Mike Tims spent 33 years inside one of Calgary’s most respected energy investment firms before stepping into a second act as Vice Chairman of Matco Investments Ltd, and the Southern Alberta Business Hall of Fame added him to its 2021 class in recognition of both chapters, plus a long list of community roles most Calgarians never hear about. His career traces the arc of Calgary’s energy finance sector itself, growing alongside the city’s oil patch and then diversifying as the sector matured.
A Career Built at Peters and Co
Tims joined Peters & Co. Limited, a Calgary investment firm specializing in energy, and stayed for 33 years, eventually rising to Chairman after earlier serving as President and CEO. That tenure placed him at the center of Calgary’s energy finance sector through decades of expansion and volatility alike, and it built the reputation that carried him into his current role as Vice Chairman of Matco Investments Ltd, a private investment holding company. Few Calgary financiers can claim that kind of continuity, three decades at a single firm followed by a second executive role that keeps him active in the local investment community today.
An Education That Started at Home
Tims earned a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary, graduating with distinction as a gold medalist, then added an MBA from Harvard Business School. The University of Calgary later awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, a fitting bookend for someone whose career and civic life have stayed rooted in the city where he studied. That local grounding, a Calgary undergraduate degree feeding an international business education and then a career built entirely at home, is part of what makes his profile resonate with students in Junior Achievement’s programs, who are told repeatedly that Alberta credentials can carry real weight.
Recognition Well Beyond Bay Street
The list of honours attached to Tims’s name is long. He was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2018, received the Fraser Institute’s Founders’ Award the same year, and picked up the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship from the Canada Institute in 2016. The Oil and Gas Council gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015, and he was inducted into the Canadian Investment Industry Hall of Fame in 2014. None of that reflects time behind a desk alone. Tims served as Chairman of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund, the Investment Dealers Association of Canada, the United Way of Calgary and Area, and West Island College in Alberta, and he is the immediate past Chairman of the National Gallery of Canada, a role that took his civic contributions well outside the energy sector where he made his name.
What the Hall of Fame Honours
Junior Achievement Southern Alberta built the Hall of Fame to give young people a living example of what disciplined, community minded business careers can look like, and Tims’s record covers both halves of that mandate, a long run of professional achievement paired with sustained volunteer leadership across arts, finance regulation, and social services. It is the kind of career students in Junior Achievement’s classroom programs are meant to study closely, not for a single headline moment but for the pattern of showing up on boards year after year. The organization’s full account of his career, credentials, and board work is available through JA Southern Alberta’s laureate profile at jasab.ca.
How many careers can claim 33 years at one firm and still find room for a chairmanship at the National Gallery of Canada?
