Shipping PowerTraxx's utility vehicles overseas.Name a mine development in Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is the part of the province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River and Lake Nipissing. Northern Ontario has a land area of 802,000 km² (310,000 mi²) and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it and chances are PowerTel Utilities Contractors have strung the wire and hooked up the power. With almost 40 years experience building transmission lines and substations through deep bush, swamps and over rivers, the Sudbury area company is considered top specialists as ahigh voltage electrical contractors. In recent times, the Whitefish-based company has been busy delivering power 270 kilometres up the James Bay James Bay, shallow southern arm of Hudson Bay, c.300 mi (480 km) long and 140 mi (230 km) wide, E central Canada, in Nunavut Territory between Ont. and Que. Numerous rivers flow into the bay; many of these have been developed for hydroelectric power in Quebec (see Coast to De Beers' Victor diamond mine in Attawapiskat and connecting Brookfield Power's Erie Shores Wind Farm Erie Shores Wind Farm is a large wind farm near Port Burwell, Ontario. It stretches approximately 8km to the west of the town, and 16km to the southeast. In 2004 it was awarded a generation contract by the Government of Ontario as part of its renewable energy RFP. in southwestern Ontario Southwestern Ontario is a region of the Canadian province of Ontario, centred on the city of London. It extends north to south from the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron to the Lake Erie shoreline, and east to south-west roughly from Kitchener to Windsor. to the grid. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Construction and development activity in the mining and renewable energy Renewable energy utilizes natural resources such as sunlight, wind, tides and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished. Renewable energy technologies range from solar power, wind power, and hydroelectricity to biomass and biofuels for transportation. fields have kept the 90 employees of PowerTel on the move across Ontario and Canada. "In the last 29 years, we have built more transmission lines and substations than all other Ontario entities combined," PowerTel president Wayne Gatien proudly boasts. They've recently expanded to add a Vermont-based subsidiary to start bidding on U.S. contracts. PowerTel grew out of Central Canada Central Canada (sometimes the Central provinces) is a region comprised of Canada's two largest and most populous provinces: Ontario and Quebec. Central Canada, with the four Atlantic provinces, form Eastern Canada. Construction, the company his father, Clary clary: see sage. Gatien, started in 1953. It was a single proprietorship operation until 1968 when he added business partner Herb Krueger and started PowerTel. For the younger Gatien, there was no easy ride to the top. He started at the bottom, digging fence posts and ditches for substation projects in the late 1960's before heading off to university and returning fulltime in 1975. He became a registered Ontario lineman, but also drove trucks and floats, bulldozers and backhoes. "I enjoyed that as much as climbing poles," says Gatien, who became company president when he bought out his father in 1987. His first project as a general foreman was in the early 1980's was for Great Lakes Power building a 150-kilometre cross-country transmission line from north of Smooth Rock Falls, across the Abitibi River and the swampy Canadian Shield, to the Detour Lake gold mine. In his travels, Gatien has worked in Nova Scotia and spent three years in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes in the early 1990s, working on a generating station project on the Cotahuasi River, south of the city of Arequipa. Among Gatien's lasting memories is the many encounters with the Shining Path communist guerillas. On his dad's 65th birthday, they helicoptered into one guerilla-held village near Machu Picchu, the 'Lost City of the Incas.' A photograph captures the moment of the pair being surrounded by teenagers armed with sub-machine guns. "But they never seemed to bother us." Gatien finds many of their jobs in the remote villages along the James Bay, they are revisiting, contracting with Five Nations Energy, to replace the diesel generators and small distribution systems with larger connections to the Ontario grid. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] While the company have been long-time contractors for public and private utilities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland-Labrador, their home province hasn't been very fertile ground. The so-called 'deregulation' of Ontario Hydro hasn't landed PowerTel any work. "The Ontario government has a bad habit bad habit Unhealthy habit Clinical medicine A patterned behavior regarded as detrimental to physical or mental health, which is often linked to a lack of self-control. Cf Good habit. of sole-sourcing their grid construction to Hydro One," which Gatien calls the "highest cost contractor in Ontario." Construction of a new transmission network between Manitoba and Sudbury is in the feasibility stage and pending line construction between the Bruce Nuclear generation station and Milton may yet out to public tender, but Gatien is not counting on it. "Prior to that (deregulation Deregulation The reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, usually enacted to create more competition within the industry. Notes: Traditional areas that have been deregulated are the telephone and airline industries. ), we averaged 28 jobs per year for Ontario Hydro. Since then we have not had one tender." One area of business where they've really gained traction is PowerTraxx, their off-road, tracked utility vehicle company. The former Montreal-based Hydraulic Industries Corporation was acquired in 2004 and relocated to Whitefish whitefish: see salmon. whitefish Any of several silvery food fishes (family Salmonidae, or Coregonidae), inhabiting cold northern lakes of Europe, Asia, and North America. , about 30 kilometres west of the city. It's a separate outfit from PowerTel, listed under the parent PowerNorth Holdings Company. Inside their 12,000-square-foot shop, they manufacture 10 models of rubber-tracked vehicles ranging from light and manoeuvrable Adj. 1. manoeuvrable - capable of maneuvering or changing position; "a highly maneuverable ship" maneuverable mobile - moving or capable of moving readily (especially from place to place); "a mobile missile system"; "the tongue is... two-seat personnel carriers, to heavy-duty 18ton utility carriers. Out back, there's about 400 acres of Canadian Shield to test drive the machines. Gatien, who heads up both companies, says the HICO HICO High Coefficient acquisition complimented their power line work. "We're not just a manufacturer, we're a user," he says, second after their biggest dealer, Louisiana's Scott Power Line and Equipment Company. The machines have found their way to Ecuador, Ireland and utility companies across North America. PowerTraxx manufactures and assembles the carrier's steel frames, tracks and cabs, with a few modifications depending on customer's specifications. Any further outfitting such as attaching crane booms, aerial buckets for line work, dump boxes, drilling devices and derrick rigs are left for individual manufacturers to install. Their newest cabs have a ROPS ROPS Rollover Protective Structures ROPS Roll Over Protection System (Volvo) RoPS Rovaniemen Palloseura (Finland soccer group) ROPS Rollover Protective System ROPS Range Operations Squadron (Roll-Over Protective Structure) rating of up to 80,000 pounds, meaning it's safety certified to protect the operator in case of a roll-over. In the operator's seat, there's an easy-to-use electronic joy stick control that pushes the lumbering beast along at a steady 12 kilometres an hour clip. To minimize environmental impact, the vehicles are rubber tracked to handle ground, rough terrain and icy conditions. Rubber tracks are the norm in the utility industry, says Gatien. "Most of the right-of-ways are easements EASEMENTS, estates. An easement is defined to be a liberty privilege or advantage, which one man may have in the lands of another, without profit; it may arise by deed or prescription. Vide 1 Serg. & Rawle 298; 5 Barn. & Cr. 221; 3 Barn. & Cr. 339; 3 Bing. R. 118; 3 McCord, R. over farmer's fields, private property or swamps. Either the MNR MNR Ministry of Natural Resources MNR Metro North Railroad (New York, NY) MNR Manor MNR Mouvement National Républicain (French: National Republican Movement) (Ministry of Natural Resources) or the property land owner doesn't want you tearing up the place." Operations manager Pierre Champagne says their 15-H (15 ton-capacity) equipment carriers are easily the most popular. Customers are demanding bigger and more powerful vehicles all the time, especially the utility outfits. He estimates tracked vehicle sales are rughly 50/50 between Canada and the U. S. www.powertraxx.com www.powertel-usa.com By IAN ROSS Northern Ontario Business Northern Ontario Business is a Canadian magazine, which publishes monthly in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The magazine covers business news and issues in Northern Ontario. |
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