Aboriginal company caters to clients' needs: with unprecedented levels of exploration and mining activities in the province, Athabasca Catering is busy fuelling the workers that mine for fuel.

When the Athabasca Catering Limited Partnership (Athabasca Catering) was established more than two decades ago, company officials faced head-on the challenge of finding employment for the province's mushrooming northern population. Over the past four years, exploration expenditures in Saskatchewan's uranium, minerals and metal industry skyrocketed from $30 million in 2003 to a projected $208 million in 2006. Coupled with Alberta's oil boom, the frenzy creates unprecedented opportunities for employment in Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin.

"We started with about 30 people at one camp at Rabbit Lake," said General Manager Kevin Danchuk. Thanks to the mining and exploration boom, "we expanded to operate in six different locations. In the last two years, we more than doubled our employees, from 150 to about 350."

Athabasca Catering is one of the companies under the umbrella of Kitsaki Development Corporation, the economic development arm of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. This partnership between the Lac La Ronge, Black Lake, Fond du Lac, Hatchet Lake and English River Bands, provides food service and janitorial work to the Key Lake, Rabbit Lake, Cigar Lake, McLean Lake and McArthur River mine sites, and the Star Diamond Project.

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Approximately 80 per cent of its employees are northerners and most are employed in their own communities. Perhaps that is why the company enjoys comparatively high retention rates. This past summer, the company handed out long service awards to 45 per cent of its employees who had been with company over five years and as long as 20 years.

The new employee influx related to the increase in exploration and mining activity means that as many as 75 per cent are now under 30 years of age. Up to 60 per cent are women and 25 per cent are single mothers. "With so many of our employees coming out of Aboriginal communities," said Danchuk, "you really see the effectiveness of the extended families. Grandmothers will look after their kids while the mothers are up at work."

Now the company's greatest challenge is in training the newcomers. "We have tackled it three ways," said Danchuk. "First, we emphasize management training. We try to promote from within."

Second comes on-site training and orientation by both the client and the company. Third is an apprenticeship program. Once a week for five consecutive months, the company brings its apprentices and a SIAST instructor to Key Lake.

"Four employees are entering their third year of the professional cooking program," said Danchuk. "We are very, very proud of that."

With job satisfaction so high, only one employee has answered the siren call of slick oil patch recruiters. In fact, the catering company hopes to turn the tables on the tar sands. "We are eyeing up the oil patch ourselves and seeing if we can apply the week-in, week-out work schedule from Saskatchewan mines over there," said Danchuk. "We would like to establish firefighting camps [in Saskatchewan] as well."

In the meantime, current clients will never go hungry and can rely on quality meals from Athabasca Catering "There are no dance halls or movie theatres to go to so people do look forward to the everyday meal," he explained. "It is hugely important to the morale--and morale always will affect production. The last thing in the world we ever want to do is be creating production problems for our clients."

"It has been a real pleasure for us to cater to the mining companies," added Danchuk. "They have been very understanding of some of the unique challenges we face as a 100-per cent, Aboriginal-owned company. Without them, we would not be where we are today."