Cindy MacDougall
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 31/00) - Gord Van Tighem flew into Yellowknife for good eight years ago. Since his arrival he's been involved in more community activities than you can count on your fingers and toes.

His eclectic talents and interests have taken him across Canada and hobnobbing with some of the great minds of our time, but eventually brought him to the North to stay.

"I met David Suzuki once when he was a researcher," Van Tighem said. "And Margaret Atwood and I fought over who would publish a certain new author by the name of Alice Munro."

Van Tighem started his life in Calgary, Alta. as the oldest of nine children. He said his role as older brother was the beginning of learning to care for others.

"I was five years older than the next one," he said. "It was more like being an uncle than a brother, but that was OK.

"When I was fishing or hunting, there was always someone to get my snagged hook back or to scare something out of the bushes," he said, laughing.

Although Van Tighem came North as the regional manager of the Bank of Montreal, his studies had little to do with banking.

"I took a double major in psychology and Canadian Studies," he said. "But I started doing estate planning while I was in university."

Book hunting

But it was his love of the written word that called to him next.

As the national field editor for McGraw Hill Ryerson, he recruited new authors and helped them shape their work.

"I went from coast to coast, and met the Canadian literary stars of the time," Van Tighem said. "The most fun for me was finding a person who had the interest and ability to write a book and helping to bring it to completion."

The work was challenging and fast-paced, he said.

"I did 32 books a year," he said. "I was quite young at the time and didn't understand the ramifications of life.

"I had one author go senile during the process (of writing a book). Another had a nervous breakdown because of the stress of the process."

In order to deal with the stress, he turned to his wife Carol, his three children and to a hobby that took his stress into the clouds.

Flying free

"I fly model airplanes, radio-controlled," he said. "I've been doing it for 37 years. It started when I won two first prizes at the Calgary Stampede for leather work. The prize was gift certificates to a model and hobby shop. The rest is history."

Ten years worth of national championships and a four-year stint as the national director of Canada's model aeronautics association has not dimmed his wonder with the small and quick model airplane.

"At the time I was most active, it was something the whole family could do. It was an outdoor activity," Van Tighem said. "We moved quite a bit because of my work, and no matter where we moved, there were people we knew through it."

Van Tighem used to own over 180 models. He's whittled his collection down to a little over a dozen in "his own personal museum."

"I used to race the planes," he said. "When you're racing, there's 100 per cent concentration. It's an escapist thing and a real adrenaline rush."

Van Tighem continued to hunt, fish and fly his planes once he started working for the bank.

He quickly worked his way through many different departments, and was offered a chance to do his master's degree in business administration in 1991.

"It was a stretch," he said. "It was one of those programs where you go to school for three weeks and then work for six weeks."

A new challenge

"When it was all over, the bank came to me and said, 'We have good news and we have better news. You're in charge of a whole region, and the job is in Yellowknife," said Van Tighem with a chuckle.

And how did he feel about flying into the North?

"I was looking forward to it," he said. "Up here, we're on the edge of the last frontier. All of the people I already knew here were the kind I liked to be around.

"And there's big fish."

Since he's moved North, Van Tighem has been winning an ongoing battle with his wife on where he's allowed to mount his hunting and fishing trophies.

"Once we moved here, she let them out of the basement," he said. "Now, we have a wood bison in our bedroom and eight other heads on the main floor."

Super volunteer

Van Tighem said he liked Yellowknife so much, he couldn't help but get involved in community activities.

"When I got up here, I asked the stupid question, 'Why don't we have a hospital foundation?' So we started one," he said.

His list of volunteer activities is as long as his arm.

Van Tighem is past president of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce; he's the finance commissioner for the St. Patrick Church Pastoral Council; he's a founding director and treasurer of the Side Door Youth Drop-in Centre. He is the director of the Yellowknife Shooting Club and the past president of the NWT Federation of Shooting Sports.

Van Tighem likes to shoot and hunt, but he also believes in protecting wildlife. In fact, he's the director of the NWT Wildlife Federation, as well.

"This way, I don't have a free evening to worry about," he said, laughing. "And it's partly because I learned how to say no too late in life."

He said all the extracurricular activities don't overtax his time or patience.

"A lot of these activities are not time-consuming," Van Tighem said. "It's all timing. And they're all things that make the community a better place and I live here, so let's make it better."

One of his community service activities eventually turned into his current job.

Van Tighem, as the executive director of the NWT Community Mobilization Partnership, which helps people get the lifeskills and training they need to get and keep a good job.

The partnership was started for and by the communities involved in the Ekati diamond mine jobs deal. The GNWT and BHP Diamonds also helped develop and fund the program.

"I started out as a member," he said. "I helped develop the money management part of the course. I provided people from the bank to teach it. I taught."

He was soon invited to sit on the organization's board of directors and he later became board chair.

"I guess it goes back to why I like being in Yellowknife," he said. "You've got people on the edge of the wilderness. I get to go out and be with them a lot. They're neat people.

"And if this enhances their life, so much the better."

The partnership needed an executive director last October, just as the Bank of Montreal was offering an early retirement deal. Van Tighem said he jumped at the chance to focus on one good cause.

Slowing down?

Van Tighem said he's trying to slow down with all his other extra-curricular activities.

"Since I'm working for a non-profit organization rather than being on a non-profit board, I have to focus on the success of this."

The program has been very successful, with 92 per cent of graduates keeping their jobs at the diamond mine.

Van Tighem said the partnership's youth programs will be the next big success.

"Our youth programs may become circumpolar," he said, "and our literacy program is going well."

As he flies into his new profession and old hobby of helping others, Van Tighem said the future is bright.

"I'm learning to fly real airplanes now," he said. "It's not too hard. The models were harder. It's another thing I wanted to do."