New Wawatay CEO calls for quality of service

Wawatay Native Communications Society’s new CEO is looking to implement a quality management system at the long-running communications organization.
“When I was working at the Royal Bank of Canada, their emphasis was on quality of service, so that is what I want to implement at Wawatay,” said David Neegan, who took over as chief executive officer Nov. 29. “We would put emphasis on servicing the communities.”
Neegan is planning to develop an ISO 9000 quality management system at Wawatay within the very near future. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9000 is a family of standards related to quality management systems and are designed to help organizations ensure they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders.
“It ensures your advertisers, customers and communities that you are providing them a quality service,” Neegan said.
The Constance Lake band member has previously been employed with a wide variety of companies, organizations and communities, including most recently at Northern Nishnawbe Education Council where he was manager of technical services. He has also worked with Pikangikum, Wood Tech Group, Sioux Lookout Area Aboriginal Management Board, Keewaytinook Okimakanak, Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Niagara Peninsula Aboriginal Area Management Board in Hamilton. During his time at RBC, Neegan was employed as manager of personal banking in Thunder Bay.
“I have always put my heart and soul into everything I have done,” Neegan said.
Neegan feels his background growing up on the land with his grandparents near Mattice, located along Highway 11 east of Hearst, provides him with a good perspective for leading Wawatay.
“My grandparents would spend hours talking about Wesakechak and his adventures,” Neegan said. “There’s one story that was shared with me about one of my great-grandfathers from way back before contact.”
Neegan said the story involved his great-grandfather as a boy being so scared of a hairy creature that had wandered into the community while everyone else was away that he shot the creature with an arrow.
“Everyone came back into the village and he was as white as a ghost,” Neegan said. “All the men got together and they tracked this creature down for about a day and finally caught up to him. They found it sitting on a stump crying with an arrow in its leg.”
Neegan wants to focus on reviving the strong cultural component of northern Ontario’s First Nations people at Wawatay.
“That’s very important about who we are as a people,” Neegan said. “It’s very important to keep those stories alive.”
Neegan remembers spending most of his time as a youth canoeing, hunting, fishing and trapping along the Missinaibi River.
“We didn’t have computers or the TV,” Neegan said. “I would say about 95 per cent of my time, either summer, fall, winter or spring, I would be out in the bush.”
Neegan remembers going out into the bush while in Grade 5 and 6 to snare rabbits and hunt partridge for his grandparents to cook.
“In the summers I would spend it on the river canoeing and fishing,” Neegan said. “When I was a youth, I was taught how to canoe and how to navigate rapids and keep myself safe.”
Neegan also has a strong interest in astronomy that he developed while in university. He studied political science at Lakehead University and community economic development at the University of Guelph.
“I took a philosophy course that had to do with existentialism (individuals determine their own path through their own free will) and determinism (individuals have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions),” Neegan said. “I always believed that things are pre-determined in nature just because of way we are constructed with atoms, electrons and so forth. It just grew from there.”
In addition to astronomy, trapping, hunting and canoeing, Neegan has a variety of other hobbies, including cross-country skiing, weight lifting, running, golf, playing the guitar, reading, writing, world philosophy/religion, mythology and ancient history.