An entrepreneur who won a provincial business award after taking over Calm Air when her husband Arnold died, Gail Morberg was also a noted philanthropist and a dedicated volunteer.
Morberg died Feb. 27 at the age of 79, just a few months shy of her 80th birthday, leaving Manitoba without one of its most generous donors to organizations in the north and Winnipeg.
“She was a very generous soul and a person that, if you did know her and she asked you to do something, it was very hard to say no,” says Sandra Ross-Hitch who worked for Calm Air for 16 years while the Morbergs were the owners, including the four years between Arnold Morberg’s death in 2005 and the sale of the company for $59 million to Exchange Income Corporation in 2009. “She just had that knack, that personality that made you want to do things for her, for your community because she’s asking you to and that takes a talent. She was a special woman. People wanted to follow her because she was doing that first.”
Born in Saskatoon in 1940, Gail co-founded Calm Air with Arnold in Stony Rapids in 1962 and together they grew it into the largest privately owned airline in Canada, eventually relocating its headquarters first to Lynn Lake and then to Thompson.
“She made you feel like you were a part of a family and that’s what I’ll miss about both of my employer parents now passing away,” said Ross-Hitch.
Morberg became well-known for her generosity in Winnipeg after selling the airline, financing the construction of a new kitchen at Siloam Mission and purchasing a St.Boniface home for $550,000 to turn it into a residence for homeless people. She also donated $1 million to A Port in the Storm for their efforts to establish a residence for northern and rural patients who have to travel to Winnipeg for medical treatment after having previously contributed $100,000 to the organization in 2009. She also donated $25,000 to Thompson’s Northern Spirit Manor for the purchase of a handivan because one of Calm Air’s former employees was a resident there.
One of the founding board members of the Thompson Community Foundation, which now gives away over $100,000 locally per year, Gail and her late husband were inducted into the order of Thompson in 2011 and she was also named Manitoba Business Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008.
“Arnold passed away so then she stepped up and she was actually in the company in every day after that,” recalls Ross-Hitch. “Of course she had a president in Gary Beaurivage but she was in every day and would see employees and that and make sure that everything was running smoothly. She just stepped in and there was no misstep. It was like, ‘OK, Dad’s not here anymore but mom’s stepping in,’ like normal parents do in a family atmosphere. Mom’s now in charge. It’s the end of an era for many employees that started to work for Calm Air that felt like they were a part of a family and now our parents are gone.”
A celebration of Morberg’s life was originally planned in Winnipeg for what would have been her 80th birthday April 15 but was postponed until June 19 due to the ban on large public gatherings imposed as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
