Over the Northern Horizon

With a lot of land, comes a lot of space to innovate and produce

By David Quinn

The variety that is manufacturing isn’t just in the mix of sectors or products that companies offer, there’s the variety in geography of where these companies are located, too!

Often in Canada, though – especially for those folks living in the more densely populated southern areas) our sense of this country’s geography tends to be viewed in an east-west orientation. We tend to lump the higher-latitude reaches of our provinces (and the Territories) into a singular area – the North – if we consider them at all.

Well, there might not be the large urban centres, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t manufacturing and innovation taking place. With improving access to broadband and transportation connections, the ‘where’ and ‘when’ of manufacturing are becoming somewhat less of an issue than they used to be.

Let’s meet a few of the folks who are making a go by making things just over the northern horizon.

Paul Bros. Nextreme
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

Founded in 1978, Yellowknife-based Paul Bros. Nextreme is the second business by the Paul family and continued the family’s roots in welding and metal fabrication. With a 12,000 square-foot shop space, including a dedicated machine shop with CNC lathes, mills, plasma cutters, rollers, brakes, and saws, the company services the entire Northwest Territories from its home base.

Supporting the extensive range of products and services, the company employs a diverse team including welders, ironworkers, millwrights, pipefitters, machinists, industrial painters, and engineers, and maintains COR and CWB certifications. Regular training is also provided to ensure the workforce is up-to-date with the latest standards, methods, and equipment. 

All the company’s directors are Northwest Territories-born-and-raised and are from the three recognized Indigenous groups: First Nations (Dené), Métis, and Inuvialuit. Paul Bros. Nextreme is not just in the North, they’re of the North and for the North in everything they do.

Beyond the welding and fabrication services, Paul Bros. Nextreme serve the region through the manufacture and distribution of welding supplies and equipment, painting and coating supplies, steel supplies and PPE, ensuring the safety of their partners and neighbours, and working to keep costs down by bringing production as close to site as possible.

RCFarmArm
Clairmont, Alberta

Growing up on a farm in Alberta’s Peace Country, Vincent Pawluski always loved to tinker. Whether it was the Fisher Price boat that he hot-rodded with a small motor and propellor, or the remote-controlled drill stem that was a science fair project for Vincent and his friends. 

The tinkering continued into adulthood with the spare-time development of remote-controlled devices of all sorts, one of which – the RCFarmARM – has become almost an overnight sensation winning over farmers across the country and beyond.

Pawluski’s career took him away from the farm he and his father owned and operated, but the agriculture ‘bug’ never left Vincent or his family as they travelled across the continent in an RV for eight months before coming back to Alberta and settling in Okotoks.

“We always felt most comfortable near some type of ag activity. I needed that in my life to give me balance and purpose,” says Pawluksi. 

After his sabbatical roadtrip and landing in southern Alberta, Pawluski ended up working in construction before getting a job with Seed Hawk, which pointed him back in the direction of his roots in agriculture. From Okotoks, the family moved back to the Peace Country to farm once again (and continue the tinkering and building).

Winning its first award in 2021 at Canada’s Farm Show, the RCFarmArm is now an on-farm business where Pawluski and his family produce and market the patent-pending wireless tractor control system. It’s just like the Fisher Price toys, but on a much grander scale!

RCFarmArm was developed to reduce the number of times a farmer needs to transition between the tractor cab, the implement behind, and the countless injury hazards between them. 

“You seem to always be running around the tractor and the machine to shut it off, especially when something goes wrong and there’s two of you. Sometimes the second person doesn’t exactly know what button to press because they’re not all laid out the same, or the keys are on the column or the corner post behind you. With RCFarmArm, if something goes wrong, you just calmly press the button,” Pawluski explains.

Unlike other remote-control systems, RCFarmArm doesn’t require any alterations to the tractor itself. It’s designed to overlay or sit atop the existing controls and works its magic through mechanical ‘fingers’ that physically manipulate the switches and other controls of the tractor. It can be installed with a couple of screws and taken off without any trace of it being there.

Pawluski says that traditional manufacturing processes would be prohibitive to the development and constant re-jigging of the product, but that commercial-scale 3D printing is able to meet the business’ demands and produce even the most intricate assemblies and components. And the cool thing? It’s all being done on the Pawluski family farm outside of Clairmont.

Vermette Wood Preservers
Spruce Home, Saskatchewan

In 1973, brothers Archie and Gil Vermette went into business together with the goal of honouring and supporting their parents while making life better for their respective families – something that was at the heart of their family’s Métis heritage.

Growing up, the brothers worked on the family farm but also helped with the family’s forestry business, all the while building their own business. As adults, each brother pursued separate careers, but they still maintained the forestry business. In 1973, they purchased land in Spruce Home, Saskatchewan, along with a log peeler and loader, marking the start of Vermette Wood Preservers (VWP).

The company started out treating agricultural fence posts using the dipping process, which treated the posts using a blended solution of creosote and diesel. But the wood preservation industry continued to innovate and improve, and VWP kept up by updating their operations in 1982 and constructing the facility that continues to operate today on the company’s 26 acres of land.

Today, the company produces a wide variety of treated wood products (and untreated by-products) that meet the needs of customers across North America. Archie’s son Perry assumed management and ownership of the business, keeping it a family operation.

Under Archie’s leadership, VWP expanded their product offering with treated product lines including fence posts, utility poles, wood pilings, bridge timbers, pipeline blocking and sleepers, plus custom treating, the company’s products are found in applications that keep the lights on, the roads and rails connected, structures stable and level, livestock and wildlife safe, and homes and businesses fuelled.

From the beginning, Archie and Gil committed VWP to exclusively using an oil-based wood preservative called Penta. As an oil-based treatment, Penta isn’t water-soluble, which means that wood products treated using this method won’t leach harmful products (like arsenic) into the ground water. And the best part? The oil used as part of the Penta treatment process is biodiesel, a biodegradable and renewable product manufactured from biomass like plant-based oils and animal fats.