John Nightingale stands on a ledge above what was once the Vancouver Aquarium’s killer-whale pool. Dolphins frolic below in the May sunshine as a living example of how the facility continues to evolve.
“Killer whales need acres to swim in,” he says, sounding a bit nostalgic for what were once a main draw at one of Vancouver’s biggest tourist attractions.
“If you propose building a several-acre-sized whale pool in Stanley Park, it would be inappropriate. That’s not even contemplating the whales-in-captivity issue.”
More appropriate for the 57-year-old facility, Nightingale believes, is the expansion currently underway, including:
•a redesigned 47,000-square-foot expansion of the aquarium’s entrance gallery;
•an outdoor, half-covered plaza that the aquarium can use for performances;
•a new indoor food service.
When that work completes next summer, a second phase will launch – one that will replace crumbling concrete in what is now the dolphin pool.
“When people turn 50 they go to an eye doctor and dentist,” he said. “The aquarium version of that is to replace rotting concrete and bad pipes.”
Future redevelopment at the aquarium will then include rebuilding the parking lot that he says provides the city with about $1 million annually.
“Over the next five or six years, people will see some fundamental changes and a lot more space,” he said. “It can be quite crowded in here in the summer so that’s a good thing.”
The changes keep the 65-year-old from contemplating retirement. There is simply too much to do and he wants to see the evolution that he’s put in place come to fruition.
Tourism boosters say Vancouver is lucky he has that drive.
“If you show up at a dinner and you’re seated at the table with John, he’ll be the smartest guy at the table although he would never act that way because he’s very self-effacing,” said Tourism Vancouver CEO Rick Antonson, who has known Nightingale for almost all of Nightingale’s 20 years at the helm of the aquarium.
“Look at the intelligence, adaptability and flexibility of the fish world that he’s close to and an admirer of and schooled in. He deals with that and then he’s also adept and savvy with the less sophisticated world of the business ecosystem.”
Copies of Business in Vancouver and plenty of books clutter Nightingale’s office and provide evidence that he keeps up to date on business issues.
One book atop a stack is Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, co-written by Whole Foods Market co-CEO John Mackey.
Born in eastern Oregon, Nightingale achieved a bachelor’s degree in biology from Eastern Oregon University in his hometown of La Grande.
He moved to Seattle to complete his master’s degree in fisheries biology and a doctorate degree in physiology at the University of Washington.
Then, as a twenty-something whippersnapper, he took a job at an engineering company that was designing the Seattle Aquarium.
“I was less tactful in my 20s,” Nightingale said. “I was a harsh critic of the standard of operations at aquariums. The director of the Seattle Aquarium then said, ‘OK, wise ass. Put up or shut up.’”
He stayed in the post seven years and then left to co-manage an exhibit design-consulting firm.
One of his final projects there was to design a concept for what is now the Maui Ocean Centre.
That took him to Hawaii for almost three years. But when delays cropped up, he realized it made no financial sense for him to be biding his time in the Aloha State.
He took a job in New York City as assistant aquarium director at what was then known as the New York Zoological Society.
“For a country boy from the west, New York was a fascinating place to live,” Nightingale said, “although I felt like I was living on a movie set.”
He bumped into Woody Allen a few times at Nightingale’s regular coffee shop. And, as the society’s senior staff representative on its marketing and communications committees, he sat next to Tony Randall and Glenn Close, who were on the society’s board of directors.
It was 1993 and the Vancouver Aquarium’s founding director Murray Newman was retiring after 37 years at the facility.
Despite the New York glamour, Nightingale jumped at the chance to come back west and to a province that he visited frequently when he lived in Seattle.
“I didn’t expect to stay,” Nightingale said. “I was thinking I’d give it four or five years and then see what’s next. But it turned out I love Canada. I love Vancouver. Besides, the aquarium is so interesting, why would I ever want to leave?”
His passion for the job is reflected in his results. Nightingale has quadrupled the aquarium’s revenue in the past two decades to $29.8 million in 2012, which was also the first year that attendance passed the one million mark.
And he is more than halfway to helping the aquarium achieve its goal of raising $100 million to rebuild the facility.
The aquarium has already landed $15 million from the federal government and $10 million from Victoria.
Teck Resources Ltd. (TSX:TCK) last year announced that it was giving the aquarium the largest corporate donation that the facility has ever received: $12.5 million, including $10 million to the capital campaign and $2.5 million to fund ongoing education, research and conservation programs.
Smaller corporate donations include $500,000 from the Royal Bank of Canada (TSX:RY) and $750,000 from the Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO).
“We’re also putting in our own money,” he said, demonstrating both the aquarium’s financial health and the oddity of a cultural institution financing its capital campaign from its own operations.
“We’ve already put in the first $5 million, and we’ll eventually invest another $12 million over the course of the project.”
Married to City of Vancouver senior cultural planner Jacquie Gijssen, Nightingale has three children from a first marriage and four grandchildren.
Outside of work, he is active on various boards and is a director of the Vancouver Board of Trade.
He skis, cycles and occasionally sings in a chorus. Nightingale also tries to spend as much time as possible making trips to Seattle, where his grandchildren live.
“I’m reminded of what Canadian author Douglas Coupland said, ‘If I’d known grandchildren were so much fun, I would have had them first.’”
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