By Ian Ross
Robyn Thompson thought she had it made with a federal job for life. After leaving her native Newfoundland for what she believed was a more politically secure position at the Chalk River national forestry lab, the computer programmer received a rude awakening one day when Ottawa decided to hand out pink slips.
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David Bisset, (left) and Robyn Thompson are among many Canadians who have shifted to new careers and become business owners. |
Thompson and her husband, Ian, a research scientist, were among the casualties in the wave of bureaucratic layoffs and institutional closures in the mid-1990s.
"I was only there four years and they closed the place," says Thompson, now 46, sounding as dumbfounded as that morning when staff went to work and received notice that their facility would be padlocked and reduced to rubble in a year's time.
While her husband was offered opportunities at other labs, eventually accepting one at the Canadian Forestry Service in Sault Ste. Marie, she stayed behind to run the systems.
"It was a really stressful year," says Thompson who, after arriving in the Sault in 1996, decided to take some time off, buy herself a new sewing machine and relax for a few months before going job hunting.
Not impressed with what she saw with only one sewing machine dealer in town, Thompson followed her passion and opened up her own downtown business, Life's-A-Stitch, in 1997, selling fleece, offering courses and becoming the local Husqvarna Viking distributor.
As many Canadians have discovered, the days of graduating from high school and straight into a job for the next 30 to 40 years have gone the way of home-delivered milk.
Downsizing, a lack of local opportunity, filling a niche in the community, or the motivation to seek a more fulfilling lifestyle is finding more and more people making a mid-life career switch and starting up their own businesses.
Taking advantage of some courses offered by the government, she prepared a business plan to present to the banks, who were not as enthusiastic about her idea, but did extend her personal line of credit.
Now in her fifth year of entrepreneurship, Thompson finds that, yes, the workweek is longer, the money is not as good and vacations are almost an afterthought, "but the satisfaction you get from owning your own business is far superior."
For David Bisset, owner of Birch Point Gardens Lodge on Lake Wahnapitae, northeast of Sudbury, opening up a plush bed-and-breakfast catering to ecotourists combined his loves of landscaping, gardening and playing host.
Years of running the family business had taken a toll on his health and the change of scenery he needed was the tranquility of his own lakeside home.
The stress from expanding the family business from two depots to five with 85 employees, maintaining a prewash contract with a blue jean manufacturer, all while going through a divorce, had him looking for a way out.
"At that point in time I went through a burnout," says Bisset, 54, of the 18-hour long days as a third-generation owner of Sudbury Steam, a well-known laundry and dry-cleaning operation.
So he sold the business, took some landscaping courses at Ryerson Polytechnical University and began doing casual work in the Toronto area, before moving back north.
With encouragement from friends he has renovated his home into an upscale "bed-and-breakfast-in-the-boonies," dipping into his retirement savings before recently securing a small-business loan. His plan is to offer jeep and canoe tours of the back-country and waterways around the lake, and he also hopes to attract European tourists via the Internet.
For Joan Kulmala, spending five painful years in bed after suffering a severe back injury in a household fall had the Thunder Bay resident reflecting on her 18-year nursing career and wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
While taking stock of her individual qualities - her zest for life and upbeat, ongoing personality - she decided to use her experiences to help other people put their lives back in order.
Today, she runs Totally-U Communications as an image and communications consultant for the last 15 years, teaching business etiquette, presentation skills, networking, customer service and delivering motivational speeches.
Rather than lie in bed and the moan about her disability, Kulmala assessed her skills of observation, discipline, leadership qualities, creativity and empathy to begin her emotional healing process. She took up aquatic exercise as part of her physiotherapy, began runway modelling and produced a local cable television show called "Walking Life's Curve."
"When I saw what I was teaching on camera, I thought there's a business here," says Kulmala, 57. She took small-business courses and night classes to learn new skills.
Recently accepted into the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers, she boasts a client list that includes BDO Dunwoody, PraxAir, Fort Frances' Riverview Health Centre, Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce and the City of Thunder Bay.
"Go through the whining, moaning and crying, then stop and build slowly," Kulmala says. "It's taken me 15 years to have my best year ever."
