Sudbury.com is saddened to share the news of the passing of Michael Ross Atkins, the man whose vision and passion for Northern Ontario was second only to his vision and passion for the news business.
The founder of Northern Life, Sudbury.com, Northern Ontario Business and a host of other publications, Mr. Atkins passed away Dec. 18 in Toronto with his family by his side. He was 76.
Telling the story of a life like his is challenging. Mr Atkins, as the many people interviewed for this story will tell you, had his finger in a lot of pies.
He moved easily through the worlds of news media, business, academia and politics, driven, as his friends and associates will tell you, by an insatiable curiosity and an unquenchable desire to make a difference in people’s lives and in the world.
Fortunately for the people of Greater Sudbury and the people of Northern Ontario, Mr. Atkins chose to dedicate his considerable talents to ensuring the Nickel City and the North — long ignored by powerbrokers in Toronto and Ottawa — not only had a voice, but had influence.
Mr. Atkins’ approach in this regard was as unique and interesting as the man himself. He didn’t tell Northern Ontario it had a voice; he used his media empire to give the North a megaphone.
Mr. Atkins had a knack for bringing the right people together at the right time under the right vision and the right conditions for something like magic to happen.
Every person we spoke to about his life repeated a single word: visionary. He knew the North’s true strength wasn’t its resources, but its people. And he invested in them.
Whether it was launching a mining journal to tell the world about the region’s rich mining cluster and supply and services sector; whether it was seeing how a school of architecture was the perfect fit for a region built on mining and timber; whether it was seeing how automation would impact mining and bringing together smart people to envision ways of diversifying the local economy, Mr. Atkins had an ability to see the big picture unlike few others.
Even in his final days, his passion and curiosity were very much in evidence through the Sustainable Northern Ontario Development course he developed with economist David Robinson and which is offered by the Northern Policy Institute (and of which Mr. Atkins was a member of the advisory council). His drive is also evident in the journal he launched in Nova Scotia, his second home, called the Nova Scotia Journal of Sustainable Community Development.
While Mr. Atkins was known by many, few worked with him as long or as closely as Abbas Homayed, the publisher of Sudbury.com.
“For 29 years, I had the privilege of working alongside Michael, a man whose passion, vision, and unwavering dedication to Sudbury were truly inspiring,” Homayed said. “Michael wasn’t just a partner; he was a mentor and a friend who taught me profound lessons about leadership, collaboration, and the power of community. His love for Sudbury was the driving force behind everything he did.
“Michael’s vision was not just about building enterprises; it was about fostering connections, creating opportunities, and inspiring others to see the possibilities in our community. He will be deeply missed, but his impact and the lessons he imparted will live on in the hearts of all who were fortunate to call him a friend and partner.”
A person who worked equally long with Mr. Atkins was Patricia Mills, the longtime publisher of Northern Ontario Business.
“I loved the man. He was an icon. He was generous, kind, passionate about his job and what he did, and he gave so many people opportunities,” Mills said.
Mr. Atkins also served as an advisor to Jeff Elgie, the president and CEO of Sudbury.com’s parent company Village Media, who also shared his thoughts on the man’s impact.
“I had the privilege of meeting him long before Village Media was founded, during his time leading the Northern Ontario Business Awards,” Elgie wrote. “When Village Media began, Michael became our first licence partner, wholeheartedly supporting and championing the vision that has since grown into a network of more than 130 licensed publications.
“Michael’s impact extended far beyond business. He deeply believed in the power of journalism, the strength of community, and the importance of serving our country. His values of integrity, compassion, entrepreneurship, and care resonated in everything he did, leaving a mark on all of us who were lucky enough to know him.
“He was a true visionary, a rare spark who reshaped communities, Northern Ontario, and countless lives. The world is undoubtedly a better place because of him, and his absence will be deeply felt.”
This is our tribute to Mr. Michael Atkins.
Back to the beginning
Former Northern Life newspaper publisher Michael Ross Atkins often played down his success as a series of misadventures or just plain luck.
"I have been lucky. Lucky to have landed in this fantastic city (Sudbury) through a string of almost comical misadventures in the fall of 1973," he wrote shortly after announcing he was closing his community newspaper and other publishing interests in Sudbury in March 2020 after 48 years.
Mr. Atkins often told this story of how he came to own Northern Life. He was living on Manitoulin Island and drove to the city to purchase carpeting for a building he owned in Little Current. The store owner, when learning he was in the journalism business, promised him a good deal on carpet if he took his struggling weekly off his hands.
"The moral of the story is that if you need carpet, buy it in Sudbury," he joked. (To Our City 100th anniversary publication, 1988.)
Even as his many business interests preoccupied him, he always considered himself a newspaper man. He was an entrepreneur with a social conscience before it became fashionable.
"Michael used his privileged role as a publisher for the common good," said his friend Narasim Katary.
"He played a leadership role in the transformation of Sudbury from a one-industry mining town to a thriving regional capital" in the late 1970s and 1980s. As well, when asked, he never declined to take on leadership roles, regionally, provincially, and nationally.
Mr. Atkins provided energetic leadership in Northern Ontario as well, as publisher of Northern Ontario Business, a monthly business newspaper.
He served as chair of the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT) and chair of the Laurentian University board of governors.
His influence was also felt as chair of the Canadian Business Press, president of the Association of Area Business Publications (USA), and director of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, and the Ontario Community Newspaper Association.
"His record of business undertakings coupled with multifarious volunteer efforts are a testament to his character," said Katary.
"Michael did not do these things to benefit others. He does not do these things to bolster his own self-worth. He did them because they were the right things to do. Doing the right thing and doing it right are in his DNA."
Finding his way north
Born in Montreal in 1948, Mr. Atkins was only four when his father, Eric, died prematurely. He grew up in Montreal and Toronto (though he has a longstanding family connection to Nova Scotia as well), raised by his mother, Jacqueline, a Ryerson professor, who was considered a pioneer in teaching business communications. When she died, Mr. Atkins established the Jacqueline Mr. Atkins Scholarship for Excellence in Professional Writing.
After attending Carleton University in Ottawa, like so many young adults in the early 1970s, he went on an adventure of discovery in Europe. His choice of transportation then and for many years after was a motorcycle.
When he returned to Canada, Mr. Atkins worked for the federal government in the newly amalgamated city of Thunder Bay where he made the mistake of criticizing the Ontario Opportunities for Youth job creation program in a 50-page report.
"I thought at the time, in my 23rd year, it was ground-breaking. Someone from The Globe and Mail got my report and did a story. I was fired for my groundbreaking insight a few days later," he recalled.
Shortly after, he landed a job as a reporter at the Fort William Times Journal. He had found his life's work but he left the paper after a disagreement with the editor over his coverage of urban renewal in Port Arthur. (In 1977, Mr. Atkins bought a competing newspaper, Lakehead Living.)
After a stint at The Manitoulin Expositor, he moved to Sudbury in September 1973. At the age of 25, he was editor and publisher of Northern Life.
At one time, Northern Life published three editions every week and was delivered to more than 40,000 homes providing serious competition for readership and advertising revenue for Sudbury's daily newspaper.
"The paper has always done its job well but, just as importantly, it was the mothership for so many other projects," wrote Mr. Atkins in March 2020.
In 1980, he launched Northern Ontario Business, a newspaper which bridged northern communities for the first time. This network laid the foundation for the annual Northern Ontario Business Award program in 1987.
Jim Gordon, who served 17 years as mayor of Sudbury, credits Northern Ontario Business and the annual awards for unifying Northern Ontario and giving it an identity.
"Michael has done more in his life than anyone, in his business and with his own personal drive to unite the North, and to make business people aware of their importance to the community and to the North in general."
Gordon met Mr. Atkins shortly after he purchased Northern Life.
"I was impressed. He was so bright-eyed. He asked insightful questions." This is high praise from a politician. The two men became friends and collaborators.
Gordon, who also served a term as an MPP, said he never asked Mr. Atkins why he did not get into politics himself because "he was so passionate about being in the news business. He gave every indication he could do more as a publisher. There is way more power in that. One story in the newspaper can make you or break you."
As Northern Life and Northern Ontario Business grew into Laurentian Publishing, Mr. Atkins developed a penchant for wearing suspenders and pinstripe suits. People who knew him as "Mike" now referred to him as Michael.
At one time Mr. Atkins owned more than a dozen community newspapers throughout Ontario including newspapers in Parry Sound, Sturgeon Falls and Nipigon.
In Sudbury, Laurentian published Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal, Northern Ontario Medical Journal, and Sudbury Living magazine.
The Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal, in particular, is a publication to highlight, economist and friend Dr. David Robinson said.
The journal was an important step in identifying the multi-billion-dollar Sudbury mining and supply services sector, which no one really understood at the time.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, no upper level of government recognized the powerhouse cluster of mining services business operating in the region.
While everyone was talking about how Sudbury needed to do more than mining, an economic study by Robinson showed that Sudbury was economically diverse: not away from mining, but around mining.
The Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal provided the evidence.
“They couldn't see it because there was no statistical evidence. But even more important, there were no organizations. There was no industry magazine. There were none of the things that would say, this is an organized cluster,” Robinson said. “There was no one to talk to.”
He didn’t know Mr. Atkins well at the time, but he called him up with an idea for a journal about the Sudbury mining cluster that Robinson’s work had identified.
“You're a publisher. You can do this,” Robinson said he told the publisher. “And [Atkins] said, ‘That's not going to make any money.’ Wet blanket, right there. I asked him if he could just fake it for nine months.
“So he built Sudbury Mining Solutions, the magazine. He put his own money into it. He found a terrific editor, Norm Tollinsky, who he worked with for years. He pulled in contacts from all around the community. He actually made me the chairman of the editorial board, although that was an honorary position for sure.
“But he made this happen, and it cost him money. Nobody else could have made this happen.
And six, eight months later, we had this monthly magazine that was publishing about the mining supply cluster in Northern Ontario, and literally making it known around the world.”
MineConnect (originally known as SAMSSA) was born out of that work.
Human capital
One former staff member said it seemed everyone who worked in journalism, advertising, marketing or graphic design in Sudbury worked for Laurentian at some time or another. Some started their careers there while others were given opportunities that only larger publishing companies normally can offer.
In 2004, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his ownership of Northern Life, Mr. Atkins was inspired to start the Community Builders Awards to honour leaders in Sudbury. Like the business awards, this much-anticipated annual event generated community pride.
For Mr. Atkins, the awards weren’t only about honouring local people who made a difference. He always had another angle, another wrinkle. In honouring those who had achieved, Mr. Atkins aimed to inspire those who had yet to achieve, who maybe needed just a little push. Seeing other people awarded for this vision and hard work was that push.
This would come as no surprise to Robinson, who shared an anecdote from his first meeting with Mr. Atkins that demonstrates the man’s insightful approach.
Robinson said he was at a university event and saw this man standing alone in the middle of the room in a pinstripe suit. Curious, Robinson went to speak with him.
“He, for some reason almost right away, started in talking about how communities in the North should be investing in human capital,” Robinson said. “That is, they should put some fraction of their budget to buying talent, to building up their capacity.
“That's actually a really clever analysis. Nobody does it, but it's right. The big shortage in Northern Ontario is human capital. It's just free brain power, because the way the corporate system works is to buy up a mill, take out the accounting and all the management capacity and centralize. Basically, it's lobotomizing. And he understood this, and I thought it was such an interesting observation.”
Public service
Mr. Atkins was one of the first community newspaper publishers to embrace digital media, and in 2003 launched Northernlife.ca. The website, which won provincial and national awards, was rebranded as Sudbury.com in 2016. It was purchased by Village Media in 2020.
His business interests expanded to Toronto and other markets. Laurentian Media Group became a diversified media company that included IT World Canada Inc., a print and digital trade group; CCMC Sports Group, an integrated sports marketing and publishing company; ConceptShare Inc., a web-based design collaboration business; Xpeerient Inc., an ICT outsourcing platform; and Adventus International Limited, a digital music business.
"I think Michael would like to be remembered most of all as an entrepreneur-of-the-publishing-business head with a public-service heart for all of Northern Ontario," said Katary.
His relationship with Mr. Atkins goes back to the late 1970s and the work they did to establish Sudbury 2001, a group of leaders from business, labour, government, academia, media, and other groups to find solutions to the city's dependency on Inco Ltd. and Falconbridge Ltd., and to stabilize the boom and bust cycle of a one-industry town.
This diverse group of men and women did not have a history of working together. As an outsider, Mr. Atkins did not have long-established loyalties, political entanglements or prejudices. He brought a fresh, perhaps even radical, perspective to issues at a time when Sudbury needed it most.
"Michael was one of a handful of people in Sudbury to have the foresight to comprehend the inescapable march of automation and mechanization in the mining industry and the resultant loss of jobs," said Katary, who was the long-range planner for Regional Municipality of Sudbury at the time.
"Michael and his co-founders conceived Sudbury 2001 as a means to match local needs with local resources so that sustainable development could go on beyond the life of an organization. What they achieved was the transformation of the mindscape of Sudbury. The fact that Sudbury, the mining town, has evolved into a mindful town is a testament to his vision matched with action."
A significant number of jobs lost in the mining sector were replaced by jobs in tourism, health, education, mining supply and services, and public administration.
In 1987, Mr. Atkins told a business group in Windsor eager to hear how Sudbury diversified its economy successfully, "We simply said if Sudbury was going to have a future, it was in our hands.... So we stopped whining and started working.” (Windsor Star, April 15, 1987)
One of the ideas that grew out of the Sudbury 2001 initiative was the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT). Established in 1995, NORCAT provides health and safety training and product development assistance to small, medium and large industrial enterprises.
Mr. Atkins served on the board since inception and was chair in 2009 when NORCAT opened its million-dollar expansion. He retired from the board in 2015, but remained a member of the advisory board. NORCAT has assisted in the development of more than 300 technologies and 150 products. Its Fortin Discovery Lab is one of the most sophisticated advanced manufacturing labs in the country.
Mr. Atkins served on Laurentian University's board of governors for about a decade and was chair from 2013 to 2016. During this time, the university raised nearly $70 million in private investment, invested more than $150 million in campus renewal including new residences, the Vale Living with Lakes Centre, the School of Architecture, the Indigenous Sharing and Learning Centre, and launched the Goodman School of Mines.
Mr. Atkins was particularly proud of the School of Architecture, the idea for which was born on a car ride with Robinson.
Through his publications and public work, Mr. Atkins had developed a name for himself as someone with vision, with ideas. In 2005, the mayors of six northern forestry communities, their economies limping thanks to the ongoing softwood lumber dispute with the U.S., invited Mr. Atkins to a meeting, hoping he could provide them some insights.
Mr. Atkins brought Robinson along and over the course of the long drive to Chapleau, the pie-in-the-sky idea of starting an industrial design school was born. The publisher seemed to have a knack for turning pie-in-the-sky into pie-in-the-oven.
The seed of the idea came from a comment by Robinson.
“One of the things I said is … you can't export value-added stuff unless you've got design capacity. In the North, we don't have any, so build a school of industrial design,” Robinson remembers saying. “That evolved into a school of architecture as something that was feasible.”
Terrance Galvin, the founding dean of the School of Architecture, also spoke of Mr. Atkins as a visionary.
More than just a school, Galvin said Mr. Atkins had a vision of the role an architecture school could take in the North’s resource-based economy, a “kind of place that would guard and celebrate the resources of timber and mining,” Galvin said.
He fought for the school, Galvin said, defended the school and was always interested in what the school had going on.
“When I came to town, Michael was absolutely in our corner as we started to develop the school and the curriculum,” Galvin said. “He was also there when we first did ice fishing huts, the first two years of the architecture school in 2014 and 2015. He would write notes and emails afterwards celebrating that he thought this was following the mission of the discussions that the community had in the North.”
Handsome, smart and confident, the publisher and digital media owner had the good manners not to brag. His "official" biography was less than 100 words.
Although he was enthusiastically involved with awards programs for business and community leaders, he discouraged people from nominating him for honours. They did not listen. Mr. Atkins was a recipient of the Paul Harris Fellow Award from the Rotary Club of Sudbury, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Laurentian University, and the prestigious Dr. Fred Sheridan Award from Cambrian College.
Saying goodbye
Michael Ross Atkins died Dec. 18 at Bridgepoint Hospital in Toronto after a battle with cancer. His family is exceptionally grateful to the palliative care team at Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital and Mr. Atkins’ wish, with gratitude, was that any donations in his honour be made to Bridgepoint or to Better Beginnings Better Futures in Sudbury.
Michael touched many lives. He will be deeply missed by family, friends, associates and colleagues (that also became dear friends), too numerous to mention by name.
There will be no obituary at this time, nor will a religious service or funeral be held, as per Mr. Atkins’ wishes.
A celebration of life will be held in Sudbury in May, around Mr. Atkins’ birthday.
And now we have come to the end of this tribute. As he was a publisher, a columnist and a community leader for so many years, It is only fitting, naturally, to give the last word to Mr. Atkins himself.
"I love Sudbury plain and simple. It’s not arrogant. Not like London, Ontario. You have the president of a mining company living next to a miner on the lake and everybody has a good time together.
“Sudbury needed me and my skillset, and it made me a man. I can write. I can connect people and thankfully I can delegate to folks more competent than me. The role of a publisher allows you to knock on any door, call a meeting, bring people around a table to figure out a solution to the big problems.
“Sudbury has infinite possibilities and potential and it held my attention from the day I set foot there."
And Greater Sudbury is all the better for it.
— with files from Vicki Gilhula
