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Mark Dobbin has one of Canada's hardest acts to follow. Mr. Dobbin, 47, inherited the mantle of his late father Craig Dobbin, an entrepreneurial legend in Newfoundland, where he built CHC Helicopter, the world's largest helicopter operator. The elder Mr. Dobbin, who sported an outsized personality, died 14 months ago at age 71, leaving Mark, one of five children, as the new chair of Vancouver-based CHC. Mark is also president of Killick Capital, a private equity firm based in St. John's and built on Dobbin money. He talks about being the successor to a titan.

Will Mark Dobbin's CHC be

different than the company headed by Craig Dobbin?

Things have changed significantly. My father was the entrepreneurial driving force behind CHC. He showed a lot of foresight in terms of the management team and the board of directors that he was able to recruit.

But I'm not the executive chairman - I'm a non-executive chairman. Sylvain Allard is a very, very capable CEO and we were fortunate that we inherited these roles at a time when the dynamics in the helicopter business have never been better. So all of our challenges are related to managing growth and managing opportunity - whereas my father spent a lot of his life manufacturing the opportunities. We're doing a little bit of harvesting now.

Would you ever consider

selling out to private equity players, as was contemplated once by your father?

You always hear rattling and rumours about that because people like to speculate. But right now it's nice to have just a steady-state, stable company.

Do you still get calls from the private equity guys?

You don't want to speculate too much on what kind of incoming calls you get, but people always want to know where you're thinking. The mindset of those guys is they hate to miss an opportunity.

So I guess they've got a watch list of a number of different companies.

And you're on it?

I presume. It would be fair to say.

How has the company evolved?

It's entered into a much more managerial phase right now. I quite enjoy the role of chairman - I like being on boards. For example, I'm on the board of Aurora Resources, a uranium development company up in Labrador. I enjoy that role of understanding the business. I find there is a great learning opportunity.

What exactly does Killick do?

It's a small private equity manager with two funds, the Killick Atlantic Fund which invests in Atlantic Canadian businesses, and the Killick Aerospace Fund. We have a company in Dallas that we are using as a platform for aerospace growth. It's called Avatas and it repairs and overhauls the Pratt and Whitney PT6A engine; buys and sells CFM56 engines [used on Airbus planes]; and distributes parts for small business jets, things like that. At this stage, the funds are entirely family money but down the road we may take our track record to market. We'd be in the very top quartile of private equity returns in Canada.

Can you make money

investing in Atlantic Canada?

Absolutely. We've found some fantastic investment opportunities here. For example, we invested in Greyfirst, a small local IT company with the largest online community of content providers in the world. They have a product called Celtx which is used to create digital media projects and the installed base is growing 30 per cent a month.

There is not a lack of opportunities but a lack of investment capital in Atlantic Canada. Our investment thesis when we set up the Atlantic fund was there was a shortage of capital and valuations would be attractive - and that is proving true. The Atlantic fund is $20-million and we have $24-million in the aerospace fund.

How do you keep people in the province?

I always used to say I was never sorry to see a young person leave here as long as I thought they were coming back. It does everyone good to go away for a while and broaden perspectives. Then, I was becoming increasingly concerned that they would not come back - they would set down roots in places like Alberta.

But I am more comfortable now that as our economy grows and provides the ability to earn a fair living, a lot will come home for the quality of life. The fact we have 6-per-cent unemployment in St John's says that is no longer a dream. Anybody in St. John's who wants a job can get a job. That's the reality.

How do you build a

technology industry here?

We've got a university here with over 18,000 students. It's got a world-class geology department, the Centre for Cold Ocean Research, an engineering faculty and faculty of business, a good computer science department. Anywhere else, all this would be covered by a plethora of venture capitalists and investment angels, but there is very little of that here.

Is that what Premier Danny Williams should do with his energy billions?I don't know if I'd advocate that, but I would like to see more of our capital resources directed back into the province. Quebec and Ontario have been successful with that. All of our money flows out to money managers elsewhere in the world. There is not even a hint of a desire that, if there were any good opportunities back here, they would invest in Newfoundland. We haven't anything like the Caisse that's done a lot to develop business in Quebec. It's just "send your money to Toronto" every week.

At the very start, it would be nice to tell the people who manage our [institutional] money that 2 per cent had to be invested in Newfoundland. Some of that money, particularly on the public equity side, could be managed out of here. Why is it all going away?

Your father left a great legacy.

We really miss him. We worked together off-and-on for most of my career. We were having a lot of fun together. He'd been ill for a long while but was dealing with it. Everyone just thought he'd continue on for a lot longer. He'd dodged so many bullets.

Do you have a different style?

Oh yeah, this whole thing about trying to fill someone else's shoes - that's setting yourself up for failure. I've got my own objectives in life - what will make me and my family happy. I do want to be successful in business, to continue to grow the business, both Killick and CHC. But I want to do that in parallel with my family life. I'm trying to get that balance right.

I have three children, 13, 12 and 10. My wife [Sandra] is from Colombia - she's a Colombian-Newfoundlander now. I met her when CHC had a contract in Bogota. I was back and forth there every couple of weeks.

Are you different from your father in that way?

Family was also important to him but he was more of a swashbuckling entrepreneur and that is something you can't go out and pretend to be. I don't want to make it sound like I'm bureaucratic or non-entrepreneurial - I just operate in a different sort of way.

How would you describe that?

Quieter. Craig was larger than life. He didn't leave any gas in the tank.

Mark Dobbin

Title: Co-founder and president, Killick Capital Inc., St. John's; chairman of CHC Helicopter Corp., Vancouver.

Born: St. John's, 47 years old.

Education: Bachelor of Commerce, Memorial University of Newfoundland; Masters of Business Administration, Dalhousie University.

Career highlights:

Spent 17 years at CHC, rising to senior vice-president.

1998-2003: CEO of Vector Aerospace Corp., a spinoff from CHC.

Late 2003: Ousted as CEO by dissident shareholders, including Halifax aerospace magnate Ken Rowe.

2004: Founded Killick Capital to focus on Atlantic Canada and aerospace.

October, 2006: Became CHC chairman on death of his father Craig, 71.

gpitts@globeandmail.com