Tim Coonen, OMI
Father Tim Coonen was born in Brillion, Wisconsin. He was a music student at the University of Wisconsin. During his second year, he hitchhiked around Lake Superior. On his second day he was picked up by a Christian youth group run by a Catholic priest from Montreal. He stayed with them for eight months. The tour took him to Vancouver Island where he spent time with an Oblate order living on Meare's Island out of Tofino. This led him to join the order. They sent him to Edmonton for training and the Ottawa Valley as a novice. He finished two university degrees in Edmonton, a third in graduate school in Boston, returned west and was ordained in 1983.1)
Father Tim Coonen, OMI, was assigned to a parish in Terrace and he loved the church and the community. Three years later he was offered a post at Teslin. He was just turning thirty-two and thought it was a good time to go north. He spent four years there, was a volunteer with the ambulance service, and was on the board of the George Johnson Museum and the Yukon College campus committee. In 1990, at the height of the Curragh years, he was asked to take over from an aging brother priest in Faro and his volunteer activity continued. After the mine closed, Coonen worked on a committee to help miners relocate and cope. The stipend was enough to keep the doors open for eighteen months at the interdenominational Church of the Apostles.2)
In 1994, Coonan’s bishop transferred him from Faro to Dawson. The three-year assignment became six, and then Bishop Lobsinger was killed in a plane accident and the diocese decided to keep things stable until the new bishop was named. Five and a half years later, Coonen reflected on his over eleven years in Dawson. The appointment of Bishop Gary Gordon as the new Bishop of Whitehorse followed a few days after Fater Coonan’s departure from the Yukon.3)