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That’s “retiring” as in “leaving one’s job”, not as in “shy or reserved”. No one would accuse the soon-to-be-former director of the Yukon Bureau of Statistics of being reserved. Dr Gerry Ewert is not afraid to speak his mind and rarely reluctant to let statisticians and government policy wonks know when he thinks they’re talking through their hats. A clear and incisive thinker, he has no time for political correctness or other preconceived notions that inhibit honest examination of the problem at hand. For him, there are no sacred cows in policy analysis.
Dr Ewert has a fascinating background.
Born in Saskatchewan, the retiring director of the Yukon bureau of statistics grew up in Kenya while his parents were teachers, attending boarding school and finishing his high school courses by correspondence.
He went back to the country in 1967 to teach school at age 20.
The experiences rooted in him two complimentary drives: wanderlust, and a desire to combine morality with effectiveness into government policy.
Between his day job inside the Yukon bureaucracy — and before that, within Alberta’s government — Ewert has moonlighted as an international development consultant, helping Nigeria, Lesotho and Egypt create education and poverty strategies.
The Yukon News article does not mention that Dr Ewert’s father was a Church of God pastor or that his parents served Christ’s church in Kenya for many years. Gerry is an active member of Riverdale Baptist Church.
After earning a BA, honours psychology, from the University of Alberta in 1971, Ewert worked for the Alberta government for several years. Later, he earned a masters and doctorate at Harvard University and a masters from University of Alberta.
He moved to Yukon in 1991 to work in the territorial government’s Department of Education and became director of the Bureau of Statistics in 1995.
As an consultant working in developing countries, he takes a broad moral view of the issues before him.
“A large part of international development aid just goes wasted because it doesn’t attempt to understand the context it’s in.
“Once you understand it, you can start working around it. But then you start running into a moral problem: to what extent do we intervene to change a culture?”
“That’s not a trivial question,” he says.
“In my work, I will actively engage people in that discussion.”
The photo at the top of this post was scanned from a hard-copy newspaper edition. I dropped by Gerry’s office for his autograph (see lower left corner of the photo) before posting it here.
Today is the first day of Gerry’s last week at the Bureau. May our Lord bless him and his family in all their future adventures.
