A few small lessons on the road to sustainability.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: President's Note

"If we didn't have bad luck, we'd have no luck at all."

That's Brianna Humphrey reviewing the kind of year she had in 2016 with her fabulous new Timmins restaurant, Radical Gardens. In one year she was targeted by vandals nine times who smashed windows, stole the cash register, pilfered food, and nearly made off with the farm truck. Additionally, she had a broken fridge, a broken water heater, broken pipes, and a broken furnace. Apart from that, things were great.

I met Brianna at our 31st annual Northern Ontario Business Awards dinner this year in Timmins. Radical Gardens won Company of the Year (1 to 15 employees). There are six magic themes at Radical Gardens. One, they grow their own food. Two, they have a sense of humour (check out Timmins billboards where they advertise their wares wearing no clothes). Three, they are digitally literate (www.radicalgardens.com). Four, they are fierce advocates for an independent Northern lifestyle. Five, they make food you will find nowhere else. Six, they work like dogs.

Brianna will influence Timmins for many years to come. It was great to meet her and her team.

Down the highway and around the corner from Timmins is my old friend Pierre Belanger (bison farmer, community developer, entrepreneur) in Earlton (pop 1,100). My wife and I went down to visit after the NOBAs and it was food that was on Pierre and his wife Francoise's mind as well. They took us deep into the heart of Temiscaming, Que., to visit with Angele-Ann Guimond, proprietor of L'Eden Rouge. It is located in an old barn next to her parents' farm. The idea was to put the produce from the farm on the table of her restaurant and assume they would come. They did. With 70 per cent of their food products coming from local farms, much of it from their own earth, the restaurant has been a huge success. The night we were there it was full and the food amazing.

We stayed the weekend in Haileybury where we encountered two more remarkable entrepreneurs. Jocelyn Biais, a settler from Hearst, and Nicole Guertin, a pilgrim from Kapuskasing, have accumulated five beautiful homes in Haileybury, relics of the fabulous silver mining rush of the late 1800s and early 1900s. They are known as the Presidents' Suites. The attention to art and history and culture in these homes is fantastic. You're not renting a room, you are going back to a time of excitement, risk, greed, wealth and outsized...