Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services
He never really wandered too far, but didn't need to. Everything he wants is in the North. He now wants young people to have the things they want, so they'll also stay.
 Tom Makepeace says everything he wants is right here in the North. - Dave Sullivan/NNSL photo |
Makepeace runs the South Slave's government housing office, but he's known just as much for dedication to minor sports.
"We're helping these kids keep themselves occupied. They think they're too busy but they're not."
When he says "we," Makepeace doesn't like being singled out without including other dedicated sports volunteers like Bobbi Hamilton and Greg Rowe.
Makepeace believes sports opens opportunities that many of the 400 or so who play organized ball and hockey in Hay River wouldn't otherwise have.
Makepeace first left town in 1969, where he wound up in Fort Smith. He followed in his father's footsteps by becoming an arena manager. In 1986 his father died in a car-train collision in Hay River. Tom and another coach were seriously injured.
During the '70s in Fort Smith he became interested in sled dog racing. That's also where he began coaching, and met his wife Nancy. Married for 23 years, they have three children.
With hippie-type protest tendancies, Makepeace remembers listening on the radio to Berger inquiry proceedings.
"I was saying yeah, all right!" in agreement with pipeline opposition.
A shift in direction took Makepeace to Fort Simpson in 1977, where he apprenticed as a carpenter and started his own business.
"I started dog mushing there too."
While enduring pain from a bad back, Makepeace realized he needed more education, so he enrolled in construction engineering at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. That qualified him to join the NWT Housing Corporation as a technical officer, which he did in 1988.
