Kjell Nymark's path to being an NWFA Regional Instructor started at age 21 on an ice rink in Finland.
He went there to play hockey after college and do some soul searching. He found a spot on a second division team that came with a place to live. He dreamed of staying, but then, in 1989, the Iron Curtain came down. As Russia opened up to the world, so, too, did the Eastern Bloc's talented hockey players, and Nymark lost his spot on the team. 
What to do? Having seen how many people in Finland were trained tradesman, he went back to Canada and asked his wife's father for a job at his hardwood company.
He loved it.
"I always liked wood, but never had considered I could make a living with wood until I went to Finland and found myself," Nymark said. "The only time I really found direction is when I got into hardwood."
That is, he felt great while working for BC Hardwood until 13 years later when he felt an itch to do more. At the urging of his wife, he went to Las Vegas to take a course on becoming an installation trainer.
"I couldn't believe after 13 years in the business how much there was to learn and how little I knew," Nymark said. "Meeting those people, my eyes were opened, and I realized we don't really know anything."
He took to it like a tongue to a groove, and in the process, he met some key personalities involved in NWFA training, including Rusty Swindoll, Kevin Mullany and Mark Lamanno. Before long he was teaching at the Las Vegas schools. He was teaching good people who were eager to soak up the best techniques and new information-it was impossible not to like, he said.
Eventually Nymark started his own company, Nymark Custom Wood Floors (Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada). He soon realized, though, that he preferred instruction and inspection to running a business, and he scaled operations back to be a one-man operation so he could start consultation, training and inspections-focused Precision Wood Floor Services. Now, being an NWFA Regional Trainer is part of that equation.
"I look forward to just meeting the people that are out there; I like connecting with people from different areas, I've always enjoyed that," Nymark said. "I enjoy those teaching moments when you can see that somebody gets something they didn't before-that's my favorite."
"Every time I teach a class I feel I learn just as much as everybody else has. There is so much more to what we do than putting pieces of wood together," he adds.
This year Nymark led the Magna Hardwood Floors International Inc. (Alberta, Canada) school and will teach at the following workshops:
May 7-9: Certification School | Installation Certification | Sand & Finish Certification | Certification Testing | A & A Flooring (Toronto)
May 19-23: Moisture Mitigation & Water/Wood | Problems, Causes & Cures | Wood Floor Sales | Installation Certification Training | Sand & Finish Certification Training | Certification Testing | Portland, Oregon
Aug. 5-8: Intermediate Installation | E.J. Welch Company (Chicago)
Aug. 26-28: Basic Sand & Finish | Chattahoochee Technical College (Marietta, Ga.)
Oct. 6-10: Job Site Preparation | Estimating/Job Costing | Installation Workshop | CP Installation Testing | EPA Lead Renovators | Energyst-Solutions (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
To read more about the revamped NWFA technical schools and see the schedule for this year, click here. To register, click here.
The NWFA Regional Instructors for 2014 are:
