Recently we wrapped up our first COVID-19 Business Impact survey. The information gathered from close to 8000 respondents informed the measures the province is currently taking to help businesses.

But more help is needed.

We’re teaming up with the BC Business Council, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, The Mustel Group, and all of you to increase the reach of our insight during these unprecedented times.

The Chamber will be conducting regular ‘pulse checks’ every two weeks on BCMindreader.com, to find out how businesses are faring, and how their needs are evolving. This information will inform ongoing recommendations to government—powered by our biggest and broadest business network.

We thank you for your participation in previous surveys. They were extremely important in collecting Kootenay specific data as well as the overall Provincial state of affairs. Take a few minutes to update us with this survey

https://www.bcmindreader.com/c/r/covid-pulse-check1-2020-chambers

The Nelson and District Chamber in collaboration with our Federal and Provincial  Chamber counterparts will continue to advocate for you. It is extremely important to our Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and Staff, as well as our partners, that our local, regional, Provincial and global economy can return to pre pandemic levels

Canada Day festivities set for Nelson’s Rotary Lakeside Park Monday July 1^st.

The entertainment is scheduled, and community groups all gearing with a family-oriented activity, as the Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce rolls out Canada day 2019.

The Chamber of Commerce has been organizing Canada day activities for Nelson and Area for longer than we can remember. President Tanya Finley says “there’s a lot of work that goes into organizing this Canada Day community celebration. Thanks to the Chamber staff, and many Chamber directors that have helped over the years with stage building, organizing, setting up and tearing down….and of course getting that giant 4 X 8 cake down to the park.  Our day starts early and ends late, but the Chamber enjoys putting together this free family fun day”.

Chamber Executive Director Tom Thomson notes, that Canada Day kicks off on Baker Street with annual Lions Club Pancake Breakfast that runs from 8am-11am. Special thanks to the Lions for getting the volunteers together to host another fantastic Baker Street breakfast.

Following breakfast, you can head to Lakeside Park for the opening ceremonies at 10:30am with local dignitaries celebrating our diversity and culture, and with a colour guard of Nelson Police, RCMP and Firefighters.  That is followed by a rousing rendition of O Canada lead by the Heritage Harmony Barbershop singers and kicks off about 11 hours of music and dance entertainment.

One of the highlights each year is the giant 4 foot by 8-foot Canada Day birthday cake served up at 11am by Chamber Directors and members of Nelson City Council. In fact, you can indulge throughout the day at the Rose Garden Café or enjoy the Rotary Clubs annual BBQ from 11am-3pm at the Rotary shelter.

The park is alive with activity as there are close to 30 community groups and organizations at this year’s event, all of them offering up family oriented-kid’s activities, from Sandcastles to Bouncy Castles, Dragon Boats to Jump Rope, art making to map making, tattoos to trivia.

Entertainment on stage gets underway at 10:45 following the opening ceremonies and runs through 9:45, with solo artists, Blue Grass, Blues, The Nelson Community Band, Playmor Junction Big Band Highland Dancers, the Rhythm Dance Drum Orchestra, Samba Band and the Nelson Rhythm Ropers with three shows, including a “light show” at 9:30pm at the Labyrinth prior to the Fireworks finale.

Thomson adds the day belongs to the community groups and organizations, volunteers and entertainers, but it wouldn’t be possible without fundraising and sponsors.” Special thanks to the Nelson Professional Fighters for helping us order, transport and safely handle the fireworks finale around 10pm that is always a crowd pleaser and a great way to end the day long celebration.

Over the last five years Canada has been a high-tech job creation machine.

Year after year, the Toronto area alone has generated more technology jobs than San Francisco, Seattle or any other U.S. city. Vancouver has seen a similar economic boom.

Both cities, with top universities and hospitals, a high quality of life and an enormous pool of existing talent, act as magnets for tech startups and companies looking to expand.

But as rents rise and cities become more hectic, there is a group of Canadians who have been studying how to unlock an enormous national resource, the open spaces of rural Canada. And there are early hints of victory.

Brad Pommen, founder of Smrt1 Technologies, stands out as one example of a rural development success story.

Pommen, a computer whiz from Alberta, did not move to the “Big Smoke” to launch his tech startup. Instead he founded his company in Nelson, B.C., a community with a population of about 10,000, half way between Calgary and Vancouver.

One of the things Pommen did after he arrived in the city about 10 years ago was to start the Nelson Tech Club, a place for computer enthusiasts — and wannabes — to congregate, learn and share ideas. As well as helping to make the community a dynamic technology-aware place, it paid off in another way.

“The membership was always asking me to for tools and parts,” says Pommen. “So I started dreaming up a way that I might be able to automate that for schools.”

His essential idea was to create touch screen technology linked to the internet that adds to the capabilities of existing vending machines. Customers can see images of the product being sold, everything from food to shoes to computer parts, and obtain detailed information about the products on offer.

“And once I’d invented the technology, I realized it didn’t exist for the entire 15 million existing vending machines in the world,” he said.

Pommen and his local team have assembled a prototype, linked up with distributors, suppliers and customers, all without leaving Nelson.

“We work with people all over the planet,” says Pommen.

Rural, on purpose

Mary Doyle, founder of a network called Rural on Purpose, works from Belleville, Ont., a community on the highway between Toronto and Montreal that boomed in the 19th century during Canada’s version of the first Industrial Revolution.

Doyle is part of a Canadian and global network of people trying to share solutions to problems that have impeded smaller communities from attracting and keeping jobs (like many others she extends the term rural to include smaller cities that remain connected to the countryside). And while many communities are still shrinking, she says things may be turning around.

But she says Belleville, like Nelson, is a community poised to take advantage of the next industrial revolution, where the internet and technology, including 3D printing, allows work to be widely distributed.

“If you have a company in an urban centre that is really trying to attract top talent and that top talent wants to be able to live wherever they want …  the company has to be able to accommodate that,” says Doyle.

“Nineteen per cent of freelancers currently live in rural communities,” says Doyle. For freelancers and remote workers, high-speed internet is key.

One common problem is the loss of young people from rural communities as young adults head off to the city to seek their fortune, a phenomenon studied by Karen Foster, a professor at Dalhousie University.

While there is evidence that many young people fail to grasp the diversity of employment opportunities in smaller communities, Foster says even parents have trouble encouraging their kids to forgo the advantages of leaving home.

“People who leave rural communities tend to earn more, they earn more over their lifetimes and they tend to get higher levels of education,” says Foster. “So if those are good things, then hanging onto young people is not the answer.”

More money, less quality

On the other hand, in large expensive cities, that higher lifetime income may buy a much poorer quality of life.

“I don’t miss the traffic,” says Aimee Coueslan, who lived in Toronto for 13 years before moving to Brandon, Man., where her husband had accepted a job and where you can buy a comfortable three-bedroom detached home for less than $300,000.

Coueslan, who just started back to work herself last year after a decade-long break to raise three children, just can’t imagine how she could have raised a family in the big city. Like many others wanting to have children, she was pleased to exchange the perceived advantages of the city for a better quality of life.

Wayne Kelly, who manages the Rural Policy Learning Commons, a network of experts studying how to extend the boom to the boonies, says many of the young people who settle in smaller communities seeking a rural lifestyle and rural recreation, are not the ones who left.

“As you can imagine it can be difficult to attract somebody back once you’ve told them they have to leave to be successful,” says Kelly.

Rural Canada is still growing, he says, just more slowly than the urban centres and while every community is different, communities like Nelson that have got the formula right are doing very well.

“We have to be careful about the narrative that rural Canada is dying and everybody’s aging and moving out,” says Kelly. “That is definitely happening in some cases, but there’s lots of other cases of success and really rapid growth.”