By IAN ROSS
In his late teens, Andre Lapierre wasn’t all that different from many restless kids in Northern Ontario.
All the career opportunities and real-world experience lay over the horizon, he thought.
Many of his friends left Sudbury for post-secondary education and what they perceived as a lack of job choices or general boredom. “Why stay here?”
In the late 90s, the Chelmsford native was one of the thousands leaving Sudbury, which reached a peak of 2,888 in 1998-99, reports Statistics Canada.
But in the last four years, Sudbury has been on the positive side of the migration ledger, recording 836 arrivals in 2005-2006.
Young professionals, the 20 and 30-somethings, seem to be slowly trickling back to be closer to family and setting down roots.
Lapierre’s timing to come home two years ago and start an HR business, Northern Employment Solutions, couldn’t have been more perfect.
While working for an HR firm in Ottawa, Lapierre cultivated his hometown contacts and worked extra hard with partner Bernie Plouffe to develop their business plan to set up a similar shop in Sudbury.
“Our industry was not well known, we were not sure how busy we would be.”
Today, he does corporate head-hunting primarily for mining and industrial clients, searching globally for engineers and getting them to re-locate to the North.
One of his biggest contracts is with Vale Inco in handling their contractors during the company’s annual mill maintenance shutdown.
It’s sometimes around-the-clock work as an entrepreneur, but he doesn’t mind the odd hours. He’s totally devoting the next two years of his life to his profession.
The 28-year-old “ lived in hotels for almost three years.”
A quick learner and relying on his abundance of youthful energy, he wanted to work as hard as he could and shake as many hands as possible.
“When I went down south I was meeting with CEOs and presidents of international banks and you come to learn that people are just people, regardless of the title and status.”
“Me being a country kid (from Chelmsford) growing up on a farm, I realized I could hang with the best of them.”
He met Plouffe while working in Ottawa for Adecco, the world’s largest employment agency, and recruited the fellow Chelmsford native to do the same in their hometown.
Though comfortable with the sushi bars and big city amenities, Lapierre felt an emotional pull to be closer to home.
It wasn’t a cost of living choice, but a level of comfort based on familiar surroundings, local contacts and knowledge of the market.
“Something felt right about it,” says Lapierre.
His girlfriend, Lisa Masse, has shifted her optometry practice to Sudbury and many of her friends in the health care profession are filtering back from Montreal and Toronto.
He’s inspired about the renewed local optimism and the camaraderie among many young professionals he’s met.
Doug Nadorozny, general manager of the Greater Sudbury Growth and Development Department, says quality of life and the community’s cultural amenities are big recruiting tools.
Sudburians are used to mineral price cycles in the mining industry, but Nadorozny says few saw this upbeat shift coming as fast. Even the most ardent pessimist sees the current cycle lasting at least five years based on demand from India and China.
There’s many spinoff job opportunities at local colleges and university, with the medical school, for skilled trades, engineers and IT people in the increasingly complex mining industry.
“Countless studies have shown that the way you attract those people is a cultural infrastructure,” says Nadorozny.
“Those people want to (do) things in the evenings and there’s a heightened awareness of the role culture plays, from immigrant or professional perspective.
Nadorozny says for one engineer recruited to Laurentian University, the final piece of the recruiting puzzle was to find his wife a position with the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra.
“If you look at the growing communities there’s a huge cultural piece.”
Building an 1,800-seat performing arts centre in downtown Sudbury is on the radar screen of a citizen’s panel and Mayor John Rodriguez.
On the city’s part, there’s recruiting at two levels, says Nadrozny. “We know demographically, the young professional that left, we know they went to Toronto and Ottawa.
“We know they have an affinity to Sudbury and as long as they believe there’s a long-term future here, we know they’ll come back.”
There was also the recognition that any community in Canada that’s growing is growing through immigration.
Immigration is a function of the federal and provincial governments, but Queen’s Park is getting involved in programs to expedite and identify needed skill sets. Sudbury intends to be plugged into those programs, he says.
To Lapierre, the youth outmigration pattern that has traditionally dogged many Northern communities in the past happened for a reason.
“If everyone had stayed in Sudbury, they wouldn’t have developed the knowledge to open up their own businesses.
“I think it’s come full circle. The young people that left are bringing something back to their hometown.”
