There’s a lot to brag about in Atlantic Canada – and more than a few people you’ll want to keep your eyes on. We’ve singled out 10 of them, representing a wide variety of industries, from biotech to hi-tech, wellness to beauty, caffeine to construction.

When asked about leadership, these fast-moving entrepreneurs were surprisingly similar in their answers; words like “empowerment” and “team building” came up again and again. These individuals have the spark, drive, and positive attitude to lead their teams steadily forward.

Read on for a quick glance at 10 business leaders to watch. And stay tuned! We predict you’ll be hearing more about these men and women very soon.

Barb Stegemann
CEO, The 7 Virtues Beauty Inc.

Nova Scotia-based Barb Stegemann uses uncommon scents to make the world a better place. The 7 Virtues Beauty, Inc., launched in June 2010, sources fair trade essential oils from countries in the process of rebuilding – including Afghanistan and Haiti – and blends them into fragrances available across Canada.

Stegemann’s belief that “women can flex their buying power to effect change” inspires her bustling business.
She is sought after for speaking engagements; her book, The 7 Virtues of a Philosopher Queen, is in its third edition.

In just two years, Stegemann’s company has sold more than $500,000 in fragrance in Canada. She credits her mentors and partners – particularly W. Brett Wilson, an investor Stegemann connected with when she successfully pitched her business on CBC-TV’s Dragon’s Den – for aiding her fast success.

Next up? Stegemann is focused on bringing her line to new markets in the UK, Europe, and the United States. The 7 Virtues will be at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralymic Games as part of an economic trade component, and Stegemann has already begun European media interviews and promotion. “None of this happens overnight,” she says. “It takes relationships and nurturing and being innovative.”

John Atkins
President, John Atkins & Co (JAC)

At 17, John Atkins started his first company, building customized computers and servers for business clients.
His love of technology and entrepreneurship has never left: today, John Atkins & Co. (JAC) is a leader in online marketing and web design and development.

Four years ago, JAC started with one employee and one client. Within a year, Atkins had five employees and
50 clients. Today, Atkins manages 10 staff, a number of outside contractors and freelancers, and a roster of 200 clients. By year-end, Atkins expects another 100 clients, and formal expansion beyond Newfoundland. Locations in Halifax and Alberta are already in development and, Atkins says, the company is on track to double the amount of projects and revenue from last year.

In addition to Atkins’ fearless and creative approach to the web, JAC is poised to make waves through the creation and launch of new online marketing and management tools, the details of which he’s necessarily keeping close to his chest. “I’m not afraid to push the limits of what we do,” Atkins says. “The web is organic, and you need to learn to adapt, change, and embrace it.”

Jeff LeDrew
CEO & founder, Jumping Bean Coffee Inc.

Jeff LeDrew’s goal has always been to produce the perfect coffee. By importing fair trade, organic raw coffee beans, and roasting them locally using Jumping Bean’s own technology, he’s achieving that – and the marketplace is noticing. The company’s annual revenue has jumped from $2,000 in 2005 (the first year of business), to $1.3 million in 2011. Jumping Bean coffee is listed in major Newfoundland grocery stores, over 100 smaller stores, and has four retail outlets in St. John’s.

Along the way, LeDrew has invested $600,000 in new technology. The resulting ECO2Roast process produces 85
per cent fewer emissions than traditional roasting. That, says LeDrew, has given Jumping Bean the marketing advantage to go national, targeting the eco-conscious consumer – as well as “doing the right thing.”

In 2012, the company will implement a franchise model, bringing its coffee and cafés to more Canadians. After locating a major franchisee in Ontario, and regional franchisees in Atlantic Canada, LeDrew plans to have at least five (and as many as 10) new locations within the next 12 months. It’s part of LeDrew’s “multiprogram approach” to growth that includes Jumping Bean’s popular fundraising programs, brokers, and distributors in new markets for food service, office supply, and retail.

Sylvio LeBlanc
President and CEO, LeBlanc Custom Homes Inc.

In 1994, while working as a long-haul truck driver, Sylvio LeBlanc decided to build his own house. The process – coordinating tradespeople, dealing with suppliers, creating the home he envisioned – was so satisfying he decided to make it his full-time job. In 2004, LeBlanc Custom Homes became a reality.

LeBlanc faced challenging times in the late 2000s, after a decision to enter the spec home market didn’t pay off as planned. LeBlanc refocused his business and is now a leader in top-tier (he attracts clients “with unlimited funds”) custom home construction in southeastern New Brunswick.

Growth has been steady since the restructuring: sales increased 15 per cent between 2009 and 2010, and another nine per cent in 2011, hitting “the sweet spot between $3 million and $4 million.” Leblanc expects over $5 million in sales this year.

With a trusted group of local contractors and suppliers around him, LeBlanc moves steadily forward. “On some levels our business has exceeded our expectations and on a few occasions it has taunted us to keep up,” he says. “We have chosen to grow in a clear and definite direction.”

Paul Gunn
President and CEO, Soricimed Biopharma Inc.

New Brunswick is not the most likely place to start a biotech company, but Paul Gunn is making it work. He
takes pride in having raised the required finances (some $10 million), engaged partners and shareholders, and set up shop in Sackville.

Soricimed Biopharma launched in 2006, focused on two key projects: a new cancer drug (which could stop the growth of ovarian, breast, and prostate cancer cells); and a suite of tests for the early identification of those same cancers. Both have huge potential, from a life-saving perspective and a financial one. As Gunn points out, successful cancer drugs generate sales well over $1 billion a year – some, many times that.

The company is facing a major milestone: the human trials for Soricimed’s cancer drug are on track to start in May 2012. If early results, expected this summer, are as promising as expected, Soricimed will partner with a major pharmaceutical company for further testing and ultimately bring the product to market.

Gunn says the company is ready for the next step. “Our business development program has been underway for some time,” he says. “And we do have some interest from a number of large international pharmaceutical companies.”

Dallas Mercer
President & CEO, Dallas Mercer Consulting Inc.

Founded in Dallas Mercer’s basement a decade ago, Dallas Mercer Consulting is rapidly approaching her goal of
“being recognized as a national provider of disability management services.” In addition to disability management (getting people back to work quickly), the company offers occupational health and safety and industrial hygiene services, and operates a St. John’s training facility.

Health and safety is becoming front of mind for a lot of companies and organizations. By hiring “seasoned professionals who have a deep level of expertise and have been in the trenches,” Mercer says she offers a rare complete suite of services, from proactive training to reactive problem solving. She’s led her company through rapid growth of more than 75 per cent in the past two years, now counting more than 240 clients across Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. She plans to double her operations again by 2013.

Mercer knows the need for her services is there, and has targeted additional nation-wide opportunities. Through an integrated marketing strategy, adjusting the company’s customer service model for national clients, and her own tenacity, Mercer intends to access them.

Tom Hickey
President, Wedgwood Insurance

The commercial insurance marketplace is a competitive one, says Tom Hickey, and his job as head of Wedgwood Insurance is to stand apart form the crowd. After a fairly stable period, Wedgewood is showing new growth, as Hickey succeeds in rebranding the company as more than just an insurance vendor.

What’s changed? Well, you won’t see any more billboards advertising Wedgwood home insurance, though that is still available. If you are looking to reduce business risk and increase productivity, however, take note of Wedgwood’s newest offerings. Under Hickey’s guidance, seminars and services relating to business productivity and continuity, strategic hiring, and “Noise Reduction” have become a growing part of the company’s revenues.

“Our client feedback has been tremendous,” says Hickey, noting that the new consultancy services, launched midway through 2011, accounted for 15 per cent of that year’s new revenue. It’s also allowed for deeper commitments from clients.

Across the business, Hickey is working to simplify processes and integrate social media platforms to improve communications. Although technology is making it less necessary than it once was, Hickey plans to open a branch outside Newfoundland within a few years, capitalizing on the new business direction.

Alexander MacDonald
Vice-President, Admiral Insurance

The Halifax office of Admiral Insurance offers seven-day-a-week sales and support for Admiral’s UK-based clientele. Led by Alexander MacDonald, it also happens to be one of the fastest growing and highly rated offices of the billion-dollar auto insurer.

MacDonald’s biggest recent challenge, he admits, was an enviable one: to grow the business as quickly as possible in response to UK market demand. In other words, MacDonald had to increase his employees by 45 per cent (growing from 285 people to 420) in 2011.

To do so, he developed a “quick hit leader development program” to train existing employees to take on higher-level roles. The efforts to promote from within were so successful that three courses for new managers have been developed. In 2012, Admiral Insurance will add yet another 100 employees to the Halifax office, following the same model.

“We are developing our own internal talent spotting and talent development program,” Macdonald says. “To … help (employees) develop into a talent pool of future senior leaders.” The results have been tangible: high customer service rating and over-achievement of sales targets, even in the face of rapid growth.

Mike Wahl
Co-founder, Director Canada, Definitions

Eight years ago, Definitions opened as a small, respected fitness studio in downtown St. John’s with two staff: co-founders Mick O’Neil and Mike Wahl. There are still a handful of Definitions fitness studios, but the company is better known for providing office and industrial wellness safety programs to major international and local clients.

Today, Definitions staff can be found on offshore oil-rigs, in factories, and on other industrial and office sites. With 33 highly trained employees and successful, scalable programs, Wahl’s goal “is to grow Definitions to be a globally recognized name in industry.”

It’s already started. Successfully established in Houston, Texas, this year Definitions will begin work overseas. The company has been able to expand through their current client base, primarily within the oil and gas industry, to access different geographic regions.

Another key to success will be innovation and research: Wahl, named the Graduate Student Entrepreneur Global Champion at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards a few months ago, is a PhD candidate in medicine. “Everything we do at Definitions is science-based,” says Wahl. “It’s been our philosophy from the start.”

Milan Vrekic
CEO, TitanFile Inc.

Milan Vrekic characterizes TitanFile’s current status as a “rapid growth stage.” That sounds accurate: since 2010, the high-tech company has consistently doubled its customer base every six months. These aren’t small clients: they include Lionsgate movie studio, Emory University, the University of California, and law firms, including Stewart McKelvey.

TitanFile offers secure online document transfer and tracking solutions for businesses. If a file is too large or confidential to send via email, TitanFile will step in with military-grade encryption and impeccable security standards.

Vrekic intends to keep a small, effective team (currently at five employees) in the Nova Scotia office – even as he foresees TitanFile becoming a global security player, providing a crucial service in today’s cyber-dominated world. Vrekic is already in talks with potential partners in the U.S., the UK, and Germany. “Each market brings us unique challenges,” he says. “Having experienced partners will be a key to our foreign market entry.”

It’s not the brutal winters that lure humanity to the Great White North’s diverse rural and urban landscapes. It’s the absence of intellectual straight-jackets. We manifest the simple proposition that rational accommodation is the one enduring gift a true civilization bestows on its members.

Lately, though, this nation of 32-million souls has been losing its deft touch. Our emerging solitudes, displaying both American intensity and British stratification, are now almost too numerous to count: East versus West; rich versus poor; resource industries versus manufacturing ones; the over-educated versus the under-skilled, both unemployed.

Precisely when this happened is hard to know. But it is clear that our major media have, for some time, mongered intergenerational warfare to divide and conquer the watching, listening and (even ccasionally) reading public and, of course, the advertisers who follow them. A recent edition of Canada’s leading organ of preening self-regard sharpens the point.

“We are the gilded generation,” columnist and professional provocateur Margaret Wente writes about her fellow baby boomers in the Globe and Mail. “Things have always gone our way . . . Should we . . . feel guilty about this? I think so. We like to say we earned it, and I guess, in part, we did. But we also won the birth-year lottery. Perhaps we shouldn’t cling so stubbornly to our entitlements . . . Perhaps it’s time we pay it forward.”

It’s too late for that, declares her 20-something opponent Dakshana Bascaramurty in mock outrage. She’s a so-called “millennial” who “resents” the fact that she and the rest of her cohort “already have to start saving for our retirement, even as we pay for the mistakes of the older generation . . . For the most part, the boomers will keep enjoying what they’ve always enjoyed.” The conclusions from both sides of the debate – which occupied two full pages of prime editorial real estate – are no more fortifying than a face full of plastic glitter. But that is the point of the exercise, after all: To inflame, rather than inform, public opinion.

In fact, the Globe’s calculating masters don’t seek a solution; they want an argument. And, in this, they, and others like them in the Fourth Estate, have learned their lessons from political tutors who have, over the past 10 years, decided that Canada is no place for a reasonable conversation.

Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty screams blue murder over the deleterious effects of Alberta’s oil sands development on the Canadian dollar, whose value, he complains, is now too high to secure his province’s competitive edge in export markets. He doesn’t bother to mention that Ontario already receives tens-of-billions of dollars a year in industrial benefits from the western bitumen boom.

Alberta Premier Allison Redford responds in like, petulant fashion, claiming that the durable future of the Canadian economy lies in the land of the setting sun and implying, to the delight of her gritty, chippy electoral base, that this new natural order of things is as welcome as it is overdue.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cavalier of cabineteers continue their remorseless, relentless project to replace the very underpinnings of Confederation – to, in effect, set the provinces free to fight each other for the ever-dwindling attention and resources of the federal government – as they cut spending on programs Canadians need in favour of those they don’t.

How can procuring 65 new fighter jets in a time of relative peace or erecting new prisons in an age of falling crime rates compare in importance or relevance to improving access to health care? You may ask this, but don’t expect a thoughtful rejoinder. In Canada ver. 2.0, you are more apt to be reviled as a traitor, terrorist or worse, tree-hugger – such is the level to which public discourse has sunk.

In a society that is becoming increasingly tribal in its obsessions, it’s easy to overlook the fact that we no longer elect people who have our best, or even basic, interests at heart. And the only conversation they want us to carry on is the one that echoes in our small, divisive, intolerant minds.

Pink gingham aprons and homemade quilts flapping on a line, waving welcome to a stiff onshore breeze. A child clattering a stick along the pickets of a winding fence just for the joy of making noise. An old man steering a dory through the moorings of a tranquil harbour. Definitely Newfoundland.

But definitely not your run-of-the-mill tourism ads. In fact, the concept of everyday life being used as a tourism draw, be it ever so gloriously portrayed in hues vibrant enough to put Technicolor to shame, was met with some scepticism by the tourism industry when the Find Yourself campaign was first unveiled by the Newfoundland and Labrador Ministry of Tourism in 2006.

Of course, that was before the series of ads won 147 awards. Those awards include the country’s most prestigious advertising award, a Grand Prix Cassie (Canadian Advertising Success Stories), a Gold Cassie, two Tourism Industry Association of Canada Marketing Campaign of the Year awards and a Canadian E-Tourism Award for Best Website. Not to mention a host of awards at this year’s Adrian Awards in New York – including two platinum awards – given to the best of the gold winners. And the promotion isn’t over yet.

The campaign is in the hands of Target, a St. John’s-based advertising and marketing company that has been named one of the 10 best in the country. It’s the only east coast agency to ever win a Cassie Grand Prix. Target is also one of only 11 agencies in Canada to have won a Gold Lion in the 55-year history of the Cannes International Advertising Festival – the Oscars of the advertising world. Clearly they know what they’re doing.

The tourism spots are marketed through print, radio, television and online advertising, as well as social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You can even find their minute-long montages of an idealised island life beckoning from airplane entertainment screens. Since the beginning, 14 chapters of the television campaign have been launched including the most recent ones, “Iceberg Alley” and “Secret Place”, which focus more directly on the province’s natural beauty.

Tourism statistics prove that the unconventional campaign is working. Despite a challenging global economic environment, non-resident tourism visitation to the province has grown eight per cent since 2008 and tourism spending has grown 11 per cent during the same period. In 2010, half-million non-resident visitors came to the province. That was an increase of 7.3 per cent over the previous year and marked the first time that tourism numbers reached the half-million mark. That same year, tourism spending reached $880 million. Accommodation occupancy rates rose by one per cent at a time they were decreasing in other markets.

It’s estimated that about 13,000 people in the province are employed in the tourism industry directly, and the industry supports over 2,400 small and medium-sized enterprises. Those numbers are substantial for a province with a population of just 511,000 people.

According to the Department of Tourism, the news isn’t just good for the tourism industry. It has also had an impact on those economic sectors that promote the province as a place to invest, live and work.

Why do the ads strike such a chord?

“The positive portrayal of the province’s landscape and people has resonated with the local tourism industry and residents, and exudes the sense of pride we have in this amazing place we call home,” says Tourism Minister Derrick Dalley.

Clearly, with all those awards and a host of new visitors, it’s not just residents who see themselves happily partaking of the simple life so eloquently portrayed. Visitors from all over are looking for a welcoming place to hang their hats – and their aprons… if only for a little while.

By Denise Flint

Toast of the town
From micro-brewery to wine bars, Fredericton has plenty to ‘cheers’ about

Booze is big in Fredericton, and rightly so. Businesses like Picaroons have been scooping up awards and getting noticed. Last year, this micro brewery waltzed away from the Canadian Brewing Awards ceremony (held in Toronto) with the big catch – Brewery of the Year – and won several other awards including two gold medals for Timber Hog Stout and Best Bitter beers.

Mastermind Sean Dunbar and his team work very hard to get the community involved with their brand. For example, fans and friends have been invited to do everything from helping the Easter Bunny find painted kegs to coming up with a mug shot of their cat in aid of creating a label for Picaroons Melonhead beer.

Wine also shares the lamplight in Fredericton. Doug Williams at the Garrison District Ale House features the largest selection of specialty beer in the province, including exclusive products with exotic names like Affligem Dubbel, Don de Dieu and La Terrible. He’s always looking for new ways to engage customers, the most recent being a beer and food pairing with a certified cicerone (sort of a sommelier for beer).

A year ago he opened Up Wine Bar featuring varieties that most mortals rarely see. Right now he’s focused on summer wines and predicts that Deakin Estate Moscato from Australia (low alcohol, fruity, light, sweet, and easy on the pocket book) will be popular. Asked about his personal favourite (and most sexy win) Williams says, “I always reach for Pinot Noir. My current favourite is Sokol Blosser Pinot Noir from Dundee, Oregon. A bit on the pricy side but worth the splurge.”

The newest kid on the block is Meaghan Barry who opened a wine bar last July called Corked. She says, “Fredericton has the perfect downtown for places like these to thrive. There are thousands of people working within the three block radius. Each place provides a different experience – as they should – and this allows people to feel as though they’re living in a bigger urban center.”

Then there’s Frank Scott over at The Lunar Rogue Pub – arguably the hottest whisky joint in Canada – and a story for another time.

By Sandra Phinney

Butt collector
Robert Zed, president of Zed Events, says his worst grunt job was strolling beaches and parks in Saint John. Before you roll your eyes, consider that he was working for the city and his task was to pick up cigarette butts, beer cans and all the unprintable detritus you might expect to find if you start digging under public bushes.

“It was gross. It was pretty humbling,” he says. “As I sit here and think about it, it really was a miserable job. My highlight was remembering that we found the best hiding places in those jobs.”

After one summer working for the man, Zed realized he wanted to be the man.

He discovered that the government issued grants for students interested in starting their own summer job. Zed created Operation Diamond, a program helping senior citizens. “I was project manager and had 10 students working for me… And I had a car for the summer. I was King Shit,” he laughs.

Another summer grant led to SunBumz beach clothes, which Zed elegantly models in a vintage photo he provided to ABM.

Zed’s summer grant jobs eventually led him to health care, where he spent much of his career before starting Zed Events. “What does stay with you is your leadership ability, your determination and your energy and desire to do better,” he says. “Focus on the prize – those things don’t change, they’re in your DNA. You’re either an entrepreneur, or you’re not.”

 
 
Bug bait
Steven Burns is CEO of Bulletproof Solutions, a leading N.B. technology firm. He says his worst grunt job was planting trees for JD Irving over a long, hot New Brunswick summer.

“If you want a lesson in patience and hard work, look no further,” he says. “The idea of getting paid by the tree and tramping through clear cuts in the middle of nowhere, while trying to fight off giant mosquitoes you’d think hadn’t seen human life since they existed – nasty all the way around.”

But it also led to an early best job – a summer research project for Forestry Canada studying the health of trees and plants. His team’s primary task was to insert meters that would measure the earth’s composition, but that meant long, sweaty days digging holes.

“It took two of us all day to dig that first hole and we were not happy thinking that we had 20 or more still to dig,” Burns says.

And thus a leader was born. “Back at the camp that night, I got to thinking of how we could do this differently. There had to be a better, faster and cheaper way,” he recalls.

“I approached our boss and said, ‘Why don’t we rent a small backhoe?’”

The nascent leader got his way and the team dug all of the holes in one day. As CEO of Bulletproof Solutions, he is rarely called on to dig a better hole, but he is constantly looking for ways to do things better – while keeping an ear open for bright ideas from fresh faces.

 
 
“John” boy
Rob Steele, CEO of Newfoundland Capital Corporation, audibly shudders when asked about his worst grunt jobs. “I remember them all,” he says. After a few minutes probing those dark memories, he settles on a summer job he had at Notre Dame Provincial Park.

“They were fairly humbling jobs. I was painting picnic tables, selling park passes and cleaning outhouses,” he says.

Cleaning outhouses?

Steele admits that was a low point – especially when he ran into friends exiting the john as he was entering it. “My friends would come there on the weekends and camp. Geez, I’d be working and going in the next morning with the slop bucket. It was pretty humbling,” he recalls.

He did it for three summers. It was a tough decision each day to go to work and not join his partying friends. “But it was great to just have a job,” he says. “I was just so ecstatic to have a job. It wasn’t a lot of money, but to me then it was a lot of money. It was great to get a cheque.”

His career at the top of Newcap Radio, one of Canada’s leading radio broadcasters, has taken him far from the outhouse wilderness of Newfoundland, Former provincial park attendant Rob Steele agrees: “There’s nothing like cleaning outhouses to make you appreciate hard work.” but his love of a good paycheque has remained.

“Work is work, whether you’re doing arduous labour or executive work,” he says. “It’s good to work the spectrum so you can get a feel for what work is like at every level. It’s a different kind of stress. I understand the value of hard work.”

 
 
The clothes (work) horse
Nancy MacCready-Williams, CEO of Doctors Nova Scotia, spent her grunt days paying for university via life in the Sears Clearance Centre. “My job involved working in the children’s department keeping the shelves tidy. What that really meant was working my way up and down both sides of a long shelving unit, folding thousands and thousands of tiny little clothes, over and over again,” she says. ”By the time I worked my way down one side of the shelf, it would look like a bomb went off on the other side: Little clothes all over the place, including the floor! And so I’d start folding all over again.”

The job was high in stress, and rich in life lessons. MacCready-Williamssays it taught her the importance of patience and self control, as well as the helpful maxim: “No screaming aloud in any workplace.” She also learned that every job has its own source of pride. “Who knew that tiny little clothes, neatly folded, could be a thing of beauty?” she asks.

“This job gave me a view about workplace respect that I carry with me today. Every person, regardless of their job, is to be respected for the important role they play in an organization,” she says. “And those who touch the customer have the most important – albeit sometimes the most difficult – roles. They are your organization’s ambassadors.
Make sure they feel supported and appreciated for the important work they do.”

 
 
Pavement pounder
Ken LeBlanc remembers his grunt jobs with such fondness you wonder if he wishes he was still walking the streets of East Dieppe with a bag of Times and Transcripts slung over his shoulder. “It was a pretty prestigious job for a young fellow to have,” says the president of PropertyGuys.com.

He got the coveted route after a year-long mentorship with the previous paper boy and kept it for three years of steep hills, hot summers and frozen winters. “Growing up, we didn’t have a lot. If I wanted extra spending money, it was up to me to go out and get it. It taught me a lot of responsibility. It definitely taught me the value of a dollar,” he says.

LeBlanc also learned the importance of delivering on time, every day, and how that makes it easier to collect the money on payday. In the winter, he augmented his income by shoveling snow. “It really showed me I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” he says.

He co-founded the PropertyGuys. com for-sale-by-owner real estate network while still in university and never looked back.

 
 
IN SUMMARY, a grueling grunt job makes the real world vividly clear for a young person setting out in life. The danger is not a horrible first job, but a comfortable one. Anything less than awful might just turn into a career.

Steele, Nova Scotia’s finance minister, has come here for a breakfast meeting with the New Glasgow-Pictou County Chamber of Commerce. It’s the sixth of nine “dialogue sessions,” 15 “stakeholder meetings” and three community group gatherings he is staging as he criss-crosses the province, asking Nova Scotians for their input in the lead-up to his next provincial budget April 3.

Last night at the hotel, Steele did four local media interviews. Later this morning, on his way to Port Hawkesbury for a luncheon session with the Strait Area Chamber of Commerce, he’ll stop in at CJFX-FM radio in Antigonish for a sit-down interview with its news director.

Though the real subjects of all these sessions are the still-woeful-but-becomingless-so state of the province’s finances and the important question of how best to bring the fiscal state “back to balance” and better, Graham Steele can’t help but begin this morning by crowing that his beloved Winnipeg Jets had squeezed past the Tampa Bay Lightning the night before, keeping their flickering NHL playoff hopes alive.

Steele, a Winnipeg native, was a hockey-crazed kid back in the 1970s during the Jets previous NHL incarnation. When a local radio station staged a sports trivia contest in which the prizes were tickets to upcoming games, Steele would plant himself by the telephone, surrounded by his collection of hockey trivia books, and eagerly wait for the announcer to ask a question. He won so often he eventually had to disguise his voice and use other people’s names when he called.

Steele doesn’t mention his trivia prowess this morning, but few among the three dozen local business and community leaders attending would probably be surprised. There is a nerdy, earnest yet cheerful obsessiveness to Steele. And he is clearly the smartest person in any room he is in.

“I’m not here to make a speech,” he says, easily shifting gears to the matter at hand. “I’m here to hear what you have to say.” But then, of course, he makes a speech; his promised 15-minute Powerpoint presentation “to lay the groundwork” stretches into 30.

There is a lot to say.

When Nova Scotia’s New Democratic Party swept into office in June 2009 – the first time the NDP had ever formed any sort of government in Atlantic Canada, let alone won a majority – there were great expectations, many of them created by party leader Darrell Dexter’s rosy, read-my-lips, new-programs-balanced-budget-no-taxincreases mantra. There were just as many trepidations, fueled not only by exactly those promises but also, in some quarters, by the stunning reality that conservative, mainstream Nova Scotians had actually elected a “socialist” government.

Once in office, however, the new NDP government didn’t simply do a 180-degree turn on the economic promises it had campaigned on; it threw in a couple of double back flips for good measure.

The new government – like new governments of every stripe these days – immediately commissioned a consultant’s report to show how badly the previous administration had mangled the province’s finances, creating the mess they were left to clean up and, of course, forcing them to declare all previous promises null and void.

The consultants obliged, concluding that, if nothing changed, the province was on a collision course with reality. By 2012-13, the annual deficit would be an unsustainable $1.5 billion while long-term debt would top out at a future-defying $17 billion.

A follow-up report by a blue-ribbon panel of economic experts recommended the government commit to completely eliminating its annual deficits by 2012-13 and “implement tax increases, introduce significant spending restraint measures and focus more on economic growth to achieve this goal.”

The man Premier Darrell Dexter charged with playing Paul “Dr. No” Martin to his genial, optimistic Jean “Regular Guy” Chretien was Graham Steele.

He chose well.

THOUGH BORN AND RAISED in Winnipeg of Scottish immigrant parents, Steele says his most formative experiences came during his pharmacy-professor father’s year-long sabbaticals – to Switzerland when he was in grade four and North Carolina in grade 11. Discovering a Europe where everyone didn’t speak English and a North Carolina that wasn’t anything like Manitoba “opened my eyes to the world,” and encouraged his love of travel.

His interest in the wider world was also stoked by a Winnipeg Free Press paper route; he says he “managed to read the whole paper” each day while he folded copies for home delivery.

“I’m not sure I can explain why now,” he allows with a smile, but the young Graham Steele also became a Young Liberal. “Somewhere,” he even has a John Turner Youth T-shirt from the party’s June 1984 leadership convention.

But by then, he was on his way to Oxford University for two years in Thatcherera England as a Rhodes Scholar, where his focus would not be on politics with a partisan “P” but on loftier ideas about “government and public affairs.”

In 1986, he returned to Canada to figure out “something practical” he could do with two undergraduate degrees. Law school – where he could follow his fascination with what he calls the “laws of government” – seemed an ideal fit. He considered schools in Toronto and Halifax, choosing Dalhousie in large measure because “I’d never been to this part of the country.” His plan, he admits, was to get his degree and get out, on his way to a successful career somewhere else. He even did an internship at Blake, Cassels & Graydon, a powerful Bay Street law firm.

But somewhere along the line, he met a fellow student, Tilly Pillay, a South Africanborn woman whose family had moved to Nova Scotia when she was nine. They fell in love and decided to make Halifax home. Today, he and Pillay – who practices law with the province’s Justice Department – have two children.

“Nova Scotia,” Steele likes to point out, politician-like, “is the place I chose to live.” But he didn’t choose what he saw as Nova Scotia’s peculiar brand of “tribal politics. People here voted Liberal or Conservative, not because of ideas but because of the way in which their parents voted, and that went back generations.”

Why is this so unfortunate? Because I know that no matter how accomplished or hardworking the Top 50 are, regardless of their generous charity work or the number of jobs they create, there are people out there who will use our celebration of their efforts as an opportunity to criticise.

It could be a disgruntled employee, frustrated competitor or someone stuck in an unrewarding job. Whoever they are, they’ll find some reason to “justify” sneering at triumphs, downplaying achievements or claiming that results are exaggerated. They’ll argue that so-and-so had it easy – that they were “given” their job and wealth because they were born into an entrepreneurial family. Or they’ll insinuate that favouritism, nepotism, or some other skulduggery was involved in the awarding of a lucrative contract.

Enough already. Success is not a birthright. And it does not happen by chance.

In an April 3, 2012 article on fastcompany.com, Josh Linkner rightly pointed out that there is no such thing as an “overnight” success. He explained that it took Rovio eight years to create the popular Angry Birds video game – and they nearly went bankrupt doing it. James Dyson reportedly had 5,126 failed prototypes before he perfected his revolutionary vacuum. Well-known lubricant WD40 is so named because the first 39 experiments failed. Even Groupon had a near death experience in its earlier days.

Paul LeBlanc of Extreme Group (and a Top 50 CEO alumnus) has a message for everyone afflicted with the lobster pot syndrome: “If you think anyone driving a BMW, Audi or Mercedes was handed a golden opportunity or just dealt a better hand, and that there should be an equalization of success, (there are) challenges, hazards and stress that come with risking it all … I can promise you that there’s a more than good chance that Sobeys and Irving had many close calls that could have tanked their business at some points in their life cycle.

“The public needs to know that without risk takers, our economy would cease to exist. Jobs are created on the backs of those brave (or crazy) enough to pursue an idea and we need to respect that, not shoot them down.”

His self-described “rant” was spawned by online comments about SeaFort Capital, a new investment company started up by the Sobeys and McCains. Launched March 26, SeaFort will focus on making controlling investments in Canadian businesses with $2 million to $10 million in earnings. Negative public response ranged from “fat cats getting fatter” to “maybe they will both lower the price of the foods they supply so us common folk can pay for oil and electricity that they probably are shareholders in also.”

LeBlanc says he was extremely angry at the sentiment and ignorance of the general public about this “exciting” announcement. “Perhaps if they shadowed an entrepreneur for a month, they would happily return to their jobs with an appreciation for what it takes, day in and out, to run a successful business.”

Personally speaking, I’ve never resented someone else’s success. Envy them? Yes. Begrudge them? Never. When I was growing up and I wanted something that someone else had, or was bested in something that mattered to me, my parents invariably responded with a question: What are you going to do about it? There’s a wealth of power in that question, in being taught that you yourself have the ability to effect change. So, rather than be intimidated or threatened by the exemplary achievements of the Top 50 CEOs, I am instead inspired. They make me want to work harder, take risks, reap rewards.

That’s why we began publishing these awards 14 years ago: to recognize the singular strengths of award-winning leadership and to show other Atlantic Canadians that this is a great place to do business.

If you’re looking for the motivation or inspiration to pursue your dreams, please read on. If you’re one of those sadistic crustaceans I hear so much about, please put the magazine down. You don’t deserve it.

Something else I never would have suspected is the wealth and industrial opportunity that have become so evident throughout the region: the $25-billion Irving Shipbuilding contract; the $450-million topside and GBS contracts for Hibernia; Shell’s $970-million exploration commitment offshore Nova Scotia; the imminent start to development of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador with its connection to Nova Scotia. These projects represent a considerable infusion of wealth into the region – and everywhere I look, I see the Top 50 CEOs, poised and ready to demonstrate what Atlantic Canadians can do.

They’re not just passively waiting for opportunity to arrive either. This amazing collection of go-getters is also creating their own prospects for professional fulfillment. Take Tanya Shaw, for example, and her custom-fit clothing analysis machine. Or Anne Whelan and Cathy Bennett, who seem to launch or acquire a new business every other year. Or Wadih Fares and his innovative building design/project management/development company. Or Jamie King, Dianne Kelderman, Ron Lovett … I could go on – but that’s what our cover story is for. Please, read these profiles. Their stories truly are inspirational and it’s our privilege to share them with you.

The credit for selecting such a dynamic group of award winners belongs to the judges: Robert Zed, Rob Sobey, Mark Surrette, Terry Malley, Chris Hickman and Hollis Cole. Despite the demands of their own businesses and volunteer activities, they made time in their incredibly busy schedules to dedicate many, many hours to carefully weighing the merits of each and every nominee. On behalf of everyone here at Atlantic Business Magazine, I’d like to thank them for their diligence and dedication.

I’d also like to recognize the efforts of our staff for going above and beyond when it comes to giving the Top 50 CEOs the recognition they deserve. Every year I think there’s no way you can top the success of the year before – then you go ahead and amaze me again. You deserve a standing ovation.

Finally, I want to extend my sincere appreciation to the corporate sponsors, many of whom return to support this program year after year. Through their sponsorship, they are doing their part to encourage the growth and development of great leaders in Atlantic Canada. Let’s do our part and show them our support in return.

By working together, we can continue to increase our regional leadership talent pool. And that’s a win/win for everyone.

Learning to speak Inuktitut made the difference. In the early 1980s I was hired by McGill University to travel up North with my eight-month-old son to train Inuit teachers – who taught children who only spoke Inuktitut – about how children learn language. I quickly discovered that what I had been taught about language acquisition did not make sense – Inuit children were doing things with language that our “southern” English- and French- speaking children could not do until they were two years older. This turned certain prevailing theories on their head and taught me about the richness of our Aboriginal cultures and their languages.

You have to do what you want. And you have to do it now. I grew up in a family of four girls. A cancer gene runs in my family. Fortunately, I do not have it but my sisters all died from cancer. When the sister to whom I was closest in age became seriously ill at age 40, I began looking at my life in a whole new way. I realized that I would not be here forever, that I had to figure out what I truly wanted to do with my life and get started. Now.

Be bold. Boldness helped me kick-start my career. Colleagues thought that at 38, I was too old to try for a career in academia. Doing bold Ph.D. research led to important things for me – I challenged accepted theories and had the chance to be a part of important, leading edge work. Never do something you’re just sort of interested in. Do something you’re passionate about.

She who plays by the rules gets ahead faster. Early on, a mentor gave me a book that explored the stories of women academics who failed to get tenure or otherwise fell off the academic track. The book suggested that they failed because of certain decisions they made. For instance, many of the women did not play strategically or pay attention to the rules of the game. They spent too much time mentoring students versus building their own research careers. That book woke me up. I told myself, “Be smart. Do not mess this up. There are expectations. Take them seriously. Do what is required.”

What I needed to know about leadership I learned from tennis. I’ve never played tennis. But I love to watch the game. Pete Sampras was a great model of mental toughness. I remember watching him play Andre Agassi in the U.S. Open years ago. Sampras was ill, he was exhausted, and he was down two sets. Everyone figured he would lose. But he didn’t let up, he kept competing hard until the bitter end. And he came back and won. Leadership takes tenacity and grit. You have to persevere even when you don’t achieve early success.

Work-Life balance is a myth for me. I prefer to think of integration. When I worked in the North I used to take one of my three children with me on every trip. I truly love my work – it’s my passion and my hobby. You have to set things up so that the things you value in life can integrate with your work.

He won.

Jean Chretien, then a Bay Street lawyer in between elected gigs, and Walter Baker, a University of Ottawa professor, agreed to create a private, non-profit organization to raise money for the program. Nine years later, Chretien, by then the prime minister, restored public funding for the organization.

Each year, Katimavik chooses 1,100 young Canadians between the ages of 17 and 21 and fans them out, in teams of 10, to other regions of Canada to spend six life-changing months living together as volunteers with local community-based organizations. Among its 30,000 alumni: Patrick Bechet, the CFO of Google.

In my province of Nova Scotia, Katimavik volunteers are embedded with close to 20 diverse community groups, including the Sackville Rivers Association, a do-good organization working to restore a local watershed.

What does the group get from these youthful, come-from-away volunteers? “It’s the enthusiasm,” Walter Regan, the association’s president, told the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. “This new enthusiasm really drives us and helps us do our good work.”

Katimavik also enables Canadian young people to experience the vastness and complexity of their own country first-hand. “We had youth from the prairies who had never seen the ocean,” Regan says. “We had one aboriginal youth from Winnipeg who just couldn’t get over lobster. She’d never had a lobster.”

The program has been praised by the United Nations. Other countries have tried to copy it.

None of that was enough to save Katimavik from federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s swinging ideological axe. In his first you-can’t-stop-us-now, majority-government budget in March, Flaherty announced he was cutting $15 million in annual funding for the organization.

And Katimavik may not be the only seventies-era citizen-building program to disappear. Ottawa’s Canadian International Development Agency, which helps underwrite Canada World Youth – another Jacques Hébert-inspired non-government organization that has provided 31,000 young people the chance to participate in international volunteer programs over the past 40 years – took a $319-million hit to its already frozen budget. Will the trickle-down effect drown Canada World Youth too?

Forget for a moment the intergenerational battle the Harper government’s budget has supposedly triggered between us entitled-to-ourentitlements boomers and the rest of you, fend-for-yourselves under-54s.

Consider instead the government’s much more dangerous war against our young people — and our future.

Shortly before Flaherty introduced his budget, Ottawa also announced it was shuttering Service Canada’s Jobs Centres for Youth, a service that has been helping students land summer work for 40 years. It will be replaced by a website. The purpose: to save Ottawa $6.5 million.

Today, nearly two million Canadians carry student loan debt worth $20 billion. The average debt for graduating university students is $27,000.

Those lucky enough to land, dragging their debt behind them, in today’s job market turn out not to be lucky at all.

“The economic recovery has been almost non-existent for younger Canadians,” economist Francis Fong wrote in a recent TD Economic Report called The Plight of Younger Workers.

To make matters worse, too many profitable companies have found it convenient to exploit bright young people with what have become rotating, unpaid, never-lead-to-jobs “experiential” internships and short-term-contractswithout-benefits that make it impossible for them to fully join the workforce or get on with adult lives.

In March, Statistics Canada’s latest numbers showed unemployment for 15-24-year-olds topped 14.7 per cent, twice the rate for the rest of us. Even those distressing numbers – 27,000 fewer young people had jobs than at the same time a year earlier – mask a worse reality. Statscan only counts those drawing employment insurance benefits or welfare, not those who’ve simply given up.

Where is Jacques Hébert when we need him? Unfortunately, he died in 2007. Which means it’s now up to the rest of us.

“How do we create economic growth and prosperity for our nation through science and technology?” Goodyear asked the gathering of scientists and business leaders. “The answer always seems to come back to innovation.”

He was in the right place to learn about great ideas that have changed the world, created jobs and saved lives. Atlantic Canadians have long been some of the world’s most creative inventors and few people know their history better than Mario Theriault. Theriault, a patent agent in Fredericton for the last 16 years, literally wrote the book on east coast innovation.

“Part of my job is to do patent search. I came across several of them and put them aside. I built up a file of them and one day decided it was worth writing a little book on them,” he explains.

The result was Great Maritime Inventions 1833-1950. He says the east coast has a long and fruitful history of inventing local solutions to solve global problems. He shares a few of his top picks.

“John Patch is a favourite one,” he says. “I think that fellow has not been recognized to his full merit.”

Patch was a fisherman in Yarmouth, N.S. when he invented the boat propeller in 1833. He was given the U.S. patent in 1849 and Theriault notes the modern propeller is surprisingly similar to Patch’s original design.

If you ever wonder about the fairness of confederation and the effect of oil wealth on ‘have’ vs. ‘have-not’ provinces, Theriault points to Abraham Gesner. The Halifax man, who served as New Brunswick’s provincial geologist, started experimenting with tar in Moncton in 1854. “He produced kerosene,” Theriault says. “He is the father of the petroleum industry. If you look at this inventor, look at how many jobs he has created with his invention. All of our cars today would not exist if not for Abraham Gesner.”

Theriault also likes Wallace Turnbull from Saint John. He invented the airplane propeller with variable pitch. Turnbull also built the world’s first wind tunnel, revolutionizing the aviation industry. His contributions earned him a place in the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame in 1977.

New Brunswick has a particular bent for engineering solutions. James Elliot and Alexander McAvity of Saint John invented the scuba tank in 1839. Benjamin F. Tibbets of Fredericton created the compound steam engine in 1845. A clothes washer with roller wringer was developed by John E. Turnbull in Saint John in 1843. Robert Carr Harris of Dalhousie developed a monstrous-looking snowblower way back in 1870.

And leave it to a New Brunswicker to take a much-hated winter word – flurry – and add two letters to make our mouths water. Ron McLellan was running a McDonald’s franchise in Bathurst in 1998 when he had the brilliant idea of the McFlurry. The dessert rapidly caught on and became a staple of McDonald’s franchises across the world.

Nova Scotians are no slouches either when it comes to delectable treats. Ron Joyce from Tatamagouche combined two of Canada’s favourite things, hockey and coffee, when he partnered with NHLer Tim Horton. Joyce’s business acumen unleashed the caffeine colossus we all love today. It will surprise few to learn that the donut king’s previous job was as a policeman in Hamilton.

Another Nova Scotian invented something even more fundamental to modern life: standard time. Halifax’s Sir Sanford Fleming lived in an age when trains raced across the country and ran into the problem of figuring out what time it was “locally.” If a train leaves Amherst for Toronto at 1 p.m. going 75 kilometres an hour, what time is it in Toronto? Until Fleming, as chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway, invented Standard Time zones in 1869, nobody had a clue. His standardized time is the same Greenwich Mean Time system we use today.

Heck, Nova Scotia can even claim the greatest modern inventor of them all: Thomas Alva Edison, the genius behind the phonograph, the motion picture camera and the very symbol of a great idea – the light bulb. Okay, technically he was born in Ohio, but his father, Samuel Edison, was from Marshalltown, Nova Scotia. That still counts, right?

If Edison gets disputed Nova Scotian status for inventing the movie camera, the province does not have to share the genius behind the digital camera. Willard Boyle of Amherst shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2009 for co-creating the first charge-coupled device (a semi-conductor circuit that changes light into electric signals that create a large number of pixels) back in 1969. You can thank him for that adorable photo of your niece taken with a smartphone and posted online – and also for the soul-shaking Hubble Space Telescope photographs of stars being born, and Rover images of the lonesome beauty of the surface of Mars.

It will surprise no one to learn that P.E.I. has taken the lead on agricultural inventions. William Allin and William Stiggins invented a potato digger in 1868. The large machine broke the trail for modern, mechanized harvesting. Abraham Gill the Younger created the hay carrier in 1872, allowing farmers to more easily move hay in their barns. In 1934, Robert Holman of Summerside invented the cultivating and hilling machine. Its basic concept has been in use ever since.

Newfoundland and Labrador lives up to its big-hearted reputation with inventions that greatly reduced the amount of suffering in the world. The First World War gave humanity many terrible advances in self-destruction, including the first use of poison gas to kill soldiers. Dr. Cluny Macpherson of St. John’s created a gas mask made of fabric and metal with an attached breathing tube. The original looks disarmingly like a ghost smoking a cigarette, but it went on to be one of the most important protective devices of the war. A modern version of his invention continues to protect soldiers and civilians today.

In 2001, Rutter Inc. of St. John’s perfected the Voyage Data Recorder, a black box for ocean-going ships. It is the modern equivalent of the captain’s log and records every detail about the ship’s trip. It quickly] became mandatory for all international cargo vessels over 3,000 tons. The VDR’s developers, Byron Dawe, Gary Dinn and Joe Ryan, are all based in St. John’s. Like airplane black boxes, the virtually indestructible VDR can be recovered after an accident to learn what went wrong, and to learn how to avoid such tragedies in the future.

Newfoundland can also claim status as the birthplace of modern rapid communications. The Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi pioneered the wireless telegraph in 1901. Critics said radio waves went in a straight line and did not curve with the earth. Marconi disagreed and devised an experiment to prove it. From atop St. John’s Signal Hill, he proved the doubters wrong by receiving the first transatlantic radio message.

Mario Theriault’s book of east coast inventors ends in 1950, but he sees the region’s continuing spirit of innovation in his patent work every day. His notepad is once more overflowing: he’s writing a sequel to Great Maritime Inventions.