EDUCATION

We have inspired thousands through our talks in showrooms, boardrooms, and classrooms. If your team would like to be energized, we invite you to request a session.

In this OAA learning-credit-approved 50-minute presentation, Yuill takes participants through what wood is, why some woods naturally last longer than others outdoors, and how pressure treating certain species barely extends their life while pressure treating others ensures life cycles of 30 years and beyond. This is the third in Yuill’s series of wood presentations.
An optional 20-minute Q&A at the end is available for participants to ask detailed questions about their projects — but we also encourage questions throughout the main presentation.
Duration: 1 hour
Location: Your office
Credits: Participants will receive a certificate for one learning hour that can be submitted to the OAA, LOA or ARIDO for a continuing education credit.
Cost: Free for OAA member companies
Refreshments: Host is responsible for providing meal/beverages, if so desired. North on Sixty will provide fair trade maple milk chocolate.
We’re very open about our end-game in this course: We want to see more local, Canadian, well-engineered woods specified in traditional and non-traditional uses—because the case for doing so is overwhelming. In addition to carbon sequestration, wood offers immense direct benefits to human health, and designers of all stripes are picking up on cultural best practices. Shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice of forest bathing, acknowledges that forests—and wood generally—reduce stress and improve the immune system’s natural killer cells. Natural wooden rooms are in almost every Japanese home, and just about every Finnish home in the form of a sauna.
It’s about using the most cost-effective, versatile, engineerable material that this beautiful planet has to offer. We cover the key wood types (natural, pressure treated, modified) and how best to use them outdoors to ensure that, when conditions are present, wood can dry. We're helping to ensure that your team has the technical components required for your projects to utilize wood in a way that extends its life cycle.
We also provide a snapshot of the culture of wood in Canada and the status of our forests, and leave you with concrete resources for continued learning.
An optional 20-minute Q&A at the end is available for participants to ask detailed questions about their projects — but we also encourage questions throughout the main presentation.
Duration: 1 hour
Location: Your office
Credits: Participants will receive a certificate for one learning hour that can be submitted to the OAA, LOA or ARIDO for a continuing education credit.
Cost: Free for OAA member companies
Refreshments: Host is responsible for providing meal/beverages, if so desired. North on Sixty will provide fair trade maple milk chocolate.
This thoughtfully condensed one-hour course provides participants with a thorough overview of the increasingly central role that wood is playing in architecture and design. Participants will be briefed on how wood is being used around the world, new techniques in sustainable sourcing, and how to specify with confidence. An optional 20-minute Q&A at the end is available for participants to ask detailed questions about their own projects.
Participants with less experience with wood will be encouraged by the instructor's ability to present the subject in an accessible manner. Participants with more experience will be stimulated by the instructor's deep knowledge of the field and are encouraged to bring their most challenging questions to the session.
Duration: 1 hour
Location: Your office
Credits: Participants will receive a certificate for one learning hour that can be submitted to the OAA, LOA or ARIDO for a continuing education credit.
Cost: Free for OAA member companies
Refreshments: Host is responsible for providing meal/beverages, if so desired. North on Sixty will provide fair trade maple milk chocolate.

Meet your instructor

Yuill McGregor, president of North on Sixty, is a Toronto-based builder (R-2000, 1988) and one of Canada's foremost authorities on wood.

Yuill’s passion for wood began at age four, when he was given a set of Maple building blocks from his grandmother. He’s been building things ever since.

Yuill’s expertise on the subject — from forestry through to building applications — is matched only by his passion for sharing that knowledge with his peers as well as the next generation of designers and builders.

★★★★★

"I thought the presenter did a great job of explaining the environmental implications of certain choices and specifications."

★★★★★

"Good overview of the importance of wood as a sustainable building material as well as a psychological link to nature that can impact our health in ways that we are only just beginning to understand."

★★★★★

“I quite enjoyed learning about the scientific properties of wood that give it useful construction properties.”

★★★★★

"I want to thank you for your presentation of Wood 101 for the 3rd/4th-year engineering course entitled Discovering Wood and its role in Societal Development. Your presentation was very well received, as indicated by the breadth of questions/comments after your lecture. You brought many new subjects to light and gave the students lots to think about as to how wood fits in to the modern world. Personally, I really appreciated the multiple perspectives you bring: from forester, to designer, to craftsman and finally builder. Your passion and experience are contagious." Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto

★★★★★

"Speaker was dynamic, knowledgeable and engaging. Comparisons between different products and why you might choose one or the other was most helpful."

★★★★★

"One of the best uses of one hour of my team’s time that I can imagine. I can already see how your contagious passion might impact our work."

★★★★★

"I liked learning more about the detailed properties of wood and why it behaves how it does. Yuill's passion and excitement about the topic was impressive.”