By IAN ROSS
Name a mine development in Northern Ontario and chances are PowerTel Utilities Contractors have strung the wire and hooked up the power.
With almost 40 years experience building transmission lines and substations through deep bush, swamps and over rivers, the Sudbury area company is considered top specialists as ahigh voltage electrical contractors.
In recent times, the Whitefish-based company has been busy delivering power 270 kilometres up the James Bay Coast to De Beers' Victor diamond mine in Attawapiskat and connecting Brookfield Power's Erie Shores Wind Farm in southwestern Ontario to the grid.
Construction and development activity in the mining and renewable energy fields have kept the 90 employees of PowerTel on the move across Ontario and Canada.
"In the last 29 years, we have built more transmission lines and substations than all other Ontario entities combined," PowerTel president Wayne Gatien proudly boasts.
They've recently expanded to add a Vermont-based subsidiary to start bidding on U.S. contracts.
PowerTel grew out of Central Canada Construction, the company his father, Clary Gatien, started in 1953.
It was a single proprietorship operation until 1968 when he added business partner Herb Krueger and started PowerTel.
For the younger Gatien, there was no easy ride to the top.
He started at the bottom, digging fence posts and ditches for substation projects in the late 1960's before heading off to university and returning full-time in 1975. He became a registered Ontario lineman, but also drove trucks and floats, bulldozers and backhoes.
"I enjoyed that as much as climbing poles," says Gatien, who became company president when he bought out his father in 1987.
His first project as a general foreman was in the early 1980's was for Great Lakes Power building a 150-kilometre cross-country transmission line from north of Smooth Rock Falls, across the Abitibi River and the swampy Canadian Shield, to the Detour Lake gold mine.
In his travels, Gatien has worked in Nova Scotia and spent three years in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes in the early 1990s, working on a generating station project on the Cotahuasi River, south of the city of Arequipa.
Among Gatien's lasting memories is the many encounters with the Shining Path communist guerillas. On his dad's 65th birthday, they helicoptered into one guerilla-held village near Machu Picchu, the 'Lost City of the Incas.' A photograph captures the moment of the pair being surrounded by teenagers armed with sub-machine guns. "But they never seemed to bother us."
Gatien finds many of their jobs in the remote villages along the James Bay, they are revisiting, contracting with Five Nations Energy, to replace the diesel generators and small distribution systems with larger connections to the Ontario grid.
While the company have been long-time contractors for public and private utilities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland-Labrador, their home province hasn't been very fertile ground.
The so-called 'deregulation' of Ontario Hydro hasn't landed PowerTel any work.
"The Ontario government has a bad habit of sole-sourcing their grid construction to Hydro One," which Gatien calls the "highest cost contractor in Ontario."
Construction of a new transmission network between Manitoba and Sudbury is in the feasibility stage and pending line construction between the Bruce Nuclear generation station and Milton may yet out to public tender, but Gatien is not counting on it.
"Prior to that (deregulation), we averaged 28 jobs per year for Ontario Hydro. Since then we have not had one tender."
One area of business where they've really gained traction is PowerTraxx, their off-road, tracked utility vehicle company.
The former Montreal-based Hydraulic Industries Corporation was acquired in 2004 and relocated to Whitefish, about 30 kilometres west of the city. It's a separate outfit from PowerTel, listed under the parent PowerNorth Holdings Company.
Inside their 12,000-square-foot shop, they manufacture 10 models of rubber-tracked vehicles ranging from light and manoeuvrable two-seat personnel carriers, to heavy-duty 18-ton utility carriers.
Out back, there's about 400 acres of Canadian Shield to test drive the machines.
Gatien, who heads up both companies, says the HICO acquisition complimented their power line work.
"We're not just a manufacturer, we're a user," he says, second after their biggest dealer, Louisiana's Scott Power Line and Equipment Company.
The machines have found their way to Ecuador, Ireland and utility companies across North America.
PowerTraxx manufactures and assembles the carrier's steel frames, tracks and cabs, with a few modifications depending on customer's specifications.
Any further outfitting such as attaching crane booms, aerial buckets for line work, dump boxes, drilling devices and derrick rigs are left for individual manufacturers to install.
Their newest cabs have a ROPS (Roll-Over Protective Structure) rating of up to 80,000 pounds, meaning it's safety certified to protect the operator in case of a roll-over.
In the operator's seat, there's an easy-to-use electronic joy stick control that pushes the lumbering beast along at a steady 12 kilometres an hour clip.
To minimize environmental impact, the vehicles are rubber tracked to handle ground, rough terrain and icy conditions.
Rubber tracks are the norm in the utility industry, says Gatien.
"Most of the right-of-ways are easements over farmer's fields, private property or swamps. Either the MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources) or the property land owner doesn't want you tearing up the place."
Operations manager Pierre Champagne says their 15-H (15 ton-capacity) equipment carriers are easily the most popular. Customers are demanding bigger and more powerful vehicles all the time, especially the utility outfits.
He estimates tracked vehicle sales are rughly 50/50 between Canada and the U. S.
