By IAN ROSS
Early one morning Jennifer Rasmussen's neighbour, clad in shorts, ambled out onto his dock, a steaming coffee mug and cell phone in hand, and slumped into his Adirondack chair.
The executive from a major Canadian brewing company was participating in a conference call while on his three-week summer break at his Kenora cottage.
"He almost got away with it until someone asked, 'is that a float plane I can hear in the background?'," recounts Rasmussen, the City of Kenora's Economic Development Officer.
Still another friend, a Calgary consultant comes east each summer and coaches her executive clients on wireless internet from her tiny island cottage that's off the power grid.
"She couldn't have done that three years ago."
It's that harmonic work-life balance that officials in this community of 15,000 are pitching to both retirees and entrepreneurs in Manitoba.
The recent closures of two forestry mills and the loss of more than 400 jobs since 2005 has forced the 'Forestry Capital of Canada' to change gears and start aggressively promoting a natural resource that no corporation can take away, the paradise that is Lake of the Woods.
Since the days of the Cottage Express excursion trains in the 1920s, Kenora has been a summer haven for many generations of Winnipeggers including high-powered types like CanWest Global tycoon Leonard Asper and grain moguls, the Richardson Family.
The City's of Kenora's recently rolled-out Office at the Lake campaign is a spinoff of an ongoing cottage construction surge and a larger marketing concept to attract more near-retirees and young entrepreneurs to move their families and business to the lake.
The vision they're pitching is: stay connected and do your deals from camp.
Together with their municipally-owned tel-com, Kenora Municipal Telephone Service, they're intent on expanding a network of cell phone towers and internet service to as many outlying areas as possible.
Dennis Wallace, the new chairman of Kenora's Economic Development Commission, is one of their poster children.
The former head of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency -- the East Coast version of FedNor -- sees only the unlimited potential of his hometown.
"It's the Baby Boomer effect of Winnipeg."
Working as a consultant from his home-based office in an unorganized township, Wallace is connected by high-speed wireless technology that the former civil servant says is as good as anywhere in Canada.
His testimonial extolling the virtues of Kenora is posted on the City's website along with other entrepreneurs, both home-grown and "from away," who've turned their childhood memories spent at the lake into a year-round homes and businesses.
It only makes sense, Wallace says. With Winnipeg only two hours drive west, many business leaders can stay that extra week longer at the camp while keeping on top of work by computer and BlackBerry.
In surveying his 45 wealthy cottage neighbours on his township road, Wallace says one-third plan to live there six months of the year within three to five years and will continue to work.
He draws parallels to economist David Foot's 10-year theory in Bust, Boom and Echo that a healthier generation of boomers will continue to work well into their 60s.
There's development plans to establish more of a back-office service economy catering to knowledge-based small and medium-sized business and value-added enterprises. It may include adding executive suite accommodations and meeting spaces with possibly a performing arts and convention centre in the works.
The City is also promoting to Winnipeg business leaders their industrial park space, new property at their shuttered Abitibi-Consolidated mill site and their abundant water and sewer capacity.
Their consultants say it's also time to give their tired-looking but busy downtown core a facelift.
There's an new effort underway to preserve the original facades of the 100-year-old heritage buildings, adding new street fronting and make waterfront improvements. A 2004 study attached a $25-million price tag, including a $9-million first-phase Gateway concept at the western end of the harbourfront and downtown area.
City council is investing in social services with a $2.8-million upgrade to a medical walk-in clinic housing 20 doctors for seasonal residents to use.
Some positive press for Kenora came with their recent ranking as the 38th Best Place to Live in Canada by Canadian Business magazine.
Despite forestry mill layoffs at Abitibi and Devlin Timber many locals are determined to stay, says Rasmussen. Some families have permanently left while others are commuting to Oil Patch jobs in Alberta.
"Most of us are second and third generation, we have very deep roots here. We're not a transient type of community."
But attracting value-added forestry and natural resource enterprises remains a strategic priority.
The City is putting out feelers to attract private investment to build a softwood furniture manufacturing facility and a dimensional stone finishing plant to take advantage of the many colours of raw granite in the area.
Big news is expected from Kenora Forest Products, a major producer of two-by-fours for the U.S. housing market.
Negotiations with the provincial government and the Grassy Narrows First Nation are expected to secure more wood fibre prior to launching a reported $34- million expansion.
On the tourism end, community leaders are excited by a fledgling project following last spring's acquisition of Tunnel Island. The largely green waterfront property was "gifted" to them by Abitibi-Consolidated.
The City, which holds the property in trust, has struck up a working group with the Treaty 3 First Nation bands which regard the 370-acre site as sacred.
Used in the past as a garbage dump, it's remained largely undeveloped but it has a rich history that contains traces of human existence dating back 8,000 years. Later, it became a vital fur trading post and portage linking the Lake of the Woods with the Winnipeg River system.
Being a sacred Native site doesn't mean the land is off-limits to development, says Rasmussen, but don't expect waterfront condominiums going up anytime soon.
The City is taking a "measured" approach to properly consult with local First Nations to keep it green but also establish some kind of cultural interpretative centre to tell the land's history and diverse mix of vegetation.
"We're optimistic about the future," says Kenora Mayor Len Compton who's determined to avoid the cyclical nature of most Northern Ontario mill towns.
"We're not looking to the government for hand-outs, we're going on our own because they have not been forthcoming in assisting us in any great way."
He does concede Queen's Park did deliver a one-time $585,000 Municipal Affairs grant to offset the tax loss of the Abitibi-Consolidated mill closure to provide some breathing room for the City's budget. But Kenora's economy will survive on its merit, says Compton.
Wallace adds the Kenora-area's history of relying on nature's staples: the fur trade, forestry, commercial fishing, railroading, mining and agriculture, dictates it will flourish again.
"This is a can-do kind of city. The challenge now is the need to enter a new economy more aggressively and diversify the base with something that has breadth and depth."
