The following is an excerpt from Michael Atkins’s
speech to the Rotary Club of Sudbury, June 14, when he was
presented with the Paul Harris Award.
 |
| name="valign" top > Michael Atkins |
Iwant to thank the Rotary Club of Sudbury for
naming me their 2004 Paul Harris Award winner. I am proud and
honoured to be here and it is especially gratifying this year as
our company celebrates 30 years of publishing Northern Life
newspaper in this great city.
There are a thousand stories in 30 years of doing
business in Sudbury and I am grateful for every one of them.
I want to tell you what I love about Sudbury
which is why I think we need to work so hard to keep it vibrant and
prosperous.
I love Sudbury because it is an open society.
When you arrive here you will be immediately accepted for who you
are and what you do and not necessarily for what you say or where
you come from.
I love Sudbury because it is dangerous. It is not
for everybody. There have been great ideological battles, bitter
strikes, monumental struggles of courage and principal and not a
little stubbornness on all sides. There have been religious and
linguistic differences, but almost always these tendencies have
been balanced by reconciliation and goodwill.
I love Sudbury because 13 people ran for mayor
last year and, when it was all over one of the candidates had a
party. They had a good laugh while enjoying one another’s
company.
I love Sudbury because it is almost always at
risk. From rationalization of the mining sector to the
consolidation business and government into larger urban settings,
the threat is real. Our community almost always needs us for
something, which can be burdensome but also invigorating and
engaging.
I love Sudbury because it works the way a
community should work. If you ask for help you get it. If you need
volunteers, you can find them. If you need a helping hand, it can
be found.
I love Sudbury because hope springs eternal.
Loving a community, however, will not save it.
To survive we need more than common sense. We
need brilliance. We need to support brilliance with real
money.
The creation of community wealth comes from
business and social entrepreneurs. It comes from a civic culture
that has enough trust in its body politic to take collective risks,
the competence to measure performance and the courage to pay for it
when the political dividends are small.
We must create a city state that is prepared to
act outside of its traditional boundaries because it must take
responsibility for creating wealth as well as paving roads.
In Sudbury we have benefited from some
extraordinary wealth creators.
Jim Marchbank has built an international creative
powerhouse at Science North. He has muscled himself onto the world
stage to pay for his activities at home.
Darryl Lake has carried the Northern Centre for
Advanced Technology on his back and found the sweet spot where
intellectual capacity meets real world commercialization needs,
which, in turn, creates wealth.
Jim Gordon has had his footprint on a stunning
array of breakthroughs from the cancer treatment centre to the new
medical school.
Gerry Lougheed Jr. has single-handedly raised
enough money to ensure the medical school actually has a hospital
to align itself with.
Helen Ghent, Wendy Watson, and Robin Thomson, and
so many others, found a way to build a brand new YMCA in Sudbury
that is a jewel in the city.
Ron Arnold is not just a builder. He is a true
believer. He has invested in Sudbury land where you couldn’t find a
buyer if your life depended on it, and then he went out and brought
someone to town to use it.
The Speigel family has left an indelible impact
on the built form of this community.
Dr. Magdi Basta is building our first major
biotechnology initiative at NUREKA from the ground up.
David Robinson from Laurentian University has
pushed, cajoled, and demanded we see the power of our mining
services cluster and his impact is impossible to measure.
Jim Grasby’s social entrepreneurship and
leadership on a myriad of important projects in this city is
unparalleled.
It goes on and on...It is why we are here
today.
The city has a wonderful opportunity to build on
this community’s DNA.
It must act boldly. It must act like a city
state, not a municipality.
It needs a ministry of state for immigration.
After being a magnet for immigration, we are missing the
boat.
It needs to set up an intellectual capital fund
to match its infrastructure fund.
It needs the capacity to think strategically. It
needs the will and capacity to nurture its economic engines because
more and more it will be on its own.
That said, the business community at large has a
huge responsibility to deal with its own succession. The key to a
vibrant economy is a high proportion of enlightened and engaged
local entrepreneurs.
If our business potential is sold outside the
community, there goes the authority and capacity to act on the
communities behalf when it needs help, which it always will.
In my opinion it is currently the most important
issue we face and the one that will contribute most of our success
or failure in remaining a vibrant and civil society.
Michael Atkins is the president of Laurentian
Media.
