It’s time to travel
After several years of dedicated volunteer work for Federal Retirees, national board member Connie Kehler plans to travel more when she steps down in June.
Connie Kehler has served on the national board of Federal Retirees for the past six years. Now, she says, it’s time to travel with her husband, Gord Gozda. Photo: Dave Chan
When Connie Kehler steps down from Federal Retirees’ national board in June, the association will lose someone who has always sought to make a contribution wherever she has found herself.
“Friends, family, people have always meant a lot to me,” Kehler says. “Perhaps that was why I worked for so many years in [human resources]. It was a natural fit.”
Kehler has a resumé that is filled with achievement and, in its way, startlingly simple. At age 17, in 1981, she started working for the federal government in Winnipeg. She began in a clerical position at the Department of National Revenue (now known as the Canada Revenue Agency), and worked there without interruption until her retirement in 2018.
“Getting that first government job was plain dumb luck,” she recalls. “I was only 17, had lost a job, and was on [employment insurance], when the unemployment people told me about a job opening in the government. I applied, got tested and soon I was working as a clerical [member] in the tax centre in Winnipeg.”
She knew immediately that this department would be a good place for her to develop as a civil servant. The career opportunities were abundant, and there were lots of training programs to round out her skills. “I could say I grew up in the tax centre,” she says now.
Her career took a brief turn in 1988, when she began five years of work at what was then called Health and Welfare Canada, finishing as a unit manager and project team leader in resourcing and development. She then returned to the Department of National Revenue, working in human resources (HR), which was her dominant area for the remainder of her career.
“HR was always good to me,” she says. “It was a good career base. I really liked the people I worked with. And I think the human values that are important in HR really helped me grow as a person.”
Always on the clever side, her early start, at age 17, with the government was only possible because she had skipped a grade in school. And when she took two courses in management and business administration at Athabasca University from 2003 to 2005, she had GPAs of 3.9 and 4.0, even while continuing full-time work and raising
a family.
Kehler has been a member of Federal Retirees since 2015, when she joined in part so she could benefit from cheap travel insurance. In 2018, she joined the Winnipeg & District branch as a director at large, responsible for social media and website updates. Late in 2020, she was elected to the national board, where she’s enjoyed the work even while believing it might be time to step back.
“I’ve met such wonderful people on the board and I’m happy to report I’ve developed some real friendships there. They have such diversity of knowledge and background, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of the work — and I will miss the energy of our discussions.”
Why go then?
She says she and her husband, Greg Gozda, want to spend time with family and travel extensively while they still easily can. (The family has a decided feminine cast, with four daughters, two granddaughters, and even a female dog, she says.)
They’re planning trips to Mexico, long a favourite family destination, as well as to more far-flung places, including Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.
“We’ll be travelling a lot, but we won’t forget where home is.”