Our family kept a set of World Book Encyclopedias in the den. My Dad loved science, my Mom was a nurse, and our neighbour was a doctor. I was captivated by the volume on the human body. It contained a printed page of a skeleton and a series of transparent overlays. Each transparency introduced a different layer of information, a system entirely different from the last: the circulatory system, the organs, the muscles and tendons, and finally the skin. I was spell bound by how the layers fit together and how the human body could not function if any layer was missed or impeded.
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One machine in particular captured my interest. A slot car race track with scoreboard sprawled the surface of a table and was covered by a large plastic dome. The steering wheel and controls were located outside the tamper-proof dome.
Over time I started to differentiate sound patterns between players. High score players had more of a rhythmic sound. It was rather intriguing to me. I found the rhythmic patterns held my attention and were strangely soothing in their predictability. |
Tana Plewes has been building communities by focusing on individual dreams and strengths of people since she arrived in British Columbia from Saskatchewan at the age of 19. She started work as a dive tender and relief skipper on an underwater seafood harvesting boat. From the rough waters of ocean living and the hard life of working the boats, she began to not only fall in love with the ocean, but also the people who work hard and dream of better things both for themselves and their families. Tana believes that building entrepreneurs is a powerful way of building communities.
It was that vision that led her to work for the Steveston Harbour Authority, creating systems that helped diverse communities of harbour users thrive. “Our processes took an organization out of chaos and mis-management, and built a financially sustainable, future-focused and people-first system that worked for the community” Tana recalls. It was these early successes with re-structuring and re-vitalizing communities that led Tana to launch out on her own and create a company focused on building up communities of entrepreneurs. |
Hurricane Winds
Tana has a unique ability to see possibilities where others only see problems. In 1996, driven by the urgent need for conservation, the federal government declared a mandate for a massive reduction in salmon fishing, including the likelihood of eliminating entire sub-industries (such as gillnetting) on the west coast within 2 years. This single statement threw the entire west coast fishing community into chaos, fear and confusion. It was like a hurricane wind hitting their boats! People were losing their livelihoods, many of whom had fished on the coast for generations, had devoted their lives and life savings into this industry and simply didn’t know what to do, or how to respond to this unprecedented and sudden change. Tana knew she had to do something. And she knew it started with listening to the people. So she launched her own consulting business, and using that as a vehicle, got the funding for, created and staffed a toll-free support service, the Fisheries and Oceans Information Line. Tana listened as 17,535 calls came in and people told their stories of how this 'hurricane wind' was impacting them. People were angry. They were stressful, anxious and sad. Families were breaking up. Whole communities were falling apart. When the president of the Area 'D' Gillnet Association called her and asked in a plaintive voice, “What will I tell my members? What will our members do”? Tana recalls. “It was heart-breaking, but exhilarating at the same time, because as the conversation went on, we slowly began to see possibilities and dream of ways we could turn it around and create something new and different.” And so that’s what they did. Just like her earlier work at the Steveston Harbour Authority, Tana set about creating structures and systems to help bring people out of chaos and fear, and into order and hope. Her work with fisheries and the fishing communities resulted in new demonstration fisheries, pilot projects for sustainable fishing, programs and services for the fishing communities, and ultimately, her client won the Governor General’s award for Selective and Responsible Fisheries. Order and hope out of chaos and confusion. |
The Start of a New Chapter, The Triumph & The Downfall
After a successful career making an impact in the fishing industry, and having 2 children, Tana decided to enter into the world of entrepreneurship in a bigger way. Together with her husband Randy, they founded Premier Building Products, a manufacturer and distributor of high-end, panelized, custom homes, and Premier Enterprises USA Inc., a general contracting firm. Within 3 years, their BC company grew from revenue of $50,000, to $1.5 million, and was one of the top 3 finalists for the 2001 BC Export Awards, Exporter of the year. Then, like the fishermen facing fisheries closures, Tana and Randy experienced their own ‘hurricane winds’ on September 11th, 2001 when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York. The economy experienced a downturn and home builders in the US (representing 100% of their customer base), ceased building. The bottom fell out of the market. Despite efforts to re-tool and resurrect their business into new Canadian markets, the business was sold by 2005. “We had taken it as far as we could, but at the end of the day, we had built a business that was totally dependent on ourselves and on the whims of one singular market” Tana explained. |
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