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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When Gord Van Tighem was first elected mayor in September 2000, Frank and Evelyn Karain bought him a half-metre-tall evergreen tree from a local floral shop.

Yellowknife's longest serving mayor Gord Van Tighem is preparing to leave office after 12 years. He plans to take this tree with him, which was given to him after his first election campaign and stood with him through the years. - Simon Whitehouse/NNSL photo

After four terms in office as the city's longest-serving mayor, the tree, now almost two-metres tall, still sits in his corner office, along with other paraphernalia he has collected, such as an Olympic torch, Alaskan licence plates and gifts from various dignitaries.

Like the tree, the city has grown and changed since Van Tighem took office.

"The analogy that I use is that in the 1990s this was still a city that reflected someone in their teens," Van Tighem said. "There has been an evolution into, say, somebody who is in their mid-twenties. There is now more serious contemplation of the quality of the community, and the future security of the community."

Van Tighem said he is most proud of getting the Multiplex built within a few years after coming into office, which entailed securing a partnership with Diavik to get it done.

"The city had been working on that for 19 years previous to our council getting elected. We had the shovels in the ground in six months. Through a partnership with the community and Diavik, we got it done two-and-a-half years earlier and on budget, which wasn't the way that it was starting out."

Being able to get Niven Lake developed over the last decade was also another big accomplishment, he said.

"When I started here there were seven houses on Niven Drive and within the first three years there were 1,300 units constructed on a base of 6,000 houses," he said. "Now, looking back at the 12 years, there has been almost 2,000 housing units put on the market here on a base of 6,000. That is a fairly significant increase in housing in Yellowknife."

Addressing broken infrastructure at Northland Trailer Park within the last year, which had been debated throughout his whole term, will finally lead to repairs next year and the city now has land for sale for development, which has been rare in the last 12 years, he said.

Van Tighem was less forthcoming on the subject of disappointments. He said he would have liked to have been recognized for a fourth year in a row by Corporate Knights Magazine for being the most sustainable small city in the country, after getting the recognition in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

He would also have liked to have seen a conference centre built, although it remains an item the city continues to work on, he said.

Not being able to get the airport runway lengthened in 2002 and the failure of Hockey Day in Canada coming to Yellowknife were also disappointments, he said.

When asked about the controversy raised during the election surrounding the 2010 hiring of Bob Long as the city's senior administrative officer, Van Tighem replied that any problems the new council has with city employees should be dealt with through performance reviews and not through public debate. Van Tighem and the incoming mayor, Mark Heyck, made up the team that interviewed Long for the job.

"Personalities and performance reviews happen as a matter of general management. Council has one employee and they deal with that employee," he said, adding Long has only been in the job for two and a half years.

Van Tighem said he plans to remain in Yellowknife after he leaves the mayor's office next month.

"This is where I live," he said. "I hope to stay here for a long period of time.

When reached at her home in Saskatoon, Evelyn Karain laughed when she heard how much Van Tighem's evergreen tree has grown in 12 years.

She recalled campaigning for Van Tighem with her husband, and how they wanted to give him greenery to congratulate him on his first win in 2000.

"I think Gord had a really good rapport with a lot of people in the community and he was somebody who we had thought would be very professional in that position," said Karain. "It seems to me there were quite a number of factions and you needed somebody who would be able to bring all sides to consensus. People had such varied ideas across the board and that took somebody to have the skills to do that."

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