Gilles Pepin, EMBA 96, sitting in the conference room of the Montreal Aviation Museum, overlooking the diorama that took him and his team six months to complete. | All photos: W. Mark Roe, MAM
“If I need to sleep and I’m not anywhere near my bed, I’m in trouble,” Pepin says. “As I approach the four-hour mark of being awake, my memory is affected.”
RBC offered him a generous severance package in recognition of his years of hard work. Pepin accepted, retiring to the care of his wife, a former nurse.
What, then, for a now-disabled man of seemingly boundless ambition to do?
Aside from being a financial planner, Pepin has also played professional tennis. In 1993, he ran for the leadership of the Equality Party, a federalist political party in Quebec.
First, he took a moment to recoup. Away from the marble-floored halls of money management, he let his body rest.
But then, he got restless.
“I’ve always been an aviation buff, ever since I was a young lad,” Pepin says.
“When I went to Collège Bourget [in Rigaud, Que.], I devoured every single World War II book in the library. I’m also a model railroader. I’ve worked with miniatures all my life as a hobby.”
His mind a galaxy of knowledge about Second World War airplanes and model crafting, Pepin approached John Lawson, president of the Montreal Aviation Museum (MAM). He pitched a program, “We Build Heritage,” which would offer exact replicas of aircraft, to scale, to interested donors.
The museum accepted. Pepin and his team of volunteers began work, striving for historical exactitude.
“The research is half of the work,” Pepin says. “I’m building a single engine fighter right now. With all the research, it’ll take me two months.”
A closer look at the diorama Pepin and his team built in memory of Malcolm Dalton Loucks, Canadian veteran and squadron leader. Loucks was the senior flying control officer of a large Royal Air Force base in Yorkshire, England, during the Second World War.