Mike Stimpson

From Conflict to Partnership

2012-01-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

Published in Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining, Winter 2012:
Once upon a time, actually not long ago, conflict and confrontation were rife in Aboriginal communities’ relations with mining and forestry companies. Now, ‘partnership’ and ‘consultation’ and ‘respect’ are keywords.

Half of Cameco’s northern Saskatchewan workforce is Aboriginal, and the uranium company’s list of contractors includes many native-owned firms.

In the Northwest Territories, Diavik Diamond Mine’s operators have developed a productive alliance with Aboriginal communities.

In northwestern Ontario, Pikangikum First Nation has taken bold steps to “be in the driver’s seat” when it comes to responsible development of a big patch of precious boreal forest.

These are ‘good news’ stories for the communities involved, as they represent opportunity and potential prosperity in places where unemployment and poverty run high. But are they isolated instances or part of a trend? Do they bode a future of greater inclusion for Aboriginal peoples in Canada’s resource sectors?

Melanie Sturk is one observer who believes we’re seeing great changes, though she cautions against over-generalizing.

“I think definitely things are getting better in terms of community and company relationships,” Sturk says from the Ottawa offices of the Mining Industry Human Resources (MiHR) Council, where she is Director of Attraction, Retention and Transition. “That being said, each situation is different and some companies and some communities are more receptive to each other than others. However, I think overall the industry and the communities are much more interested in working together.”

One element of that trend is the increasing Aboriginal presence in the workforce – and MiHR is helping to nurture this happy development with Mining Essentials, a partnership program with the Assembly of First Nations that was developed with the Metis National Council and other important organizations. Mining Essentials prepares Aboriginal Canadians for employment with a combination of classroom sessions and practical experience. The pilot stage of the Canada-wide program concluded in February 2011, and it was a great success.

“I think this is a really good example of how industry and Aboriginal peoples can come together and create something that is more effective,” she continues. “One of the very important pieces of qualification (for a training site in the program) is that there’s a three-way partnership happening with a qualified educator, at least one company and the community all on board.”

Another part of the steadily improving relationship between mining and Canada’s indigenous peoples is the increasing occurrence of impact and benefit agreements, or IBAs. Reached between mining companies and First Nation communities, IBAs formalize relations, reduce environmental and other impacts, and secure economic benefits for affected communities. They are simultaneously a means for business to improve interaction with Aboriginal people on the one hand, and a powerful expression of Aboriginal rights on the other. On balance, they can rightly be seen as hopeful signs.

In forestry, a northern BC logging company called Coast Tsimshian Resources serves as something of a model or template for First Nations aspiring to take control of their destinies. Owned by Lax Kw’alaams First Nation, the company holds two forest tenures and is allowed to cut more than 500,000 cubic metres annually. It has been exporting wood to China since 2009, and has sent dividend cheques to band members.

Four provinces to the east, the struggling Pikangikum First Nation has established the Whitefeather Forest Management Corporation in pursuit of the same sort of success Lax Kw’alaams has found with Coast Tsimshian.

BEACON OF HOPE

Aaron Palmer, Planning Forester at Whitefeather, says the corporation’s focus at this point is forest management planning. “The intent of the Whitefeather Forest Management Corporation is economic development, and the part that we’re working on now is getting a woodlands operation up and running. There is work being done to look at building a mill facility in the Whitefeather Forest that would receive wood harvested within the management unit.

“Pikangikum First Nation is looking at building a forest products processing business which will produce products with the highest value end use of the wood fibre,” he continues from his office in Red Lake. “The strategy is to use a ‘value chain optimization’ approach for developing highest-value uses from the quality timber available on the Whitefeather Forest.

“Really what it comes down to is the elders of Pikangikum had a vision for their ancestral lands, to be in the driver’s seat for what happens and also to provide jobs for people. Given that the Whitefeather forest has such value, they wanted to ensure the optimum use of the resource.”

The main partnership in this case is between Pikangikum/Whitefeather and the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources, though the Aboriginal community is open to the possibility of partners in the private sector.

Palmer enthuses that Whitefeather is “a massive beacon of hope” for Pikangikum, a community with greater than 90% unemployment. Aboriginal communities frequently came out on the losing end as companies based in faraway big cities cut down trees and created mines in pursuit of profit, with arguably not enough regard for the impact on native land, water, heritage and livelihood.

Industry’s relationships with First Nations and Metis people have been riddled with conflict, perhaps most dramatically demonstrated by blockades that have periodically sprung up across the country. One of the longest-running blockades is near Kenora in Ontario’s northwest, where Grassy Narrows denizens first blocked logging trucks back in December 2002. The dispute still roils on, with the Aboriginal side heralding a court victory last summer when an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the province had infringed on treaty rights.

Further north in Ontario, Marten Falls First Nation has imposed (and ceased) blockades on ice landing strips and mineral exploration in the chromite-rich Ring of Fire. Matawa First Nations’ Ring of Fire Co-ordinator, Raymond Ferris, seemed to succeed in finding détente between member First Nations and exploration companies, but then Matawa chiefs announced in October their withdrawal of support for Ring of Fire development.

On a more encouraging note, four First Nations signed an agreement in August to develop a service corridor for Ring of Fire activities. “We want to work with the government, the industry and all other people that may be involved in that process (of Ring of Fire development),” Webequie Chief cornelius Wabasse told Thunder Bay’s Chronicle-Journal. “We want to be fully involved in the development.”

The relationship between Aboriginal peoples and industry is still imperfect and, indeed, far from ideal. But most observers would agree that it is better, and the mining and forestry sectors are making efforts to improve them still further.

Gary Merasty, a Cameco Corp. Vice- President and former Grand Chief of the Prince Albert Grand Council, says the uranium company has made great progress in bridging differences and strengthening ties with First Nations in northern Saskatchewan.

The proportion of Cameco’s Saskatchewan mines workforce that is First Nations, Metis or northerners has more than doubled to about 50%, Merasty notes from the company’s headquarters in Saskatoon. “We are at this time Canada’s largest industrial employer of Aboriginal people.”

And the progress isn’t limited to people drawing wages from Cameco, he notes. “We have a very proactive northern preferred supplier program. Upwards of 70% of all the services that we require at our mine sites are procured or purchased from northern-owned businesses or companies. We insist that these companies are 50% or more Aboriginal-owned and have Aboriginal management in place, and also that they follow our aggressive employment targets.”

Merasty, who once represented northern Saskatchewan in Parliament, says Cameco tries hard “to really understand the context or situation the northern communities or the First Nations and Metis find themselves in. So we’ve spent a lot of time in community meetings being available, responding to each and every request within a timely manner. We work closely with them in designing initiatives on community investment, on these business investments, on the employment, education and training investments.

“I think over the last 20 years, the company and the men and women within Cameco have really developed a trusting relationship within the communities,” he summarizes. “The community leaders know who the president of our company is, know who the vice-presidents are. Employees are the greatest advocates we have in the communities. They talk about working with Cameco and for Cameco, and they get involved in community events as volunteers. So a lot of social capital has been built up over the years.”

Cameco has won awards and industry recognition for its approach, and so has Diavik Diamond Mine for its own success in bridging differences and building relationships with Aboriginal communities in the Northwest Territories.

Like Cameco, Diavik has been a trailblazer and trend setter in IBAs – though the gem-mining partnership (60% Rio Tinto, 40% Harry Winston Diamond Corporation) calls them “participation agreements.”

“We use the term ‘participation’ because we view our relationship with any Aboriginal group as a partnership,” says Yellowknife-based Diavik spokesperson Doug ashbury. There are five Aboriginal groups in the area of Diavik’s mining operations, and Diavik has a participation agreement with each one of them, he adds.

Diavik further contributes to community economic development with apprenticeships and training, buying from Aboriginal contractors, and an Aboriginal Leadership Development Program. Some 1,100 people are employed either directly by Diavik or through contractors, and 30% of those people are Aboriginal. At the time of writing, the company had more than two dozen apprentices, most of them Aboriginal.

Two Aboriginal business success stories that Diavik’s community-mindedness helped bring to fruition are Bouwa Whee Catering and Tli Cho Logistics. Bouwa Whee (“I’m hungry” in Weledeh) is a 100% Deneowned firm that has expanded beyond food services to supply other mining-camp support. Tli Cho provides site services that include airstrip maintenance, snow clearing and handling of aircraft on the ground; it employs more than 250 people. Ashbury says Diavik has, over the past decade, spent $2 billion with northern Aboriginal businesses and their joint ventures.

NORTHERN PROGRESS

Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines Executive Director Tom Hoefer says mining companies and the federal and territorial governments have done an outstanding job lately forging partnerships in a part of Canada that, when diamond mines were first being constructed, was notable for having no settled land claims. In 20 years, he notes, NWT miners have gone “from virtually no Aboriginal employees to one of the country’s leaders in Aboriginal employment.”

In 1995, Hoefer says, you could have counted the number of Aboriginal businesses at the diamond mines “on, like, two fingers. Now there’s about 25 of them. "So that’s the positive side,” he continues from Yellowknife. “Where the negative side comes in is generally where a claim is not settled.”

Land claims disputes often engender court challenges and uncertainty. Hoefer says one result is that, predictably, potential investors can be “a bit gun-shy about what could happen to their projects.” That’s particularly true of exploration companies lacking the deep pockets of a Rio Tinto-size corporation.

Still, Hoefer (a former Diavik employee) sees reasons for optimism. One positive omen, he says, is a memorandum of understanding the Chamber signed this past July with Akaitcho Dene First Nations to promote “responsible mineral exploration and development.”

“It’s also encouraging that we have the federal government working on a regulatory improvement initiative, because the regulation we have up here has become very complex,” he adds. The process started in October with a workshop in Yellowknife bringing stakeholders together.

Cameco’s Merasty says the uranium miner is in northern Saskatchewan “for the long term … And so we work at continuing to build our relationships.” Community agreements will be improved, good will is being strengthened, and communities are set to prosper along with Cameco, he declares.

At Whitefeather head office, Palmer notes that other First Nations are also taking the reins in forest management and setting up robust forestry-related businesses. He hopes Pikangikum, drawing from other First Nations’ inspirational work, “can lead the way and provide more inspiration for other First Nations.”

Few would disagree that there’s a solid business case for companies building bonds and alliances with Aboriginal communities. There’s much to be learned from the experiences of Cameco, Diavik and other firms that have strived for harmonious relations with the land’s original peoples. A key lesson is simply this: Doing the right thing and doing the smart thing can be one and the same.

Fools rule politics of climate change

2011-12-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

Published 10 December 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:
Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change
By William Marsden
Knopf Canada, 325 pages, $30

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

One conclusion to be drawn from Montreal journalist William Marsden's new book is that this year's federal election was another setback in the fight against global warming.

The May 2 vote's outcome was a majority in Parliament for a Conservative party that is rife with "climate change deniers" and beholden to oil companies.

Fools Rule is a well-researched, highly readable followup to Marsden's 2007 book about Alberta's oil sector, Stupid to the Last Drop.

He makes clear in Fools Rule's first chapters that the change from Liberal to Conservative government in 2006 altered Canada's role in climate talks for the worse.

As Canada's Liberal environment minister in 2005, Stephane Dion went the extra mile to get a diplomatic breakthrough in Montreal that brought the United States back to negotiations.

The present government, by contrast, has allied itself with countries that stonewall on proposals for curbing emissions of the "greenhouse gases" that are driving temperatures upward.

Now that the Conservatives have a majority, we can expect a still more negative approach.

This book gives plenty of colour on climate change diplomacy and how it has gone off the rails and been almost completely unproductive with each international summit.

Marsden describes climate-change talks as a "clumsy tango" of dance partners working at odds with each other.

Many countries have been sincerely striving for global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but powerful countries have thwarted those efforts.

Canada was among the countries trying to keep the 2009 Copenhagen summit from reaching an effective pact.

Those countries largely succeeded, and the next year's conference in Cancun, Mexico, was a shambles as well.

Canada's economic interests as a petroleum exporter have led it away from doing the right thing, says Marsden, and it's hard to disagree with that assessment.

One need only consider Ottawa's recent stumping for the Keystone XL pipeline to see how oil money trumps environment in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet.

Marsden makes an interesting point about how "social trap" theory applies here.

He sees the failure of climate-change talks as an expression of how people often will "pursue short-term gain" even when they know their actions will hurt everyone in the long term.

In Canada's case, the pursuit of oil profits is overcoming the long-term interest of ensuring a livable planet for future generations.

Another interesting observation is that those who are most ignorant about the science of climate change are among the most cocksure about being right. As Marsden pithily puts it, "stupidity breeds unbridled confidence."

He despairs that traditional diplomatic processes simply will not resolve this issue, and suggests the answer may lie in getting scientists, economists and other non-diplomats and non-politicians to produce a plan of action.

That seems unlikely, however. Which leaves the reader feeling a bit gloomier about the future.

He got Googled, and he liked it

2011-08-20T17:37:00.000-07:00

Published 20 August 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59
By Douglas Edwards
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 416 pages, $32

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Doug Edwards took a big gamble in 1999 when he left an established newspaper for an Internet startup with a funny name.

Jumping from a California daily newspaper's marketing department to the fledgling Google entailed a $25,000 cut in salary.

But thanks to generous stock options, Edwards was a millionaire when he left Google less than six years later.

Good for him. Now, why should you be interested in his memoir?

Well, for starters, I'm Feeling Lucky offers the first book-length insider account of Google's formative years.

Judging by the book's depth of detail, Edwards clearly was paying close attention and taking plenty of notes as the little search-engine site grew to the Internet giant it is today.

He was in on Google's tense negotiations with AOL for a momentous advertising and search contract, and saw that partnership evaporate when AOL bought a rival search company.

He saw news hosting after the Sept. 11 terror attacks evolve into Google News.

He was around for the birth of Gmail, and he watched as the company's first attempt at a social network site flopped (it recently launched another attempt, dubbed Google+).

Edwards was Google's brand manager, meaning he was tasked with guiding and shaping its public image as it grew in popularity and breadth of services.

The job included being the company's master wordsmith, writing things to build on public perceptions of Google as smart, honourable and a bit whimsical.

So it's no surprise that this, his first book, is highly readable, brimming with clever analogies and metaphors, and chock-full of nimbly told anecdotes.

Many of the stories have to do with Google's founders, Stanford University alumni Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The book portrays Page and Brin as brilliant, eccentric and riddled with contradictions.

They founded the company without a clear idea of how it would eventually make money, reckoning they would find a way to make the business profitable without compromising their ideals too much.

It seems the venture capitalists that bankrolled Google in its early years did so on faith that the founding geniuses would make the search engine work as a business.

Brin and Page often said it was important to be honest with Google's users, but at other times they adamantly refused to disclose how some things the company did might imperil privacy.

They expected long hours from employees and were ruthlessly stingy toward suppliers, yet the workplace included an on-site chef, massage services, a sauna and gym, a wide assortment of candy, air hockey and video games before there was even a hint of profit.

Partly in lieu of bigger salaries, Page and Brin offered employees stock options that made millionaires of many when the company went public on Wall Street in 2004.

Edwards doesn't disclose how much he pocketed from selling his shares, but there are clues that it was a rather substantial sum.

He does say that he borrowed money from his parents to purchase a large number of shares -- he was surprised at how many he was allowed to buy -- at 20 cents each shortly after joining the company.

Since the share price soared past $100 right after the initial public offering's launch in late August 2004, we can surmise that the lucky wordsmith made off with a staggering amount.

This book certainly is well-written, though it would be better without so many distracting footnotes.

Every few pages, there's another footnote or two to draw the reader away from the story at hand.

Often the footnote contains information that we could do without; other times, it should have been a brief parenthetical remark in the story.

Oh well. Like Google itself, this Google memoir strives to be thorough but falls a bit short of perfection.

Losses on Tap

2011-07-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

Published in Bar & Beverage, Summer 2011:
Pour a little more, or give away free drinks: It’s an easy, though unethical and illegal, way for a bartender to win the favour of patrons and get bigger tips.

The practice of over-pouring costs bar owners buckets of money. It can be the difference between profit and loss for any fiscal year, so it’s a problem that has to be addressed.

Fortunately there are some good, reasonably priced solutions in the marketplace. Aids on offer include inventory software, portion-control spouts, meters on beer kegs, tap locks, and auditors who will keep track for you.

The good people of Atlanta-headquartered Alcohol Controls Inc. (ACI) can hook you up with nearly all of these options to reduce beer and liquor “shrinkage.”

“We try to have a little bit for everybody,” proclaims ACI president Mark Flaschner. “We do have quite a range.

“This is what we specialize in, and we’ve been doing this for 20 years now. We’re the longest-running and the largest provider of loss-prevention products that are geared towards the bar industry.”

He says there are “a lot of different ways you can go,” but seems to most strongly recommend the Eclipse system that is an upgrade of the popular Spirit system incorporating portion-control spouts and software that keeps track of how much is poured.

Eclipse tells the bar manager at the end of a shift how much was poured, which can be checked against what the bartender entered into the POS till.

Inventory loss is a “pretty serious” problem, Bevinco marketing manager Krista Dinsmore says from Toronto. “On average, bars are losing 20 per cent of potential sales, so you’re looking at thousands of dollars every week, depending on the size of a bar.”

Dinsmore says some inventory loss occurs due to bartenders unintentionally pouring too much into a shot or wine glass. Other times, it’s because of accidental spillage. Still other times, the loss is due to dishonest practices.

Flaschner agrees, but hastens to add that we shouldn’t get too dim a view of staff. “Think of it this way: When you’re driving down the highway, everybody’s going over the speed limit until they see a cop with a radar gun,” he says. “And the reason is that people will tend to push the edge of the envelope if they fear no repercussions. That’s just human nature.

“It doesn’t mean that there aren’t honest bartenders out there, but typically when bartenders know that their manager doesn’t know how much they’re pouring, they’re going to give away some free drinks. They’re going to over-pour some drinks to get more in tips. They’re also going to pour drinks and collect money and not ring up some drinks.”

He says it’s vitally important for management to keep a vigilant eye on inventory because “if the manager doesn’t know if the bartenders are stealing, then typically you’re going to have an operation where bartenders are cutting into the profits.”

While ACI (www.alcoholcontrols.com) offers gadgets and software, Bevinco has real live people come into establishments for inventory control. For a weekly fee, Bevinco will weigh and count all bottles (opened and unopened), calculate from that data how much was dispensed since the previous audit, and compare that to point-of-sale numbers.

All that data is uploaded into Bevinco’s software system to create a variance report which is submitted to the client establishment.

As part of the service, Bevinco (www.bevinco.com) also puts a sticker on every bottle it inventories to let bar staff know the situation is being monitored.

Bevinco’s auditing service reduces inventory loss by more than three-quarters to less than five per cent, according to Dinsmore.

Flaschner cautions that the battle against shrinkage “doesn’t have to be an us-versus-them type of scenario. I always tell managers, ‘Be nice to your bartenders. Just tell them what your expectations are and then hold them accountable to it.’

“You never have to be upset or mean with them. You just say, ‘Hey, Jimmy, I love you to death, but you poured $1,000 in liquor and you only rang up $700 in liquor sales today. That’s not acceptable. I don’t know what you’re doing, and it really doesn’t matter what you’re doing. I just want you to ring up sales properly. If you can’t do that, you can’t work here.’”

Your shrinkage-stopping options are varied, and include free-pour spouts such as the ones sold by Arizona-based BarVision, which actually transmit data on volume poured to a computer, which records the data in real time.

Whatever your choice, the important thing is that you tackle the problem.

As ACI’s Flaschner says: “The bottom line is, bars should use some type of controls. Whether they get it from us or someone else, they’re going to benefit hugely if they put in controls.”

Dramatic account of Madoff's fall highlight of tale

2011-05-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

Published 14 May 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
By Diana B. Henriques
Times Books, 419 pages, $34.50

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Before beginning to tell the story of the largest Ponzi scheme ever, U.S. business journalist Diana Henriques furnishes her readers with a list of key "characters" -- 89 in all.

That is thoughtful of her, since it can be difficult to keep track of all the players in The Wizard of Lies, despite how well Henriques relates the tale.

The intriguing story of how Bernie Madoff fooled thousands of people into believing he was a wizard of Wall Street trading, and not just using new money to pay old investors, begins nearly 50 years ago in 1962.

That's when Madoff first used someone else's money to deceive investors, reports Henriques, a financial writer at the New York Times who has penned three previous books and been a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The cover-up money came from father-in-law Saul Alpern, who was an accountant. Madoff had lost $30,000 on risky stocks but borrowed that amount from Alpern and put it into clients' accounts so that they wouldn't know about the loss.

The sleight-of-hand wasn't a Ponzi scheme, but it wasn't honest, either.

Madoff did it to, in Henriques's words, "burnish his reputation as a trading star."

He concealed information clients of his then two-year-old firm deserved to know -- that he had lost their money on a gamble he should not have taken.

Despite first-hand knowledge of his son-in-law's deceitfulness, Alpern referred and recruited many people to him for investment services.

After Alpern retired, his accounting firm's remaining partners continued its association with Madoff and eventually made investor recruitment for Madoff its sole focus.

Madoff's business grew tremendously through the 1970s and '80s, as more and more people became convinced he was an investment genius.

By the early '90s, Madoff's firm was a major force in the NASDAQ stock exchange that he had helped create and once chaired.

Somewhere along the way, his "investment advisory" service became a Ponzi scheme. Precisely when is unclear and may never be known.

Madoff says it happened during a money crunch in 1992, but Henriques suspects the transformation occurred shortly after the Black Monday market crash in October 1987.

She suggests in the epilogue that the transformation might not have been so abrupt as Madoff going crooked on a particular day.

Rather, she says, the Ponzi scheme may have been the climax of a gradual process that began in 1962 when Madoff learned he could get away with deceiving investors.

His criminal behaviour may have been, as she puts it, "a destination he reached after a decades-long journey along the edges of right and wrong."

At any rate, the stress of constantly having to reel in new money to cover redemptions became too much for him and he confessed his crimes to his sons, who were both employees at his firm, on Dec. 8, 2008.

His sons turned him in, he was arrested Dec. 11, and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was shut down.

Henriques's account of those dramatic days, meticulously reconstructed through interviews with virtually everyone involved, is one of the book's highlights.

She also does an excellent job explaining the process and controversies involved in trying to get compensation for Madoff's thousands of victims, who were out more than $20 billion in cash losses and still more in paper losses.

Madoff, 73, is serving a 150-year sentence at a medium-security prison in North Carolina.

He told Henriques this past Feb. 15, in the second of their two interviews at the prison, that he never really believed he was stealing.

What a character.

Insider trading a helluva tale, if uneven in spots

2011-05-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

Published 7 May 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:
Tip and Trade: How Two Lawyers Made Millions from Insider Trading
By Mark Coakley
ECW Press, 381 pages, $20

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Two men meet in law school and forge a friendship based on shared politics.

Their friendship becomes a partnership in insider trading that nets several million dollars in illegal profits, until they're caught.

One man kills himself before charges are laid; the other is sent to prison.

It's a helluva story, and the author of this true-crime story has the advantage of having known both principals from his student days at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

But the storytelling is of uneven quality, occasionally larded with dull and unnecessary details.

Hamilton writer Mark Coakley recalls Stan Grmovsek and Gil Cornblum as practically inseparable buddies who penned provocative right-wing pieces for Osgoode Hall's student paper in the early '90s.

One of Grmovsek's columns was like a parody of right-wingers, arguing that the poor should be taxed more than the rich, though Grmovsek was serious.

Coakley liked the rightist pair, and they seemed to like and respect him despite Coakley's left-of-centre politics.

In 1994, about a year after finishing law school, Grmovsek convinced Cornblum that they should make extra money by trading stocks based on secrets Cornblum learned at work.

Cornblum would come to work early to hunt for information while no one was around to see him, then tip Grmovsek on mergers, takeovers and other transactions that his employer was facilitating.

The process continued for 14 years, minus a few years in which Cornblum did not tip Grmovsek.

By the spring of 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission were hot on the crooked pair's trail.

Grmovsek's E*Trade accounts were frozen in late April, and the law firm that employed Cornblum was told of suspicious trading in client companies' shares.

Fired, disgraced, and worried about going to prison, Cornblum committed suicide by jumping off a bridge shortly before he was to be formally charged in October 2009.

Grmovsek pleaded guilty to three charges and began a 39-month prison sentence last year at the maximum-security Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ont. The book concludes with him awaiting transfer to a minimum-security facility.

Coakley, who previously wrote a historical novel about Vikings, explains the twosome's crimes in a way that's easy for everyday folks to understand.

He also gives an engaging and interesting account of his own interactions with them, and the sometimes complicated friendship between Cornblum and Grmovsek (who, unbeknownst to his pal, took more than his half of the profits).

But we could do without Coakley going on about the history of York, the part of Toronto where Osgoode Hall is located, or the special place New York City's 57th Street (where Cornblum had an apartment for a couple of years) has in popular culture.

Coakley's decision to reprint long excerpts from court transcripts likewise provides too much information and legalese, some of it eye-glazing.

Some readers won't like the way Coakley repeatedly links Grmovsek and Cornblum's politics with the avarice that fuelled their crimes.

But the assertion seems fair when you consider that big-time white-collar crooks are rarely, if ever, leftists. It is reasonable to think greedy attitudes might produce greedy behaviour.

High-tech Exploration

2011-04-30T16:31:00.001-07:00

Published in Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining, Spring 2011:
Drilling into rock and extracting a core sample is a bit pricey, so it’s good to know where you have a better-than-average chance of finding what you’re looking for. That’s where the brainy experts and high-tech equipment of geophysical surveying come in.

The experts include geophysicists who process data, aircraft pilots and equipment operators who collect the data, and engineers who develop the data-collection technology. Sometimes their work is followed up by the likes of Condor Consulting, a Colorado-based firm that processes and interprets data.

“We take it to the next step after data collection,” explains Condor President Ken Witherly, himself a geophysicist with decades of experience in the mining sector. “We do a kind of forensics, the sleuthing part of geophysical surveying.”

The equipment includes aircraft, navigation systems and data acquisition systems. The technology is often very impressive and mind-boggling to those not schooled in the sciences. Toronto-headquartered Terraquest Ltd. has, for example, a proprietary XDS VLF-EM (Very Low Frequency-Electromagnetic) system that maps electrical conductivity from above. It is, as company President Howard Barrie says, “a very advanced electromagnetic sensor.”

As a field of work, geophysical surveying is ever-changing and brimming with innovation and new ideas. Here’s a look at just some of its exciting developments of recent times.

FROM THE SKY

Exploration companies turn to geophysical survey firms such as Terraquest and Oracle Geoscience to collect data via high-tech devices suspended from airplanes and helicopters. The data may fall under the parameters of magnetics, electromagnetics, radiometrics and gravity.

Magnetics refers to the the measurement of magnetic response to detect, for example, possible kimberlite pipe which might contain diamonds. Electromagnetics involves the measurement of conductivity of what is below the surface. Radiometric data indicate radioactivity, which is useful information if you’re looking for uranium.

What about gravity? Isn’t that the same everywhere? Not exactly. There are fine – very, very fine, in fact – differences depending on the mass and density of minerals directly below, and that’s what is measured.

Pico Envirotec makes airborne surveying easier with equipment such as IMPAC – Integrated Multi-Parameter Airborne Console, a new real-time data acquisition device that combines a number of components into a single unit. “It’s quicker to install, it’s easier to install, and it requires far less effort on the part of the user,” Pico Chief Operating Officer Keith Hall says from company headquarters in Concord, Ontario.

“When you’re paying $1,500 a day to lease a helicopter while you install your equipment in it, being able to install in a couple of hours as opposed to a couple of days is a serious consideration,” he adds.

Pico’s recent innovations don’t begin and end with IMPAC. The company has also developed P-THEM, a versatile time-domain electromagnetic system for use in helicopter-borne surveying. It weighs less than 300 kilograms but has a powerful transmitter, a state-of-the-art receiver and advanced signal-processing software. “And it’s actually for sale, as opposed to having to go to a company that will lease you their services rather than sell you the equipment,” Hall points out.

The airborne survey specialists at Sander Geophysics measure magnetics, gravity, electromagnetics and radiometrics (gamma-ray spectrometry). “Concurrent with these methods, we can record scanning LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data to provide extremely accurate digital elevation models of the topography in the survey area,” adds Malcolm Argyle, Marketing Manager, from his office in Ottawa. The company has a fleet of 14 airplanes and one helicopter.

Sander has designed and developed its own AIRGrav system for gravity surveys. “It’s been used worldwide for petroleum exploration and regional geophysical mapping for over 10 years, but we have recently flown several mineral exploration surveys where higher resolution is required,” Argyle says. “All our AIRGrav surveys record magnetic data concurrently with the gravity, providing our clients with two complementary potential field data sets.”

Goldak Airborne Surveys, out of Saskatoon, was the first company in North America to offer a three-axis AEM (airborne electromagnetic) gradiometer system. Measuring the three axes is important, says Chief Geophysicist Marc Pelletier, because it means you’re “measuring all of the components accurately.” Thus, you get a better idea of what’s below ground.

Pelletier says Goldak has in the last couple of years “been mostly busy with radiometric surveys.” That type of survey is useful for not just uranium exploration, but for detecting a broad range minerals. “In fact,” he adds, “most of what we’ve done recently has been in government geological surveys.” The company’s 20 or so field staff and five office staff have been involved in surveys for the Saskatchewan, Quebec and federal governments and flown over lands from B.C. to Quebec to the Arctic coastline.

Another Saskatoon company, Leaf and Stone Resonance Services, surveys from much further above ground than any plane or chopper goes. Leaf and Stone uses resonance coupling technology to look specifically for whatever mineral you seek.

“Molecular Resonance Coupling is a spectrum change that occurs when two atomic structurally identical substances match each other,” the company website explains. “We have applied this technology and have developed a proprietary method of measuring this response so that given a sample of oil or other mineral, we can locate the same substance that is underground and not yet discovered.”

CEO Robert Fisher says the technique’s very accurate, and has testimonials to back up his assertion. “We commercialized it in October of 2007, and we have not been wrong in our 21 months of tests and since we commercialzed it,” he declares. You can learn more about the firm’s intriguing work at www.leafandstone.ca.

AT GROUND LEVEL

Ground surveying can collect magnetic, electromagnetic, gravity and radiometric data, plus other parameters such as seismic data.

EMpulse Geophysics - principally physicist David Goldak and mathematician Shawn Goldak – applies natural-source electromagnetics to help exploration companies find underground resources. The Saskatchewan firm uses the electromagnetic energy from thunderstorms (which can occur thousands of kilometres away) to map resistivity (how a material resists the flow of electrical current). From that information, inferences can be made about where particular minerals might be found in significant volumes.

EMpulse’s most promising innovations of late are probably in its use of 3D inversion software, post-surveying, to map resistivity distribution in the subsurface. “To make use of all the data we collect, you really have to do a 3D inversion,” David Goldak explains. “In the past, people have been limited to two-dimensional inversions, but when you do a 2D inversion you end up throwing out about half of the data you collect. If you’re able to do a 3D inversion, you’re using all of the data that you collected. You’re making use of all your information.”

Precision borehole surveying technologies are the specialty of Icefield Tools Corporation, which has been designing, manufacturing and selling such products since 1990 (first as Icefield Instruments, then under its present name as a spin-off to that company). Its star product these days is the GyroShot, which has sold well in the mining and petroleum sectors since coming on the market a few years ago. It uses nano-technology to deliver accurate borehole surveys yet it’s also “very rugged,” says President Erik Blake.

Dan Patrie Exploration, operating out of Massey, Ontario, owns claims in Ontario and offers magnetic and electromagnetic survey services to other companies. Owner and CEO Dan Patrie has worked in mining and exploration since 1968, and in geophysical surveying since 1986. He says induced polarization surveying, in which surveyors transmit electrical current to find polarizable targets, has developed a lot in recent years thanks to “more powerful systems” being used in the industry.

Indeed, a recent article in Ontario Mineral Exploration Review detailed how Abitibi Geophysics worked with the National Research Council and several gold mining companies “to commercialize a concept that increases the detection radius [of polarization surveys] by hundreds of metres.” That concept is hole-to-hole induced polarization, an improvement on the classical borehole induced polarization survey.

“The idea is to explore in between the boreholes that they already drilled, looking for pockets of mineralization that they might have missed,” geophysicist Roman Wasylechko, who co-authored the article with Abitibi President Pierre Berube, says from Ottawa. “What we do is, we transmit electrical current to polarize any mineralization that is underground, and we measure the responses cross-hole in the various boreholes.”

The responses give Abitibi staff such as Wasylechko indications as to where there might be the kinds of mineralization that exploration companies are looking for between or below boreholes. By taking measurements between holes, he explains, “our radius of coverage increases, because we’re now measuring a signal from one hole to the other hole.”

Hole-to-hole induced polarization had been tried before, Wasylechko continues. “The problem was what to do with the data – to figure out the mathematics, to develop the model of the electric field. We invested a fair bit of money in terms of research into understanding what happens when you are taking measurements between holes rather than along one single hole at a time.

“Instead of providing people with a simple profile of the response in the hole, we invert the data to produce a 3D image of all the readings that are taken amongst all the holes,” he says.

In laymen’s terms, Wasylechko is saying the bright minds at Abitibi turn the data from hole-to-hole induced polarization surveying into three-dimensional pictures indicating the size, shape and location of the polarizable clumps below ground that seem to have significant mineralization. These are areas for further exploration since, of course, the only way to find out the exact kind of mineralization in those places is to drill a hole and extract a sample.

What Abitibi and the other innovators do is complex stuff requiring advanced scientific knowledge and a lot of hard work to make it happen. For that knowledge and work, exploration and mining companies are surely grateful.

Enjoyable political reporting full of insights, humour

2010-12-11T16:46:00.000-08:00

Published 11 December 2010 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
By Matt Taibbi
Random House, 250 pages, $30

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Matt Taibbi's work has been described as both juvenile and brilliant.

Juvenile because few serious political writers are as fond of profanity and insults.

Brilliant because the New Jersey resident delivers more insight than most of the Washington "insiders" and "pundits" you'll see on CNN and Fox News.

His fifth book, essentially a companion piece to the recent documentary Inside Job, has a bit of the juvenile: There's a dandy cuss word in its second paragraph, and the second chapter's title can't be printed in this paper.

But most of all, Griftopia is shot through with brilliant insights and eye-opening reportage. It's one of the smartest, funniest and most enjoyable books on U.S. politics you'll ever read.

Old narratives dating back to at least the 1960s are blinding people to reality in U.S. politics, Taibbi writes. Republican supporters think they're battling big government, while Democrats think their own party's victories are blows for justice and goodness.

"The reality is that neither of these narratives makes sense anymore," Taibbi declares.

Instead, he says, an elite "grifter class" is swindling ordinary Americans and being allowed to gamble recklessly with client money.

The grifters are the ruling class. Everyone else is either a sucker or a servant, or perhaps both, to that elite.

Americans are being "bled dry" by arrogant "financial criminals" who are aided and abetted by friends high up in government.

Foremost among his gangs of crooks is Goldman Sachs, the huge investment bank Taibbi describes as "a great vampire squid" voraciously sucking money from humanity.

He saves for last an update of a 2009 article on Goldman that raised hackles on Wall Street. It's a fine climax to his populist polemic, though not the best part of Griftopia.

That distinction belongs to either the chapter on Alan Greenspan or the one about "the great American mortgage scam" that led to 2008's financial meltdown.

Greenspan chaired the Federal Reserve, epicentre of U.S. monetary policy and financial regulation, for nearly 19 years ending in 2006. A disciple of libertarian icon Ayn Rand, he chopped away at Wall Street rules during his time at the Fed.

In Taibbi's estimation, Greenspan's years at the Fed laid "the foundation for orgiastic greed" and transformed the central bank "into a permanent bailout mechanism for the super-rich."

The Fed under Greenspan loosened and eliminated restrictions on Wall Street and repeatedly bailed out the financial sector by making money available at almost no cost to the high rollers when their big bets failed.

That anything-goes trading climate fostered and created speculative bubbles that included the tech bubble that burst and sent people's portfolios plummeting in 2000-2001, and the more recent mortgage bubble.

The book's mortgage chapter is notable for its clear, easily understood explanations of complex things like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations.

In fact, financial journalists might want to take notes on how Taibbi makes financial instruments understandable to those of us who haven't taken courses in high finance.

Even though Taibbi puts forth a great critique -- nay, condemnation -- of the system, he offers no solutions.

Then again, with a system so sick and corrupt, what solutions could be offered?

Hot & Cold Success

2010-11-24T09:36:00.001-08:00

Published in Manitoba Business Magazine, May/June 2009:

Ice Kube Systems takes heat from below ground level and puts it to work above-ground at indoor winter sports centres. And it’s been scoring in markets across the continent and overseas.
The West St. Paul manufacturer’s geothermal heat-pump systems are used at hockey and curling rinks across Canada, from 100 Mile House in B.C. to Springhill in Nova Scotia.
Ice Kube has infiltrated the U.S. market, too, notes Steve Sacher, the firm’s vice-president of international development and operations.
The company’s surprisingly compact heat pump units, used for cooling and heating in a variety of building types, are operating at more than 60 locations in North America. Sacher says about two-fifths of those places are in the United States.
Not that Ice Kube is limiting itself to the North American market. To the contrary, it is wooing customers as far away as the United Arab Emirates.
The government of Dubai, the Persian Gulf country’s wealthiest and most populous jurisdiction, is trying to build a “zero carbon footprint” community. Ice Kube’s “green” technology seems to be a good fit with that objective.
“Our role in that project – if there is one - is not defined yet, but we continue to talk with (the developers) and we’re optimistic,” Sacher says.
And then there are the potential new customers Ice Kube is courting in Scotland and Ireland, where curling rinks face soaring energy costs.
Schools in England are considering Ice Kube’s geothermal technology to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, he adds.
Closer to home, the Ice Kube team has secured a deal with a New Brunswick town to install a geothermal system at a $21-million recreation complex.
The Q-Plex in Quispamsis, N.B., will be the first recreation facility in North America to win Gold-level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. Sacher says Ice Kube’s geothermal technology, utilizing a renewable resource and producing essentially no carbon emissions, is a perfect fit for such aspirations.
Ice Kube geothermal heat pumps can also be found in Russia and South Korea.
Sacher says projects in which Ice Kube has been involved come in a broad range of sizes, from an indoor rink at a rural Canadian Prairies household to an art collector’s private estate near San Francisco.
The guts of Ice Kube Systems’ product are housed in metal cubes that are just a few feet tall. Heat is sucked up from underground loops of pipes and converted to hotter or colder temperatures to suit a facility’s needs.
“Technically, what makes it unique is that we simultaneously heat and cool,” says Sacher. “We have the ability to produce both chilled and hot fluid simultaneously.”
And the equipment can deliver a high range of temperatures, cooling to 10 F or heating to 145 F.
Every component in the Kubes, which are assembled below Sacher’s second-floor office in West St. Paul, is “off the shelf” rather than specially made, he notes.
“What that means is that, from a maintenance perspective, you don’t need highly specialized mechanics. From an ease-of-maintenance perspective, it’s a huge advantage.”
Ease of maintenance is an especially important consideration in places far from major urban centres. Facility operators appreciate knowing that their regular maintenance personnel can, with just a bit of training, keep the Ice Kubes running.
“What really makes us unique and successful, though, is our approach to the marketplace,” says Sacher.
The company has developed close “strategic partnerships” with its distributors so that they’re like “an extension of the company,” he explains.
That corporate philosophy applies to Ice Kube staff, a small group sharing a building with its parent company on St. Paul Boulevard, he says. “We all have to feel like owners and we all make decisions as owners.”
Also, he says, Ice Kube Systems strives to remain “boutique-y” even while sales are growing at an impressive pace.
He says net revenue grew by about 60 per cent in 2008 versus 2007, and is projected to grow by more than 30 per cent this year compared to last.
But he adds the company is “being careful not to grow too quickly.”
Not being a “mass producer” means Ice Kube can always keep an eye on quality and creativity, he says.
The company’s systems are more expensive to install than more conventional systems but they’re so efficient that the extra installation cost is typically recovered within three to five years, he adds.
The story of Ice Kube Systems dates back to about 15 years ago, when Selkirk came to Frontier Refrigeration and Mechanical Services with a challenge.
The municipality was using geothermal technology at its hockey rink, but not using it very well.
“The product that they were using was not specifically designed for hockey rinks,” recalls Walter Lehmann, Frontier founder and president. “It was just not the right product for that particular application.”
“What we decided at that point was that the concept was good but we had to design new equipment specifically for that application.”
Lehmann says the experience gave Frontier “an opportunity to create a product for that market.”
The product in turn was the foundation for a new division of Frontier.
“It’s a relatively simple storyline, but exciting because it’s the start of how we got to where we are now,” says Lehmann.
The first Ice Kube units were sold mainly in smaller, rural communities in Manitoba, he says.
The product line’s first international sale was made in the late 1990s when six of the heat-pump systems were purchased by a Minnesota electric utility.
Ice Kube Systems Ltd. was spun off as a separate company a few years later. Lehmann is president of both companies. Sacher came on board two years ago.

Onward and Upward

2010-11-24T09:35:00.000-08:00

Published in Piling Industry Canada Magazine 2009:
The 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week airport at the end of Wellington Avenue in northwest Winnipeg remains bustling even as it undergoes the most momentous transition in its history.

A new four-level parkade is up and providing vehicle accommodation north of the 45-year-old terminal building while, just north of the parkade, there’s a hum of activity as construction of the old terminal’s replacement continues. Elsewhere, a bus depot is under construction, as is a utilities building. And a sign at the airport property’s outskirts proclaims the future home of a mail-sorting facility, itself under construction.

As cars, vans and trucks pass by on the way to dropping off and picking up airline passengers, workers are in the process of turning about 4,500 tonnes of steel, more than 12,000 cubic metres of concrete and sundry other ingredients into a shiny new landmark for the gateway to Canada’s West.

Winnipeg’s international airport is being transformed – modernized and augmented, if you will – with a gleaming new terminal building that will be about one-third bigger than what it replaces.

The existing terminal was built in 1962-64 after continuous post-war growth in air travel. At the time, approximately 600,000 passengers used the airport annually. Ever-increasing passenger traffic prompted the terminal’s expansion in 1984. Passenger volumes have followed an upward trend in the 25 years since, with a notable dip following the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Passenger traffic was down in the first quarter of 2009, too – probably a blip due to the global recession.

The need for a bigger airport was obvious before the 20th century made its final bow, and became more pressing as the millennium grew older. In 2008, for example, the airport hosted 3.5 million passengers, a 28 per cent increase from 2000 and 50 per cent more than in 1995. Cargo loads rose 44 per cent from 2000 to 2008, to 150,000 tonnes.

Renamed James Armstrong Richardson International Airport in December 2006, the facility is Canada’s seventh-busiest airport.

Passenger volume is projected to reach 4.1 million by 2015 and 4.6 million by 2020. Cargo tonnage is expected to increase as well, and there are about a million visits annually by people accompanying passengers to the airport or meeting passengers post-flight. All of these statistics from the Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA) point to a need for more and bigger facilities.

Accommodation by design

The WAA contracted Pelli Clarke Pelli and Associates as “master architect” to design the new 51,000-square-metre terminal in collaboration with Stantec Architecture (the building’s “prime architect”).

That’s Pelli as in Cesar Pelli, an Argentina-born but New York-based architect who has made his mark on urban skylines with such notable landmarks as the Wells Fargo Centre skyscraper in Minneapolis, the Wachovia Center office tower in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the 452-metre Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Petronas towers are the world’s tallest twin buildings and were the world’s two tallest buildings for several years until 2004, when they were surpassed by an office tower in Taiwan.

While he’s most famous for skyscrapers, the 82-year-old Pelli also has some notable airport terminals in his portfolio. Terminals B and C at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were designed by him, as were Terminal 2 of Tokyo’s Haneda airport and the TWA terminal building at New York’s Kennedy airport.

Pelli visited the Winnipeg airport and surveyed the area to get a feel for the project before getting to work on designing the new building, says WAA spokesperson Christine Alongi, adding that the new building “has been conceived as a signature building connecting (Winnipeg) with the rest of the world.”

Besides being bigger to meet the needs of an increasingly busy airport, the emerging new terminal is also touted to improve “customer wayfinding” (i.e., people’s ability to get around within its space and find the things they seek), the range of concession services (restaurants and stores), and customs processing for international travellers. It’s also designed for universal accessibility, so that passengers with disabilities can access services with ease.

The building is designed to meet the criteria for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the Canadian Green Building Council. Extensive use of natural light will cut electricity consumption by reducing the need for artificial lighting. At the same time, windows will cut cooling costs in the warmer months by reflecting excess sunlight away.

Another important component of the terminal’s “green” design is its waste-heat recovery system. Waste heat in the central utilities building’s boiler operations will be captured, as will heat from the main computer and server rooms, for reuse in the hot-water system for heating the new terminal building.

That’s pretty impressive, but there’s more. “An advanced electrical demand management system will sense and turn on what’s needed, then sense and turn off what’s not needed—for example, by turning off each baggage carousel when all luggage has been removed, rather than staying in motion until someone notices that equipment is being used for no purpose and manually shutting down machinery,” says Alongi.

Everybody benefits from the terminal’s LEED-worthy design, says WAA project manager Lloyd McGinnis.

“From an energy point of view, this is a very efficient facility,” he says. “Though it’s a much larger facility than the existing terminal, the projections are that in fact it will use less energy than the existing terminal. Everybody benefits from that, because that means less charges to the air companies, and if there’s less charges to them, ticket prices can be lower and so on.

“From the environmental point of view, we’re learning every day that the more environmentally conscious we are, the more efficient we are.”

A big job like the new terminal building, with all those tonnes of steel and concrete, demands a thorough and careful approach to foundation work. “The approach to piling was based on proven professional methods with a significant degree of planning in advance to make the process smooth, predictable and productive,” Alongi remarks.

Subterranean (Manitoba) Ltd., a company based in West St. Paul, Manitoba, that’s been in the foundation business for about 60 years, was hired as the project’s foundation subcontractor. Subterranean’s recent work includes the new water treatment plant being built east of Winnipeg, the recently completed Manitoba Hydro building in the city’s downtown, and the MTS Centre hockey arena. It has also landed the foundation contract for the future Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Hundreds of precast and cast-in-place piles and caissons were used. The precast driven piles are approximately eight inches wide and 30-plus feet deep. The depth of drilled, cast-in-place caissons varies depending on depth of bearing strata, with size ranging from three to 14 feet in diameter.

All piles are custom designed to support specific loads, following a design made in accordance with current national building codes. Piles are driven until a specified resistance is met. Caissons were founded on a very dense till layer with a high bearing capacity. Both straight-shaft and belled caissons were used. Till/hardpan was relatively consistent at a depth of approximately 30 feet.

On track for 2010

On a cool spring day, the labours of building a new terminal continue as car and truck traffic provides an ambient soundtrack to the changes underway. The project, managed by Winnipeg-based Wardrop Engineering and California-headquartered Parsons Corporation, is on track for completion in 2010.

“I think it has gone well under the circumstances of the contractors having been plagued by labour shortages along the way, and then we have not had the kindest weather in the last two winters,” the WAA’s McGinnis remarks as the work proceeds.

“They’ve had some setbacks because of weather but even in spite of the very severe winter that we’ve had this year, a tremendous amount of work took place around and within the air terminal.

“The biggest challenge for everybody in this area over the last two and a half years has been labour shortages,” he adds. “Everybody went to Alberta and B.C. … But at the moment we have about 420 people working on the air terminal itself almost every day. That has picked up from, say, 300 last summer.”

Official groundbreaking for the redevelopment program took place September 15, 2005, with Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz and Manitoba Transportation Minister Ron Lemieux among the dignitaries on hand.

A four-level, 1,600-stall parkade (also home to car-rental outlets) was constructed in 2006 by PCL Constructors, doubling the number of parking spaces at the airport. A pedestrian bridge between the parkade and the terminal is to be completed this year.

South of the parkade, on Powerhouse Road, the airport’s new central utilities building (CUB) nears completion. McGinnis says the CUB was “about 90 per complete” by early May and expects it to be finished before the leaves change colour this year.

Redevelopment’s other main components, aside from the terminal building, parkade and CUB, are what McGinnis refers to as “airside” (runways, aprons, etc., for the airlines) and “groundside” (roadways, walkways and the like). He says the former was 90 per cent done as of early May, and the latter will be mostly completed by autumn.

Total cost of the entire redevelopment program – terminal building, parkade, roadways and all – has been pegged at $585 million. The terminal building itself will cost about $270 million. The budget has remained essentially unchanged despite pressures in the labour and materials markets. And it’s all funded through an Airport Improvement Fee applied to every passenger boarding a flight at the airport.

One of the most significant challenges has been building in the middle of a busy, 24-hour-a-day airport, says Alongi. “A prime focus has been maintaining current airport terminal and parking activities with minimal disruption to passengers or other customers. As a result, it has been necessary to isolate construction to the maximum degree possible away from the public.”

Contractors in the airport redevelopment program’s various components include Man-Shield Construction, PCL Constructors Canada, Nelson River Construction, Mulder Construction, McCaine Electric and Otis Elevators.

General contractor for the terminal building is EllisDon Corporation, which was awarded the contract in 2007 after a competitive bidding process in which a variety of criteria was applied to determine the bidder offering the best value. EllisDon selected Subterranean for the foundation work.

On the Trail to a Ring Road

2010-11-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

Published in CCA Magazine 2008:
A ring road for burgeoning Calgary was declared a top priority in 2003, when Alberta and Ottawa announced major funding for the project.

"The governments of Canada and Alberta agree that the Calgary and Edmonton ring roads are top infrastructure priorities," then prime minister Jean Chrétien stated in a news release. "With this investment, we will keep people and goods moving quickly and efficiently to, and through, these cities. We will also help clear the air by reducing traffic congestion in the city centres."

A ring road “will reduce congestion, make the movement of goods more efficient” and make travel safer, then premier Ralph Klein added as the two levels of government announced hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for ring roads in Alberta’s two biggest cities.

But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, the Calgary Ring Road is taking years to become a reality. The northwest segment is set for completion next year while the northeast portion is scheduled for completion by 2009 – six years after the big federal-provincial funding announcement.

The Calgary Ring Road made a big step forward this year with the announcement of a public-private partnership for the northeast portion. The Stoney Trail Group, a consortium of private-sector companies, signed a 30-year contract with Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation to design, build and operate the road from its junction with Deerfoot Trail to 17 Avenue SE. Construction got underway in the summer.

The proposed southwest portion remains problematic. Still in planning and consultation stages, the southwest segment would run partly through Tsuu T’ina First Nation territory. As of early September, the First Nation and the province were still working on a final price for that land. And even if negotiators reach a deal this year, it would still need approval from Ottawa and the people of Tsuu T’ina. That could take another year or so. After that, actual road construction would take another two or three years.

Craig Cheffins, who replaced Klein as MLA for Calgary-Elbow in a byelection this spring, launched a petition in August urging the province to resolve the impasse as quickly as possible.

What a long, strange trip it’s been so far.

What Calgary needs

The Calgary ring road concept dates back at least 40 years. Construction of a transportation utility corridor (TUC) – a route around the city for motor vehicles, pipelines, power lines and municipal utilities – was recommended in a 1967 report to the provincial government.

A potential route for that TUC was identified in 1974; a couple of years later, the province enacted legislation freezing development along the TUC route. The route was modified in subsequent years though much of the east and south portion of ring road remains essentially unchanged, says Garry Lamb of Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation.

Most of the land for Calgary’s ring road had been acquired by 1985 and the first section of the northwest portion was built more than 10 years ago, he added.

Why has the process taken so long?

“I think part of it was that by the mid to late ’70s things had progressed so that there was a good concept in place, but then there was quite a major (economic) downturn in Alberta in the early 1980s,” says Lamb.

“When things recovered in the late ’80s, transportation wasn’t the first priority in everybody’s mind. So allocation of resources to implement the ring road … wasn’t a political priority in the late ’80s and early ’90s. And at that time, Calgary still had a good transportation infrastructure for its needs.

“What happened in the ’90s, though, was that Calgary continued to grow pretty rapidly and the transportation network didn’t. So pressures started to build to start implementing the ring road.

“But then the provincial deficit issue was a political priority, so the government was reducing funding across the board on all programs, and transportation was certainly one of them. So we ended up not spending money on (new roads and some other infrastructure projects).

“Then, come the late 1990s and the turn of the millennium, finances are good in Alberta and there’s a fresh push on to deal with some of the infrastructure deficit. And certainly the ring roads in Calgary and Edmonton are big pieces of that.”

While the northern portions of Calgary’s ring road head toward completion, there’s no work on the southern segments. Lamb seems unworried by that.

The province is “cautiously optimistic” that negotiations with Tsuu T’ina for the southwest land will conclude with a deal this year, he said.

And the southeast portion is a “very straightforward” project on land that the province already owns, he added, so construction there could start “when we have resources and if the southwest leg gets (sidetracked by negotiations) we’ll probably continue on and build the southeast leg of the ring road as soon as we’re wrapping up the northeast leg.”

Northeast partnership

Bilfinger Berger BOT, Flatiron Constructors, Graham Construction, Carmacks Enterprises and EarthTech - collectively the Stoney Trail Group – signed a 30-year contract with the province in February to design, build, operate and partially finance 21 kilometres of four- and six-lane roadway and nearly two dozen bridge structures in northeast Calgary from Deerfoot Trail to 17 Avenue SE.

The project also includes six interchanges – at Deerfoot Trail, Metis Trail, Country Hills Boulevard, Airport Trail, McKnight Boulevard and 16 Avenue NE.

The government will pay the Stoney Trail Group $300 million toward construction of the northeast section and $21 million per year once the road is open to traffic. Premier Ed Stelmach has said the arrangement, worth some $650 million to the Stoney Trail Group, “represents excellent value for taxpayers.”

The contract also includes maintenance of the roadway from Deerfoot Trail to 16 Avenue NW.

Bolfinger, headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany, is at the centre of the project as developer. This is the company’s “first project in Alberta and represents a very important milestone for our group,” president John McArthur said when the P3 was announced. “We are looking forward to a long-term partnership with the province for the successful implementation of the project.”

Other Bolfinger transportation infrastructure projects include the Herrentunnel under the Trave River at Lubeck, Germany, completed in 2005 after less than four years of construction, and a P3 for development and maintenance of a 26-kilometre stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway that crosses Kicking Horse Pass.

Earth Tech, a unit of giant Tyco International headquartered in California, is the project’s lead designer. Graham, Carmacks and Flatiron comprise Stoney Trail Constructors, the builders in this project.

Calgary-based Graham “brings a local presence, knowledge of the local (construction) industry and its standards and the workforce – all that kind of good stuff,” Graham Infrastructure Ltd. president John Connolly says. “And it brings in particular an expertise in interchange and bridge building, which is a large component of the project.”

Graham is a force behind many Calgary-area interchange and bridge projects of recent years, including the current Glenmore Trail/Elbow Drive/5 Street SW interchange project which has a contract value of about $70 million.

The Stoney Trail Group is endeavouring to keep a lid on the dust and noise problems that are an inevitable part of road construction. Full-time water trucks travel up and down the construction site to reduce dust; all municipal and provincial noise guidelines are followed.

Alex, Ice Road Trucker

2010-09-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

Published in Western Canada Highway News, Fall 2010:

Alex Debogorski is known to millions as a star of the History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers. That makes him probably the Northwest Territories’ most famous resident, and perhaps Canada’s best-known trucker.
But he contends the reality show’s title gives people the wrong impression of him.
“I don’t consider myself a trucker, but I drive trucks,” says the personable father of 11 and grandfather of seven. He pauses, and then concedes with a chuckle: “I’m not sure what that means.”
To understand how this truck-driving non-trucker came to be famous as a trucker, it helps to rewind the Debogorski story to the early 1970s, when teenaged Alex was trying to earn a living in his native Alberta.
Quite a raconteur, he’s happy to tell the story.
“I started out in 1972,” he says from Alaska, where Ice Road Truckers’ fourth season is being produced. “I didn’t plan on driving trucks. I went to university for a year – the University of Alberta – got married when I was 18 years old and had 16 jobs that first year. I was trying to get a job, get set up.
“We had a baby and I got offered a job in Grand Cache hauling coal. I was driving a truck and getting paid about three times as much as the other 15 jobs that I had.”
At that west-central Alberta locale, Debogorsksi drove a GM dump truck to transport coal to a power plant five days a week. It wasn’t long, he relates, before “we had these big diesel off-road trucks that were hauling coal down the mountain, and I wanted to drive those.
“That was dangerous work. We were coming down the mountain with a 30-yard box on a body job with a 350 Cummins in it. You know, in the winter time with two mountains, there was ice and chinooks would come through. It would get slippery and the trucks would run away, you’d run out of brakes and we had cliffs on all sides.
“And then from there,” he continues matter-of-factly, “I almost got killed.” A workplace accident sent him to a hospital, where he met someone who told him about an opportunity in the mining sector. He went looking for gold in central BC, but that was a bust. (“I lost my pants there” is Debogorski’s colourful way of putting it.) He and his wife and child returned to Alberta, and eventually a family friend found him a job in Yellowknife with Robinson Trucking.
“That was in August 1976,” he recalls. “I got there the 10th of August and I’ve been there ever since. Started with Robinson, and I drove a taxi, and I worked in a bar. I worked four jobs for a couple of years. I just about killed myself. Then I started my own business, and then I got it down to just driving a taxi and running my own (excavating) business. And then finally I quit driving cabs and just stuck with the dirt business and we survived. We didn’t get wealthy but we did alright. When I turned 40 I realized I had retired at around 28 but didn’t know it at the time.”
By “retired” he means isn’t a slave to his job; he can leave it at any time. “Just in knowing that you can pick your coat off the hook and leave, that makes the job 10 times better. That’s what retirement is – knowing that you can always do something different.” He says it’s a position everyone should try to be in.

No place like home
“A trucker, to me, is a guy who goes up and down the highway 12 months a year,” Debogorski says. “I’ve been fortunate and I spend most of my time around home.”
But, as he’s saying those words, he’s in Alaska for another season’s taping of Ice Road Truckers. “I’ve been here since the beginning of February,” he says, a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. “I guess I’m more of a trucker now, because I haven’t seen my family for a couple of months.”
Debogorski says driving isn’t something he would want to do year-round, “but I enjoy doing it for two or three months every year. Then I go do something different. This is part of retirement – doing different things. Otherwise, I get easily bored. Sometimes, driving is good. Sometimes, it can get monotonous after awhile. And especially on the jobs we do, if it gets too monotonous, if you take your eye off the ball, it’s an easy way to wreck stuff and get killed.”
The Alaska experience, taping season four of Ice Road Truckers, has been quite an eye-opener for him, in more than one way. Debogorski marvels at Prudhoe Bay’s “phenomenal industrial complex” and the region’s impressive scenery.
“On the clear days, the colours of the sky change. I could not believe how, on every trip, the colour is different. There are an infinite number of shades of pastel for the sky. It just blows me away.
“On the last trip, we had a herd of about 2,000 caribou on both sides of the road,” he remarks. “Then there were a whole bunch of sheep on both sides of the road, and we had to watch out for them. Some of the guys have seen musk ox under the pipeline. And, of course, closer to Fairbanks, you gotta watch out for the darn moose.
“And how many people have seen 40 eagles at once? Unless you’ve seen so many eagles at once, you don’t realize how different they are from one another. There’s tall ones and short ones, fat ones and skinny ones, ones with short beaks and ones with long beaks. They look comical because they all look different.
“Most people would have to pay lots of money to see what we see just driving down the road here.”

Famous in 50 states
By the time you read this, Ice Road Truckers’ fourth season will have premiered on the History Channel. The documentary-style series has changed Alex Debogorski’s life.
“I always thought I was famous, but now everybody else found out,” he quips. “Somebody told me that was actually a quote from some important guy, but I didn’t know that. I thought I invented that myself.
“It’s changed my life in quite a few ways. Like, last year, I spent quite a few weeks in the southern 48 (United States). I got my son to help me, and we got an agent, and we got these PR people this year we’re gonna try. Maybe we can make something out of this notoriety. Maybe we can make the world or some people’s lives better in some way, from an idealistic standpoint. Maybe we can make money off of it.”
The money’s important as Debogorski, well into 50s, ponders the conventional kind of retirement. But he says it isn’t all about the moolah.
“I don’t mind shaking hands and kissing babies, or shaking babies and kissing hands, talking to kids or visiting people in the hospital, or signing autographs,” he says. ‘If I can make somebody’s day by signing an autograph, that’s a pretty big deal.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh that’s all baloney.’ Well, if I can improve somebody’s day by signing my name or having a picture taken with them, what the heck. It sounds stupid, but you’re making a difference in the world if you can improve somebody’s mood for a while.”
A sometime truck driver in the Northwest Territories becoming a star of a three-million-viewer U.S. cable show “might seem surreal for others,” he admits, but for some reason it doesn’t feel so odd to him.
“I mean, my life has been so twisty and turny,” he remarks. “For a guy that’s not very well travelled and not very well educated, I’ve lived a lot of life. For me, I’m not really overly surprised. The show’s just another twist, just another job, another opportunity to make a difference in the world, and maybe another opportunity to make a dollar. I know that my life is short. I think this show is a great thing.”

Customs Brokers Help Importers and Carriers

2010-09-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

Published in Western Canada Highway News, Summer 2009:
Photos of his son and daughter decorate the window sill of Chad Pasosky’s second-floor office in south Winnipeg. Seated at a large U-shaped desk, he manages a team of nearly 40 who are doing their part in getting U.S. products to stores and factories in Canada.
Not one member of Pasosky’s team operates a tractor-trailer, but he plays an important role in the transport industry. He helps trucking companies and their clients get goods across the border.
Pasosky is a customs broker. He and other employees of Jensen Customs Brokers Canada, of which he is regional manager, do the administrative work necessary to get import shipments cleared at the border. They act as intermediaries between importers and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
He says customs brokers’ work has, if anything, become more important in recent years as border operations have been transformed by changes in technology, trade rules, security concerns and other factors.
“If an importer invests in compliance, by joining various programs offered by the CBSA it will benefit from lower examination rates, not to mention lowered costs and increased savings. The CBSA wants to focus their efforts on high-risk or unknown shipments. With CBSA’s increased scrutiny of compliance, more emphasis is placed on an importer’s books and records to verify compliance away from the border.”
Evolving regulations mean customs brokers, who stay on top of these changes, are vital partners to importers and the transport companies those importers use. And Pasosky, a 21-year veteran in the customs broker industry, expects more changes to come. “You’ve always got to be on top of your game to meet future requirements,” he says, “because they’re endless.”

Partners in importing
A customs broker’s work is mainly about “managing information and managing relationships,” Carol West, president of the Canadian Society of Customs Brokers (CSCB), says from Ottawa.
The information management part is easy to see: Customs brokers take data from their clients and format it for use by government officials, then send it to those officials to get imports cleared at the border.
“They save government a ton of money, because they’ve taken on a lot of the data entry function from the government in terms of preparing the information that allows goods to be released and accounted for in this country,” says West.
Relationship management includes, of course, brokers’ relationships with importers. But that’s not all.
“They also have relationships with warehouse operators,” says West. “They have relationships with thousands of carriers who bring goods into this country, and that sort of thing.”
Tens of thousands of importers rely on customs brokers every year to help get their shipments cleared at the border. For each of these shipments, important data must be made available to government officials.
Putting that data, which may include the shipment’s point of origin and eventual destination, into the proper format for border clearance is the main job of customs brokers. They make the importer’s task easier – nay, possible. Without that “paperwork” (much of which is electronic) being done, the goods won’t be allowed passage.
But there’s more to the customs broker’s role than the completing documents and filing them with the CBSA. As the CSCB states at its website, “customs brokers are now helping importers leverage that information into a strategic advantage, turning information into critical business intelligence. They are offering a growing range of specialized services to help importers develop new product lines, explore new markets, evaluate the impact of global change, and cut costs.

Finding a partner
Back to that whole thing about customs brokers, as West put it, “managing relationships.” As in any type of relationship, choosing the right friend or partner is of utmost important. The CSCB’s website (www.cscb.ca) offers some pointers.
Generally, says West, “I’d suggest that if an importer has an idea of what they want to do, then they should meet with a couple of brokers, using some pretty standard questions in terms of what a broker provides. They’ll find a fit, I think, pretty easily.”
One question the website suggests the importer ask a customs broker is “Does your firm have a specific area of expertise?”
A few other questions at the website: “Do you have experience with and current knowledge of the goods that will be imported by my business? Can you provide me with some references from clients who import the same or similar items? What do you require from me to begin development of my database records?”
Then there’s this one, which Jensen’s Pasosky says is quite important: “How will we work together to develop a compliance plan to clarify our responsibilities and minimize our exposure to administrative monetary penalties?”
The administrative monetary penalty system, commonly referred to as AMPS, is the CBSA’s schedule of fines for non-compliance with customs rules. Penalties increase with each infraction, and infractions stay on an importer’s record for a few years. Penalties can apply to importers and carriers alike.
Office locations, reporting practices and alliances with foreign – especially U.S. – customs brokers are a few other things an importer might want to know about when choosing a customs broker.
Then there’s the matter of fees, which can be a bit tricky. “It’s not so much whether fees vary,” West says. “It’s whether the service being provided is the same. So, I always encourage importers to be very straightforward about their expectations, and I encourage brokers to be very clear about what their service is.
“For me it’s more about communication in terms of service levels and service options than it is about having a standardized fee.”
Not surprisingly, she puts in a plug for the CSCB. “I believe it’s very important that the broker belong to our organization. There are very few that don’t. It’s important that they belong to the CSCB, because you’re guaranteed that (the broker is) benefiting from the advocacy work we do and from the information we provide our members.”
From a carrier’s perspective, a customs broker’s availability is important, according to Bison Transport’s Trevor Batenchuk.
“The trucking industry is a 24-7 business,” says Batenchuk, supervisor of customs and customer service at Bison in Winnipeg, “so having the flexibility that the broker is open 24-7 allows us to sometimes deal with issues in the middle of the evening or at 6 o’clock on a Sunday.
“But, that being said, sometimes the customs broker needs to get more information from the shipper and the shipper is only open 9-to-5 Monday to Friday. It’s a little complex, but having the extra hours helps the drivers get across the border more easily.”
“The carrier is a key partner in ensuring that goods get across the border without trouble,” says Reynold Martens, executive vice-president of GHY International in Winnipeg. “We work very closely with the carriers. Carriers are very important to us.”
Problems for carriers at the border should be rare since documentation is filed well in advance of any border crossing, he adds, but carriers can count on GHY to do its best should the need arise for “last-minute intervention.”

Making it easier
If someone has the letters LCB (for Licensed Customs Broker) or CCS (Certified Customs Specialist) after his or her name, it’s a safe bet that you can rely on that person to have the knowledge and wherewithal to deliver quality service. But there are a few things importers and carriers can do make it all easier.
Tops on customs broker Bob Hobson’s list of tips: “Make sure you have documentation, and make sure you send details to the customs broker.
“We’ve gotten bills of lading here where the client says ‘Hey, I’m crossing at Emerson,’ and they don’t give us the date and time they’re crossing, they don’t give us the weight of the shipment or the number of pieces,” Hobson, president of Service Plus International, says in Winnipeg. Such details are crucial if you want a shipment to reach its destination at the appointed time.
West and Pasosky add that importers and carriers can help themselves a lot by getting more and more with the electronic information scene. Pasosky says about 95 per cent of documentation to the CBSA is released electronically. Clients can help that process along by submitting their data to the broker in electronic form rather than, say, a faxed document of numbers that then have to be keyed in.
A good reason to be thoughtful toward one’s customs broker is that the customs broker can really save the day for an importer or a carrier.
One quick example: Pasosky relates how JCBC got the CBSA to reclassify the imports of an Alberta company that had used a different broker. The reclassification resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in tariffs being refunded to the importer.
At Service Plus, Hobson has a broker-comes-through anecdote of his own.
“Last week,” he says, “I had a customer who phoned and said ‘Listen, all I have is a bill of lading here. No invoices. I’m hoping that you have invoices.’
“I was always made to understand that trucking companies are not supposed to move shipments without invoices when they’re moving goods across the border. They’ve got to have some sort of documentation.
“So, what I was able to do is get a copy of the invoice and fax it to (the importer’s) dispatch people. I’m not sure how they got it to the trucking company, but we were able to get them an invoice.”
Similarly, Martens says GHY was recently “called after hours by a carrier in the U.S. who was approaching the Canadian border hauling perishable goods without sufficient documentation.
“Our staff made a direct emergency intervention with the U.S. producer to obtain the necessary information, and arranged for the documentation to be processed and sent to the border crossing in time for CBSA to approve clearance, thus avoiding a lengthy delay that could have been costly for all the parties involved.”

Borrow, Lease, Rent or ...?

2010-09-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

Published in Western Canada Highway News, Spring 2009:
Even in the best of economic times, new equipment can be quite an onerous purchase for a trucking company. A new heavy-duty truck can cost more than $140,000, and that ain’t chicken feed.
And 2008 was not the best of times. First, truckers saw a big jump in operating expenses as fuel costs went sky high in spring with the pump price for diesel above $1.40 per litre in June across western Canada and above $1.50 in Whitehorse. Then, in September, came the big market crash that prompted financial institutions to tighten their purse strings.
“I guess it’s hard for everybody to get credit,” says Glenn Cranwill at the Connexion Truck Centre in Winnipeg. “Various finance companies have raised what’s called their beacon score.” Loans are less expensive than a year ago, he adds, but fewer would-be borrowers qualify.
The hoops through which one must jump can be a serious headache, particularly for owner-operators. “Truckers are very time-conscious,” says Cranwill. “Time is money for them. If they have to take a lot of time off the road, that’s a problem for them.”
“Capital has dried up all over, but we’ve seen an increase in business,” Money In Motion’s Kurtis Chisholm observes from his office in Sudbury, Ontario. “For us there are obstacles, but we’re still able to do deals.
“We’re finding we’re able to get it done for owner-operators. As long as they’re still getting contracts, we’re able to get credit for them. With the larger fleets, there doesn’t seem to be a credit problem at all. We’ve found trucking companies in the mid-range in size have been hit the hardest.”
Money In Motion has its headquarters in Sudbury and four other operating offices, including one in Winnipeg. Its website says it provides a range of “custom tailored financing” to transportation, construction and other industries.
Financing options for that new equipment or expensive upgrades include loans, leasing and factoring.

Get some credit

Loans and credit lines are probably the first things that come to mind when the topic of financing comes up. Banks and credit unions are the traditional places to look for these services.
"There is a belief in the marketplace that banks are no longer providing credit,” remarks Allen Barabas, an executive at RBC Royal Bank. “That is not true. In fact, RBC is very much open forbusiness, and we have capital available for trucking firms.
“The process and qualifications required to obtain funding have not changed at RBC,” he adds. “We have always assessed the credit-worthiness of any company prior to providing funding to an entity. It is important to note that the costs of funds have changed for all credit suppliers. It has become more expensive for banks to lend, and as such, loans may be priced higher against prime than in the past.
“That said, given today’s low-interest-rate environment, many firms are finding that their borrowing costs may not have increased much if at all and in some cases may have actually decreased.”
Barabas says commercial account managers at RBC branches across Canada provide “individualized financial solutions” and the bank’s team includes specialists in the transportation sector.
Trucking firms will find many financing options available at banks, he says from Toronto. “For example, RBC offers a retrofit program to help trucking firms that are considering reducing their carbon footprint by upgrading their trucking fleet or warehouse facilities. These solutions can be conducted in a form of term loans,leasing or commercial mortgages.”

Use those assets

Barabas recommends companies look into asset-based lending to tackle the challenge of paying for equipment expenditures. One option under the category of asset-based lending is factoring, a.k.a. accounts receivable financing.
Many transportation companies use factoring to meet cashflow demands or seize growth opportunities at a time when there aren’t the financial resources to make it happen, Jennie Bugg says from J D Factors’ national headquarters in Mississauga.
Essentially, factoring is the sale of accounts receivable to another company in exchange for a line of credit. The creditor takes a percentage of the receivables and the trucking company (in this case) gets quick access to money for operating and capital expenses instead of having to wait for customers to pay up.
Bugg says J D Factors has both big and small factoring clients in the transport industry – from $10,000 a month in invoicing to $4 million a month. The companies typically get 95% of accounts receivable right away, then another 3% once J D collects, but it varies according to circumstances.
Besides giving your company quick access to cash, factoring also “relieves you of the considerable time, energy and effort and expense required to follow up with customers to ensure timely payment,” Liquid Capital Corporation’s website declares. Instead of you or your employees pursuing clients for payment, the factoring company does that for you.
Brian Birnbaum, Liquid Capital’s Chief Operating Officer, offers a hypothetical example to illustrate this case for factoring. A firm with $600,000 a year in receivables might pay a 4% factoring fee (the percentage varies according to a number of particulars). That’s just $24,000 a year – a lot less than the salary of a full-time employee - to have someone chase down receivables.
“So they get the money they need and they also get the whole accounts receivable administration that they would otherwise have to pay staff to do,” Birnbaum says from Toronto.
Liquid Capital has an office in Saskatoon, as well as principals in Edmonton, Calgary and several other Alberta centres, and most other provinces.

Lease or rent it

Leasing instead of buying can carry significant tax advantages,especially since the Canada Revenue Agency changed its rules in 2001 following a Supreme Court ruling (Income Tax Technical News Bulletin 21, June 14, 2001).
On the other hand, leasing can be more expensive than buying, depending on a number of variables. NationaLease has “Lease vs. Buy Worksheet” on its website (NationaLease.com) that managers may find useful in addition to consulting a qualified professional to help evaluate all the available options for financing.
Among the touted advantages of leasing are the preservation of credit lines and the conservation of working capital. Also, a “full-service” truck or trailer lease can lighten a company’s burdens through maintenance and roadside assistance services that are part of the lease agreement.
Leasing can be the best option for a transport company eyeing equipment acquisitions to grow or remain competitive, says Classic Capital Inc. Winnipeg representative Errol Tapper.
“With all the changes in the credit markets and the withdrawal of some of the financial companies that had previously offered accessible financing, it has become more difficult to obtain the credit if there are any tarnishes in the credit history of the applicant,” he notes. “Where before, some minor infractions in the credit history may have been overlooked, this now has become a reason for a credit-granting institution to say no.
“It is imperative that, when seeking the financing, any applicant has all the information readily available to present. That includes financial statements and tax returns, as it takes more effort today to satisfy the credit investigation process.”
A Canadian company, Classic Capital specializes in financing for customers and equipment dealers in transportation, construction and other sectors. It offers services related to leasing and financing, to help companies get the equipment they need on flexible terms that meet their budgets.
If leasing or purchasing doesn’t work for your business, you might want to rent. Or you could go yet another route: rent-to-own. It requires no money down and gives you the option of purchasing eventually. “It’s right between a purchase and a lease,” Harry Dornn says from Maxim Truck & Trailer’s head office in Winnipeg.
Under its rent-to-own program, Maxim allows customers to build equity in their rental equipment and apply up to half of their rental charges toward a down payment for purchasing.
Maxim, which has 15 branches, has also introduced a two-year lease product for those who aren’t comfortable with a typical lease of five years or more. Think of it as an option between rent-to-own and standard leasing.
In short, there are many financing options out there, and no shortage of people ready to assist transport companies in the equipment acquisition process.
Money In Motion’s Chisholm says, in his experience, he can nearly always find a way to overcome the obstacles.
“Sometimes it’s just a matter of digging a little deeper (to find a way to get financing). We need to see how an operation is working so we can find information that could help them get financing.”
He’s optimistic for Money In Motion’s trucking clients despite last year’s “perfect storm” of economic calamities, saying “I would tell people to just turn off their radios and televisions and go to work.”

Be Fuel Smart - Here's How

2010-09-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Published in Western Canada Highway News, Fall 2008:
Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market reached out and slapped truckers in the face this spring as escalating world market prices for crude oil drove up the price of fuel at the pumps.

For truckers in Western Canada, it meant mid-May diesel prices well above $1.25 per litre, and above $1.40 in Whitehorse. Truckers were paying $1.32 in Winnipeg, $1.30 in Saskatoon and $1.27 in Edmonton. A year earlier, the retail price range in those Prairie cities was 92 to 98 cents, according to M.J. Ervin & Associates.

Add concerns over the environmental impact of carbon and nitrogen oxide emissions, and the reality that our planet has only a finite supply of petroleum, and operators and fleet owners alike have compelling reasons to improve fuel economy.

Luckily, experts have some easily implemented ideas on how you might achieve that objective by changing what you put in the tank, the equipment you use, and what drivers do when they’re on the road.

New fuel additives have been put on the market in recent years with their makers and marketers saying they improve fuel economy. Among those products is the NEUTRO line of additives from PEXT International, which claims NEUTRO products are a “green” way to add as much as 10 per cent to your diesel mileage.

“With America using 375 million gallons of gas a day, the introduction of NEUTRO could not be more timely,” the Deer Park, Wash.-headquartered company declared in a news release this spring. PEXT claims its diesel additive will boost fuel efficiency, improve engine health and reduce emissions.

Similarly, Connecticut-based Stanadyne Corporation and Saskatchewan-based DSG Canada claim their diesel additives reduce fuel consumption for substantial gains in miles per gallon.

Such claims are met with skepticism in some quarters. “We don’t believe in it, that’s for sure,” Imperial Oil senior account executive Jim Noel says from Vancouver. “We’ve looked at all different types of additives over the years and we haven’t found anything that significantly improves fuel economy.”

Stanadyne’s website says the company’s Performance Formula diesel additive has been proven in tests and is approved by Ford, Navistar, General Motors and other leading vehicle manufacturers. Similarly, PEXT International and DSG Canada say their products’ safety and quality have been established through testing and numerous testimonials from satisfied users.

DSG’s additive for heavy-duty diesel trucks sells for about $35 per two-litre bottle. How much you put in varies depending on the product, says DSG president Percy Hoff in Saskatoon. The most common treatment rate is one ounce per 18 gallons (about 82 litres) of fuel.

When considering an additive, “check the label to see what verified claims the manufacturer makes,” Hoff advises. “You should be asking a lot of questions before you go ahead and dump things into your fuel – it could be a costly mistake, or just a waste of money.” He adds that there are a handful of good fuel additives on the market, including the DSG brands.

Biodiesel has been touted and hyped as a way for the transport industry to “go green.” Blends of petroleum diesel with fuel made from vegetable oils certainly do produce less air pollution than conventional diesel, but they don’t improve fuel economy. What’s more, if the motivation for using biofuels is environmental, one might wish to consider the environmental and social costs that go with producing it. Those costs include the energy that goes into producing it and the cropland that’s used for growing fuel instead of food.

Still, whether you think biodiesel is a good idea may be a moot point by the time you read this. Bill C-33, the Renewable Fuels Act, passed in the House of Commons in late May and was headed for approval in the Senate. If passed, it would require diesel sold in Canada to have an average renewable fuel content of two per cent by 2012.

Engine makers are trying to help you reduce fuel consumption with more efficient systems. International Truck and Engine, for example, says it has designed a truck that is seven per cent more fuel-efficient than their nearest competitor.

“The ProStar is the most aerodynamic and fuel-efficient Class 8 truck on the road,” Roy Wiley says from International headquarters in Illinois, adding that wind tunnel tests conducted in Canada confirmed ProStar’s superiority.

International says the high fuel efficiency, which is mainly thanks to the truck’s aerodynamic design, means well over $5,000 in savings on diesel in a 190,000-kilometre year. That ain’t chicken feed.

“Clear and decisive fuel-economy leadership is great news for our customers,” declares Daniel Ustian, president and CEO of Navistar (International’s parent company). “The ability to save thousands of dollars in fuel with one truck over the course of a year is extremely significant, especially with the financial pressures placed on truck and fleet owners.”

Idling costs fuel, so it’s fortunate that engine makers have developed idle reduction systems. Kenworth’s patented Clean Power no-idle system was put in T660 trucks a while back, and this spring’s Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville the company announced that Clean Power will become a factory-installed option for W900s and T800s as well. Kenworth states that Clean Power can boost fuel economy by as much as eight per cent in trucks with high idling times. That can mean saving thousands of dollars per truck every year. Clean Power adds $8,000 to $10,000 to a truck’s purchase price.

You might want to consider an engine performance module – or a “fuel-economy enhancing module,” as Hoff prefers to call it - like the ones made by DSG Canada. The Saskatchewan firm makes them for Cummins ISX and some Caterpillar engines, and prices them at $1,800 to $2,300. “With a 10 per cent fuel economy gain,” adds Hoff, “you pay for that in no time.” Hoff assures us DSG’s modules don’t interfere with manufacturers’ engine control modules.

Digital technology can also come in handy for improving fuel economy. Innovative companies like Langley, B.C.-based 4Refuel Canada have software to help you track fuel costs and increase fleet productivity. Its core program, Fuel Management Online, allows clients to access daily fuel-spending reports. A step up from that is an attachment that collects data from a truck’s engine on idling time, excessive acceleration, excessive speed and other things that jack up diesel consumption.

The 4Refuel approach recognizes that on-the-road practices have a big impact on whether your fleet is getting the best bang for the fuel buck. “A truck driven using poor driving habits can use up to 35 per cent more fuel than a truck driven using fuel-efficient driving techniques,” states a 4Refuel fact sheet. Companies have seen dramatic fuel savings after implementing “smart driver” programs.

Maintaining reasonable speeds and not accelerating too quickly are two simple tactics for conserving fuel on the road. According to Natural Resources Canada, reducing your cruising speed from 100 klicks to 90 can result in 10 per cent better fuel economy. An increase from 100 to 110 can worsen fuel economy by a similar magnitude.

Another simple measure is to reduce idling. It’s stating the obvious to say that the worst gas mileage a vehicle can get is zero distance per litre, so prolonged idling is obviously a waste of fuel. A commercial truck driver can save thousands of dollars on fuel annually just by eliminating unnecessary idling, according to Natural Resources Canada. As well, letting an engine idle for too long can cause damage that shortens engine life and harms fuel economy.

Low tire pressure also adversely affects fuel economy. Tires under-inflated by 15 per cent can reduce fuel economy by one per cent or more. Proper inflation also improves braking performance and tire life, by the way.

Make sure your fleet goes out on the road with proper lubrication. Follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for optimal fuel economy. According to International Truck and Engine, using a 10W-30 instead of a 5W-30 can reduce fuel economy by two per cent. An extra two per cent in diesel expenses adds up to a lot of money for a busy fleet.

Lastly, drivers can improve the distance they get from every tankful by removing unnecessary weight. By that we don’t mean dieting and exercising to lose body fat (though it might not be a bad idea). Losing as little as 100 pounds (45 kilograms) from what a rig is carrying can mean a significantly smaller diesel bill for an 800-km haul.

The federal government has a program called SmartDriver for Highway Trucking. Free information on that and fuel-smart practices generally can be obtained online at fleetsmart.nrcan.gc.ca.

New Generation Engines

2010-09-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

Published in Western Canada Highway News, Spring 2008:
Engine manufacturers had to green up in 2007 as new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emission standards came into effect. They rose to the challenge with innovative solutions in exhaust gas circulation and particulate filtering.

In December 2000, the EPA declared new emission standards for 2007 and later heavy-duty highway engines. The new limit for particulate matter (PM) emissions was set at 0.01 grams per brake horsepower per hour, one-tenth the standard that was in force in 1998 (which was about one-sixth the standard enforced in the late 1980s). Emission standards for nitrogen oxides (NOx) and non-methane hydrocarbons were similarly tightened. The PM standards were to take immediate effect in 2007 while the NOx and NMHC standards were to be phased in over three years.

The health effects of exposure to high levels of particulate matter can include decreased lung function and chronic bronchitis. Nitrogen oxides – compounds of nitrogen and oxygen, in varying complexity – are of concern due to their link to respiratory problems, acid rain, global warming and other troublesome issues. The EPA’s website says hydrocarbon emissions, resulting mainly from incomplete combustion and the evaporation of fuel, are “a serious air pollutant in cities across the United States.”

Cummins Inc. responded with confidence that it could comply with the new benchmarks and yet still deliver the quality its customers had come to expect. The company was “on schedule to deliver as promised, just as we did in 2002 (when new standards also came into effect),” Cummins vice-president Ed Pence said at the 2006 Diesel Techology Conference in Washington, D.C. “Given the breadth of our engine design capabilities, we consider emissions technology a competitive advantage for Cummins and we welcome the new EPA regulations."

For the big engine makers, the approach to meeting the new emission standards was essentially twofold: recirculating exhaust gas to cut emissions of NOx and NMHC, and filtering particulate matter so that less of it gets belched out. In Cummins’ case, it meant combining the newest version of the company’s cooled exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system – already proven when Cummins met the 2002 regulations – with a particulate filter designed and produced by Cummins division Emission Solutions.

“We have delivered on our promise to have certified compliant engines that perform and deliver on the things that are most important in the trucking industry, which are performance, fuel economy and reliability,” Cummins spokesperson Louis Wenzler said this year. “And as we step back and listen to customers and fleet owners that we talk to on a regular basis, our interpretation would be as they grade our scorecard that (they believe) Cummins has delivered on its promise. The product is working.”

Wenzler said Cummins was pleased to see that the engines “worked as designed” right from the start, though “minor adjustments in the software” were made after the first units hit the market. He emphasized the word minor. “Have we made design changes that drive hardware changes and assembly changes? The answer to that is ‘No.’ The fundamental product as released is stable, is remaining with no changes. Have we made minor software changes? Yeah.”

Caterpillar Inc. responded to the emission-reduction challenge with refinements to its trademarked ACERT technology. To the basics of ACERT – air management, precision combustion, etc. – the company added clean gas induction (CGI) to reduce NOx levels, as well as a top-notch diesel particulate filter. CGI is an ACERT process that cools filtered non-combustible gas and and then blends it with more incoming cool, clean air before returning it to the combustion chamber. A company brochure emphasizes that these engines differ from competitors’ products in that they put clean air into the combustion chamber – “not the recycled exhaust gas of cooled-EGR technology.”

A news release from Caterpillar last fall said the new engines “provide the value, performance and fuel economy customers expect.” Lorne Lagimodiere, truck engine account manager for Toromont Cat in Winnipeg, concurred with that assessment early this year. He added that the 2007 engines provide better response, power and fuel economy. And the trucks running on those engines invariably have clean smokestacks as testament to how well PM pollution has been cut.

Truck sales volumes shot up in 2006 “because truckers knew that that the ’07 engines would cost anywhere from $8,000 to $13,000 more,” said International Truck and Engine’s Roy Wiley. “There was a big pre-buy in 2006. For the medium-duty engines the price difference was a lot less – more like $4,000 to $6,000. But for the big-bore engines - well, those engines are quite expensive.”

The Pro-Star Class 8 truck was at the centre of International’s response to the 2007 standards. The MaxxForce 11 and MaxxForce 13 engines in those trucks included proven cooled-EGR systems and advanced aftertreatment systems. A company vice-president pledged in 2006 that the new engines would deliver outstanding performance and reliability along with improved air quality.

"The new engines are being received well in the marketplace," Wiley said months after the launch. He added that the engine systems were subjected to “your normal tweaks that you sometimes have to do, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

Mack Trucks also used a combination of cooled-EGR technology and a diesel particulate filter to cut emissions from its MP engine series down to 2007 standards. Early reviews from customers were rather positive. The GM of a Pennsylvania industry supplier, for instance, said in late 2006 that his company tested the new Macks and “had absolutely no issues. I would not hesitate to buy more of these trucks.”

“We’re very happy with the product,” Murray Marshall, general manager of Mack Sales and Service in Winnipeg, said early this year. “Our customers are very happy as well.”

His shop has sold well over 100 of the new engines, so they’ve got a good idea of how well the engineering panned out. And it was all aces, he said, with the engines being “great right out of the box. … The guys did a great job engineering these parts into the engine. … It went off really well.

Feedback from customers was extremely positive, Marshall said. “The most common comment that we received back was how quiet and powerful these new engines were.”

Volvo Trucks North America president Peter Karlsten said in 2006 that its new D11, 13 and D16 engines “will make our air cleaner and help our customers be more productive and efficient.” The new engines were to use high-efficiency cooled EGR and a diesel particulate filter to tackle the emission challenges.

So, now that the new products are out and in use, what’s the prognosis? “Other than the expense, they were very well received,” Winnipeg Beaver Truck Centre fleet manager John Oades said. Extra cost and weight were issues, he added, and Volvo made very minor tweaks to enhance their products after after they hit the market.

Detroit Diesel’s heavy-duty Series 60, perhaps the most popular on-highway diesel engine in North America, came equipped in 2007 with an aftertreatment system for removing PM from the exhaust, and a top-drawer EGR system to meet the NOx emission targets. The company took other measures as well to improve the performance and cleanliness of the engine.

Detroit Diesel spokesperson Dave Siler said the company’s ’07-compliant engines – which also included the revamped MBE 4000 – got a “lukewarm” reception on the market at first, largely due to typical caution toward new products. In the end, however, the engines were embraced as the sort of top-quality products truckers have come to expect from the Michigan-based company.

Detroit Diesel has seen “better-than-expected particulate regeneration” in the new engines, he added.

The next challenge for heavy-duty engine manufacturers is to meet even more stringent NOx emission limits by 2010. Cummins announced last September it will rise to the challenge with engines that include the company’s own “next-generation cooled EGR,” without adversely affecting fuel economy, power and torque. It has already met 2010 NOx standards with the engines for certain Dodge pickup trucks.

Angelina gets Morton's tabloid treatment

2010-08-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

Published 14 August 2010 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography
By Andrew Morton,
St. Martin's Press, 328 pages, $32

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Angelina Jolie is one of the most polarizing figures in pop culture.

Is the Hollywood movie star a nurturing earth mother, or a narcissist who drags her six kids (three adopted, three biological) around the world with little regard for what they want?

Is she a passionate humanitarian, or a self-aggrandizing phoney? A bad girl gone good, or an unrepentant homewrecker?

Few would disagree that she's an exceptional actor with a commanding screen presence, given her performances in such films as Changeling, A Mighty Heart and the title role in the new movie Salt. But her talent isn't what gets tongues wagging, and it won't sell many books.

It's no surprise, then, that British celebrity biographer Andrew Morton focuses on the enigmatic and often controversial off-screen Jolie in this scandal-heavy tome.

He recounts the scandals, dishes never-before-heard stories, and tries to explain what makes the pillow-lipped thespian tick.

The end result is a somewhat gamy stew of dubious ingredients.

This book's greatest shortcomings are in Morton's attempts at accounting for Jolie's personality, or what we know of it.

For that he turns to a battery of psychiatrists and psychologists who have never even met the woman who was born Angelina Jolie Voight 35 years ago.

Jolie's father, Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight, left his wife, son and infant Angelina for a young drama student.

Seeing a facial resemblance between baby girl and scoundrel dad, Angelina's mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, could hardly bear to have the child around. So she assigned a rotating crew of babysitters to care for Angie in a separate apartment.

One result of all this, according to Morton's stable of shrinks, was a deep-seated fear of abandonment that has affected Jolie's relationships, especially with men, all her life.

The book makes recurring themes of parental conflict and Jolie's "inner turmoil," which Morton can't possibly understand since he has never had a conversation with her.

A psychologist tells us teenage Angelina's suicidal thoughts reflected how she lacked a "sense of self," probably because "she had internalized all that abandonment as a baby."

Jolie was a druggie and a "cutter" (that is, she inflicted harm on herself by cutting) with anorexia in her high school years because her insides were roiling with rage and other demons, say a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

That she abused drugs in her teen and adult years is something Jolie has admitted to. So is the cutting. But that anorexia stuff has a shaky foundation.

Morton isn't the first writer to report that Jolie has struggled with anorexia, but still the assertion should be taken with a grain of salt.

Yes, she has sometimes been rather thin. But that alone doesn't mean she's anorexic.

The former London tabloid reporter can't point to any anorexia treatment, nor any evidence of anorexia beyond Jolie's thin build and the occasional statements she's made about watching her calories.

Yet he repeatedly says she's anorexic, as if it's an indisputable fact, and he trots out explanations for the eating disorder from his team of experts on the mind.

Of course, much psychobabble is also thrown around to explain Jolie's brief and non-monogamous first marriage to British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her brief but intense marriage to actor-musician Billy Bob Thornton, and the dynamics of her current relationship with fellow screen superstar Brad Pitt.

Her adoption of children from other countries is interpreted as being "symbolic of how alien she feels."

As if Morton's use of never-met-Angelina-but-I'll-gladly-analyze-her shrinks weren't bad enough, he applies the zodiac to his subject.

You see, Angie's a Gemini. So it's hardly surprising that she has "a dual personality, the forces of good and evil, darkness and light, male and female, wrestling in her psyche."

Morton repeatedly goes back to that hokum to explain perceived "dualities" and contradictions, as if inconsistencies aren't just a part of being human.

After his 2008 book critically examined Tom Cruise's immersion in a cult, Morton's use of astrology in this one is a major disappointment that hurts his credibility.

Also not helping is how Morton fails to cite sources for many of his Angelina tales.

He writes that Jolie's mother kick-started teenage Angelina's acting career by telling her agent, behind Angelina's back, to go ahead and let everyone know that she's Jon Voight's kid.

The story is one of the book's "scoops," and it seems plausible. But it would be a lot more credible if Morton told us where he got it. (Jolie's mother died a few years ago and isn't mentioned as a source, so it's not likely her.)

Similarly, Morton says Jolie once shocked her dad with photos of her licking and kissing her lesbian lover, model Jenny Shimizu.

Since the scribe doesn't disclose who told him the tale and how that person knows about it, we have nothing on which to assay its credibility.

Jolie's sexual liaisons with women are, by the way, discussed as a pathology -- "part of being lost" and not knowing herself, according to a psychoanalyst.

Jolie won an Academy Award in 2000 for her portrayal of a psych patient in Girl, Interrupted. Now Morton and his clinical friends can't stop psychoanalyzing the actress.

In the final analysis, this book isn't worth the cover price.

Smart memoir might keep you awake

2010-06-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

Published 12 June 2010 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

Wide Awake: A Memoir of Insomnia
By Patricia Morrisroe
Random House, 276 pages, $30

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Popular wisdom holds that the average adult needs eight hours of sleep nightly. Patricia Morrisroe rarely comes close to meeting that quota.

Genetics may be behind her chronic sleeplessness. By her reckoning, she's at least a fourth-generation insomniac.

Quite the entrepreneurial wordsmith, she has turned her bad relationship with Mr. Sandman into a smart, informative and entertaining memoir.

Wide Awake chronicles the New York magazine writer's varied efforts at understanding and conquering her insomnia.

She stays overnight at a "sleep lab" where physiologic patterns are monitored while she sleeps, or tries to.

She takes a medication called doxepin, which gives her a spooky psychedelic dream.

She meets with a scientist who got rich off a sleeping pill he invented, and interviews a doctor who tells her "sleeping pills kill."

A physician at New York's Sleep Disorders Institute reassures her that any risks from "appropriate treatment" are slight compared to the perils associated with insomnia.

Morrisroe tries Sonata, Ambien, other drugs, cognitive behaviour therapy and light therapy.

She attends a medical conference that seems like little more than a trade show for drug companies to sell doctors on the merits of sleeping pills.

On her way to a clinic for an interview, she takes a white-knuckle taxi ride in Las Vegas with a cabbie who tells her he never gets enough sleep between his 12-hour shifts.

And all that's just in Wide Awake's first 100 pages.

Hypnosis, a palm reader, bed shopping, meditation classes and house hunting figure in some of the adventures that follow.

Morrisroe, who previously authored a book on photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, peppers her storytelling with insomnia facts she has gathered in her research.

There are two basic categories of insomnia: sleep-onset and sleep-maintenance. Morrisroe's is of the latter kind, meaning getting to sleep's a relative breeze for her but she has trouble staying in her slumber for more than a few hours.

Some pharmaceutical treatments work well (but with side-effects) against one type of insomnia but not the other. And what's effective for one person with sleep-maintenance problems may be utterly ineffective for another.

After trying several drugs, Morrisroe focuses on finding a non-pharmaceutical solution. It appears by the end of Wide Awake that she has succeeded through a combination of meditation and a quiet country home.

The latter isn't a viable alternative for most people, of course. But then Morrisroe, a successful writer whose husband works on Wall Street, isn't most people.

It will occur to the class-conscious reader that Morrisroe spends more time and money on her problem than a person of modest or even average means could afford.

The overnight stay at the sleep lab, for example, carried a price tag of more than $3,000. It was covered by her health insurance, but anyone following the U.S. health-care debate knows that many people south of the border don't have policies to foot the bill.

Similarly, her voluminous arsenal of drugs and long line of therapists must have cost more than that tired Las Vegas taxi driver could afford.

Come to think of it, the cabbie's story might be more interesting to examine. Just how does a working-class family guy like him cope with insomnia? Does he have any hope of defeating it?

Wide Awake is a memoir, so the reader has no right to expect Morrisroe to delve deeply into other people's problems. She tells her own story.

And she tells it with wit, honesty and a crisp writing style. This is a good book for the sleepless and those who wish to better understand their plight.

Big Wheels Turning Again: The days of OTR tire scarcity have passed

2010-05-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Published in Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining, Spring 2010:

It’s quite simple, really. Mining operations use big equipment. Big equipment has big wheels. Big wheels require big tires.

Anything that can haul a 200- or 300-tonne load needs a set of huge wheels clad in huge tires. One of the very biggest haulers, the Caterpillar 797 used in Alberta’s oilsands, wears 13-foot-tall radial tires that weigh about five tonnes each. The enormous tires are needed to support the 797’s two-storey, 260-tonne frame and payloads in excess of 350 tonnes.

Of course, size isn’t everything. Wear resistance and traction are two of the other factors that separate the good from the bad, or the exceptional from the merely mediocre. Canadian mining companies need to know the tires will endure the rugged terrain, long workdays and often inhospitable weather of their sites.

The world’s major tire makers have happily supplied those needs with products priced at thousands, often tens of thousands, of dollars apiece. Then, sometime in the middle years of this millennium’s first decade, the supply chain hit a snag.

Demand from emerging economies, especially China, fueled a sharp scarcity in off-the-road (OTR) tires. Many projects in resource extraction stalled as companies scrambled to find tires for their big machines.

Tire manufacturers tried their best to meet those needs but found it difficult to do so as a “perfect storm” of simultaneous North American and overseas demand rocked the rubber products sector.

Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining reported on the problem in its Summer 2006 edition and now presents an update.

Situation better

“The situation has indeed improved,” says Mike Dembe, Sales Manager at Toronto-based Solideal Canada, a tire manufacturer and seller. “We have come off an approximately three-year OTR tire shortage.”

The global shortage, which eased up noticeably by 2008, sparked bidding wars on OTR tires and a “grey market” of fringe dealers selling questionable fare at inflated prices. As well, retreading grew in popularity and entrepreneurial types scrounged up old tires for sale to retreading shops.

The shortage “caught everyone off guard,” a Yokohama Tires executive told GX Contractor magazine in 2005. “We’re behind in production about 10 months, with heavy back orders. In 40 years in the tire business, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Mining behemoth Rio Tinto responded by establishing its own retreading shop, capable of giving new life to 1,000 old OTR tires annually, in Perth, Australia.

Though it helped some companies fill their OTR needs, retreading was never the solution. For one thing, there just aren’t many facilities capable of retreading tires that stand taller than an NBA forward. And, like Rome, such a retreading shop couldn’t be built in a day.

Similarly, OTR tire manufacturing couldn’t be ramped up right away. Rectifying the shortage would take time and large investments.

The Chinese were able to partially fill their own OTR tire needs with made-in-China products, and exported some of those tires to North America.

Unfortunately, some Chinese products were not so good. “Quality was mixed,” Dembe remarks. “In general, it was of a lesser quality than major brands.”

He adds that Solideal did, however, find a quality line of Chinese products to meet OTR needs. The Duratough brand includes 24.00R35 tires that are about seven feet tall by three feet wide, and suitable for a Caterpillar 773 rigid haul truck.

Besides China ramping up its OTR tire production, other factors behind improvement in the OTR market include a slowing of demand and the way big tire companies increased their own OTR production capacity.

Michelin, the world’s largest tire maker, invested $85 million US to expand its Earthmover plant in South Carolina to meet demand for the brand’s 57- to 63-inch radial tires. It also dedicated a $200-million OTR tire plant in Brazil.

Yokohama Tire expanded facilities in Japan and struck a deal with Barrick Gold Corporation to create a dedicated tire plant (in Hiroshima) for production of more than 1,000 units a year for the mining giant. Bridgestone Firestone opened a new factory for large and ultra-large OTR tires last year in Japan. Goodyear expanded its retreading shop in North Bay, Ontario. Titan Tire expanded production of giant (63-inch) tires at an Ohio facility.

And, while production capacity was being increased, demand started to decline due to several factors. A recession and credit crunch hit the U.S. home-building market hard, and that in turn reduced demand for copper and other metals. The mining industry scaled back instead of growing, and didn’t need tires so much as big machines went idle.

OTR tire manufacturers no longer have to worry a whole lot about producing enough to meet the needs of their customers. “The pressure’s off,” as John Mullin, a Vice-President of dealer chain Kal Tire, puts it.

No letting up

Indeed, Jonathon Karelse has statistical evidence that the “pressure” of demand for OTR tires has dropped to uncomfortable lows. Karelse is both National Marketing Manager for Yokohama Tire (Canada) and Chair of the Rubber Association of Canada’s statistics committee.

After peaking in 2004 at 55,000 units shipped, industry-wide Canadian OTR tire sales slid to 38,000 in 2007, 35,000 in 2008 and a paltry 33,000 last year. By contrast, Karelse points out, annual sales always exceeded 40,000 units in the years prior to 2007. He says 2009’s sales volume is the lowest on record.

Whether last year’s number represents a bottoming-out in the OTR market remains to be seen, but it is clear that tire makers aren’t letting up or giving up on their aspirations of bigger shares of the OTR market.

Goodyear, for instance, has announced a multimillion-dollar investment in an existing Kansas plant to make 63-inch radials for open-pit mining haul trucks. A Goodyear executive described the plant upgrade as “a long-term strategic decision that reflects Goodyear’s commitment to deliver products for OTR customers’ changing demands.”

Moreover, engineers and scientists at all the major tire manufacturers are devising and experimenting in ways to make even better, longer-lasting products. The puzzles they’re trying to solve include how to improve cut resistance, wear resistance, traction and heat management. (The temperatures haul trucks’ tires reach constitute perhaps the most important factor behind tires’ durability, or lack of it.)

Building better and better tires is “tremendously important” to Titan, says Paul Hawkins, the Illinois-headquartered company’s Vice-President of OTR sales. “Research and development is a critical element in the overall stability of Titan’s long-term strategic plan.

“Our R&D group has redesigned a new generation of giant mining tires based on the lessons learned from our first generation,” he continues. “We tested over $2 million worth of tires to prove these designs. The results are impressive. This new-generation giant mining tire is able to run 35 to 40°F lower in temperature, and is also 1,500 pounds lighter. These design features, along with new rubber compounds, have resulted in better performance at faster speeds.”

You might say the wheels are always turning at Titan.

San Gold Soars

2010-05-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Published in Manitoba Mining Review 2009:
Year after year, investors in San Gold Corporation get new reasons to believe their investment was a wise one.
In 2006, the Manitoba miner poured its first gold brick, valued at an estimated $500,000, and discovered new deposits. The next year, the company’s exploration in the Rice Lake Gold Belt paid off with more discoveries adding significantly to the company’s known and inferred gold resource, and San Gold began about $100 million worth of development of the Rice Lake and SG #1 mines.
The most exciting news in 2008 is undoubtedly the discovery of high-grade deposits in the Hinge Zone east of the historic Rice Lake mine.
Dale Ginn, San Gold’s CEO, told the Business News Network’s Small Caps program in June that “the numbers are very strong” at the Hinge.
New York-based investment guru Jay Taylor (editor of J. Taylor’s Gold, Energy & Tech Stocks newsletter), a frequent co-host of the BNN show, considers San Gold one of the continent’s most promising small mining companies. His newsletter advised readers in mid-August to buy San Gold stock, in large part because of the exciting Hinge Zone discoveries. It was far from the first time the newsletter recommended San Gold, and likely won’t bet the last.
“It’s still early stages, because we only just found it in May,” Ginn told the Manitoba Mining Review in September, “but the Hinge Zone discovery is the most significant development to date in San Gold's history. It’s significant because the grades are higher than we’ve seen before and the gold is close to the surface. And there’s no additional capital required – the equipment is already there (at Rice Lake).”
The Hinge find is “pretty spectacular,” agrees San Gold shareholder and director Rick Boulay said. “It’s very significant to the company.”
The company is completing a ramp to the Hinge Zone from the Rice Lake mill area and aims to begin mining there in the first quarter of 2009, said Boulay, adding mining operations there will be low-cost because the gold is so near the surface.
San Gold Corporation’s two predecessor companies, San Gold Resources and Gold City Industries, acquired the Rice Lake Mine (formerly known as the Bissett Mine or the San Antonio Mine) in 2004 by purchasing 100 per cent of Harmony Gold (Canada) Inc. San Gold Resources and Gold City Industries merged in July 2005 to form the present corporation.
Located about 200 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, the Rice Lake mine has a nearly century-long history dating back to the discovery of gold there in 1911. It produced more than 1.5 million ounces of gold and 200-plus ounces of silver in 36 years before shutting down in 1968 after a plunge in gold prices. The mine and mill reopened briefly in 1982-83 and 1998-2001 (after $130 million was spent in rebuilding the mine and mill). San Gold reopened it yet again in 2006.
A “classic deep Canadian mine” (as Ginn likes to describe it), Rice Lake is less than 100 km away from Goldcorp’s highly productive Red Lake property in Ontario. The Rice Lake and Red Lake districts both lie within the Uchi Subprovince of the Canadian Shield’s Superior Province. Major gold occurrences occur within quartz veins or quartz vein systems related to structural deformation (folding and faulting).
San Gold also mines the near-surface SG-1 deposit a few kilometres away from the Rice Lake mine. Both mines feed the Rice Lake mill which the company intends expand in capacity from 1,250 to 1,900 tons per day by the end of 2009.
The company also announced its discovery of the Cartwright gold deposit, less than a kilometre west of the Rice Lake mine, in early 2006 and made plans for near-surface ramp development there. Those plans were put on the back burner after the high-grade Hinge Zone deposits were found, but Boulay said mining at the Cartwright deposit will happen in the not-too-distant future.
On the nearly 15,000 hectares of exploration land it owns or controls in the Rice Lake Greenstone Belt, San Gold increased its ore resources and reserves from 550,000 gold ounces (audited, all categories) in 2004 to over 1.6 million gold ounces (audited, all categories) by the end of 2006. Updated data expected by year-end will include a hefty increase in the resources and reserves tally.
Lately, San Gold stock has outperformed well above the TSX Global Gold Index and far better than its small-cap Canadian peers. That’s partly due to the excitement generated by this year’s Hinge discoveries, but Boulay notes that there are several other factors giving it a competitive edge. For one thing, the company is blessed with $300 million in infrastructure while being absolutely debt-free – quite a rarity for “small” mining companies anywhere in the world.
Then there are a host of other notable competitive advantages, including having two mines in production and a third under construction for 2009; rapidly expanding audited gold resources; the lowest electricity costs anywhere in the world (about half what Quebec mines pay, less than one-quarter of Nevada rates); easy access to infrastructure by road; and a stable environment in a province the Fraser Institute judged the world’s most pro-mining jurisdiction in 2007.
San Gold has built on those competitive advantages and forged ties with Bissett-area people via extensive recruitment from surrounding communities, in-house training for over two years, and share ownership and incentive plans for its employees.
Among corporate goals for 2008-09 are completion of a new comprehensive 43-101 resource report this December, and more than doubling annual production to more than 100,000 ounces in 2009. Ginn told BNN in June that he expects the company will post a profit by the last quarter of 2008. With gold trading at about $900 an ounce this autumn, that’s not hard to believe.
While former Harmony Gold (Canada) general manager Ginn is CEO, mining veteran Hugh Wynne is San Gold’s chairman. Founder of San Gold Resources, Wynne has more than 40 years of experience in mining, mining services and exploration – including some 25 years of exploration in the Rice Lake Greenstone Belt.
Other key senior management positions are held by Ian Berzins (COO) and Gestur Kristjansson (CFO). The company is headquartered in the Town of Bissett.
San Gold recently extended its reach to outside Manitoba by acquiring 3,754 hectares in properties west, south and east of Timmins, Ontario.

The World Digs Uranium

2010-05-02T13:03:00.001-07:00

Published in Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining, Winter 2008:
The most populous country in the world is expanding its nuclear power capacity, and our country is ready to help.

China’s plan to build more nuclear power plants is one reason why executives at Canadian uranium companies are smiling these days.

The Asian giant’s government approved a plan in 2007 to quintuple its nuclear power generation capacity to 40,000 megawatts by 2020. As of last year, China has 11 nuclear reactors in operation and another eight units under construction. Most of China’s present electricity generation is via fossil fuels.

For uranium companies, the China plan was a significant part of an encouraging year which saw the spot price of yellowcake soar to about US$138 a pound in June. That number fell in the ensuing months, but was still $85 in September with the long-term price used by utilities for bulk buying steady at more than $90. Those numbers were way up from 2006 prices.

That June price jump was simply a matter of “a lack of material and a whole bunch of buyers,” Uranium Participation Corporation president E. Peter Farmer says from Toronto. Uranium Participation is a trading company managed (but not owned) by Denison Mines, one of Canada’s largest mining companies.

“You have to remember that the spot market is a small portion of the total market,” he continues. “It’s the tail-end market. And we had a whole bunch of buyers out, including a number of producers, who were out to get material in the first half of the year.

“The belief at the time was – and it was absolutely true – was that in order to get it you had to bid above market. So every time some material came out for bid it pushed the market up.

“There is a constant demand. What happened in June was, some of the producers were short of material that they had to get material and at least one if not more utilities felt they had to get material, and they went out to get it. And of course you had traders involved on top of that. It was kind of an alignment of the planets, really.”

After that, he says, buyers notched down their demand for yellowcake and “the normal kind of market has returned.”

Exploration

Prices have seen a dramatic rebound since 2000, when the spot price was as low as $7.10. Canadian companies have responded to price trends and generally upbeat forecasts with exploration projects at familiar and new regions alike.

For those familiar with the history of uranium mining in Canada, the revival of exploration in the Elliot Lake and Beaverlodge areas is perhaps most interesting.

The Elliot Lake area, north of Lake Huron and west of Sudbury, first bustled with uranium activity in the mid-1950s. One mine operated by Denison produced nearly 70 million tonnes of ore in 35 years before closing in 1992. Denison and Rio Algom closed the last of their Elliot Lake mines in the 1990s.

Now Pele Mountain Resources and International Montoro Resources have begun work near Elliot Lake. With hopes of developing a “world-class mine,” Pele has drilled at a property east of the city; Montoro is assessing the viability of renewed mining at the Serpent River property a few kilometres east of Pele’s project.

The Saskatchewan Beaverlodge mines, operated by Eldorado Mining, closed in the early ’80s after some 30 years of operation. Nearby Uranium City, which once had a population of nearly 5,000, all but disappeared. Uranium City Resources, a junior exploration company headquartered in Kirkland Lake, Ont., has conducted drilling and found reason to believe uranium extraction could profitably return to that area along the north shore of Lake Athabasca. The company posts frequent updates on its website.

Other Athabasca Basin properties have seen diligent exploration. At Mann Lake, 25 kilometres southwest of the McArthur River mine, Triex Minerals and Consolidated Abaddon Resources have been drilling for uranium. ESO Uranium and Hathor Explorations have embarked on an exploration project near the former Cluff Lake mine. Denison Mines and rival Cameco Corporation each have interests in several exploration projects in the region, where nary a sliver of land is unclaimed for exploration.

More than $120 million was spent on uranium exploration in Saskatchewan in 2006, 25 per cent more than in 2005, and the tally for 2007 is expected to be still bigger. Hundreds of claims have been staked and permits taken in the Wheat Province since the dawn of this millennium, as market trends declare that there is much profit to be had. The Saskatchewan government estimated 2007 uranium exploration expenditures in the province would reach $130 million, nearly half the spending in a record year for mineral exploration.

Alberta locations are also being eyed for uranium potential. Red Dragon Resources and UraMin, for instance, drilled this year at their Rea property on the western edge of the Athabasca Basin. France-based AREVA Resources (formerly Cogema Resources), which purchased UraMin in 2007, has claim to the nearby Maybelle River uranium deposit.

Further north, enterprising minds see potential in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Alberta Star Development is drilling in the northeast Great Bear Lake area, near the defunct Port Radium mines. Uranium North Resources and Ur-Energy are among the firms checking out properties in Nunavut.

Two companies – CanAlaska Uranium and Hinterland Metals – are exploring the uranium potential of Manitoba, heretofore not a uranium producer. Hinterland recently reported that it has found both uranium potential and gold potential at its Hearne property west of Churchill.

And Canadian companies aren’t confining their uranium quests to

Canada

. They’re looking for or extracting uranium in Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Kazakhstan,

Peru

and other countries.

Top producers

Canada

is tops among uranium-producing countries, putting nearly 9,900 tonnes on market in 2006. That’s 25 per cent of the year’s world uranium output and much more than Australia (7,600 tonnes, 19 per cent), the globe’s second leading producer, though Australia’s known uranium reserves are much greater than

Canada

’s. Kazakhstan, an Asian country that borders both Russia and

China

, has emerged as a major uranium source; it was responsible for 13 per cent of global uranium production in 2006. Russia, Niger, Namibia and Uzbekistan (another neighbour to

Kazakhstan

) are also major producers.

Canada has the largest-producing uranium mine in the world – the McArthur River underground mine in Saskatchewan operated by Cameco Corporation. More than 7,000 tonnes come out of that mine annually. But McArthur River may not stay No. 1 for much longer. In

Australia

there are plans to triple the output of the Olympic Dam mine owned by BHP Billiton. That would bring its production past McArthur River levels.

At present, all of Canada’s uranium output is from three Saskatchewan mines: McArthur River and Rabbit Lake controlled by Cameco, and the McClean Lake open-pit mine which is majority-owned by AREVA. Denison Mines has a 22.5 per cent stake in McClean Lake.

A fourth Saskatchewan mine was supposed to have begun operations by 2007, but that plan was stymied by flooding in 2006. Cameco, which has a majority stake in the Cigar Lake joint venture with AREVA and other companies, stated in October 2007 that production at the underground mine will be delayed until 2011.

Cameco, based in Saskatoon, is the world’s largest publicly traded uranium company. Besides its Saskatchewan properties, it also operates uranium mines in Nebraska, Wyoming and Kazakhstan, and owns conversion plants at Port Hope, Ont., and a refinery in Blind River, Ont. It also owns one of the two mills in the Athabasca Basin region, near McArthur River.

AREVA Resources Canada, which also has offices in Saskatoon, is looking to expand its uranium production at a site 16 kilometres west of the McClean Lake operation. The Midwest Project, a joint venture in which AREVA is the majority partner, aims to establish an open-pit mine that is expected to yield 360,000 tonnes of ore averaging at four per cent uranium. Production is scheduled to start in 2011, pending regulatory approval. AREVA’s mill at McClean Lake will handle the Midwest ore as well as ore from Cigar Lake once that mine is in operation.

One emerging player in the uranium business is Toronto-headquartered Uranium One, which operates mines in South Africa and

Kazakhstan

. It’s also involved in exploration activities in Saskatchewan, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, the United States and

Australia

Major markets

Uranium’s sole commercial use is as fuel for the nearly 450 reactors at nuclear power plants around the globe. The U.S. has more than 100 reactors in operation while France and

Japan

have more than 50 each, but one country is set to rival those last two as a market for the processed uranium used as reactor fuel.

That would be

China

, where the government aims to have nuclear plants supply four per cent of the country’s power needs by 2020 – double the present percentage. To that end, it will have to build several new reactors including the two AREVA agreed in late November to build for

China

. Westinghouse Electric signed deals in December 2006 to build four reactors in

China

. Both companies hope to land contracts for still more reactors, further enlarging the market for uranium in

China

AREVA is also building power plants in France and Finland, company spokesperson Alun Richards says from Saskatoon, and there are signs that a new generation of power plants is ahead in the

U.S.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, Constellation Energy and other companies are keen to build new plants, and the first new plants in the

U.S.

could be up and running as early as 2014.

Three of China’s neighbours - India, Russia and

Korea

– each have several nuclear power plants as well as plans for many new ones in the next decade.

Cameco projects three percent annual growth in global uranium demand to 2016, company spokesperson Gord Struthers says from Saskatoon. “It could be considerably higher than that, depending particularly on what happens in terms of reactor construction and the performance of operating plants.”

Market growth is projected to be especially strong in Asia, he remarks.

Uranium Participation’s Farmer says his company projects a two per cent annual growth in the world market – about the same as in recent years. He concurs that the growth will stem largely from new plants in Asia “and the perception in North America that we’ve got to do something about our environment – we can’t keep burning coal the way we’ve been burning it, and we can’t keep burning so much natural gas in order to produce oil.” (Nuclear reactors don’t produce greenhouse gases.) He, too, expects a nuclear-energy revival in the

U.S.

Major challenges

These are boom times for uranium, but challenges come with the opportunities. Mining and exploration companies are coping with shortages in labour and equipment.

“We recognize that we are challenged to find the people to grow our production - and to sustain our production, for that matter,” says Cameco’s Struthers. But he adds that they have a strategy for addressing human resources issues and “we’re confident that we’re going to get the people we need in order to sustain our business.”

Geography and history are on Cameco’s side, he says. “One advantage that Cameco has is in all of this is that our largest mining operations are in northern Saskatchewan and for many years now we have been working with Northern people to … provide training through registered programs and other programs and scholarship programs to make sure that they have the skills to participate fully in this industry.”

AREVA’s Richards says one reason the industry faces “big challenges” in human resources is that “it’s an industry that hasn’t done much expansion until recently, so it’s an aging workforce.” An additional factor for the Athabasca Basin is competition with the oilsands in northern Alberta, he adds.

The tight labour market has made the mining industry a little less choosy in recruitment. “The days of insisting on five or 10 years’ experience … are over,” Richards remarks.

The solution to the labour crunch may lie partly in luring foreign workers to the Athabasca Basin, Richards concedes. “We’re trying to find as much locally as possible, but we’re open to all sorts of approaches.”

“Right now, we certainly are challenged to get people and equipment,” Consolidated Global Minerals president George Heard says from the exploration company’s Vancouver head office. He notes that drilling costs have doubled since mid-2006.

Heard points out there are also significant technical challenges (such as finding good deposits, and fixing the Cigar Lake mine) and legislative or public-policy challenges (Saskatchewan’s new government may change the regulatory regime).

Challenges aside, the outlook seems rosy for uranium, he says. “I believe the commodity price is going to increase. … The uranium market is going to grow because of concern over carbon emissions.”

Energized by such optimism, Consolidated Global and scores of other companies continue their search for

Canada

’s next big uranium mine. Looks like 2008 will be another big, busy year for the uranium business.

Filling Holes: Companies look abroad, court Canada’s youth

2010-05-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

Published in Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining, Summer 2007:

Some 530 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay on the Canadian Shield, Red Lake Gold Mines is one of the world’s richest gold-producing operations. The mines produce nearly 800,000 ounces of gold annually, at relatively low cost. And production is expected to exceed a million ounces in 2011.

The robust activity at this huge Goldcorp operation, which includes the Campbell mine site at nearby Balmertown, means about 1,200 good-paying jobs. But as lucrative as those positions may be, it isn’t always easy filling them. Red Lake Gold Mines, like the Canadian mining industry generally, faces a growing challenge in recruiting qualified personnel.

The recruitment challenge in Canadian mining “runs the spectrum” from entry-level mine positions to millwrights to engineers, Goldcorp human resources vice-president Gerry Atkinson says from his office Vancouver.

Mining is “at the beginning phase” of its HR crunch, he adds. “I think the situation is going to get more difficult. I don’t think it’s going to get easier. And I think that organizations … are going to have to spend a lot more time thinking about their overall long-term strategy as far as recruitment and development are concerned.

“We’re doing things like building stronger relationships with high schools, stronger relationships with universities and trade schools. A number of our mine sites are in aboriginal communities, so we’re building stronger relationships with aboriginal communities. And we’re kind of looking outside the box a little bit in terms of, should we look at the feasibility of international recruitment.

“And also, we’re an international organization. I think we’re going to get more actively involved in internal transfers from … mine sites in Latin America. We’re looking at the feasibility of international transfers.”

Anne Kitchen has some ideas about what can be done to take on the human resources challenge in mining. And she’s well-qualified to comment. As business development manager of AMEC’s Training and Development Services unit, she has years of experience helping resource companies in several countries find and train workers.

Worker shortage

Every resource industry is seeing shortages in skilled workers, Kitchen says from her office in Vancouver. “We see it in more than mining.”

Forestry, for instance, is struggling with scarcities in skilled logging equipment operators and road construction workers. “The workforce shortage is real and growing,” a human resources manager recently told B.C.’s Kootenay Business magazine. “Forestry is still widely dismissed as a low-tech, low-skill sector when the opposite is true. More than ever, the industry needs a technology-savvy, skilled workforce.”

Likewise, oil and gas companies are having difficulties finding enough skilled workers. Sometimes the worker shortage has caused production delays and the postponement of projects. And it’s part of a global trend that’s been termed a “personnel crisis.”

Canada’s mining industry is expected to face a nationwide 80,000-worker shortage in the next decade, in positions ranging from mining engineer to entry-level positions. “The mining industry needs (to fill) all levels of positions right now,” Ryan Montpelier of the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MIHR) says from Kanata, Ont.

“In general, the problem varies a bit,” Kitchen remarks. “It depends on where you are in the world.” In Canada, the main factor is a demographic trend. Mines have aging workforces. Many workers are retiring, and there aren’t enough skilled young workers to take their place. The Mining Industry Training and Adjustment Council expects up to 40 per cent of the current workforce could retire in the next 10 years, and many of those workers are in skilled trades.

That word “skilled” is very important here. Canadian youth are entering the labour market with a wealth of computer skills but few are entering the workforce with the sort of skills sought at northern mine sites, Kitchen says.

In addition, as both Kitchen and Montpelier note, the mining industry has been booming in recent years. Keeping pace with the boom has been very difficult for human resources departments or mining companies, which must compete within the industry and with other sectors (such as oil and electricity) that are also facing shortages.

“I’ve been to petrochemical conferences where they are really talking about not being able to find enough people,” says Kitchen, who was a presenter at the Canadian Institute of Mining Conference in Montreal in early May. “I’ve been to conferences in the nuclear industry where they’re saying the same thing. They’re saying people are retiring and they can’t find enough people to replace them. Oil and gas is saying the same thing.”

“And these are the trainers … and the HR people. These are focused training and HR conferences. They’re not even sort of general production conferences. These are the people that are actually dealing with this issue and we’re hearing the same thing in all these industries.

Going overseas

Some companies are responding to the situation by looking to far-away lands for workers – though it cuts both ways. Canadian companies are recruiting in Australia while Australian companies are recruiting in Canada, for example.

Not surprisingly, bringing workers in from overseas can spark considerable controversy and ill will. In one case, Canadian Dehua International has applied to bring in 400 Chinese coal miners to operate a proposed mine in northeastern B.C. The United Steelworkers union and the B.C. Federation of Labour have denounced the plan.

Anyway, Kitchen says overseas recruitment is only one part of the prescription. “It depends upon the situation. If we have the freedom to go out and find the people we need in a global market – and it is a global market now – then we are free to recruit and find the people with the closest set of matching skills that we need. And we’ll assess those people, determine how close (their skills are) to the skills we need. And if we need to train them, we’ll train them and we’ll assure competency on what we are asking them to do. And that’s ongoing. It’s been ongoing for more than three years now.”

Another part of the winning formula involves reconfiguring skill sets to “reduce the scope of what it is that you’re going to have people do,” she adds.

“By finely defining what it is that we need people to do, it allows us to match their capabilities in a given area. It also allows us to more finely target training, to have people to do this. And that’s not to say that you don’t need certified electricians - not at all. Certainly, you’ll still have (them). It’s finely defining the tasks you’re asking people to do but not compromising on the safety in what you are asking people to do.”

The system “allows far more structured and powerful capability development and succession planning,” Kitchen says. The aim is to retain existing personnel and develop them into more demanding or senior roles. Then the process continues as new people are recruited to fill the gaps at junior levels and more training is done.

Mining and other industries are trying to capture the interest of future workers earlier in their lives, Kitchen observes.

“People are going into high schools, and they’re thinking it’s almost too late to go at high school level. People are … (making) visits to elementary schools to try to get children interested in the trades. Training people are starting to work very closely with local technical colleges, getting people trained in the technical programs they need to be able to come out and operate in industry.”

The federal government committed $2.5 million this spring to fund MIHR’s efforts to alleviate the HR crunch. MIHR’s Mining Attraction, Recruitment and Retention Strategy program includes classroom resources for school programs, a speakers bureau and web-based marketing directed at young Canadians. The Internet component includes the website acareerinmining.ca, which is up and running.

AMEC, headquartered in London, has helped businesses fill needs for skilled workers at oil rigs in the North Sea and Azerbaijan, among other places. Kitchen is confident the same approach used for those oil clients can be applied and adapted for great results in the mining industry.

“At the moment I have several proposals with mining companies because this system of ours allows us to determine what it is that everybody in the main roles and responsibilities in the organization needs to do. We can use it at a more holistic level as a hiring screen and then (follow up in more detail) as a competence assurance.”

AMEC Training and Development’s mining clients include De Beers, Placer Dome, Taseko and Teck Cominco.

Earth Day Haikus

2010-04-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Green and blue planet
Chokes, and feels nausea
Senses a tumor

Multinational
Says it's as green as can be
But we know better

Newspaper reports
Skinny bears up north, poisoned
Lake Superior

Never back down when
Standing up for your planet
Or for your people

That last verse paraphrases something I heard Natalie Pa'apa'a say at last year's Winnipeg jazz festival.

The Reinvention of Sweet

2010-04-18T15:00:00.001-07:00

Published in C-Store Canada, November-December 2009:

Energy drinks have made a big splash in the retail market, with such brand names as Red Bull and Rockstar often visible as soon as you walk into a convenience store.
That’s a big change from 10, 15 or 20 years ago, when the highly caffeinated Jolt Cola was practically the only recognizable "energy" drink of any kind. (And it’s really nothing at all like the energy drinks of today.)
Now fledgling entrepreneurs and more established firms have set their sights on another high-energy niche in the market with energy mints, gums and similar confections.
We popped a mint or two and had caffeinated discussions with some successful players in the energy confectionery game.

Luke Van Vliet is business development manager for Toronto-based Big Sky Brands, which markets the Jones and Warp energy mints.
While the extra energy in Jones mints comes from caffeine and taurine, Van Vliet says Warp, on the market for about 10 years, has "more natural" verve enhancers. The key Warp energy ingredients are ginseng and guarana.
To the original peppermint Warp the manufacturer has added green tea and cinnamon varieties.
Who buys these products? "Typically teens and young adults," Van Vliet observes.
"It does veer toward the lower range of the demographics as far as age goes. However, there are customers in the older demographics who will grab the energy products instead of grabbing a coffee.
"Our strategy has kind of changed since the Warp launch back in 1999. It was innovative at the time, as there were really no energy confections to speak of on the market at the time.
"At the beginning, it was a huge part of the strategy as far as the company goes, but since then we’ve kind of moved on and our strategy has changed. We’ve diversified."
The mints are a success, though not nearly of the same magnitude as energy drinks.
There’s no Red Bull-sized success in the energy confectionery market, Van Vliet notes. "I would say that the reason is that people don’t really want to eat caffeine as much as they want to drink it."
He has some ideas on how retailers should place energy mints for consumer response. "Well … you obviously want to get the counter space (at point-of-sale) as much as you can. You get the best profile there," he says.
"Other than that, if you put it on the mint rack it probably would kind of get lost and maybe lose its meaning. It’s hard to communicate what you’re trying to sell on the mint rack.
"You could merchandise it in front of your energy drinks, with maybe a clip strip or some kind of hanger on the cooler door."

Justin Waxman has a success story in the energy gum market and it starts in his university years, which weren’t long ago.
He and Eric Pilon-Bignell were shooting hoops in Waxman’s Hamilton backyard when an errant shot knocked over Pilon-Bignell’s Red Bull.
In reaction, a peculiar remark came out of the latter’s mouth: "They should make an energy drink that doesn’t spill."
At first Waxman thought the response silly, but then he got to thinking about how Pilon-Bignell’s wish could be realized and turned into business vehicle.
Launch Energy Drink Gum – enhanced with caffeine, taurine and B vitamins – was born while Waxman was still completing his business degree.
Waxman marketed the product at McMaster University while Pilon-Bignell introduced the product to students at Queen’s University, where he was in engineering. Nationwide distribution began in January 2009.
"It started as a university product and it kind of ballooned from there," Waxman says at his Hamilton office.
"There’s a learning process that needs to take place, about gum as a delivery vehicle for an energy ingredient," he adds.
"A lot of it is just getting it into people’s hands, getting them to try it."
To that end, packaging and placement are critical. A name containing the words "energy drink" helped define the product, of course. But packaging Launch in narrow cans really drove home the point that it’s no ordinary chewing gum.
Such retail heavyweights as 7-Eleven, Mac’s and Husky have further cemented the link by placing Launch next to energy shots like Red Bull and Monster.
Waxman sees "unlimited" growth potential for Launch. "One of our keys is the constant growth of our team of grassroots Launch reps, athletes and brand ambassadors," he says. "We are truly embedded within the energy and extreme sports culture and our social, customer-focused growth strategy is paying dividends."

South of the border, another young company is celebrating a major breakthrough in the Canadian c-store market. Revive Energy Mints snagged a deal with 7-Eleven Canada in early September.
Revive mints contain caffeine, green tea, ginseng and anti-oxidants for what the Denver-based manufacturer calls "sustained energy."
Its retail program got a makeover with the addition of the 8 Hour Power Pack, a two-mint (instead of eight-mint) package that gives consumers a chance to try Revive at a low price.
Revive Energy executive co-chair Justin Biel says the core market is males "ages 16 to 30 or 35" – people who’ve "grown up with Red Bull."
The company is less than a year old and, like Launch, was founded by two 20-something entrepreneurs. Biel says "about a year and a half" of product development preceded Revive’s launch in early 2009.
Store placement is ideally near point-of-sale for visibility and impulse buying, Biel says.
He agrees distinguishing energy mints from regular mints is crucial to giving sales the kind of boost Revive is designed to give consumers.
"That’s definitely a marketing challenge from our end," he avers.
But he says the young company is up for it, as evidenced by how it’s “been growing on a regular basis, month after month.
“We’re growing upwards of 15 or 20 per cent per month right now in regards of the number of distributorships that we’re procuring. That means we have a lot of people out there promoting our product.
"We are attaining some of these larger retail accounts in such a short period of time. To us that really means that we have a very, very good niche product and we’re satisfying consumer demands that weren’t being met in the energy product market."

Brewing Profits

2010-04-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

Published in C-Store Canada, July-August 2009:
A recession plus competition from a mighty Canadian coffee Goliath doesn’t equal bad times for java sales at Mike Hammoud’s Newsbreak store in Dartmouth, N.S.

“It is on the upswing, definitely,” says Hammoud. His Dartmouth store has had considerable success selling hot coffee, even though it’s located next to a Tim Hortons.

“The hot drink market right now is something that probably needs more focus on it by convenience store retailers,” he adds.

Hammoud, who is also president of the Atlantic Convenience Stores Association, offers two big reasons for that position: margins and traffic.

The profit margins on coffee, tea and hot chocolate are significantly higher than on such typical c-store fare as cigarettes and candy bars, he notes. And selling a good cup of joe can boost customer traffic, with many of those extra customers buying other items with their coffee purchase.

Laniel Canada sales director Bob Charbonneau’s read on the c-store coffee market differs slightly from Hammoud’s.

“With the current economic situation, it’s flat,” Charbonneau says at the coffee and equipment supplier’s headquarters in Montreal.

“But normally it would be up,” he adds. “For the past two years we’ve seen the convenience stores buying more and more coffee machines for their premises.”

Charbonneau says one big advantage convenience stores have over the coffee-and-doughnut shops is, well, convenience. “When they stop at Tim Hortons, they have to wait in line. When they go to the convenience store, they get their coffee and pay and leave – it’s faster. The problem at convenience stores is, most of the time they don’t offer quality coffee.”

That Newsbreak store’s proximity to a Tims hasn’t hindered Hammoud in his pursuit of java success, as he isn’t trying to go head-to-head with the coffee-and-doughnuts giant by offering a near-identical product.
“You cannot directly compete with Tim Hortons and expect to succeed,” he says. “You just can’t.”

Instead, he has built Newsbreak’s coffee program on quality, with high-grade, organic, Fair Trade beans. A cup costs a little more than Tims charges, but it’s a way different product, and that has garnered loyal customers.

In his books, it’s all about quality. If you use an average coffee, you likely won’t have great success; offer top-drawer stuff and coffee sales will perk up.

The goal of a coffee program should be to get customers to think of a store as their java destination, says Marie-Claude Dessureault of gourmet coffee supplier Van Houtte. “The only way c-stores are going to be successful in creating a destination is variety and quality. That’s one reason why so many are associating their coffee programs with a successful brand.”

Canterbury Coffee’s Gary Senez agrees that quality is indeed the key to winning the hearts of coffee swillers is quality.

“Like anything, stores have to have good product,” he says from the specialty coffee roaster’s head office in Richmond, B.C. “The product has to be fresh, and they have to have the selection that the customers are looking for.”

Senez says it’s important to remember that the competition includes big companies that emphasize the freshness of their fare. “If you’re going to be in the same market as these guys, you’ve got to be fresh.”
Okay, so quality is important. No surprise there. But how do you deliver quality?

“My suggestion for a very good coffee program is to use a whole-bean system,” Hammoud says. Key components in his prescription include finding a local roaster, offering a variety of coffees (possibly including a flavoured coffee or two), and grinding it on-site.

Senez agrees it all starts with good beans, and says that’s why Canterbury sells 100 per cent Arabica beans of the highest quality.

It’s also important to brew with the right coffee-to-water ratio and find the right grind for your needs, he says. (The finer the grind, the more bitterness.)

Don’t be stingy and load the brewing machine with too little coffee for a good brew, adds Charbonneau. “If a store cuts on costs with a smaller bag, if it tries to get away with making more with less, then it will not make a quality cup and the customer will not come back. But if it does a strong coffee, a coffee that people like, then customers will return.”

Equipment-wise, Charbonneau says a thermos system is usually a good choice for convenience stores.
“Thermos systems require some time from the store owner to make the coffee in the morning and (replenish the supply), but this is fast for the customer. When the customer comes in, he just pushes a lever and gets the coffee right away.”

Thermoses retain flavour and temperature for about two hours, making them much better choices than any hot-plate system that cooks the coffee to an unpleasant bitter taste in that same time period.

“The other fast way to do it is with an automatic machine, but then it’s a much bigger investment, which is not good for every convenience store,” Charbonneau remarks. “Some don’t want to invest that kind of money. These machines can cost $5,000, while a small thermos machine would cost $500.”

Initial cost shouldn’t be the only consideration, however. Dessureault, Van Houtte’s director of brewing technologies, points out that machines that brew one cup at a time cost more initially but can save money over the long term because they produce “absolutely zero waste.”

And you’ll save on labour with single-cup equipment, she adds, “because you don’t have to make new coffee every 90 minutes.”

Making sure the machines are running as intended is an important of quality control, Charbonneau adds.
“A key part of the strategy would be to make sure that the machines are well-adjusted, because a machine can do a good coffee but the adjustment is not always there. Tim Hortons has standards, and they make sure that the standards are always maintained.”

Convenience stores typically don’t maintain such standards due to personnel limitations, he says, because proprietors and personnel have little time to maintain equipment.

For location, Charbonneau and Dessureault both recommend any place in the store that is highly visible and say signage is important, to make sure store visitors are aware coffee is available.

“You need to draw people in,” Dessureault says from Montreal. “If you tuck it in a corner, it doesn’t look like a destination.” The hot beverage station shouldn’t look like an afterthought, she says.

Like Hammoud, Charbonneau has seen proof that c-stores can compete with Tims-like neighbours. He cites a downtown Montreal store that, undaunted by the presence of two coffee purveyors nearby, implemented a coffee program with great success. So much success, in fact, that its owners copied the program at other stores of theirs.

Bloated Beatty bio a paean to actor, filmmaker

2010-03-22T18:57:00.000-07:00

Published 30 January 2010 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America
By Peter Biskind
Simon & Schuster, 627 pages, $36

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

The bloated new biography of Warren Beatty has made headlines with its claim, really just a guesstimate, that the handsome Hollywood actor has bedded nearly 13,000 women.

Author Peter Biskind draws on "simple arithmetic" to arrive at that number, and says it could quite conceivably be higher.

The calculation, based on the assumption that Beatty, now 72, averaged a woman a day for about 35 years, seems rather silly.

And it is without doubt one reason why Beatty, whom Biskind interviewed several times, has denounced Star. But it can't be the only reason.

Biskind corrals information from books, articles and interviews to portray Beatty as both admirable and contemptible, likable and unlikable, in a tome that is sometimes fawning and sometimes critical.

The New York-based writer declares Beatty "one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation," of the same calibre as Martin Scorsese, despite a slim oeuvre as both director (four films) and actor (fewer than 25).

Orson Welles directed just two great films, Biskind contends, but Beatty has directed three: Heaven Can Wait in 1978, Reds in 1981 and Bulworth in 1998.

On the other hand, the book reports that Beatty has repeatedly grabbed for more credit than he deserved, especially as a screenwriter.

His successful bid for credit on the Dick Tracy script pushed legitimate writer Bo Goldman off the list.

Similar manoeuvring in the Writer's Guild arbitration process robbed other wordsmiths of credit for other movies as Beatty tried to burnish a Renaissance man reputation.

Beatty is described as powerfully charming when seeking the favour of studio brass or beautiful women, but so unpleasant when in charge at film sets and editing rooms that many people have sworn never to work with him again.

Past girlfriends Julie Christie and Diane Keaton were persuaded to work with him on Heaven Can Wait and Town & Country, respectively, but quickly grew to loathe him on the film set.

Christie reportedly refused to look him in the eye when shooting a scene in Heaven Can Wait, and Beatty used co-director Buck Henry as go-between for the chilly former lovers.

He barely communicates with another famous woman in his life, Oscar-winning sister Shirley MacLaine.

The seeming duality in Beatty's personality is mirrored by this book's split personality.

Much of Star is a film geek's insightful reconstruction and analysis of Beatty flicks -- the deal making, creative stages, esthetic achievements, promotion, and critical and commercial success or failure.

On that score Biskind, the author of five previous books on American cinema and the former executive editor of Premiere magazine, does a bang-up job.

His chapter on Bonnie and Clyde, for example, makes one want to run out and rent the 1967 drama for another screening to appreciate its groundbreaking qualities further.

And if one could endure the dreadfully dull Town & Country, there might be fun in trying to identify the scenes in which Keaton's body double was used after she walked out on production.

Accounts of the production of the 1987 megaflop Ishtar and 1991's critically acclaimed Bugsy (where he met wife Annette Bening) are also entertaining.

At other times Star is like a sleazy gossip rag, repeating story after story of supposed Beatty sexcapades uncritically and without regard to relevance.

Biskind quotes Joan Collins as saying the young Warren she dated in the early 1960s wore her out with his insatiable sexual appetite.

He reports that Beatty raved to friends about the amazing fellatio talent of another early flame, Jane Fonda.

He quotes a Hollywood executive who used to relax with Beatty in a steam room as saying the actor's penis is "normal, not ridiculously big."

And on and on. It's all a case of too much information. Far too much, in fact.

The prurient content puffs up this book to a size that exceeds Beatty's merit as an actor and director, despite whatever Biskind thinks of his subject.

Biskind not only puts Beatty on the same level as Scorsese, in the book's final chapter he says the Virginia native is a better director than Clint Eastwood.

Sure, Eastwood has directed about eight times as many movies and won four Academy Awards to Beatty's one. But Biskind insists "Beatty's pictures were better."

This is purely subjective, of course, but Biskind risks damaging his own credibility when he asserts that Beatty's work is definitely "better" than Eastwood's Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Gran Torino and so on.

What may be at work here is a man-crush. After all, Biskind writes of how being around the star gave him "an almost palpable sense of well-being, as if I were a better person because Warren Beatty liked me."

He also describes Beatty in his early 20s as "indecently pretty."

That might explain this book's flabbiness. Maybe Biskind loves Beatty so much he finds it nearly impossible to stop going on about him.

The reader won't be quite so fond of Star.

Book review: Here's the Deal

2010-03-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

Published 12 December 2009 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Here's the Deal: Don't Touch Me
By Howie Mandel with Josh Young
Bantam, 220 pages, $30

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Howie Mandel is famous as a wacky standup comic and host of a wildly successful game show.

Many also remember the Toronto native's dramatic work in the 1980s as Dr. Fiscus on the TV series St. Elsewhere.

His highly entertaining memoir's subtitle, actually played up bigger than the main title on the cover, refers to another thing for which the Los Angeles-based Canuck is famous: Mandel is a "germophobe" with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

That's why, as Deal or No Deal viewers may have noticed, he greets people with a "fist bump" rather than a handshake.

From the first chapter, it's easy to comprehend how Mandel came to be so obsessed with germs.

His mother was always concerned about what nasty microbes visitors to the Mandel household might have left behind to infect baby Howie.

According to Mandel, she made a mental note of what portion of the baby's crib was touched and disinfected it once the visitors were gone.

How Mandel knows this is not explained.

He also reports that his grandmother was the sort of neat freak who leaves plastic coverings on sofas and waxes a concrete veranda.

But the clincher, what undoubtedly pushed young Howie over the edge and doomed him to a germ-obsessed existence to this day, has to be what happened to him on a family trip to Florida when he was still a wee child.

A sand fly laid eggs in him, and larvae grew visibly just under the skin of his legs.

A doctor used liquid nitrogen to kill some of the larvae while medical colleagues watched; Mrs. Mandel scrubbed out the rest over several sessions at home.

Finding things growing under his skin was understandably horrifying to young Howie, and their removal was painful.

Mandel relates that whenever he thinks about those unforgettable days, "it feels as if there are organisms trying to make their way under my skin."

But there's more than just germ fears in this, his first book.

He talks about how having a daytime talk show all but ruined his standup career.

He talks about how his penchant for practical jokes has strained relationships and embarrassed his family.

He talks about how persistence paid off for a skinny, feminine-looking boy trying to get a date with one of his high school's prettiest girls, to whom he has been married for more than 30 years.

He talks about how attention-deficit disorder and colour blindness have affected his life's work, and how he weathered a health scare earlier this year.

Notice that verb, talk, used in this review because Here's the Deal is written in a conversational style befitting an author whose career has been all about getting onstage and speaking to audiences.

Anyone even slightly familiar with Mandel's standup comedy, which is maybe a notch above low-brow, won't be surprised to find that this book is not at all literary.

There are no $2 words or pretentious allusions in these pages, and that's a good thing as it makes for an easy and enjoyable read.

Mandel fans will enjoy this book the most, of course, but its appeal goes beyond that group.

Celebrity-watchers will eat up anecdotes from his interactions with the likes of Blake Edwards and Johnny Carson, and you needn't be familiar with OCD to appreciate a person's struggles with the mental-health issue.

For the right person, Here's the Deal would make a great holiday gift. With rubber gloves.

Book review: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

2010-03-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

Published 11 October 2009 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
By J. Randy Taraborrelli
Grand Central Publishing, 560 pages, $30

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Norma Jeane Baker, known to the world as Marilyn Monroe, has been the subject of countless books in the 47 years since her death.

Gloria Steinem wrote of how abandonment, abuse and domestic instability in childhood shaped the insecure personality behind Monroe's self-destructive behaviour.

Norman Mailer entertained a conspiracy theory about her death as a possible murder at the behest of John and Robert Kennedy.

And many lesser wordsmiths have plumbed her private life for lurid tales of sex, drugs and heartbreak.
You might say Randy Taraborrelli has done that, too, with his new offering.

But that wouldn't be entirely fair and accurate.

The author of 15 previous books, including biographies of Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, has written a carefully researched Monroe biography that treats its subject with respect while essaying the demons and turmoils of Monroe's 36-year life.

The big story is how Taraborrelli describes the screen siren's mental health problems, a topic never before covered in such detail though certainly at least alluded to in past biographies. He tapped doctors' records and correspondence in his research on this part of the story.

Monroe's mother, who survived her by some 20 years, had paranoid schizophrenia and spent much of her lifetime in psychiatric institutions.

The actress's maternal grandmother was never diagnosed as schizophrenic but likely had the disease as well.
Monroe herself was diagnosed by her last psychiatrist (she had more than one) as having "borderline paranoid schizophrenia."

That doctor seems a shady character with too close a relationship with his star patient, but his diagnosis comports with what others in Monroe's life observed.

Early in her career, before she was a star, she told at least one friend she thought she was being followed and watched.

She was closely watched later in her career, of course, by journalists and the FBI. But it's doubtful there was that much interest in her private life before lead roles in three 1953 movies (Niagara, Gentleman Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire) made her a major star.

She also told more than one friend over the years about hearing voices inside her head.

Monroe bravely endured "a devastating battle with her own mind," Taraborrelli writes in the preface. "Attempting to explain her difficult journey is the challenge I set for myself with this book."

And he does a good job of explaining that journey, with compassion and thoroughness.

He also spends a lot of ink on Monroe's film career, from 20-year-old contract starlet on the 20th Century-Fox lot to difficult superstar in 1962's The Misfits and the aborted Something's Got to Give, and her marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller.

The movies and marriages have been examined at great length before, so one wonders why he bothered so much with them. The long descriptions of movie plots, in particular, seem out of place in a book purporting to tell of a star's "secret life."

Nearly a half-century after her death, and after a truckload of books big and small, does the world need another Monroe biography?

Well, need is probably the wrong word. Want seems more apt.

There's still quite an interest in the blond beauty -- as evidenced locally by the popularity of a Monroe exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery this year and internationally by massive sales of Marilyn memorabilia.

And Taraborrelli has done more than crank out a redundant biography.

His book isn't really "the definitive biography" or "explosive" as the publisher promises, but it's competently (though not elegantly) written and contains details that Taraborrelli insists haven't been disclosed in previous biographies.

Monroe fanatics, jonesing for more about their goddess, will find it hard to resist picking up The Secret Life. And, for the most part, they won't be disappointed.

Book review: The Spiders of Allah

2010-03-22T18:42:00.001-07:00

Published 30 August 2009 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War
By James Hider
St. Martin's Press, 324 pages, $19

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Giant spiders, some the size of dinner plates or even as large as chairs, vexed and attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Capable of running 40 kilometres per hour, the terrifying arachnids had poisonous bites that killed quickly but painfully.

Clearly, the eight-legged freaks were sent by Allah to aid the resistance against the infidels occupying Mesopotamia.

So went an urban myth spread by Muslim clerics and warriors in 2004, and retold in British journalist James Hider's new book.

The Times of London's Middle East bureau chief has covered conflicts in the region for several years. He has travelled in Iraq with U.S. marines and met with Palestinian suicide bombers.

The "hook" for The Spiders of Allah, what sets it apart from many other war correspondents' recollections, is that Hider is an atheist reporting from hotbeds of faith-fuelled violence.

This book is at its most entertaining when Hider serves up wry observations on the "crack cocaine of fanatical fundamentalism" and offers insight into what drives fanatics in the Abrahamic religions to commit mass killings.

U.S. soldiers in Iraq, sent there by a president who said God told him to overthrow Saddam Hussein, liked to use an unflinching motto: "Kill them all, let God sort them out."

The leader of a Palestinian "martyrs' brigade" justified suicide bombings in Israel similarly by declaring "our martyrs will be in heaven, and theirs will be in hell."

Both sayings seem to have their origin in a 13th-century pope's decree during a crusade against French heretics.

Some prisoners who protested that they were not heretics were no doubt lying to save their own lives. The pope's response was to have all prisoners killed, since "God will know his own" and admit the true believers to heaven.

"That in turn was a bloodthirsty interpretation of the Biblical scripture, 'The Lord knoweth them that are his,'" Hider writes.

An Iraqi insurgent gives a straightforward explanation for what he does: Islam's holy book "says if the infidels invade an Islamic country, you must fight."

That explanation sums up how religion keeps deadly conflicts going at full tilt across the Middle East. Scriptures and clergy tell believers war is the way to go.

Hider sees little hope for peace as long as sizable, determined populations -- Islamic jihadists, Christian fundamentalists and stubborn Zionist settlers among them -- get all or most of their worldview from scriptures. The fanatics will continue to lash out at the wicked "others" and resist modernity and harmony.

The book falters a little (but just a little) in its 30-page chapter on how U.S. troops eventually defeated insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Hider's detailed description of the military nitty-gritty in the battle for Fallujah, dramatic as some may find it at times, does nothing to help us understand the religious dynamic that is at the book's core. It is, in fact, a bit tedious.

But all in all this is a good read that has a few tablespoons of Hunter S. Thompson gonzo (as the Ralph Steadman-esque cover art might lead you to expect) and a dash or two of the smart cynicism that fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens has perfected, all in a clear and accessible writing style one would expect from a good newspaper reporter.

You might say Hider's good book gets this reviewer's blessing.

Elegant look at work sadly incomplete

2010-03-11T16:18:00.000-08:00

Published 14 June 2009 in Winnipeg Free Press:

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
By Alain de Botton
McClelland & Stewart, 327 pages, $33

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

A "bourgeois ideology" tells us work is one of the main things that can bring us happiness, Alain de Botton remarks in his latest collection of essays.

And if your work doesn't yield happiness, he continues, that work-centred ideology holds that it's your fault. You didn't choose your career wisely, or you haven't tried hard enough.

The Swiss-born Briton examines very different lines of work in this insightful, elegantly written book which is nicely illustrated with scores of photos.

He begins with a chapter describing how an under-noticed part of London takes in shiploads of cargo of all sorts from all corners of the world.

He also explores the operations of United Biscuit as an example of the complexities, hard work and economic risks behind small indulgences in our lifestyles, and looks at the mundane toil and politics inside a large accounting firm.

Other chapters burrow into career counselling, invention and entrepreneurship, the aviation industry, power transmission, an artist's solitary pursuits, and the launch of a broadcast satellite.

The most interesting of de Botton's offerings is his chapter on logistics -- how goods get from their point of origin to, eventually, the shops that sell them.

The way consumers are disconnected from the people and processes behind what they buy at the supermarket reminds him of Karl Marx's theory of alienation, which observes that workers are separated from each other, the natural world and the fruits of their labour.

Two centuries ago, people knew where the merchandise bought came from and often knew the people who produced it.

Economic globalization has changed all that. Store shelves display items from places we've never even visited, produced by people we will never meet.

De Botton spies fresh tuna steaks at a warehouse and decides tracing how the fish got from the Indian Ocean to England might help "mitigate the deadening, uniquely modern sense of dislocation between the things we so heedlessly consume in the run of our daily lives and their unknown origins and creators."

So off he goes to the Maldives, where tuna is caught, carved and chilled. He then follows the product on its flight to Britain and its ground transport to a warehouse and then a supermarket. He even persuades a woman to let him and his photographer follow that tuna to her home where it is served as supper.

He relates his odyssey in a way that is entertaining (in Maldives, he finds himself "unable wholly to suppress fleeting images of a joint future with" the fish processing plant owner's comely secretary) and educational (a newly caught tuna must be killed right away or its panicked blood rush will darken the meat). De Botton tells the story with charming wit and a masterful style.

But his assay of work, beautifully written as it is, seems sadly incomplete.

It's nice that he ruminates on alienation, but he pays short shrift to another "Marxist" matter: conflict between labour and capital.

It's as if de Botton, whose past books include the critically praised Architecture of Happiness, isn't aware of disparities in income and power.

He also doesn't pay enough attention to unglamorous toil. Sure, he spends a little time with those tuna fishermen in the Maldives. But some time with, say, hotel chambermaids or diner personnel would have made this a more well-rounded book.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work celebrates some often overlooked wonders of the everyday world, and duly notes parts of it that are dispiriting or just plain dull.

It doesn't, however, pay enough attention to the working class who are the majority of humankind.

But then, what de Botton does deliver is probably perfect for his overwhelmingly bourgeois readership.

If critics hate him, fans love his music

2010-03-11T16:12:00.000-08:00

Published 11 January 2009 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Hitman: Forty Years Making Music, Topping Charts and Winning Grammys
By David Foster with Pablo F. Fenjves
Pocket Books, 234 pages, $30

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

David Foster makes pop music -- "pop" as in "popular," he reminds us in his memoir.

And he's been rather successful at his trade, producing and writing hits for Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Chicago and many other superstars.

Never a critic's darling, Foster produces slick commercial fare that sticks in your head and gets heavy rotation on radio playlists. And he makes no apologies to "purists" who say his work lacks artistic merit.

"I've somehow figured out a way to tap into what the masses respond to," the B.C. native (now a Los Angeles resident) writes. "I can only be who I am, and who I am is a guy who writes music that people make babies to -- and I'm not going to apologize for it."

It's no surprise, then, that this jaunty, easy-to-read memoir offers no great insights into the creative process. On that, Foster has little to offer because he's a craftsman, not an artist, cranking out musical knick-knacks for the masses. He is to music as Gap is to couture.

Since this memoir isn't about the cerebral process of creating aural masterpieces, one might expect Foster to make it worth the $30 cover price by dishing on celebrities with whom he has worked.

Sadly, there's little of that.

Many, many celebrities -- including more than a few non-musical ones, like Brian Mulroney and Donald Trump -- are mentioned, but Hitman is almost as free of dirt as Niles Crane's fingernails.

Sure, he tells us Chicago stuck with him for three successful albums and then dissed him in the liner notes of a more recent album. But that's not dirt, that's just a minor gripe.

He discloses that Barbra Streisand is a perfectionist and Frank Sinatra was a potty-mouthed curmudgeon, which is news to no one.

The book has an anecdote about finding Madonna "in some kind of Zen pose" in a recording studio and whinging about needing "a real man."

To Foster, the story is all about the star's "vulnerability and loneliness." Others might see it as a symptom of how annoyingly self-absorbed the Material Girl is.

There is a point when the reader thinks Foster's about to deliver some serious dirt about Cher.

He tells of cutting a record with Sonny Bono and Cher, after that pair's divorce, and reports that the diva was rude and in a hurry to leave the studio.

But then he makes excuses for Cher's behaviour ("Sonny was clearly the last guy on the planet she wanted anything to do with"), and declares that "in years to come this great lady became a terrific friend."

He also writes of telling the great Stevie Wonder an album of his "sucks," and gives a few details on why his own three marriages fell apart.

That's as far as the dirty dishing goes.

Which is too bad, because without some serious dish Foster's memoir lacks a strong selling point other than the inspiration to be found in the story of a Vancouver Island boy whose hard work and perseverance brought him to the pinnacle of the music industry in L.A.

(One might expect a guy from B.C. to know Yellowknife isn't in Alberta, by the way. We digress.)

The book also would have benefited from an index and a discography of Foster's prolific output.

But, not to belabour the point, the content's blandness is Hitman's fatal flaw.

To put it in terms Foster can readily understand, this book needs a hook. It ain't got one.

Smart book about complex green revolution

2010-03-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

Published 7 December 2008 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How it Can Renew America
By Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 438 pages, $30.95

Reviewed by Michael Stimpson

As Barack Obama's team considers ways to fulfill the U.S. president-elect's environmental commitments, they would do well to consult the latest book by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

The three-time Pulitzer Prize winner's previous tome said the world had become "flat," meaning technology had enabled more and more people to compete and collaborate almost regardless of where they live.

For the title of this book, his fifth, he has added the adjectives "hot" and "crowded." The former refers to global warming while the latter refers to population growth that has placed considerable strain on resources.

These trends "have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable," he states in the opening chapter. Energy demand is growing faster than supply, and the ways we commonly generate energy accelerate global warming. And that's just for starters.

Friedman makes a passionate and persuasive argument that humanity needs to do something, and soon, to save itself -- and that the U.S. can and should lead the way.

The first 200 pages of Hot, Flat, and Crowded will appeal to environmentalists, as Friedman explains how climate change, species extinctions, expanding middle classes and other "interwoven global trends" are pushing us toward a crisis point.

Policy wonks will enjoy the remainder of the book, which focuses on what governments can do. One intriguing idea is a "feebate" system for automobile purchases: Buy a gas guzzler and pay a big tax on it; buy a fuel-efficient car and get a rebate.

Friedman says the focus should be on taxes, regulations, incentives and disincentives that create the right market conditions for "green" innovations. He envisions not a Manhattan Project of a few government-paid brainiacs designing the ultimate generator, but rather an assortment of inventors in "10,000 garages and 10,000 laboratories" independently searching for "transformational breakthroughs."

Friedman says that Washington needs green policies not only for the planet's sake, but to make the U.S. more innovative, productive and secure. A green America would be in a better position to compete with China.

"Everything America (or any country) can do to go green today will make it stronger, healthier, more secure, more innovative, more competitive, and more respected," he writes in a chapter titled Green is the New Red, White, and Blue.

It's thought-provoking stuff, but the book has a few minor flaws. For one thing, Friedman's penchant for analogies and metaphors can be tiresome.

So can the long anecdotes that occur throughout: It's obvious Friedman has travelled quite a bit in the last couple of years -- to China, Indonesia, India, Egypt, Brazil and sundry other destinations around the globe.

Is it a cheap shot to point out what a huge carbon footprint this champion of environmental responsibility must have?

Also, it's a little frustrating that he inserts a defence of the Iraq invasion and occupation into a book that's supposed to be a call for a "green revolution." That only distracts the reader from the book's focus.

Still, these are minor quibbles. Friedman has produced a smart book about complex and important problems. Here's hoping the right people are paying attention.

Two new books fight back on behalf of meat lovers

2010-03-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Published 30 March 2008 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Carnivore Chic: From Pasture to Plate, a Search for the Perfect Meat
By Susan Bourette
Viking Canada, 288 pages, $35

The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers
By Scott Gold
Broadway Books, 355 pages, $27.95

Reviewed by Michael Stimpson

Vegetarians -- particularly the animal rights activists among them -- have succeeded in adding guilt and shame to diners' helpings of pork, beef and poultry. Two new books fight back on behalf of carnivores.

Toronto journalist Susan Bourette's Carnivore Chic is a rambling memoir of her quest for tasty meat that she could eat with a good conscience.

New York writer Scott Gold offers a funnier and more in-your-face defence of meat consumption in The Shameless Carnivore, the better of these two books.

Carnivore Chic has its origins in the week Bourette spent a few years back as an entry-level worker at the Maple Leaf packing plant in Brandon. There she saw a "horror show" for slaughtered pigs and poorly paid workers alike.

The twofold product of that experience was a magazine feature and a decision to go vegetarian.

But, despite the support and encouragement of a vegetarian spouse (or "partner," as she prefers to say), she couldn't stick to the vegetarian meal plan. She returned to meat's comforting embrace after five weeks on the vegetable wagon.

The book's opening chapter on the Brandon experience is followed by reports from various locations in North America, including a Newfoundland moose hunting camp and a Texas cattle ranch.

As memoir, Carnivore Chic is only fitfully entertaining and mildly interesting.

The book isn't helped by how its author seems so unlikable at times. She makes a point of mentioning how she took her spouse's $500 hat and her own $200 moisturizer along with her on a trip to a remote Alaska community where she took part in a whale hunt.

In Newfoundland she makes the condescending assessment that a fellow moose hunter looks like a "chainsaw killer" and any discerning woman "would run at the sight of him." How sweet of her to make that judgment of someone she hardly knows at all.

In the end Bourette concludes that she can continue in her carnivorous ways with a clear conscience so long as she shops ethically and doesn't consume gluttonously. Hard to argue with that, unless you're part of the animal-rights crowd.

Before delivering that conclusion, however, she makes a statement that seems more dubious.

"One thing I've discovered," she writes, "is that each successive generation seems to stake out its identity by rejecting the foods their parents held so dear."

Really? Have young Greek Canadians stopped eating moussaka? Have the young folk in Winkler given up on traditional Mennonite dishes? Or isn't it mainly the $200-moisturizer crowd that feels the need "to stake out its identity" in such a way? Just asking.

South of the border, Gold has been operating a Shameless Carnivore website for three years, heaping scorn on the PETA people and extolling the virtues and pleasures of meat dishes.

His book is part memoir of his "Month of Meat" -- 31 animals (from chicken to snail to yak) in 31 days. It's also part cookbook, with recipes from the Month of Meat.

And it's part rebuttal to those who have been trying to shame and scare carnivores into vegetarianism.

That last component is probably the best part of The Shameless Carnivore. He makes convincing arguments for meat as part of a healthy diet, but pleads for moderation. Carnivorous gluttony is unhealthy and "gives all carnivores a bad name," he declares.

Gold's chapter on "the ethics of carnivorism" neatly (and a bit glibly) presents an argument as to why the PETA people are morally off-base in their contention that it's morally wrong to kill animals for meat.

In a nutshell, he says virtually every food decision affects other living creatures. Couldn't the carrots and lettuce on your plate have been food for a starving bunny? And who's to say the carrot plant's life wasn't worth sparing?

He describes the Month of Meat as a celebration of the pleasing range of tasty critters on our planet. "Biodiversity? More like biodiversilicious!" he enthuses.

The Month of Meat furnished him with many comical stories about tracking down hard-to-find meats in New York City (Got guinea pig?), not to mention his struggles in the kitchen.

In the final analysis, the New York evangelist for carnivorism has put out a better book than the travelling Toronto journalist. Gold's book is funny, engaging and informative.

Dig in.

Cruise biography entertains more than actor's recent films

2010-03-11T16:05:00.000-08:00

Published 10 February 2008 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography
By Andrew Morton
St. Martin's Press, 342 pages, $28.95

Reviewed by Michael Stimpson

Contrary to longstanding rumours, Tom Cruise is not gay.

In fact, he has a history of being a ladies' man with an aggressive courtship strategy, Andrew Morton writes in his much-discussed new biography of the Hollywood Top Gun.

That's one of the book's few nuggets not related to Scientology, the controversial and alleged religion to which Cruise belongs.

But even then there is a Scientology connection, as any gal of Tom's must embrace the faith. Joining the cult was part of the deal for actress Katie Holmes when she became the third Mrs. Cruise in 2006. If she didn't join, she couldn't marry him.

Their marriage was a big thing for Scientologists because it meant their leading celebrity spokesman was now half of their leading glamour couple.

Simply everything in Cruise's life nowadays is related to Scientology, writes Morton, a British journalist best known for his 1992 biography of Princess Diana.

Morton has built quite a reputation, with the Diana tome and books on Madonna and Monica Lewinsky, as a talented digger of dirt. He's renowned for his ability to find juicy details (or at least allegations) about his subjects.

This latest project presented a challenge as Cruise and everyone around him refused interviews.

To circumvent the Cruise camp's stonewalling, Morton turned to former friends and associates, many of whom are quoted anonymously. The megawatt-smile actor and Scientology have criticized Morton for that, but they gave him no choice.

The first two chapters are padded with tedious details about Cruise's genealogy (he was born in Syracuse, N.Y. as Thomas Cruise Mapother IV) and his boyhood in Ottawa, Kentucky and New Jersey. Who cares, for instance, if Cruise mowed lawns for $2 a shot as a kid in Ottawa?

Bizarrely, Morton mentions that the high school Cruise attended in New Jersey was the scene of a rape scandal years after Cruise's graduation. The relevance to Cruise is never explained.

The book's latter half is most interesting, as much of it is about Cruise's increasing immersion in Scientology and his emergence as the cult's most outspoken celebrity member.

Much of what Morton writes has already been reported, though perhaps not in as much detail and certainly not all in one book.

The story that Scientology volunteers laboured to create a flowery meadow for Cruise and second wife Nicole Kidman to traipse through, for instance, is old though perhaps not well-known.

Morton's assertion that Cruise is effectively Scientology's second-ranking member (after leader David Miscavige) is new but questionable. Morton offers no proof.

Similarly, Morton says Cruise-Kidman household staff "had to sign an eight-page confidentiality agreement in which they waived their First Amendment rights to free speech." But no evidence of this agreement is put before readers.

It would have been nice if at least a photo of the document's first page was included in the book's 32 pages of pictures. After all, an immigration document for "Tom's first known ancestor" is reproduced. If that's important enough for inclusion, then surely the contract, if it exists, is too.

This book is, ultimately, entertaining not as a movie-star bio but as an examination of a movie star's involvement in a cult.

Morton presents stories about Cruise's work in blockbusters like Mission: Impossible and Jerry Maguire, but that's not the meat of the book. The good stuff, and what's been causing a stir and generating litigation, is about Scientology and how it seems to pertain to every facet of Cruise's life.

In that respect, Morton has scored with a book that entertains more than most of Cruise's recent cinematic efforts.

Filmmaker's stories whimsical but uneven

2010-03-11T16:02:00.001-08:00

Published 5 August 2007 in Winnipeg Free Press:

No One Belongs Here More Than You
By Miranda July
Scribner, 205 pages, $27.99

Reviewed by Michael Stimpson

Already a noted video and performance artist, Miranda July scored major festival prizes and praise from reviewers in 2005 for her debut as a feature film director. The charming, contemplative Me and You and Everyone We Know won the Camera d’Or (for best feature by a novice director) at Cannes, and many other awards.

Now the 33-year-old California resident, born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, flexes her talents in a new medium with this slim collection of 16 short stories. The result will likely please anyone who enjoyed her movie, though the stories are of uneven quality.

Whether you like No One Belongs Here More Than You will depend in large part on how you feel about the quirky world in which July’s fiction exists.

As in her movie, this book is populated by characters who constantly daydream to escape loneliness and insecurity. A fortysomething woman fantasizes about Prince William in one story; in another, a factory worker is preoccupied with imagining what a co-worker’s sister looks like.

Sometimes a character’s distraction leads to danger or tragedy, but usually the flights of fancy end in soft landings.

The collection kicks off with The Shared Patio, about a woman who shares apartment patio space with a couple.

She’s careful to reinforce the space’s shared “ownership” by being sure to use it roughly as much as the couple does. “Every time I see them out there, I put a little mark on my calendar. The next time the patio is empty, I go sit on it. Then I cross off the mark on my calendar. Sometimes I lag behind and have to sit out there a lot toward the end of the month to catch up.”

One day, while sharing the patio with the couple’s male half, the narrator’s PG-rated erotic daydream about him distracts her from noticing a medical crisis in process.

Perhaps the best story in the bunch is Ten True Things, in which a receptionist interprets the mere mention by her boss’s wife of a sewing class as an invitation to enroll in that class.

The two women get to know each other in a scene that involves nakedness and touching but nothing really sexual. It’s the sort of peculiar behaviour those who loved July’s film would expect from her.

This is mostly entertaining stuff, though a few of the stories read like creative writing class assignments that need a little more work or perhaps should have been discarded.

In The Swim Team, the narrator tells her ex-boyfriend of how she once taught swim classes in a small apartment. Her elderly students learned to breathe for swimming by putting their faces in bowls full of water, and they crossed her living room via dry swim strokes on the floor.

The story’s mildly amusing, but has no other redeeming quality.

And July’s prose is deficient in narrative voice. Whether a story’s narrator is a middle-aged man who works in a factory or a 20-something woman fresh out of college with literary aspirations, that narrator talks pretty much the same way as the storyteller in any of this book’s other entries. It “sounds” like the same person in every story.

Of course, you could, if you wish, view that narrative voice as a strength – a distinctive style, July’s own “brand.”

One reads this book’s last pages with a feeling of hope that much better work is yet to come from July’s whimsical creative mind.

'Revolution in order' changing our lives

2010-03-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

Published 27 May 2007 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
By David Weinberger
Times Books, 260 pages, $31

Reviewed by Michael Stimpson

Internet guru David Weinberger contends in his new book that we are in the midst of a "revolution in order."

Everything is Miscellaneous isn't perfect by any means, but it will make a good beach read for techno-geeks.

Weinberger's revolution is changing the way we manage information, how we view the world and what we think of as “knowledge.”

“Revolution in order” sounds like an oxymoron, so some explanation is required at this point.

Weinberger says the digital age has given rise to a “third order of order” – a new way of keeping information for future reference and retrieval.

The first order of order is the physical arrangement of things themselves – placing widgets and doohickeys in separate aisles and ordering them according to size, for example.

In the second order of order, records are kept about specific characteristics of things – like the widgets’ and doohickeys’ respective manufacturers, place of manufacture and colours – and where to find them so that people can get what they want when they want it. A library’s card catalogue is one example.

The third order of order comes from the digital bits of information attached to items on the Internet – keywords and creation dates, for example. That information can be used by each person to arrange digital photos, documents and other things in numerous ways according to individual needs and interests.

Organization in the third order of order isn’t top-down, says Weinberger, a Harvard academic who was senior Internet adviser to Howard Dean’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. (The Dean campaign used the Internet extensively for input and support from the grassroots or “netroots.”)

Gone are the days when a small few imposed on everyone else the way information is to be organized. Now we all can make those decisions in the digital world.

As well, the digital revolution takes away the power of a small few, such as the editors of newspapers and encyclopedias, to decide what information the masses get to see.

Blogs and Wikipedia are two of the vehicles through which everyday people may post information for all to see.

Weinberger previously co-authored a book about how the Internet is transforming business, The Cluetrain Manifesto.

In Everything is Miscellaneous, he makes his case persuasively and for the most part engagingly with anecdotes and side trips to illustrate his points.

Readers will be amused by his description of a decidedly first-order Massachusetts gift shop, and by his look at the peculiar world of 19th-century library organizer Melvil Dewey.

But occasionally Weinberger falls flat in his attempts at telling an interesting story. Much of his chapter on alphabetization is excruciatingly dull, and his explanation of one psychologist’s theory of understanding through prototypes is simply eye-glazing.

Weinberger seems a little too optimistic in his “social knowing” chapter, in which he lauds Wikipedia for discussions that lead to agreements on what is true from a “neutral point of view.”

But is it really a triumph in knowledge-seeking when (to cite an example in this book) partisans “negotiate” with each other to a “neutral” way of saying John Kerry was awarded medals for military service during the Vietnam War? That seems more like a triumph in jackass-ery.

In the same chapter, Weinberger gets so carried away in his aw-shucks enthusiasm for all things digital that he makes this unsupported statement: “One thing is for sure: When our kids become teachers, they’re not going to be administering tests to students sitting in a neat grid of separated desks with the shades drawn.”

He doesn’t let us know what he supposes Elroy Jetson’s classroom will look like.

But these are, in the end, fairly minor quibbles. Everything is Miscellaneous is generally entertaining and presents intriguing ideas about where digital technology may be taking us.

'Propaganda of silence' ignores U.S. Afghan role

2010-03-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

Published 10 December 2006 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence
By Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls
Seven Stories Press, 313 pages, $18.95 US

Reviewed by Michael Stimpson

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 sparked a lot of new phenomena in U.S. popular culture. Among the most curious was an obsession over a blue garment.

Well-meaning U.S. liberals like Jay Leno’s wife and self-serving conservatives like Laura Bush agreed that a traditional women’s robe known as the burka — which covers the wearer’s head and body — represented the epitome of oppression.

Under Taliban rule, Afghan women were required to wear the burka whenever they stepped out of their homes. That made the garment, usually blue in Afghanistan, a symbol of “gender apartheid.”

To the California-based authors of Bleeding Afghanistan, the fuss over the burka helps illustrate how invasion and occupation of the Asian country was sold to Americans through a public-relations campaign that simplified complex issues and ignored Washington’s role in Afghanistan’s troubled history.

The burka “is a widely accepted part of conservative Afghan tradition,” Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls note. “Focusing critique on the burka as a symbol of oppression reinforces negative Western stereotypes of Muslim culture.”

Five years after being “liberated” from the Taliban, many Afghan women still wear the burka. And women and men in most of Afghanistan remain oppressed, by U.S.-blessed warlords now instead of the Taliban.

“No longer does one hear the Bush administration, or even just Laura Bush, speaking out about women’s rights in Afghanistan,” Ingalls and Kolhatkar write. “No longer do liberal feminist groups focus all their energies on the ‘gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan. No longer do the mainstream media sport front-page exposes about the mistreatment of Afghan women, despite the fact that the women and men of Afghanistan suffer in silence under new tyrants.”

The scant attention paid to Afghanistan nowadays in U.S. news media constitutes what the authors term a “propaganda of silence.” The White House and Pentagon have benefited from the media’s “supportive or non-critical role,” they say.

But propaganda seems an inappropriate word. Rather than consciously choosing to help government spin doctors by ignoring problems in Afghanistan, the media basically have just moved on to other things. There’s no conspiracy here; that’s just how the news business works.

This book is thoroughly researched (706 endnotes) and provides insight from two writers who have seen the country and worked for the liberation of Afghan women with a great deal more sincerity than Laura Bush.

They are co-directors of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a non-profit group that supports the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

Their publisher is a New York-based left-of-centre press that includes intellectual heavyweights Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn among its authors.

This book provides a perspective you don’t often get on CNN or in your daily newspaper. And it just might make you reconsider what business Canadian troops have in Afghanistan.

The wide, wide world of sports

2010-03-09T18:21:00.001-08:00

Published in Bar & Beverage, Fall 2009:

Beer, pretzels and wings are three things you might reasonably expect at any sports bar in the Great White North.

On the wide screen, you might expect baseball, basketball, hockey, NASCAR and what we in this part of the world call football.

But how about cricket, rugby or Australian rules football? Hurling, poker or mixed martial arts?

Welcome to the world of niche sports programming, where bar managers cater to pastime preferences and televisual tastes that veer from the Canadian commonplace.

The good folks at Setanta Sports can help a bar manager out with that. The specialty channel’s offerings in early July included All Ireland Football, rugby from Australia and South Africa, and the Leinster Senior Hurling Championship.

Hurling is a Gaelic team sport played outdoors with sticks called hurleys and a ball resembling a baseball. Points are scored by hitting the ball, called a sliotar, between the opposing team’s goalposts.

“You should watch it sometime, because it is one of the most, uh, aggressive sports that I have ever watched,” Setanta spokesperson Andy Shapiera says at his Toronto office. “It’s quite interesting and very popular with the Irish community, as is Gaelic football. We carry Gaelic football as well.”

Setanta Sports has expanded its reach since springing up in Ireland 19 years ago. Its Canadian version was launched two years ago in partnership with Rogers Media.

“Our market has grown substantially since we launched,” Shapiera says. “There’s definitely an appetite, especially among the soccer community, for the type of programming that we’re offering.

“We try and focus on the major competitions when it comes to soccer. We don’t give our viewers things that would be considered Tier 2 events. We give them the Tier 1 events. We show things like the Barclays Premier League. We show things like the FA Cup.”

Setanta is an “a la carte” channel (meaning it’s not packaged with any other channel) available from nearly every major television service provider in Canada. Bars can use Setanta’s Premium service – “almost like a pay-per-view basis,” says Shapiera – to purchase events that residential subscribers don’t have access to.

“We’re serving a market that was grossly underserved prior to the arrival of Setanta,” he says. “A lot of the top leagues, the only way to get access to these leagues here was through the Internet. You wouldn’t be able to get television access.”

Setanta’s sporting menu – which also includes Australian rules football and Major League Soccer – presents opportunities for bar operators to draw patrons who otherwise might not visit their establishments.

Phill Sheckley, manager of the Elephant & Castle on King Street in Toronto, recognizes those opportunities. He has seen how rugby and soccer can brings patrons in, day and night.

“With rugby, for example,” he says, “you’ve just had the British and Irish Lions Tour of South Africa (in July). That only happens once every four years. The games were shown at 9 in the morning on Saturday. And even though we can’t serve alcohol at that time, there were still people coming out to watch the games.”

A native of the British Isles, Sheckley hopes rugby, soccer and the like will appeal to expats in the Big Smoke.

“What we’re going to start doing here is breakfast and brunch when the soccer season starts,” he explains. “We are going be showing games from England that start at 8 o’clock in the morning (Toronto time). We obviously won’t be serving alcohol at this time, it will just be a soccer breakfast. That’s what we’re going to call it.

“That will be every Saturday morning. And then the game on Sunday will start at 10:30, just before we can start serving alcohol.

“It would be nice if our sales could be helped by serving alcohol, but the soccer programming from England on Saturday is in three-game blocks and hopefully by sometime in the second game we can start serving alcohol.”

Sheckley’s motivation is simple: “I want to showcase the pub. And even if somebody is coming here and not having alcoholic beverages this time, they’ll think about coming back for dinner and drinks and what have you.

“It’s an opportunity to showcase our pub, and we’ll still make money on the breakfast, of course.

“Some games will be on weeknights, at about 3 in the afternoon Toronto time. Soccer has a massive profile in the world. We’re a British pub, and it’s the number one British sport. Also, the World Cup in South Africa is coming 2010, so it makes sense to build into that, you know.”

He’s confident the strategy will work. “My room holds 160 people,” he says, “and while I’m not expecting it to be full straight away, I’m pretty confident that it will get very busy because there’s not many places that have the facilities we have downtown and we’re the biggest British pub downtown.

“There are a lot of expats going to smaller and older venues right now. Once the word gets out, I expect many of them will be coming here instead.”

Sheckley says the customer base for the weekend sports strategy consists primarily of people with roots in the British Isles – “a few Australians and New Zealanders, but mainly Brits and the Irish.”

Folks from the West Indies, India and Pakistan figure prominently in the audience for cricket, available in Canada on the ATN Cricket Plus digital channel launched in February 2007 and available from Shaw, Rogers, Bell and Telus.

Rogers Sportsnet, meanwhile, counts poker and mixed martial arts (including UFC) among its somewhat outside-the-mainstream offerings.

UFC has seen a phenomenal rise in popularity and now reportedly garners about 10 million buys for each of its pay-per-views.

Rogers Sportsnet has responded to that popularity by snagging a multi-year deal with UFC and this year creating its own weekly MMA Connected show.

“It’s very strong for us, what can I say,” says Dave Akande, Sportsnet’s vice-president of content. “We’re the network that has taken a stand with regard to UFC programming.”

You can find Sportsnet’s programming schedule for the next six weeks online.

Pay-per-view provider Shaw Direct has a monthly Sports Planner available for download and printout at the business section of its website.

Scoring big

2010-03-09T18:15:00.000-08:00

Published in Bar & Beverage, Fall 2008:

Grey Cup Sunday is always a touchdown for The Wayland Bar & Grill in the south end of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

While no annual event is bigger than The Wayland’s Halloween party, which always has people lining up to get in, the Grey Cup is the blue-collar establishment’s second-biggest event of autumn and third-biggest of the year (behind the Super Bowl).
“The NFL is bigger around here, for some reason – maybe because we don’t have a CFL team around here,” manager Stephanie Henderson says.

A bit of friendly wagering adds to the atmosphere. Patrons organize a Grey Cup pool, which always has a winner’s purse in the hundreds of dollars.

“I always put on a free half-time meal, featuring beef on a bun,” adds Henderson. “People really seem to enjoy that.”

She puts aside promotional items from suppliers throughout the year, and then uses them as prizes on Grey Cup day, with a big prize added on. Last year, that primo perquisite was a flat-screen TV.

“Everybody walks out of here with a prize,” she declares. “I think that’s the big thing. People like getting stuff for free.”

Atmosphere is important, so the bar is festooned with football paraphernalia – but Henderson adds that the Wayland won’t go as far as some sports bars in the atmosphere department.

“We don’t dress our waitresses as cheerleaders or anything like that. This is a family bar, and we want to keep our female customers comfortable.”

Grey Cup is part of a busy fall in sports spectacles that include the World Series, American football, mixed martial arts, NBA basketball and, of course, the Oct. 4 start of the National Hockey League season.

Rogers Sportsnet’s four regional channels will keep you well-supplied with NHL games, spokesperson Daniel Zaiontz says from Toronto.

“We’re regional broadcasters for five different Canadian teams. Those are our biggest properties, bar none.

“Without a doubt in Canada, the biggest sport is hockey, and we’ve certainly got live hockey covered.”

One of the most exciting new things for Sportsnet this fall is that Hockey Central and Soccer Central are now in high-def.

Knowing what the next hot event is, and how to plan for it, is a crucial part of any sports bar manager’s job. Star Choice, one of Canada’s leading satellite TV providers, can help you out on that with the monthly Sports Planner available for download and printout at the business section of its website.

The NHL and National Football League packages are hot sellers for Star Choice at this time of year, says Nadia Routhier, the company’s national manager of major account sales.

Star Choice offers more HD channels for free than any other satellite or cable provider, Routhier says from her Calgary office.

Star Choice has a dedicated commercial team that’s available by e-mail or phone 12 hours a day, five days a week. And, of course, there’s a system in place for response to issues that might arise during off-hours.

Star Choice is offering incentives for new commercial customers to come on board, Routhier adds.

Asked what the hottest selling brand in pay-per-view is, she replies without hesitation: “UFC, definitely.” Its popularity has been growing every year for several years now, and it likely will be even more popular next year.

Boogies Diner and Sports Lounge in Winnipeg is jam-packed for every UFC card, reports owner Derek Campbell.

“We were the first bar in Winnipeg to have UFC,” he adds. “It caught on and now it’s available in a lot of places.”

Campbell says UFC posts its events three or four months in advance, so planning for them is easy.

The lounge seats 110 and has three 60-inch plasma screens, plus several smaller TV sets. The diner also seats 110 has a few TVs too. Boogies has a 65-seat patio as well.
Campbell has the place set up with six receivers from its satellite TV service, so up to six events can be playing simultaneously.

To promote the bar, Boogies sponsors local boxing cards. Campbell himself is a former pugilist.

At Boogies, Grey Cup day “is traditionally big, depending on who is in the game,” he says. “If it’s Toronto versus B.C., the crowd’s not so big. Last year, when it was Winnipeg-Saskatchewan – now that was a big day for us!”

A few kilometres away, Doug Romanik is looking forward to a busy Grey Cup day. He owns Bleachers, a 100-seat sports pub in downtown Winnipeg.

There are just a few special-event days annually at Bleachers, he says. Otherwise, it’s just whatever patrons are asking for. “My bartender loves golf. I gotta caution him that it’s not his TV.”

Bleachers doesn’t display pay-per-view events as the pub’s size makes it difficult to host such events profitably, Romanik says.

Keeping up with the NHL, UFC, NBA, NFL, CFL, NASCAR and all the rest of the alphabet soup of sports organizations is important, but it can also pay off to keep an eye on the local scene. Like how The Wayland responded to customers’ interest in a local soccer team.

The Thunder Bay Chill went for all the marbles in the Premier Development League championship tourney late July in Texas, and T Bay soccer fans were clamouring for a chance to follow the action in a social setting.

“I was surprised at how many (patrons) were asking us if we would have it,” Wayland owner Joanne Kushnier remarks.

She put the action, broadcast by Fox Sports, up on the big screen and had a packed house watching the Chill blank the Kalamazoo Outrage 4-0 in the final.

On top and in control

2010-02-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

Published in Bar & Beverage Business Magazine, Winter 2010:

An online dictionary defines inventory control as "supervision of the delivery, availability, and utilization of an organization's inventory in an attempt to ensure adequate supplies and at the same time minimize expenses caused by theft, spoilage or excessive stock."

For bar operators, the term can be defined more simply as knowing what you’ve ordered, what you paid, and how much you've used.

Knowing those things is the key to maximizing efficiency by seeing that, as near as possible, the volume of product you bought equals the volume sold.

Any shortfall between inventory and volume sold is reflected in your establishment's profit. Or, as Fraser Brooks of InfoSpec Systems (maker of Profitek software) so succinctly puts it, "Anything you can do to reduce that shortage goes right smack dab on your bottom line."

So inventory control includes keeping track of purchases, keeping track of your bar’s sales, knowing when to order more supplies, and trying to prevent “slippage” in what you have in stock.

You might say it’s a mighty tall order. Fortunately, Canadian companies are ready and able to help out with products and services to make inventory control much easier.

In and out

CLR Concepts’ Leena Lowe distinguishes purchasing control – knowing what you've bought and when to buy more – from the rest of inventory control. In fact, she thinks of them as pretty much separate things.

Purchasing control is obviously crucial to running a successful business, she says, as "you never ever want to be in a position where you’ve purchased too much, because that’s just costing you money. And you never want to be in a position where you haven’t purchased enough, because then you’re losing sales.

“Inventory control is tied into it,” she continues from her office near Vancouver, “but it’s kind of a different question.

“When I hear people talking about inventory control, what I’m really hearing is them saying ‘What am I going to do to make sure that my inventory is not walking out the door?’ That’s a whole different question.”

Inventory loss can come in other forms, of course. Some may be lost to everyday spillage, for instance. But industry research has shown theft and fraud to be taking a sizeable bite out of bar and restaurant revenues.

Lowe often hears bar operators express concern about how much profit is being lost due to employee dishonesty.

“I guess the question then is, How do you control your inventory? And the only way you can do that is by monitoring the usage. And that’s where it ties into purchasing, because if you purchased 30 cases of Budweiser and you, according to your computer, have sold five cases, you should have 25 cases left. If you don’t, you have an issue.”

Lowe says Clear POS, made and sold by CLR Concepts, has proven a useful ally in inventory control.

Clear POS includes inventory control as “an integral part of the program,” Lowe says. “When you have a choice between buying our POS system and somebody else’s, often ours is not necessarily the cheapest. The reason people go for ours is quite often the inventory control. It tracks inventory very well and very simply.”

On guard

By keeping a record of what your business has sold, all POS software – whether the brand name is Profitek, Clear, Squirrel or what have you – helps with inventory control. Aloha goes a step further with its Restaurant Guard, a supplementary product which analyses transaction patterns to find possible fraud and theft.

Bill Tischner of Edmonton-based Time Business Technologies points out that studies indicate about five per cent of bar and restaurant revenue is lost to theft by staff.

“That’s five per cent of their gross sales," he underscores. “Not their net – their gross sales. That’s a significant dollar amount that’s going into the bartenders’ jeans and the servers’ jeans through what you call industry scams.”

Tischner relates that when he operated restaurants, he observed significant inventory gaps that he chalked up to spillage and the like – honest mistakes.

“Now that I work on this side of the fence I can see that it is mostly staff theft. So the bartenders are getting rich and the owners are going broke.”

Aloha Restaurant Guard, which got its Canadian launch last year at a trade show in Vancouver, is a web-based product sold by Time that forensically audits transactions for potentially fraudulent activities.

Restaurant Guard monitors transactions and analyses them for signs of such common fraudulent practices as the “wagon wheel” scam. In that style of theft, a server collects in full on a bill, then subtracts a commonly ordered item (say, a fountain drink) before putting cash in the till, then transfers that item to the another table’s bill. The process is continued throughout a shift so that the server collects several times on the item but the establishment gets paid just once, with the server pocketing the rest.

Clients get weekly reports on suspicious activity.

Tischner says one client estimates Restaurant Guard is saving his Alberta restaurant chain as much as $500,000 annually in losses. “The monthly fee that he’s paying for Restaurant Guard, he saves in one day in what would have been losses.”

The product also spares the owner from spending a lot of time every week auditing transactions in an effort to spot theft and fraud.

Another effective tool for minimizing slippage is a liquor control system such as those made by Azbar Inc.

Azbar’s product line includes the AzGun, which dispenses up to 18 liquids according to pre-programmed portion sizes, and the AzJunior control station for small operators, as well as cocktail towers and draft beer dispensers. The Quebec City-based company also has a POS system.

The AzGun can let a bar’s inventory control system know to subtract from the volume level for each product, so that management knows which products should be replenished soon.

Company founder and president Robert Blouin says Azbar has, in its 20-plus years, became a North American leader in liquor control because of the high quality of its products.

“We’re the best in the world right now,” he proclaims, “and I want to stay that way.”