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MEMORIES OF MIKE MCNAUGHTON
My name is Sheila Tyndall and I am President of the Sudbury Human Resources Professionals Association (SHRPA). Our Association is a not-for-profit group which provides leadership and support to individuals working in the field of human resource management.
There aren’t many greater honours than being asked to share a reflection of another person’s life. And I am privileged to have been invited to this celebration of Mike McNaughton’s life on behalf of the members of our Association.
As many of you know, Mike was a professional speaker, seminar leader and writer. He was also an active member of the SHRPA community, a committed member of our Board of Directors, and the Association’s Membership Director since 1997. As Membership Director, he recruited and welcomed new members to SHRPA. This year our Association grew to an all-time high of 110 members within the Sudbury community. This is a significant contribution.
In addition, Mike’s skills as a professional speaker were occasionally called upon at our Association dinner/meetings and he was always willing to step in and assist when required. He had a reputation of being dependable and reliable. He was someone you trusted. He was also someone you could always count on for a pen.
We also remember him as having a wonderful, wry sense of humour. If you visit his web site you will see this humour in the descriptions of the training programs he offered such as “Take This Job and … Love It” and “Sleeping With The Boss – an intimate view of self-employment”.
Mike was truly interested in the well-being of others. He was a good friend. There are many within our Association who shared with him, personal challenges and he was always a considerate and caring listener.
Mike was also interested in retirement counselling and just completed writing a book related to this. As many of you will know, his personal dream was to retire in British Columbia. Although Mike never made it to B.C., I for one, am absolutely certain that he is currently
residing in an even better place. His forwarding email address will be
mikemcnaughton@heaven.com
To his family, and most especially to Patricia … Charles … and Carla …on behalf of every member of our Association, know that our thoughts and prayers are with you. We miss him too.
May 15, 2002
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Remembrance of Dr. Ignatius Fay
Almost certainly, the Mike McNaughton you knew and the one I knew were slightly different people. Every relationship is different.
To me, Mike was a close friend and one of the most caring, selfless people I know. He confided in me once that he had always had trouble making friends and that he didn’t have many. I came to realize that part of the reason was that he set such a high standard on friendship. He had no patience for insincere or superficial people. And he applied the same standard to himself. I have grown to consider myself privileged to be counted among Mike’s friends.
I first met Mike in 1985 at an organizational meeting for a housing co-op of which we were both becoming members. Our first encounter was not encouraging. I went up to him and rather abruptly asked him to butt his cigarette because it bothered me. And he did, reluctantly, making a sour face. We both came away with less than favorable first impressions. We were about to join a cooperative and each thought the other was not going to be very good co-op material. I expected him to be the typical smoker — selfish and insensitive. He thought I would turn out to be self-absorbed and inflexible.
Happy to say, we were both wrong. Luckily, neither of us let first impressions define our final opinions. We began seeing a fair amount of each other through our commitment to the co-op and my opinion changed quickly. Mike turned out to be the most caring, unselfish and committed person in the group. He was generous with his time and ideas, putting in long hours working to make the co-op as positive an experience as possible. Over time, we developed a mutual respect that evolved into true friendship.#
I am proud to say that Mike respected and trusted me enough to ask for my collaboration when he decided to become self-employed. This relationship grew and transformed until I became advisor, editor and confidant. In all of his business endeavors, aside from making a living of course, Mike was motivated by the desire to help others. In his consulting, he focussed on helping people deal with job loss, find other meaningful employment or prepare for retirement. In all cases, he was assisting them to live happier, more fulfilling lives. In his spare time, he offered, free of charge, server training for people and businesses who serve alcohol to the public and gave time to Operation Red Nose.
For myself, my own life over the next 17 years would have been quite different, much more difficult, without Mike. My mobility is quite restricted, due to illness, and Mike took it upon himself to be my informal chauffeur. He made sure I got to my medical appointments, he visited me in hospital and regularly took me to the used bookstore. Most remarkable of all, I think, for years he has made himself available to take me to and from the sauna at Cambrian College on Thursday nights. Every Thursday night! That’s quite a commitment! Seldom did more than three or four days go by without him calling to be sure I was okay and to see if I needed something.
Some might view our relationship as decidedly two-dimensional. After all, most of our time spent together was in my bedroom, where my computer is, or in his car. We never went any of the places or did any the things friends usually do, but our time together was never boring and was colored with love. I will ever be the richer for having known Mike McNaughton.
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