Sixteen young leaders from across Canada got a good taste of Northern Ontario thanks to the 2015 Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference.
Each year, around 230 of Canada’s brightest up-and-coming leaders in business, labour, government and the non-profit sectors tour different parts of the country with a group of their peers, where their prejudices are challenged, and they are given a chance to examine a variety of issues facing the country.
The Northern Ontario group followed a hectic nine-day itinerary that started in Thunder Bay and ended in North Bay with numerous stops in between.
“They certainly got a really good taste of what Northern Ontario is about,” said Andrew Dale, chair of the 2015 Northern Ontario Tour, and a conference alumnus.
“You take emerging leaders (...) and you offer them a very unique experience with which to view situations in a very condensed time frame,” Dale said.
The conference’s goal, he said, is to give participants a new perspective on a part of Canada they may not be familiar with, and then meet with their peers to consider new approaches to different situations.
The nine-day journey started on May 25 in Thunder Bay, where participants toured the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute to see first-hand some of the health research conducted in the North.
They then flew to Red Lake, where they met with representatives from Goldcorp to see how a non-unionized mining camp handles health and safety.
In Timmins they got to see some of Goldcorp’s re-greening efforts, and also visited a state-of-the-art dairy farm.
The group stayed at WildExodus Outfitting near Timmins, where they got a taste of “glamping”, or glamour camping as it is sometimes called.
Dale described the experience as luxury camping with an 18th century twist.
In Sudbury they met with representatives from Laurentian University.
