaturized Sikorsky helicopter. When Craig Dobbin's commercial diving equipment malfunctioned at the bottom of St. John's Harbour 30 years ago, there was nowhere to go but up, and up he came at a velocity obeying the law of Boyle but with a momentum that carried him sky-high.
History repeats itself.
Starting de profundis with the insight in the outfall that there had to be a better way to make a buck, our honorary graduand initiated multiple projects that led to multiple successes, achieved at an accelerating pace as initial ventures into property led to the formation of Omega Investments, to which fulcrum he applied the principle of leverage and, beginning with a single Sikorsky, set out to move the world. And the world was moved, as one Sealand Helicopter grew into the squadron of 370 now operated by the Canadian Helicopter Corporation, a Newfoundland company and the largest of its type in the world. The dragonfly has neither rotors nor fixed wings, but Craig Dobbin, in creating Air Atlantic and now Touchdown Aviation, has both. His newest creations build aerospace parts and repair aircraft in P.E.I and Gander, while Vector Aerospace, born of the helicopter corporation, enriches our school of business administration through membership of the associates program. In the creative sphere of business, whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can't, you're absolutely right.