Yellowknife (Feb 25/05) - And as Adam and Eve plucked the apple from the tree of knowledge, the Almighty reached down from the Heavens and declared, "Let there be security guards." And these new creatures roamed the Earth, and it was good.

That passage never quite made it into the Bible, but for 55-year-old Yellowknife resident Brian Carter, God and the security business complement one another. When he isn't running his own patrol operation in town, he works as deacon of St. Patrick's Catholic Church where he serves as the pastor's right-hand man.

"My faith integrates into everything I do," he says. "It was almost a natural fit, I think."

Carter planned to become a priest when he graduated from high school in Winnipeg, but when he realized he lacked life experience, he joined the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., instead. Soon he found himself flying Sea King helicopters for the Canadian Navy, machines with a knack for falling from the heavens.

But he says his own plunge from the sky inside one of Canada's aging helicopters never brought him closer to God during these times. It was the people he met.

"I got to see a lot of suffering around the world," he says, recalling poor regions of Brazil, Chile and Venezuela where people lived in tarpaper shacks without access to clean water or sewage disposal.

"And yet the people seemed strangely content," he adds. "Their faith played a big part of it. It gave me more of an insight into this work, and sort of into our inhumanity to humanity."

He left the military in 1980 and joined a security firm in Winnipeg where he made his way from security guard to vice-president of the company. With an eye to expand the company North, he moved to Yellowknife four years ago.

Six months ago, after a quadruple bypass hinted it was time to slow down, he started his own security firm. It's a mobile patrol operation, which he says is unique in town. He hires two employees to patrol 17 apartment blocks, five government buildings, most of the schools and a couple of banks.

Some might imagine the security profession is more akin with nightclub bouncers than men of the cloth, but Carter says his faith influences his business. When he and his employees encounter homeless people inside buildings, he says they take care to find them a homeless shelter to be safe and warm.

Recalls one young man

He also recalls one young man he hired from Rankin Inlet who often didn't show up for work.

"It would have been so easy to dismiss him from work, but he had a good reason," he said.

It turns out the man was homeless, so after working a night shift he either found a bunk at the Salvation Army or wandered the streets and slept in parks. Carter decided to let the man sleep on the couch in the office.

"It taught me there's more depth to people than you sometimes see. Everyone has a story, and everyone deserves respect," he says. "I've had a few employees not realize I'm a deacon, and they show up at Christmas Eve mass and realize there's another side to me."

The rank of deacon fell out of use in the Catholic church long ago, only to be reinstituted during the late 1960s. Unlike priests, deacons are allowed to marry - important for Carter who married in 1973, divorced in 1980 and remarried in 1988.

He was ordained seven years ago, after his parish priest urged him to consider it.

"Our ministry is one of outreach," he says, explaining how people with marriage problems often feel more comfortable speaking with him and his wife, Ingrid, than with a priest.

Ingrid is also active in the church and every Sunday the couple visits elders in Ndilo where they bring communion and listen to stories.

"My wife and I have fallen in love with the North and can't see ourselves moving south again," he says.