BY KAREN BLISS

Bill VanGorder has worked his magic in the charitable and not-for-profit space his entire career. Retired just recently from his national board position with Canadian Association of Retired Persons and past chair of CARP Nova Scotia in Halifax, he remains a senior spokesperson and advocacy lead in that province, proud of what he and the boards were able to accomplish over the years – from fraud education to environmental awareness and home care solutions.

“I don’t have any official ties with national anymore; I’ve retired from that,” VanGorder, 83, says. “I’m spending all my volunteer time here in Nova Scotia and helping (to revive) the New Brunswick and PEI Chapters. We’re trying to recruit leadership in those two provinces. So, I’m finding my hands are quite full here in Nova Scotia.”

For all the gravitas of advocating for Canadian seniors, he also has a seriously fun side.

VanGorder is a life-long magician, currently active with a local club called Conjuror’s Court IBM Ring #316 (International Brotherhood of Magicians) and is past president of the International Association of Psychic Entertainers, “who are the mind readers and the thought readers,” he says. The father of two grown daughters and grandparent of two twenty-somethings is also involved with another hobby from his youth, theatre, alongside his wife of almost 30 years, Esther. 

 

    

Images L to R: Bill performing magic some years ago; Bill with his wife Esther; Bill surrounded by family.

He also owns three businesses under the banner of MRC Associates Inc. and, with Esther, the international company True North Nordic Walking and local Nordic Walking Nova Scotia. Clearly, he is far from retired. His focus remains on helping his fellow seniors.

VanGorder first learned of the original CARP — founded in 1985 in Toronto by Lillian and Murray Morgenthau — in his final years as president and CEO of The Lung Association of Nova Scotia in the early 2000s. He says they had a “real problem” with lookalike charities because regulations weren’t as tough as they are now. 

“People got confused between them and us — and kids and asthma was our biggest focus at that point. “Somehow, I discovered that CARP was very concerned about these charities who were perpetrating their crimes on seniors, who are the biggest givers to charity. They didn’t really have chapters in those days, but they did have local representatives in communities, and I met the people who were running it here. That’s when we decided we were going to start a chapter here.”

The same year, 2008, media pioneer Moses Znaimer acquired controlling interest in 50Plus.com, and their print magazine, which he rebranded Zoomer, and was soon thereafter elected to the CARP board of directors. “I found that an acquaintance of mine, Ross Mayot — who I’d known when he was a fundraiser at TVOntario and I was the president of the Canadian Association of Professional Fundraisers — was involved too with the new CARP with Moses.

“So, I started to go to the national meetings in Toronto, and not long after that was on the advisory board for national CARP.” 

A lifelong advocate for others, VanGorder has received multiple awards — among them the National 50 Over 50 Wise Award (2019), Northwood LiveMore Advocacy Award (2018), the Gerontology Association of Nova Scotia’s Award of Recognition (2017), Nova Scotia Volunteer Award – Community Groups over $50,000 (2015) and the National YMCA Service Award (1991). But, he didn’t set out to work in the non-profit sector. He actually thought he might have a career in radio.

A self-described “Air Force brat,” his parents lived in Halifax, but when his father was stationed overseas, his pregnant mom returned to Hamilton to be close to family. Then they went back to Halifax, before moving all over: Ottawa; Portage La Prairie, Manitoba; and Trenton, Ontario. They settled back in Hamilton for his high school years.

There, he volunteered on the committee that put together Friday and Saturday night dances and worked part-time for historic radio station CHML (900 AM) for a couple of years, selling airtime for a Saturday program aimed at teenagers. “I was able to do some on the air stuff with Tony Parsons, who became a big news figure out in British Columbia,” he says.

VanGorder didn’t play an instrument, instead focused on two other areas of the arts: magic and acting. He says he put himself through Waterloo Lutheran (since renamed Wilfrid Laurier University), working as a magician and also ran theatre programs at children’s summer camps for the YMCA in Hamilton and Kitchener.

Little did he know that foot in the door would lead to almost three decades with the youth- focused charitable organization.

His post-secondary studies took a circuitous route. “I started out in English. Didn’t like that very much. Went over to psychology, found they were still running rats around mazes. So tried sociology and found they were full of theories. And then. I discovered political science and they were actually using all of this,” VanGorder says.

He finished up at university part-time, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and public administration, while working full-time in adult education at the Kitchener YMCA and hosting a 15-minute weekly radio segment on CKKW about health and fitness. It was at the Y that he got involved in fundraising. It appealed to him because it produced instant results.

“In the other work that I did in those days with the Y, everything was long-term. If you worked with young people or families, you wouldn’t know for years whether or not you really had any effect,” he explains. “With fundraising, you got an immediate response. You either were successful or you weren’t. You had goals and you knew whether you reached them. That immediate feedback was something that attracted me as being different from the other things that I was doing at the same time,” he says, referring to running the adult education program and directing their children’s summer camps.

When he left the Kitchener Y, he went to Edmonton to be the Director of Development, helping to raise the money to build the Jamie Platz Family YMCA. In 1978, he returned to Halifax and became the Atlantic area director for the YMCA Canada for the next 13 years.

“I was able to travel many places around the world, Saint Lucia, Jamaica, Sudan and the [former] Soviet Union,” he says. “I was working for the Canadian YMCA international development program, documenting our work overseas with audio and photos/slides to promote and fundraise for those efforts. I’m glad I’m not doing it anymore, but I was enjoying it in those days.”

In 1991, he joined The Lung Association of Nova Scotia as President & CEO, directing all aspects of provincial operations, including fundraising, health promotion, public education and advocacy. He remained at the helm until 2007, becoming a recognized voice for respiratory and seniors’ health across the province.

“I was consulting with healthcare facilities and hospitals, while I was still with the YMCA. Primarily, I had a contract with the College of Healthcare Executives to coach hospital boards to create fund raising foundations,” he says.

“I was the president of the Canadian Association of Fund Raising Executives at that time and a Certified Fund Raising Executive [CFRE designation], as well as a Certified Association Executive [CAE designation], one of only two Canadians who acquired both designations at that time, another story of a time when most association CEOs did not understand or do fundraising.”

On the side, VanGorder created MRC Engagement Group in order to provide strategic advisory services to charities, not-for-profits and small businesses, including leadership consulting, strategic planning, advocacy training and organizational development. “When I left the Lung Association, I went into doing my company full-time,” he says.

“I ended up having a client that was an HR tools company [Hiring Smart Canada, now FitFirst Technologies] and I was using their tools so much, they asked me to be their director of service and development, so I worked with them for four years,” says VanGorder. “About that same time [2012]. we started our Nordic Walking business, which my wife still runs. We’re the Atlantic distributors for the Nordixx brand of Nordic Walking Poles, but we also do worldwide online sales.”

In 2020, he took on the position of Chief Operating Officer & Chief Policy Officer at CARP, and over his five-year tenure led national operations and public policy initiatives, representing the advocacy group in government relations, stakeholder partnerships and national media engagement.

Reflecting on his history with CARP, from the start until now, he says, “Initially, there were a couple of things that we were really concerned about. One was vaccines, which is still something that CARP is making sure that seniors get all the vaccines recommended by the National Advisory Council on Immunization. Nova Scotia is a leader in terms of the number of vaccines that are covered and the breadth of people they’re covered for, although that’s still an annual battle.

“Another area is the environment,” he continues. “Ours is one of the only chapters that has a major focus on the environment and, as our committee puts it, trying to leave the earth in better shape for our grandchildren than we found it.

“Also, the whole area of home care. We’ve had great success in working with the government and giving advice and encouragement and doing real groundwork for them to show how having more home care and community care keeps people out of expensive long-term care facilities and makes seniors healthier, without as much cost.”

He adds that part of their success is owing to Barbara Adams, Deputy Premier, Minister of Seniors and Long-Term Care, a past member of CARP’s board of directors. “She has been tremendously effective in that area.”

CARP Nova Scotia also surveys its membership “and beyond” regularly. “We have almost 10,000 people on that list, and for little Nova Scotia, that’s good. So, when we do a survey, it’s not unusual for us to get a couple of thousand responses, far beyond the minimum 5% that you would want to get from a survey,” he says.

In that way, the Chapter keeps its finger on the concerns of seniors “all the time” and that helps inform its positions in order to address governments and businesses.

“The areas we’re working on at the moment are affordable, appropriate and accessible housing for seniors, and the other area is financial security.

“When we started CARP (Nova Scotia), we also started a program in conjunction with the Rotary Club called the ABCs of Fraud. Rather than go out and lecture people on how to avoid frauds, we had trained people to go out in pairs and role play fraud. I involved a number of my theatre friends and that program continues today.

“Also, there are a number of things around finances in Nova Scotia. One of our successes recently was that the income tax was not indexed here like it was in all other provinces. We got indexing just two years ago.

“I think there’s one thing that I’d really want to emphasize,” VanGorder concludes. “If I’ve done one thing, it’s recruiting a really good active board. We have active subcommittees. I may be the spokesman the face on television, but they’re the ones that are doing a tremendous amount of work in the background. The health advocacy committee has people who have worked in universities and government, and the people on finance committees are bankers and financial advisors. That’s why we’ve been able to be successful here.”