Kipling welcomes new CAO
Gail Dakue has seen a lot of changes in her time as Chief Administrative Officer with the town of Kipling. Over the course of two decades and several iterations of town council, she’s had a front-row seat on recent history for the bustling community of 1,053 (according to the most recent census numbers in 2022).
“I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and my husband retired two years ago,” she explained. “We just decided that we had some traveling and different things that we wanted to do. It seemed like a good time to retire. Our financial planner tells us most people travel between 60 and 70, so we figured we better start!”
While town council is the head of a community, some may point out that the CAO is the neck that has the ability to move that head around, making the role a very important job.
Enter Andrew Rygh, who returned to Kipling in 2022 and will be taking on the CAO role once Dakue officially retires at the end of May.
“I was looking for work, Gail had mentioned that she was looking to retire and then the job came open and I threw in my application,” said Rygh when asked of his decision to apply for the CAO position.
After his first few days on the job, shadowing Dakue to learn the ropes for the time being, Rygh’s excitement was evident.
“It’s fantastic. It’s going to be tough when Gail does fully retire, but it’s been a good first few days. I did experience the council meeting, and that was a good experience as well,” he said. “It’s like drinking from a fire hose, that’s expected with all new jobs. This one in particular there’s lots of moving parts. I’ve always been interested in the administration job.”
Rygh and his family spent 15 years in Halifax where he was employed with a bank. The urban lifestyle and especially work/life balance through the recent pandemic placed the seed of a less ramped-up pace in his mind.
“Through Covid, I think there’s a lot of people who experienced their hours of work went up as they worked from home; it was too easy to get up at seven in the morning to work until seven at night, so we were looking for a change of pace,” said Rygh.
No stranger to the world of municipal politics, Rygh’s father, Lorne, served as Reeve for the RM of Kingsley and was keen on seeing his son’s family move home.
“He was trying to attract me back to the Kipling area, saying that if one of these jobs came available, that it’s a fairly good job to get yourself into,” Rygh said.
Ryan Kiedrowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The World-Spectator
