Industry recognition: Paul Marcotte acknowledged for mining contributions.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsar
• Position: MINING

Starting out as a 20-year-old female in the mining supply and service industry, Alicia Woods would sometimes be met with skepticism by those who doubted her knowledge and questioned her place in the industry' That all disappeared when people learned her dad was Paul Marcotte.

"It was because of the credibility of the Marcotte name, and the respect that the industry had for my father, that made it easy for me to enter such a non-traditional role in the world of heavy underground equipment," Woods said.

Marcotte, a founder of Marcotte Mining Machinery Services, was recognized posthumously by the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA) with an induction into the Hall of Fame Dec. 4, along with Doug Smith, the founder of Manitoulin Transport.

Marcotte was born in Quebec, but grew up in Sudbury, and entered the industry with his father at Jarvis Clark before the family--dad Raymond and brothers Paul, Raymond, Pierre and John--forged out on its own with Marcotte Mining in 1979.

As business grew, the company went from repairing and rebuilding equipment manufactured by others to becoming a successful original equipment manufacturer (OEM), with the company offering new design and manufacturing options, Woods said.

"They later went on to design the side-shift feature on the scissor lift, which became an industry standard, and today is a feature commonly found on scissor lifts of other OEMs," Woods said.

The feature allows operators to slide the deck of a scissor lift two feet in either direction, which allows operators to get closer to a wall.

After serving as company vice-president for several years, Marcotte was poised to assume the role of president when he died unexpectedly, at the age of 37, in January 1992.

Though his life was cut short early, Marcotte left an indelible imprint on the lives of those in his personal and professional circles, and on the mining industry as a whole.

Now in...