Life devoted to transport

Press, 8 December 1976, Page 18

Life devoted to transport

Mr John Joseph Blaney Connor, who died in Christchurch last week at the age of 75, was deputy chairman of the Christchurch-Lyttelton Road Tunnel Authority. Mr Connor began work as (a telegram messenger in i 1917, and worked in the Post Office until early in 1932, when he was transferred to the Transport Department in Wellington. From then his whole working life was associated with transport. In 1936 Mr Connor came to Christchurch to open an office of the Transport Department, and he was the first district officer with an area of Canterbury, Marlborough, Nelson, Buller, and the West Coast. In 1943, Mr Connor returned to the head office to assist in the administration of the wartime controls on oil fuel.

He resigned in September,! 1944, to take up the appointment of manager of Midland Motorways Services, Ltd. He retired from the company in 1960, and then took on the secretaryship of several transport organisations. Mr Connor was a prominent member and a past president of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce and was active in the campaign for a road tunnel. When Mr W. S. Mac Gibbon, the first chairman of the Road Tunnel Authority died in 1962, Mr Connor was appointed by the Governor-General to fill the vacancy. He was a past, president of the New Zealand Motor Omnibus Proprietors’ Association and a former chairman of the Christchurch Metropolitan Road Safety Committee. He is survived by his wife, a son, and a daughter.