Canadore enrolment to soar with new campus. (North Bay).

Enrolment at Canadore College and the economy of North Bay are expected to take off with the completion of Canadore's newest campus.

Opening ceremonies were held Sept. 27 for Canadore College's new school of aviation campus at the North Bay Jack Garland Airport.

"The No. 1 priority for the college was to have a state-of-the-art facility that will enable us to increase our capacity for students," says Canadore's director of marketing, Barry Bousfield.

The facility is an 87,000-square-foot building on 10 acres of land and provides students with new classrooms and labs.

"The new hangers are spectacular," says Bousfield. "It's 27,000 square feet where students will be able to work on everything from jets to helicopters."

The school provides courses in aviation, including aviation technician/avionics maintenance, aircraft structure repair and aviation pilot fixed wing/Aboriginal - in partnership with the First Nations Technical Institute - and a helicopter piloting course in conjunction with Gateway Helicopters in North Bay.

Bousfield says that the old helicopter campus north of North Bay, at the old Bomarc missle site, was sufficient for a while, but a need for more space prompted the construction of the new campus.

"What we needed was a state-of-the-art facility," Bousfield says.

He adds the project received attention even before it was built. The design concept for the new campus won the 2001 Council of Education Facility Planners International Architecture Award.

The new facility boosts the program's enrolment rate 40 per cent to 240 students per year, he says. The first increases in enrolment will likely happen in the 2003-04 academic year, Bousfield says.

The $12.5-million project was made possible in part with $8.6 million in funding from SuperBuild, and the rest raised through partnerships with the federal economic development program FedNor, the City of North Bay and industry supporters, including Bombardier and Gateway Helicopters.

"We even had several alumni contribute a large amount of money to the project.

"Having it at the Jack Garland Aiport is really handy. It has the largest airstrip north of Toronto, with a landing strip long enough to handle a wide-body 747," says Bousfield.

The airport has become a focus of economic development in the North Bay area, he notes. With aviation being one of the fastest-growing industries in Canada, he says the demand is high for graduates who have good technical skills.

"Providing an educated and motivated workforce in the region will be key in attracting aviation investment to the area," he says.

North Bay high schools, such as West Ferris Secondary School and St. Joseph-Scollard Hall, have aviation-related programs that complement Canadore's programs, he says.

"Certainly one of the interesting things is that our graduates have 100 per cent employment in the aviation field and employers have told us that they are satisfied with the skills our graduates have," Bousfield says. "We have 100 per cent employer satisfaction with our grads."