Unlike other communities around Canada whose fortunes have waned with industrial changes and recession, Squamish is close enough to employment opportunities in Vancouver and Whistler to be in danger of becoming a mere satellite supplying workers. “Squamish could just become a bedroom commuter town for Vancouver and Whistler, but this is a beautiful place and people want to stay here and raise their families, so you’ve got to consider self-employment,” Mr. Dawson says.
For participants in CFHS’s programs, the quality of life in their communities has an impact and self-employment is a way for them to live the way they want to, where they want to.
Ivan Hughes is nearing the end of an 11-month-long business start-up support program at the CFHS, and he has just completed a week-long round of business meetings in Toronto. An award-winning documentary filmmaker from Squamish, his company, Compass Digital Media, is the sort of creative venture CFHS hopes to establish in its corridor to replace traditional industry.
Compass Digital produces corporate and adventure videos for clients across the country, but it is Mr. Hughes’ favourite service, the creation of family and life-story videos, that brought him east. “I met representatives of Canada 150, which is this country’s largest history-gathering project ever. I will be filming stories of Canadians from all backgrounds for them in preparation for our 150th anniversary in 2017. I’m really excited,” he says.
Mr. Hughes says CFs helped him define what he wanted to do with his work and kept him in a community he loves.
“I had a sense of what I wanted to focus on, and had made documentaries in my own time before, but CF made me really structure my ideas into a plan that was marketable and had a real chance at success,” he says. “The marketing, sales and basic business workshops along with the networking with others in the same position gave me the confidence to push ahead.”
In rural markets that are more isolated from large centres, CFs are even more important because there are fewer options, proponents say.
Special to The Globe and Mail
