Farewell, Keith MacDonald: A proud New Brunswicker, but also a proud Thompsonite, who helped make us a better community to live and work in

Keith MacDonald died a couple of days ago. That’s a big loss for his family and friends, of course, and my condolences to them, but it is also a very big loss for all of us here in the wider Thompson community, as Keith was tireless in both his work and many volunteer efforts in helping to make Thompson, Manitoba a better place to live. And he did it in a sort of low-key way with considerable humility.

I moved to Thompson in July 2007, a couple of years after Keith had arrived, and my first memories of him were serving as general manager of both the Burntwood Hotel and Thompson Inn (TI) for Winnipeg’s Manfred Boehm, who owns both hotel properties. These were nickel-fueled economic boom years for Thompson, and planned new hotels were on the drawing board. By 2010, Keith was also president of the Thompson Chamber of Commerce, and combined with his hotel management experience (which dated to back home in Moncton, New Brunswick and working as a young man for Keddy’s Motor Inns, and later for Inns of Banff), he shared valuable on-the-record insights with me about market dynamics at a time when Thompson would get 150 new hotel rooms and two brand-new hotels between 2011 and 2013.

Back in 2010, in addition to the Burntwood Hotel and Thompson Inn, guests could find accommodation at the Days Inn, Meridian Hotel, Country Inn and Suites (now known as Thompson’s Best Value Inn & Suites), Interior Inn, Mystery Lake Motor Hotel and Northern Inn & Steak House. The Interior Inn, which had burned down while under construction in October 1967, but was rebuilt, burned down again on New Year’s Day 2018, but is being rebuilt again. Choice Hotels’ 70-room Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, now known as the Quality Inn & Suites Thompson, opened in May 2011, followed by the 80-room Best Western Hotel, less than a year later in April 2012.

Another memory I have of Keith from that period is in his role as Thompson Chamber of Commerce president, as well as general manager of the Burntwood Hotel, barbecuing some choice steaks for a dinner to mark the chamber’s 50th anniversary year, out on the asphalt parking lot of the hotel, on a summer day so hot you could have fried eggs on the pavement. Such summer days are pretty rare in Thompson, so you perhaps tend to remember them. Keith, sweating over the flames, while getting smoked a bit himself in the grilling process, was, as always, the genial host. Having spent a good part of his working life in the hospitality industry, Keith was the consummate hotelier.  I also recall being at a Spirit Way gala with Jeanette about a year earlier on Nov. 12, 2009, at the North Star Saloon in the Thompson Inn, where Keith  bartended himself that evening, and had the place shipshape for the event.

Keith left the hotel business and became the property manager for the City Centre Mall in May 2011, a position he held until April 2018. While I had a number of interesting chats with Keith on any number of local issues during those seven years, one that stands out was from just after he left mall management. There were quite a few retail store vacancies at the time, so I asked him how close he thought City Centre Mall was to the tipping point where it becomes a so-called “dead mall.” Keith replied that he thought the two anchor stores, Wal-Mart and Sobeys/Canada Safeway, would both be fine, but said he worried about the future of the smaller bricks-and-mortar retail stores, national, regional and local, that fill up the space between the anchor stores in the mall. With such a competitive online shopping environment, Keith said he thought the future of such space in City Centre Mall and many other similar malls across North America, would be more about storefront government offices, along with dentists and perhaps other healthcare professionals, than it would be about retail stores and shopping.

While Keith spent most of his working life in the hospitality and retail service industries, he also studied civil engineering at New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) in Moncton between 1980 and 1982, and worked as a hydrographic surveyor for what was then Public Works Canada, and is now known as Public Services and Procurement Canada.

His volunteer service was considerable and diverse. It ranged from serving as treasurer of Spirit Way; active in leadership as president with both the Lions Club of Thompson and Rotary Club of Thompson; acting chair of the Thompson Zoological Society, and a passionate advocate for the Boreal Discovery Centre; serving as the Thompson Chamber of Commerce representative on the Thompson Regional Airport Authority board of directors; and serving as a board member of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba (AFM).

Keith’s final gig pretty much brought him full circle as he became, as he described it, the inaugural “non-executive director” of the new Thompson Hotel Association in April 2018, a not-for-profit entity managed by a board of directors and ordinary members of the corporation, who are any proprietor who is actively engaged in the operation of the business and pays accommodation tax to the City of Thompson, acting as a lobby group for local hotels, with a mission to develop a stronger tourism presence in the area, and to get “heads on pillows.”

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Outspoken British Columbia Osoyoos Indian Band Chief Clarence Louie Thompson Chamber of Commerce keynote speaker Oct. 23

The Thompson Chamber of Commerce is partnering with the Winnipeg-based Aboriginal Chamber of Commerce Oct. 23 to bring in British Columbia’s Osoyoos Indian Band highly successful, highly outspoken and at times controversial long-time Chief Clarence Louie as their keynote speaker for this year’s Northern Business Week.

Last year the chamber brought in Ernesto Sirolli, the Italian-born founder of community economic development enterprise facilitation from Sacramento, California as their keynote speaker for the same event. The Thompson Chamber of Commerce tried unsuccessfully in advance to get both Vale and Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Inc. (MKO), a non-profit, political advocacy organization has represented 30 First Nation communities in Northern Manitoba since 1981, to pick up part of the tab for Sirolli’s speech. When the Thompson Chamber of Commerce released its 2013 financial statements to members at its annual general meeting Feb. 19, the numbers showed a shortfall of more than $7,400 when expenses were balanced off against revenues for last year’s Northern Small Business Week. Keith MacDonald, in his treasurer’s report for 2013, wrote, “We acquired a shortfall this year in our budgeting for Northern Business Week, which reflected a deficit in this area. Having the opportunity to have a high profile speaker as Ernesto Sirolli speak in the City of Thompson will be worth its value in the future. The shortfall was covered by retained earnings that the chamber has carefully invested for an opportunity such as this.”

This year, the Thompson Chamber of Commerce has found a co-sponsor from the get-go in the Aboriginal Chamber of Commerce for Louie’s keynote speech at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 244 on Elizabeth Drive. The Aboriginal Chamber of Commerce was created as the result of a Premier’s Economic Advisory Council Summit under former Manitoba NDP premier Gary Doer 10 years ago. Tickets for the 5:30 pm. event are $80 for members and $100 for non-members and are available from the chamber.

Louie has been chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band for most of the last 30 years. The Osoyoos Indian Reserve, in British Columbia’s southern Okanagan Valley, near Oliver, dates back to 1877, takes in 32,000 acres, and is one of the most prosperous First Nations in Canada, with revenues last year of about $26 million and net profits of about $2.5 million. There is next to no unemployment among the Osoyoos Indian Band’ 520 or so members.

Among the businesses owned by the Osoyoos Indian Development Corporation are Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort & Spa, the  $100-million  Nk’Mip Resort, wit the accommodations portion co-owned and managed by Calgary-based Bellstar Hotels & Resorts, the 18-hole Nk’Mip Canyon Desert Golf Course, Canyon Desert Resort, which is under construction and is a partnership between Osoyoos Indian Development Corporation, Bellstar Developments Inc. and GGC Developments, and OIB Holdings Corporation, which controls land leases to more than 20 per cent of the vineyard grape production in British Columbia  – land leased by such wineries as Mission Hill Winery, Vincor International and Burrowing Owl Vineyards.  Osoyoos Indian Development Corporation also owns 51 per cent of Nk’Mip Cellars, rated on the best wineries in Canada. The remaining 49 per cent is owned by Constellation Brands Inc., the world’s leading wine producer.

Louie has a reputation for making highly controversial remarks and not backing down from them. He doesn’t believe cultural accommodation is going make any long-term improvement when it comes to aboriginal offenders: “If I have to go to one more jailhouse sweat lodge, I’m going to puke,” Louie has reportedly said. “It’s not about spiritual wholeness; it’s about the economy. Inmates need to learn carpentry and plumbing and other skills that will help them make a living when they get out.” The very first project the Thompson Economic Diversification Working Group (TEDWG) pitched to the province three years ago  – unsuccessfully  – was for Thompson to be the site of for a new jail, which would be a primarily aboriginal 220-prisoner “restorative justice” facility. Six months after Vale announced on Nov. 17, 2010 its partial decommissioning here, with plans to close the smelter and refinery, but continue mining and milling, TEDWG was created on May 18, 2011. Members represented 10 stakeholder groups, including the City of Thompson, Vale, Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO), Keewatin Tribal Council (KTC), Manitoba Métis Federation, Northern Association of Community Councils, Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, Thompson Unlimited, the Thompson Chamber of Commerce and – belatedly – the Province of Manitoba. USW Local 6166, which represents unionized workers at Vale’s Manitoba Operations, declined an invitation to join TEDWG.

Louie is also known for saying things like, “Be here at 9 o’clock sharp. No Indian time.”

Louie attended what is now First Nations University in Regina and later spent two years at the  University of Lethbridge. He ran successfully for chief in 1984 at the age of 23, lost the job in 1989, but was re-elected again in 1991.

Sirolli’s visit here last year as keynote speaker came as local businesses stood at a crossroads as the implementation work coming out of almost 2½ years of TEDWG needed to begin in earnest.

Some members of the chamber have spent a good part of the last  year trying to work out a plan that would see Sirolli return to Thompson from California in a follow-up visit to work on a community economic development enterprise facilitation project.

Vale paid out $2.5 million in cash over the 2½- year period to fund TEDWG, mainly using Toronto-based consultants rePlan, a Canadian firm with decades of experience helping resource-based companies and communities adapt to change, and their subcontractors, such as Heather Buttrum and Jim McGimpsey of Hamilton, Ont.-based On Three Communication, who worked on a “place branding initiative,” which the City of Thompson has yet to roll out. Buttrum is now a principal at Rain Communications Inc.

Place branding refers to how people view a place based on the experience they have had with it and involves using traditional marketing and branding techniques to try to help communities and regions improve their image.

Sirolli developed the concept of enterprise facilitation 29 years ago in Esperance, a small rural coastal community in Western Australia and now head the Sirolli Institute in Sacramento, California. Esperance, an isolated coastal town of 8,500, had 500 people registered as unemployed in 1985, and a recent quota on fishing tuna that shrunk the local fishing industry.

“Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!” Sirolli has famously said many times.

In 1999, Louie received the Aboriginal Business Leader Award from All Nations Trust and Development Corporation. In 2000, the Advancement of Native Development Officers (CANDO) named Chief Louie the “Economic Developer of the Year.”  Maclean’s Magazine listed Louie as one of the “Top 50 Canadians to Watch” in their January 2003 issue, while was named to the Order of British Columbia, the province’s highest honour for outstanding achievement, in June 2006.