For most early retirees, free time is something had in spades. But Don Walcot, involved with numerous pension- and investment-related committees, is as busy now—if not busier—than he was before he retired.
Walcot’s current volunteer commitments include the York University Investment Committee; the McGill Library Advisory Committee; the Presbyterian College at McGill; and the client committee of a Concordia endowment fund (managed by Concordia students). He also works as an advisor for the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation; the McGill pension fund committee; the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension investment committee; the Concordia pension committee; and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board pension advisory board. And those are just his pension- and investment-related roles. Walcot also volunteers for his local political riding association and his church.
Walcot’s advocacy in the pension world is not limited to his retirement years, however. He has been involved in some form of pension advocacy for most of his working life. In the 1990s, Walcot worked with the Pension Investment Association of Canada (PIAC) to end the 10% foreign property rule and made several submissions to the government as a member of PIAC’s government relations committee. It took about 15 years to accomplish that goal, during which time Walcot was always heavily involved. At the same time, he worked extensively on developing PIAC’s Pension Fund Governance Model, a model still widely used in the pension industry.
Despite his busy schedule, Walcot is doing what he loves. “I enjoy meeting people, sharing ideas and keeping myself up to date, too. There really is life after early retirement!” He adds that working with the students on the endowment fund committee is one of his favourite activities.
From Walcot’s perspective, being inv-olved in so many groups allows him to bring greater value to his committees. “Because I work with so many groups, I can share regional trends between them and make them more aware of the various ideas that other groups are considering.”
But being a volunteer is not without its challenges. “You don’t have the authority that you do as an employee, so you have to convince people and use your powers of persuasion, rather than your position, to encourage change—but I love that,” he says. “It also allows me to be more creative, and you can push the boundaries a little more.”
When asked what he’d like to accomplish as a volunteer, he says, “I try to leave every pension fund well organized and forward-looking. I want to have a good pension structure in place that the next generation can trust.”
Even though he doesn’t have any free time, Walcot is hard-pressed to think of anything else he’d rather be doing. “I enjoy what I’m doing now, as I get to attend meetings rather than spending a lot of time writing reports. Now, I do my homework, go to the meetings and advise groups of people. It’s what I love to do.”
Kerry Maddocks is editor of Benefits Canada Across Borders.
kerry.maddocks@rci.rogers.com
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© Copyright 2009 Rogers Publishing Ltd. This article first appeared in the December 2009 edition of BENEFITS CANADA magazine.