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Thompson Unlimited often comes across as a pretty low-profile entity. Partly that’s by design and partly, as general manager Mark Matiasek admits, because they haven’t always done a good job at communicating their message.
The design part often surrounds cold weather winter testing in Thompson. While it’s not quite cloak-and-dagger, it’s close at times.
Automobile vehicle manufacturers have been known to hide their cars under cladding to prevent the competition from seeing exactly what they’re up to. Naomichi Aoki, product development, technical operations director for Honda Canada Inc. in Toronto, which has been testing here since 2004, has said that among the conditions they consider essential for cold testing is “remoteness for confidentiality.”
That can make for a tricky job for a development agency trying to trumpet a community for potential new customers. Still, Thompson Unlimited scored a public relations triumph recently when Rod Nickel’s story for Reuters news agency, “Carmakers warm to frigid Canadian city as test site: Ford, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi testing engines” was widely picked up, including by daily newspapers in Alaska, one of Thompson’s major competitors in the cold weather testing business.
It’s one thing to have cold weather testing stories in your local newspaper; that’s to be expected. Being covered by Reuters is a different order of magnitude again.
Last winter, Matiasek says $736,328 was spent locally by cold weather testers at 65 different businesses. One company – which he can’t name due to a confidentiality agreement – spent a total of $539,400 on hotel room stays, meals and roundtrip airfare between Winnipeg and Thompson.
Of course, cars are not Thompson Unlimited’s only cold weather testing interest. The new state-of-the-art Global Aerospace Centre for Icing and Environmental Research Inc. (GLACIER) aerospace engine test centre being built out at Ospwagan Lake, to be owned in part by aerospace engine maker Rolls-Royce Canada Limited and Pratt & Whitney, dates back to a meeting at the Thompson Golf Club years ago. The Environmental Test Research and Educational Centre (EnviroTREC), a not-for-profit responsible for the site’s technology will be on site with MDS Aero Support Corporation of Ottawa operating, maintaining and marketing the site. Economic development is a long-term game all about building relationships.
Thompson Unlimited was established at the behest of Inco in 2003 based on a simple premise: diversification in the face of the end of nickel, which was then expected in 2013.
At the time, Inco, which had set the wheels in motion with a formal legal notice of mine closure, announced funding for Thompson Unlimited of $2.5 million over 10 years to assist with diversifying the economy in Thompson for the post-mining era. That funding extends until Dec. 31, 2012.
The development agency was originally established in a special 10-year agreement between Inco (now Vale Inco) and the City of Thompson as Thompson Community Development Corporation, but changed its name in 2005 to Thompson Unlimited after finding the original name too unwieldy to market the city with.
For the first couple of years of its existence, the Thompson Community Development Corporation had no staff and was a volunteer committee operation. It now has 2½ staff members and volunteer board members get a stipend of $75 per meeting.
Matiasek was hired two years ago after a lengthy search to replace Bruce Krentz, who returned to the City of Thompson in November 2007 to the newly created post of director of recreation, parks and culture. Matiasek had been the chief administrative officer in Lynn Lake.
In its latest initiative, Thompson Unlimited is very much stepping out of the shadows and into the spotlight to get behind the final push to get the shovel in the ground for the new Thompson campus for University College of the North (UCN), announced almost three years ago by then NDP premier Gary Doer. While the province says the project is on schedule for completion of construction by 2013, the anxiety level has jumped noticeably locally as the first spade takes longer and longer to hit the dirt. Student housing construction is now expected to get under way this summer.
Enter Matiasek and Thompson Unlimited. He surprised some last Dec. 4 when he jumped into the fray – after grumblings started to be heard about new UCN student housing displacing the Red Sangster ball fields and possibly disturbing the animals at the Thompson Zoo – with a press release acknowledging that “we appreciate that UCN’s location and development poses challenges to the community; and we are sensitive to the fact that some long-standing community assets may be affected, but residents of Thompson have pulled together in the past to turn these tough decisions into successful collaborations. We believe we can do it again. We also believe that residents of Thompson recognize the long-term benefits that UCN will bring to their children and grandchildren, not just in the city, but also in the surrounding region.”
Matiasek went onto say, “Opportunities, such as UCN, rarely present themselves. The link between education and economic development is inextricable and irrefutable. The implications that the full development and operation of UCN will have upon Thompson and the region will be positive, significant, and sustainable.”
And now, Thompson Unlimited, as the lead agency, has rolled out a “factoid” ad campaign in partnership with UCN and the City of Thompson. There will be about a dozen ads in all. The first one says, “A new campus means more than education to Thompson. An expanded campus means you can save money on accommodations and living expenses while your children are educated closer to home.”
It is an ad claim Matiasek feels personally comfortable making: After all, he grew up in Sudbury and completed two undergraduate degrees at Laurentian University largely for that very reason.
Thompson Unlimited: In from the cold and here to be heard.
