Speaking on the phone with ABM’s Dawn Chafe, here’s what she had to say about her decision:
 
“It was a difficult choice, but a necessary one. I thought about it over the summer. I hadn’t made up my mind when the interview took place, or I wouldn’t have done the interview (for Leader’s Insight).
 
“I have a young family, and my kids are active – which I want them to be. And my parents are getting older. They have some health issues.  It changes your perspective of what it means to have it all.
 
“I never sought to be a CEO, but at the same time I’ve never hesitated to push outside my comfort zone when the opportunity presented itself. The fact that I shared the job with Stephen was one of the more enjoyable aspects of my role over the past year, we had complementary strengths that worked well together.
 
It’s a demanding position and not a great fit for me at this time. The company has been transitioning. It’s growing, expanding. The job became more of an energy suck than an energy flow.  If I’m clear on the company’s vision, that’s exhilarating for me. I thrive on making the vision a reality. But the big picture, visionary, abstract stuff – it’s not as comfortable for me. I can do it, as I did in this position, but it’s not the sort of thing that gets me excited.
 
“It took me about six months to make this decision. There were always these gremlins popping up, these unspoken expectations from society. Like, what was I thinking, to throw away a promising career with a great company? How could I walk away from this great opportunity?
 
“I’ve been taking part in a seven-month women’s leadership initiative with Ambir and it made me realize what I needed to thrive, professionally and personally. Once I made the decision, I became very relieved and very grounded in my decision.
 
“I don’t have a job lined up, though I have had a number of invitations to go for coffee and discuss possibilities. What I’ve told everyone is that I appreciate their support, but I’m taking the month of November off. It’s very difficult for me, but I’m forcing myself to slow down and take my time thinking over my next move. I’m not even going to start looking until January. But I want a career and I expect that within six months, I will have moved on to another position.
 
“My ideal job would be one where I would be the right-hand of the CEO. I would be the person who makes the vision happen. It will probably be in a smaller organization of 20 to 100 employees. It would be a private company. I’d have a senior leadership role, working with a good visionary leader who needs someone who can makes things happen.
 
“I didn’t realize this would happen, but Steve’s reaction was to announce that he will be making a shift as well. He doesn’t want to the CEO on his own. He will likely still be involved with the company, but I don’t know what that role will be. It may be as a board member. He may move into an advisory role. That’s a decision he’ll be making in the weeks to come.
 
“I’m proud of what I accomplished at Precision BioLogic, and I look forward to re-creating some of those successes in my next job.”
 
November 8 was Jennifer Mills’ last day at Precision BioLogic.

You don’t have to say it; I know what you’re thinking. What kind of oxymoronic editor uses a title like that? Something is either new or improved. It can’t be both—can it? Not under normal circumstances, true, but we’re not your common garden-variety magazine (the gratuitous self-praise being a humorous case in point).

This issue, I’m using my Salvo to tell you about some things we’ll be tweaking in the magazine for 2013 (the improved), as well as some editorial additions we have in store (the new). More accurately, I’m giving voice to the collective feedback we’ve received from so many of you in response to our readership survey.

We asked for it and you delivered—sincere thanks to everyone who had the guts to tell us what you really think. You told us what you loved and hated, what we dare not touch as well as what to shuck, and you filled us in on holes in our editorial coverage. Mostly though, you humbled us with the depth of your loyalty to the magazine. To paraphrase Sally Field in her 1979 Norma Rae role, you like us—you really like us!

Our resident Devil’s Advocate, however? You don’t like John Risley; you love this well-known business mogul’s outspoken contribution to the magazine. Once again, Dear John polled the highest number of fans in our annual survey. (“Keep John Risley. What you do with the rest is up to you.”)

Columnists Alec Bruce and Stephen Kimber also scored well on the reader-metre (“Their articles are always so thought-provoking.”) with yours truly achieving the lowest score. If this were a text message, this is where I’d insert a sad face. Sure, I have enough loyal followers to keep my Salvo alive (“Dawn Chafe’s editorial is the first thing I read every issue”), but I get it—I have to work harder at making it more attention-worthy. With that in mind, if you have suggestions for topics you’d like me to address, by all means pass them on. Constructive criticism is equally well received, though I can’t guarantee you won’t get a combative response (smiley face alert).

While there won’t be any substantive changes to the columnists, our departments on the other hand are getting a thorough overhaul. After Hours will remain, but the focus will shift to luxe indulgences for deserving executives. On the “new” side of the editorial ledger, we’ll be offering analytical reviews of the latest business book releases (Off the Shelf), snapshots of innovations that can help your business stay ahead of the curve (Eureka Moments) and photo tributes to corporate donors and the charities they support (The Givers).

However, just as their initial inclusion was a response to reader input, whether or not we keep those new departments beyond the coming year will also be up to you. If you have a photo of your company making a donation or assisting with a charity event, send it in (high res digital image only, along with appropriate caption of less than 50 words in length). If you have a suggestion for a business book you think we should review, tell us about it. And if you’re aware of, or developing, some sort of game-changing innovation, don’t be afraid to loop us in.

Wait. I’m having another clairvoyant moment: you want to know how you’re supposed to contact us with all this information. Simple—any way you want. You can reach out to us on Facebook. Tweet us on Twitter @AtlanticBus. Comment on our website. Send me an email (the address is on page 4). Pick up the phone (709-726-9300). Mail a letter. Fax the facts. You can even stop me on the street. From social media to traditional mail, we are fully connected and engaged, both with you and the broader Atlantic business community.

Finally, please note that as much as we are always working to refine
our product, we will never change our core values. Our mission is to be
proud ambassadors of our people and place. To be dedicated to the highest standards of editorial, design and print excellence. For our readers and our advertisers, we are determined to be the foremost source of business information in the region. With your input, we’re getting there.

The hideous strength of intolerance is measured most often by its banality; by a flimsy, cardboard sign hastily speared into a grassy boulevard of a busy Moncton roadway, a sign that, only two months ago, pronounced: “There are no jobs for English New Brunswickers here!”

As Canada’s second smallest – and, by some accounts, least prosperous – province reels from a nearly unsustainable budget deficit, an insupportable long-term debt and the sort of painful self-examination (about the size of its public sector and cost of its social services) normally reserved for the therapist’s couch, the land of the purple violet is inching towards another round of angry rhetoric over linguistic rights.

And, as with any chronic mental disorder, there’s only so much the saner segments of society can do about it.

From time to time, the country’s only officially bilingual province finds the temptation to tear at the scabbed-over wounds, inflicted by old prejudices and sensitivities, roundly irresistible. From time to time, its focus blurs, its mouth dries and it begins to shake as an inchoate rage rises behind its eyes. Sometimes, it takes only a comment from a retired heart surgeon, an anglophone, a Tory backbencher to light the ancient pyre.

And so it was this September that Dr. Jim Parrott, a Saint Johnarea, Progressive Conservative MLA broke party ranks by declaring that his government is unresponsive to health reform in the province. Worse, he all but accused it of pandering to cultural requisites that, he implied, escalate the cost of care by duplicating its delivery in English and French languages. He paid the inevitable price. He now sits out his term, unforgiven, as an independent.

For his part, Parrott insists he has been misunderstood. Maybe he has, but he must have appreciated the minefield into which he ventured. For this is a subject no one in this province willingly broaches (at least, no one who cares about the condition of his own skin). For this reason, the opinionated doctor may have done New Brunswick an unwitting favour, though it’s doubtful many will thank him for the service.

The French and English chattering classes have closed ranks, characterizing his comments and actions as, at best, imprudent and, at worst, reprehensible. The men and women on the street don’t care or, if they do, think he’s either a hero or a villain, depending almost entirely on the pronunciations of their last names. But somewhere, in all of this, come the voices of reason.

One of these is Aldéa Landry’s. She’s a prominent businesswoman in Moncton, who was a senior government minister during the Frank McKenna years. She was around during the last, great nervous breakdown when the far-right, demonstrably anti-French political movement, the CORE party, gained enough purchase in the early 1990s to nearly upend the achievements of a generation of “equal opportunity” reform. Now, in newspaper articles, she advises calm. Let’s not rush to judgment. Mostly, she says let’s talk. About everything. And, of course, she’s right.

These manufactured feuds profit no one – not English, not French. As Landry points out, if costly duplications exist in the current health-care system, the province must work together to eliminate them if only to provide the linguistic parity the law requires and most New Brunswickers expect. In fact, there must be several ways to accomplish this without savagely curtailing the constitutional rights of 38 per cent of the voting public.

In the end, it’s a conversation that’s long past due, and the saner segments of society must moderate the debate in the interests of duality, not duplication.

If a province composed of at least two distinct cultural groups expects to prosper in a developed world that cares nothing for internecine rivalries and parochial imbecilities, it must abandon hoary tropes and simmering, secret resentments and, finally, address that elephant in the parlour; finally, order it to leave.

New Brunswick’s perilous economic circumstances demand nothing less. But even more importantly, its hungry soul cries out for the decency of its neighbours, the relevance of its government and the courage of its citizens, who declare in one triumphant voice, on a sturdy sign in the middle of a boulevard: “There are jobs for all New Brunswickers . . . ici!”

On a train bound for nowhere there’s a man who just might be a gambler, an investor and a speculator in mineral exploration. Or he could just be a character in a country song.

Kenny Rogers likely never took a train through Labrador, and that gambler was a card player, not a stock player, but both are about risk, excitement, and the possibility of a big payoff. Or a big loss.

It pays to know the game, the players, and the house . . . whether the game is Texas Hold ‘Em or making a play in the Labrador trough’s mineral exploration activity; no matter which play you make, The Gambler’s advice holds true.

“If you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.”

It’s advice that veteran investor Paul van Eeden would agree with. He’s the CEO of Cranberry Capital, an investment firm that partnered with Newfoundland-based Altius Minerals to, as the Altius website puts it, “invest principally in early stage mineral exploration businesses.”

In a conversation from his Toronto-area phone number, van Eeden points out that he isn’t following any exploration in Labrador. Instead, he speaks in general terms about the market, and the common wisdom of investing in mineral exploration, which he likens to gambling. And, like gambling, if a person doesn’t know what they’re doing when it comes to investing there’s a good chance they’ll soon part with their money.

Like the cards in a deck, there’s no way to predict market variables like metal prices, the actions of foreign governments, or the next moves of regulators. And, like cards, making an informed decision on what that next move will be is somewhat of a gamble.

“I’m not saying you can’t guess one of the things right once in a while, but you cannot predict all of these variables correct all of the time. Of course it’s a gamble,” says van Eeden.

A gamble isn’t a guess, and stepping into the game, whether it’s cards or investment, requires a certain level of knowledge that comes with research and experience.

But let’s set the card metaphor aside for a bit and focus on the investment environment. The markets are lower than they’ve been in a while, the price of iron ore continued to decline through September, and investors have lost their appetite for risk.

“In a general sense in Canada, there has been an increase in risk aversion, particularly as it relates to mineral exploration, since around 2008,” said van Eeden.

He goes on to explain that markets recovered somewhat from 2008 to 2011, then again declined, with a return upward only recently. The result is mineral exploration companies offering up a larger percentage of equity over the past couple of years to get the same returns they saw in 2004 to 2008. Good news for investors, but not so good if you happen to be a mineral exploration company.

Today’s prices are a fraction of what they were at the end of 2010, which were down from 2007 prices.

“So if you compare prices today to what they were five years ago, there are fantastic deals right now for investors with capital to invest. On the other hand, if you’re a mineral exploration company looking for investment, the environment is very difficult.”

That market downturn took a lot of chips off the table for Cap-Ex Ventures Ltd., an exploration company with some promising properties in the Labrador trough. Their stock was at $1.20 in February, and as of mid-September it sat around 33 to 35 cents, said Cap-Ex CEO Francois Laurin, on the phone from Montreal. While he admits to being worried, he knows there isn’t much he can do when it comes to controlling the market. Instead, he focuses on making the company the best it can be.

Their most recent round of exploratory drilling was fully funded, and they exceeded their drilling targets.

“We are so confident that we plan to go directly to feasibility study in 2013 and have a drilling program that would be typically, you could estimate, 1.5 times what we did this year,” he said.

Laurin is betting on the long term, and while the current market downturn “is unfortunate” he says the future looks much better.

Winning women
Six Atlantic Canadians among country’s top female entrepreneurs

This year’s PROFIT and Chatelaine joint publication of the W100 list of Canada’s Top Female Entrepreneurs includes four Nova Scotia and two New Brunswick residents. The W100 ranking and awards program celebrates the largest firms owned and operated by women in Canada.

“The women of the W100 offer 100 shining examples of Canadian entrepreneurship,” said PROFIT magazine publisher and editor-in-chief Ian Portsmouth in a published statement. “They have achieved their elite status by creating valued products and services, applying deft management skills and exercising the determination required to succeed in today’s business environment.”

About the rankings: The W100 were ranked by a composite of the size, growth rate and profitability of their businesses. All growth rates were based on a base-year revenue of at least $200,000, and PROFIT verified figures through financial statements. To qualify, women must be owners or significant stakeholders who at least share chief decision-making responsibilities.

Atlantic Canada W100 winners

It was one of the more exquisite ironies in Moncton’s long and storied history as the acknowledged transportation nexus of the Maritimes. In August, weeks after Via Rail announced it was cutting in half its passenger service – the Ocean line – between Halifax and Montreal, and mere days after Groupe Orleans Express declared its Acadian Coach and Intercity operations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island would end by year end, the Hub City celebrated a $1-million provincial contribution toward a new discovery centre dedicated to all things mobile.

At the ribbon-cutting, Moncton Deputy Mayor Merrill Henderson said the centre will honour the city’s “transportation history and heritage, from shipbuilding to the railroad, from trucking to air, and looks forward to today’s information highway.” Meanwhile, New Brunswick Premier David Alward characterized his government’s funding decision as “an important part of our plan to rebuild” the provincial economy.

But for anyone whose perspective was unaffected by the whitewash of public relations, the harsher truth was plain to see: When it comes to public transportation in the Maritimes, the future ain’t what it used to be.

In news releases and press interviews, Via president Marc Laliberte explained the Montreal-based company’s decision to trim service on the Ocean line from six to three weekly trips as a necessary function of “efficiency.” He noted that ridership since 1997 had dropped to 133,700 passengers, from 250,000. Consequent losses on the route amounted to $35 million in 2011, effectively nullifying federal operating subsidies.

At the same time, he told the Globe and Mail that the Crown corporation might be interested in pursuing partnerships with the private sector to improve passenger service along the busy Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor. “If you can bring in a service that attracts a lot of customers and you can make it profitable, then private money could be (attracted to it),” he told the newspaper in September, adding, “This is something we need to look at.”

Groupe Orleans shut down its Maritime coach lines for similar reasons. “It is well known that Acadian has been struggling financially for quite some time and we’ve worked hard over the past few years to implement a sustainable network,” its Montreal-based CEO, Denis Andlauer, said in a press release. Acadian’s vice president Denis Gallant explained to the CBC, “Under the current regulations you have to provide service to certain areas, you have to go a certain amount of frequencies. And quite frankly, some of those areas, unfortunately, there’s just not enough ridership to support or warrant a bus service.”

All of which have left public officials and transportation advocates worried and frustrated. “It’s a concern when you look at the big picture here,” Moncton Mayor George LeBlanc told Atlantic Business Magazine. “As to Via, this arose from a letter it sent around back in June. The letter which came to me indicated that Via was introducing significant improvements to its operations, and when I looked at the attachments, they indicated that in the east, the only thing they were talking about was the reduction of services. So, it just seemed to me to be an oxymoron to indicate this was a significant improvement.”

Although the termination of bus service may be regrettable, Ted Bartlett, vicepresident of Transport Action Atlantic, thinks the rail cuts are actually unnecessary. “Rail transportation is part of our history,” he said. “There is still a role for it . . . this is a concept that is alive and well in the United States. Amtrak calls at many cities and towns of substantial size . . . Canada is the caboose of the industrialized world when it comes to passenger rail. We have fallen behind other countries.”

Indeed, in newspaper accounts, Transport Action Canada head Greg Gormick has accused Via of willfully ignoring its opportunities, telling reporters: “Regional air carriers like Porter Airlines are competing aggressively in the high-density travel corridor between Quebec City and Windsor and Via Rail is cutting back on routes like the Ocean, where there is potential for real revenues. The (Ocean) passes through northern New Brunswick and Quebec at night. With another train on the route, they could increase day-time ridership.”

With any product, getting one’s goods to market is a key component of running a successful operation. In today’s age of overnight express shipping and the ability to ship products anywhere in the world with ease, transporting goods has become something that isn’t very complicated. For the mining industry, however, it isn’t necessarily so easy.

“Typically, you find mining operations throughout the country are located in relatively remote areas,” says David Plante, manager of the New Brunswick Mining Association. As a result of being located in remote areas, this can mean that mining operations have to build infrastructure such as all-weather roads during the exploration process. If a mine moves into production, it may also need port facilities, rail lines and even airport landing strips. Not surprisingly, the cost of such infrastructure can easily total in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

On top of that, in remote areas where employee compensation will be at a premium, it may be necessary to provide accommodations for the workers and workers may even have to be flown in and out. All of these things drive up the cost of doing business.

As the saying goes, there is an exception to every rule – and that certainly applies to some mining operations in Atlantic Canada. “Interestingly enough, because of the relatively small size of the province, the mineral industry in New Brunswick is a bit unique, in so much that mines are located relatively close to . . . smaller communities,” says Plante. It’s a similar story for Nova Scotia where because of proximity to communities, a good road network and ports, mining operations aren’t truly that remote. (Prince Edward Island does not have any mines.) Even in Newfoundland, transportation issues aren’t really an issue for mining operations. Labrador is a different story.

“Our largest mines . . . are in Labrador, which are poorly served by transportation networks,” says Gerry O’Connell, executive director of Mining NL, a not-for-profit industry association representing the mineral industry. He points to the fact that while there are two railway lines in place that go into Quebec from Labrador, only one is a common-carrier line. (The other is the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway (QNSLR) and it is operated by the Iron Ore Company of Canada.)

With mineral production nearing $6 billion annually in Newfoundland and Labrador, the industry is booming. That being said, there are concerns about whether the existing rail line will be able to handle western Labrador’s expanding iron ore industry. “If everything being proposed were to go to production in that region, there may not be enough capacity on the single railway line that is already there,” says O’Connell.

Relief could come in the form of an additional rail line and terminal handling facility. In August, CN Rail, its partner La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and a customer group of mining companies announced a feasibility study to look into this.

Despite general satisfaction with the transportation networks in place across Atlantic Canada, improved transportation infrastructure is something that gets peoples tongues salivating. Rick MacInnis is the general manager of ScoZinc, a zinclead mine located about 50 km northeast of Halifax on the Gays River deposit. “We’d love to have a spur line in to our plant,” he says. “It would give us a lot of flexibility.” This is because the firm would be able to use a spur line to tie into CN’s main line which runs from Halifax to Montreal and would therefore increase the markets it could reach. However, that is an option that will be considered in the long term. In the short term, the plan is to use trucks to ship to the Port of Halifax and Port of Sheet Harbour when ScoZinc resumes operations next year.

In any case, MacInnis is happy with the existing transportation linkages in place, but does think the company will end up spending money at the Port of Sheet Harbour to fund upgrades that will allow for faster loading and help keep costs down.

Proponents of improved transportation networks argue that society as a whole would benefit from the upgrades – and not just the mineral industry. Plante points to the Brunswick Mine as an example. Located 20 km southwest of Bathurst, New Brunswick, the zinc mine was discovered in 1953 and production began in 1964. One of the key things needed to make the operation a success was port access and this led to the creation of the Port of Belledune in 1968.

“So…” The new owner glanced around the room at the expectant faces of the small group of front office employees he’d inherited as part of his recent purchase of their company. “Who here handles group sales?”

It was September 2003, and Robert David Smith had just acquired 64 per cent of the Halifax Mooseheads junior hockey team from Moosehead Breweries for what was reported to be more than $3 million.

It seemed an excellent fit. Smith, better known to a generation of hockey fans as Bobby, credited his own three years as a junior player with transforming him from “a 17-year-old kid who played hockey into a hockey player, and there’s a big difference.”

After breaking Ontario junior hockey league records for assists and points that still stand nearly 35 years later, Smith had been drafted first overall in 1978 by the NHL’s Minnesota North Stars. Over the course of a 15-year professional career, he played in more than a thousand games, scoring almost a point a game and won a Stanley Cup ring as a member of the 1986 Montreal Canadiens.

When he retired in 1993, Smith returned to school (academically gifted, his mother had been “disappointed” when he originally chose hockey over university) and squeezed four years of undergraduate and graduate business education into just three years. The day he graduated, the NHL’s Phoenix Coyote hired him as general manager. Four years later, in 2001, “the owners sold the team out from under me” and Smith suddenly found himself out of a job. And at loose ends.

Which is when he began to reconsider his own passion for junior hockey. Could it also be a good business investment? He kicked the tires of an American team in the Western Hockey League, explored the possibilities of an Ontario franchise. Neither turned out to be a good fit.

Then one day in the spring of 2003, as he was finishing up a golf game in Scottsdale, Arizona, he got a call from Jeff Hunt, a friend who owned the Ottawa 67s junior team. Hunt told him Moosehead Breweries would announce the next day it was selling its Halifax junior franchise. Smith should check it out.

Smith, who was born in North Sydney and lived briefly on Sable Island as a child before his civil servant father transferred the family to Ottawa, “immediately called 4-1-1 and asked for the number of the brewery in Saint John. I asked to be put through directly to the president.” Three months later, Smith had a hockey team to call his own.

Passion rekindled. But a business? Group sales?

Group sales — putting bums from bowling teams, university engineering classes, boy scout troops and minor hockey teams into arena seats every game, win or lose — is traditionally a critical revenue-building piece in the sales strategy of any sports franchise.

But there was, Smith remembers, an uncomfortable silence in the room that day. Finally, someone responded. “Well, um, I answer the phone when anyone calls.”

By the time he bought the team, the Halifax Mooseheads were already a Canadian junior hockey phenomenon — in the stands at least. The season before when the Mooseheads had come within a game of going to the Memorial Cup, the national junior championships, the team averaged 7,600 fans a game, second best in the entire 56-team Canadian Hockey League.

During its first 10 years of operation, those box office triumphs had helped spawn a new Maritime division within the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and the Mooseheads had even hosted the 2000 Memorial Cup tournament. The team’s marketing success not only helped its landlord, the publicly-owned Halifax Metro Centre, finally become profitable but it also made it possible for Halifax to land the rights to host the 2003 world junior hockey championships, the 2004 women’s world hockey tournament and the 2007 men’s world championships.

As majority owners, Moosehead Breweries had done many things right, including keeping ticket prices down so games became popular family entertainment.

But the brewery hadn’t really ever had to run the team as a business. “Moosehead,” Smith says simply, “owned the team to sell beer.”

Although Smith is the first to admit owning a hockey team “is a lot more fun than investing in XYZ stock,” buying the Mooseheads instantly made it his primary investment vehicle, and he needed it run on a business-like basis.

Growth never feels comfortable.
Jennifer: My parents raised me to believe that the only way to grow is to push yourself outside your comfort zone. I didn’t want to take piano lessons. But they encouraged me – pushed me – to try new things. It’s a habit I’ve kept up my entire career. There have been so many situations where I’ve felt I didn’t know what needed to be done, or what I was doing there. They were terribly uncomfortable experiences. But I could also remind myself of other situations I’d been in that later seemed so moderate, but at the time were very uncomfortable.

Natural talent isn’t the be all and end all.
Stephen: My father had to leave school early to look after his family. He never took education for granted. I can remember sitting with him in the living room in Grade 1 and 2 with multiplication table flashcards. I had to sit there with him relentlessly until I could hit those numbers bang on. I learned that success comes down to hard work. In university, I lacked the elegant talent of some of my classmates. I was not the smartest guy in the room. To compensate, I had to roll up my sleeves and put in the time. I got labeled the “library guy.” Being that guy has served me well.

Ignore your passion at your peril.
Jennifer: A former mentor and business leader taught me to always follow my passion. As a leadership technique, being truly passionate about what you are doing gives you that conviction you need to take a leap of faith. Passion is infectious and helps you motivate your team to work together and achieve goals that would seem impossible. I have always found a way to merge my passion with my career. Because to treat your job as just your job makes for a really long and boring career.

Sharing the leadership role works if you do it for the right reasons.
Stephen: The day Jennifer and I were invited to jointly lead Precision BioLogic, I went home and stayed up until 3 a.m. researching the probability of success for co-CEOs. At first, I found that co-CEO arrangements didn’t have a good track record. But as I read further, I discovered that they unravel because of warring egos and power plays. After I read that, I found I was able to sleep much better. I am at a stage in my career where the whole notion of the power grab is long behind me. Jennifer has young children, and wants to grow and develop in such a way that allows her to balance the needs of a busy family life. She is high energy, action-oriented and very knowledgeable in financial aspects of the business. I’m the quiet, analytical techy. We bring diverse skill sets to the role, but we’re approaching it with the same goal – long term growth and sustainability.

We owe a lot to Starbucks.
Jennifer: One of the biggest challenges for any CEO is to separate yourself from the business to work on it rather than in it. We recognized early on that to do this effectively, we’d need to literally distance ourselves from the office. So every Wednesday morning between 8 and 10 we go to Starbucks for the sole purpose of working on the business. That is sacred time – it keeps us aligned with each other, accountable to our leadership responsibilities and focused on the things that really matter.

As a young TV reporter in Halifax in the early 1970s, I remember being sent to Prince Edward Island to cover a Maritime premier’s conference. After filing my story for the day, I was hanging around in the hotel lobby with a bunch of other reporters when Nova Scotia Premier Gerald Regan wandered through. He was in a chatty mood.

Over the course of an off-the-record half an hour, he discussed many subjects of great and no import, but what still sticks in my memory was what he said when someone asked him about the future of Sydney Steel.

In late 1967, the former Conservative government had nationalized Hawker Siddeley’s foundering Cape Breton steel plant. The initial plan was for the government to operate the mill for a year until a more engaged private sector buyer could be found. That didn’t happen, and SYSCO, as it became known, soon ended up a tax-guzzling drain on the provincial treasury — too far gone to be set right but too important to the local economy to be completely shut down.

Regan (whose own government had recently announced its latest new investment in the mill, the one that would save SYSCO once and forever) was open, thoughtful and articulate as he walked us through the dilemma his government faced. He knew the considerable amount of money his government was investing in the antiquated SYSCO plant would not be enough to save it. He wasn’t convinced any amount of money could. But whatwas the alternative?

It seemed to me Regan had succinctly summed up the conundrum we, as Nova Scotians, needed to come to terms with. The next morning, I approached Regan to ask if he’d be prepared to put his off-the-record comments on the record. Regan didn’t hesitate. No, was all he said.

SYSCO continued to vacuum up tax dollars to no good purpose until 2001 when John Hamm, the fifth premier to inherit the SYSCO file since Regan, announced his government had sold the plant to an Indian company that would dismantle it and ship the scrap overseas. Gone but not forgotten. Nova Scotians continue to drag the burden of SYSCO’s debt to this day.

I couldn’t help being reminded of that incident in late September as I watched Nova Scotia’s current NDP government smack up against its own SYSCO moment — and opt, like Regan, to play the Pollyanna card.

In September 2011, Ohio-based NewPage Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection for its Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, paper mill. The mill, which employed 600 workers and bought raw material from 400 independent forestry contractors, anchored the region’s economy.

The government’s first scrambled response was to announce it would spend what turned out to be $30 million to keep the plant in a “hot-idle” and forestry contractors working while it searched for a new buyer.

But the mill had lost $50 million the year before and, worse, the worldwide paper industry is in a continuing longterm decline.

In the end, there was only one wannabe buyer — Pacific West, a subsidiary of Stern Partners, a Vancouver-based investment company with interests in everything from publishing to retailing— and it only wanted the mill if the price was very, very right.

Pacific West agreed to pay $33 million for the mill but…

Before the deal could get done, the mill’s unionized workers had to agree the work force would be cut in half, accept pay cuts and wave goodbye to their previous pension plan.

The county had to agree to chop its tax bill in half.

Nova Scotia Power had to say yes to a sweetheart deal on power rates.

And the government had to pony up $66.5 million in government loans ($40 million forgivable), not to forget spend another $58 million to help pay off the plant’s creditors and support “sustainable practices.”

Remember… Pacific West’s commitment was just $33 million.

In late September 2012, after a wild final weekend of on, off and then on again negotiations, the deal was done.

Premier Darrell Dexter announced (shades of Gerald Regan) Port Hawkesbury’s future had been secured “for the long term.”

But if the mill isn’t sustainable today without so many grants and giveaways, will it ever be?