Fort McMurray Christmas after the fire

[Dennis McGuckin]

WestJet throws Fort McMurray residents Christmas party in annual heartwarming video | Calgary Herald

[Rodney Mills]

Somehow I missed this Dennis.

I was once the president of a remote site catering company.* We performed services mostly to the oil industry and then heavy construction projects*mainly in*the Middle East, South America and of course the USA.

The company's research department sent me a report on the oil drilling market*in Alberta, which at that time was a considerable amount of rigs.* I sent up a marketing and sales team to look deeper into opportunities.* It looked good.* The easiest way to enter a market is to buy an existing company with good management.* Well the ones available just didn't meet the criterions we had set.* However, I caught wind of a project called*Syncrude at Fort McMurray.* The catering was coming up to bid and there was just two months to legalize a company, open an office and engage Canadian managers.* Well not only did we qualify to bid, we won the contract.* Three years at Cdn$18-20 million sales a year.

I spent the first three months of the first contract year (1980 I think) shuffling between our Edmonton office and Syncrude, Fort McMurray.*and New York, and then I would visit the site mainly to stroke (P.R.)*Syncrude's management.* It paid off because at the end of the three years I won a five year extension of the contract.* I resigned after two of those years and retired.

Suncrude's contract was, dollar wise, one of the largest catering contract going, as in say Saudi, a company may cater more people a day, but they are cheap labor (Indians, Thais etc.)*and the food sales is maybe $2 a day where it's probably $30-50 a day for Americans, Canadians, Brits, Germans etc. today.

When I resigned we had another branch in B.C., with office in Vancouver, also a sub office in Prince Rupert.* We catered logging and fire control camps in the main.

For my last two years I was divorced and single and had a charming girl friend in Edmonton, so I was never cold on those long Canadian winter nights.

As touching as your thread is, thanks for bringing back memories.

I don't know why, but these @#$%^%# asterisk come up only on this site, maybe it's because it's American made and sensitive like me. and sorry but I don't have the time today to remove them***