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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Commercial insurance account executive and cigar aficionado Larry Jacquard first came to Yellowknife in 2009 for what was supposed to be a two-week visit to his mother.

Mayor Gord Van Tighem with the new president of the Yk Chamber of Commerce Larry Jacquard, at the chamber's President's Ball last Friday. - Thandie Vela/NNSL photo

Last Friday night, just over two years after arriving in the city, he was sworn in as president of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce.

"I fell in love with the city," he said, likening the more relaxed lifestyle of Yellowknife to his "very, very small" hometown of Wedgeport, near Yarmouth, N.S., as opposed to Quebec City, where he lived for 20 years. "When we arrived here, I found that the people were very friendly," he said. "People don't add stress to their lives purposely like they do down south."

As soon as Jacquard, 42, was settled, he jumped right into the business community by securing a seat on the chamber board and NWT Tourism.

"I wanted to be involved and one of the best ways is through the boards, volunteering, and fundraising," he said.

Chamber executive director Tim Doyle is not surprised by Jacquard's swift ascent to presidency of the chamber.

"Larry is very active in the community," Doyle said. "People that do take the extra time and initiative to go out there, sit on associations and boards – they get noticed pretty quickly.

"It's just that type of town where it's so hard to find quality volunteers, that you can easily go from not being known to being the face of the community in very little time."

After starting out as director of sales for the Yellowknife Inn, Jacquard is now making his own schedule as an account executive with Nunavut Insurance Brokers Ltd., and, with the blessing of his company, Jacquard is now entering the role of president with full commitment, he said.

"I'm able to take on the responsibility of a president because I actually have the time," he said. "Whereas a business owner is usually torn between putting time into his business – his livelihood – and time into the chamber, which does need it."

A passion for cigars was at the root of one of Jacquard's early ventures into business.

Jacquard picked up a taste for fine cigars as a business student at Laval University in the late 1990s, smoking up to four cigars a day. In 1997, when he graduated to find no suitable work, he opened his first business, a cigar distribution company.

"I thought, none of these jobs are going to support my cigar habit," Jacquard said. "And that's how it was born."

While maintaining a cigar company in Quebec that built and installed humidors in restaurant hotels, golf clubs, and trained staff on how to serve cigars, Jacquard opened Societe Ciger, a cigar lounge on a main drag in Quebec City, and later the restaurant Voodoo Grill.

"After work, I'd have a port and a cigar while doing up all my paperwork, instead of going out," he said.

Jacquard went on to own and operate an import and retail furniture store in Quebec City but closed his store when the economic downturn hit. After a year off travelling, Jacquard arrived in Yellowknife for the first time for that fateful visit to his mother.

While his mother has recently retired and moved back east, Jacquard, 42, just bought a Forrest Drive home with his wife Andreanne Laporte.

"We're not going anywhere," he said.

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