To Bob Tretiak, who carried his farming roots to the CEO’s chair with Applied Terravision Systems, substance wins over style.

So it is with great delight that Tretiak replays his bizarre hole-in-one on the 13th at Carnmoney Golf & Country Club.

“I hit a bad shot,” says Tretiak, exploding with laughter while pointing to a photograph in his office of the par-three hole. “I closed my eyes and pleaded with the ball: ‘Oh, please, just go across the water!’ The ball hit the cart path, bounced on the green and trickled into the hole!”

As Tretiak, 52, has learned on the journey from his family’s farm in northeastern Saskatchewan to his stature as head of one of Canada’s fastest growing high-tech companies, it doesn’t matter how many cart paths you hit along way. As long as you get where you’re supposed to go.

When the laughter dies down, a sombre-faced Tretiak passionately raps his knuckles on his desktop.

“I believe in doing things the solid way. I don’t believe in all the fluff. Maybe it’s my Ukrainian upbringing, but to me in business you’ve got to be straight and honest. It’s the only way I know.”

This is his story in 20 questions.

1. Did you aspire to be a farmer like your dad?
“I loved farming, but I could never be a farmer. There’s too many elements you can’t control, like the weather. I’d be one of those guys out there with a hairdryer drying the swaths. It’d drive me nuts.”

2. When did you become interested in computers?
“Our guidance counsellor in high school told us once that computers were going to be the thing of the future. I started researching it a bit then. And I’ve never looked back.”

3. What did the farm teach you?
“Hard work. I’d be on the combine 24 hours. I wouldn’t get off ’till I was finished. My dad would be out there flashing the lights at two in the morning. I’d say: ‘No.’ If it was dry all night, I’d be out there around the clock. That’s the same here. When there’s a project, you’ve got to go after it. Make hay while the sun shines. We weren’t rich, but the farm was a great lifestyle and great family environment.”

4. Who was your first role model?
“My dad (Mike). He truly was a mentor. There’d always be kids in the house when he lived in Nipawin (Sask.) because they wanted to b.s. with my Big Mike. When he died suddenly of a heart attack (1982), the church was just full of high-school kids. That mentoring, I like that.”

5. So after 10 years with PSI Software, what motivated you to go into business for yourself?
“In 1986, some friends challenged me. I said: ‘Running my own company has never been a big thing for me.’ Just doing what I wanted to do and satisfying customers was rewarding to me. But then I went ahead and just did it.”

6. The best advice you can give to a budding entrepreneur?
“You’ve got to have the passion. If you’re doing it just for the money, it doesn’t work. There’ll be days when you’ll be challenged to the nth degree where you might question: ‘Why did I do this?’ So if you don’t have that unquenchable passion in your gut to see it through, you won’t make it. If the fire’s not in you, those other tools won’t kick in.”

7. The biggest hurdle you’ve had to overcome?
“The public markets are always the hurdle. You wonder what you can do when the market goes south. You just go on. It’s the least controllable part of your business, so it’s always the toughest thing to work around. The challenges of a public company are far different than those of a private company. Half my time is spent being a public company.”

8. God taps you on the shoulder and says you can change one thing in your life?
“We went public too soon with too small of a company. So I’d go back and raise money in a very early stage of our life. My advice to a young company is to get private money quickly, get the company built up substantially and then go public when you’re much bigger.”

9. Do you have any regrets?
“Personally, I would have started my own company much earlier in life.”

10. Your house is on fire. A prized possession you’d take with you?
“Well, I’m not . . . No, that’s not true. After my family was out, then I’d take my Corvette out of the garage. It’s my passion.”

11. You call in sick but you feel fine. How do you spend the day?
“In the summer, I’d go golfing. I actually, believe it or not, spend a ton of time on the Internet . . . Being a techie, I’d say you can broaden your mind way faster on the Internet. It’s faster than reading.”

12. So you’re in your glory with high-tech?
“Oh yeah. Wireless Internet. Anywhere. Any time. One of the things I’ve been trying to get working is the Blackberry wireless Internet device. I had one, but it was the wrong kind. I don’t treat it as an opportunity for a career. But I want to live and breathe it.”

13. It’s important to you to share your wealth of high-tech knowledge?
“I had a presentation this morning at a seminar on the e-business of oil and gas. I love speaking in public. It’s my way of giving back my knowledge to the industry because I’ve collected so much.”

14. Bill Gates sits next to you at a shoeshine stand. One question you’d ask him?
“I need to understand from him how the Microsoft direction in the Internet is different from, say, a Sun Microsystems-Oracle — how he sees them converging. There’s kind of a Microsoft way and a Sun Microsystems-Oracle way. You can’t have two of them. There has to be some convergence if we’re going to have truly a unified network world.”

15. So how do you get that out of the man?
“If there was what I call the cone of silence, you know like there used to be on the old TV show Maxwell Smart (Get Smart). Every time they had to say something secret, this plastic cone used to come down. I’d say, Bill, if you could speak to me under the cone . . . boy, I’d like to get into his head and see what he thinks.”

16. So where were you in ’72 when Paul Henderson scored that goal on your namesake, (Vladislav) Tretiak, in the Canada-Soviet series?
“I was here in town at the home of one of the guys I worked with. There was about a dozen of us who snuck away from work to watch the game.”

17. Have you met Tretiak?
“Oh, yeah, several times we’ve chatted. My background is Ukrainian and I met him the very first time he was playing hockey here. I waited for him by the bus. I talked to him in Ukrainian and Russian. Unfortunately, he was kind of the old-school Communist. He was kind of reserved.”

18. Did you play hockey?
“Yeah, I was even a goalie — until Tretiak came along and wrecked my career.”

19. Where do you see yourself a decade from now?
“I hope to be somewhat retired. We’re currently planning on building a house on Lake Diefenbaker (in southern Saskatchewan). There’s sand beaches everywhere. It’s gorgeous, gorgeous! I’m already planning on building my own high-speed Internet access to there.”

20. So you have a secret plan of attack with your computer from the lake?
“I’ve accumulated so much knowledge and I really need to have a channel to get that across to people. I intend to sit there and do some creative things. I just want to utilize the tool (Internet) because it really hasn’t been fully utilized. I see myself having the time to clearly crystallize my thinking. I know how my mind works. It gathers data. It sucks up data. And then, and I don’t know when, but it just becomes crystal clear what has to be done. But you need that quiet time. I know that sitting at the lake house in my den overlooking the lake, it would happen. One day, it’d be like this (snaps his fingers). There it is!”

THE COMPANY: Applied Terravision

* Brass: Bob Tretiak, CEO/president; Warren Coles, CFO.
* Focus: ATR is an e-business services provider that offers accounting, marketing and land-management applications as traditional software or as an application service provider over the Internet.
* Outlook: ATS is in the process of merging with The Petroleum Place.
* Awards: ATS recently made Deloitte & Touche’s prestigious Fast 500 list, ranking 441st among fast-growing North American companies.
* Recent Stock Price: $1.70 (yr range, .50-$4.75)
* Web site: atsi.com
* Address: #900-800 5th Ave. S.W., T2P 3T6
* Phone: 218-8300

IN PROFILE: Bob Tretiak

* Born/raised/age: Stenen, Sask.; 52.
* Title: CEO/president/co-founder, ATR.
* Education: University of Regina, math degree.
* Family: Wife Irene, daughters Marla, 18, Cara, 21.
* Role model: Mike Tretiak, his late father.
* Claim to fame: Hole-in-one at Carnmoney Golf & Country Club.
* Kicks back by: Cruisin’ in his 2000 Corvette, surfin’ the web, bouncin’ golf balls off cart paths.