Defining A Place

FTLComm - Tisdale - Saturday, April 13, 2002

The outstanding success of Tisdale's "AAA" midget hockey team the "Trojans" has forced us to reexamine the community that supported and developed the team that went to the Western Canadian championship in Manitoba and will make their appearance April 22 in Bathhurst New Brunswick at the four team Air Canada Cup vying for the Canadian championship. In itself this is a remarkable achievement. Now being one of the four top hockey teams in the country, but we also have to realise that this makes Tisdale one of the four top hockey towns in the country. As a part of local and national television coverage of the event TSN needs to do a community profile to let everyone know about Tisdale. This lead to a really interesting meeting Friday morning in the town council chambers to determine just what it is that Tisdale is and what is it that we would like others to know about Tisdale. Loran Forer, who has served this community as a coach, on ice hockey official, recreation activist, an executive of minor hockey and a prominent business man, explained that he saw the remarkable integration of Tisdale's recreation, education, business and services within the community working so closely together that this almost defines what Tisdale is all about. No one factor produces a winning hockey team or a successful community but rather the combination and cooperation between all parts of that community.

Like Loran Forer, Dwight Olson, the community's recreation director, chose to live in Tisdale and raise his family here. Working in recreation he also is a hockey coach and proud father of several excellent athletes. Dwight pointed out that Tisdale is a family place where the quality of life is well above most places. Though Tisdale has many business and career opportunities, it is the health care, recreation, low crime rate, shopping and superior educational system that makes Tisdale such a top rated place.

Roger Armstrong has spent his whole life living and working in Tisdale and said that though it is great for us sitting around the table to realise what a great place Tisdale is to live and raise our families, for those people looking for work, a place to invest, or set up a business, they need to know that Tisdale is a dynamic industrial marketplace. Manufacturing and business opportunities that include and are completely independent of the positive high potential agriculture of the area. More than once he explained the prospects of the future with the world's largest Kimberlite deposit only thirty miles away and one of the world's largest deposits of high grade industrial oils only sixty miles away. Roger pointed out that Tisdale's demand for skilled labour has not been filled for years as local industries are all short of workers. But he also explained that it is not potential that makes Tisdale a good place to be, but it is the here in now of what is happening, with the terminals all up and running, the commercial hog development, the immediate development of the ethanol plant and coupled with this is the fact that per capita, Tisdale's construction rate is higher than Calgary Alberta.

Doug Hays who is a relative newcomer to Tisdale as the town's promoter for commercial projects was impressed with the enthusiasm in the committee as he discovered that the same theme kept recurring as each member voiced their opinion and spoke so eloquently about the merits of this community that is now clearly more than an agricultural service centre. Theresa Rottenbucher grew up in Tisdale and moved away, then like so many, she and her young family came back to Tisdale and would live no other place. Theresa is the office manager for the Chamber of Commerce and this gives her a wide view of the community and what makes it a place of continued growth and development. She explained that the recreation opportunities around Tisdale were enormously important to living here with the tourist adventure farms South of town which were discovering the huge attraction these facilities have and what they offer visitors. She said that the close proximity of the lakes to the South with such excellent water skiing and the best sports fishing in North America only thirty minutes away in Nipawin, make Tisdale a choice location for people who enjoy the outdoors. This outdoor recreation is year round with things to do in the environment twelve months of the year. Perhaps the most important thing Theresa pointed out was that the RecPlex is perhaps a key to Tisdale's success. The RecPlex, a combined sport, community meeting place and education centre is a model which is being copied by communities not just here in Canada, but Japanese communities have came here to see how the operation works so that they too can produce integrated facilities in their own environment. Clearly, the RecPlex exists in Tisdale because it is a model of what is happening industrially in the community. Agriculture, manufacturing and large scale integration of a range of activities are being mixed together in Tisdale to produce an enhanced correlation economic base. The communities manufacturers and corporations are involved in the community's recreation and the educational and health system are vitally involved in the economic activities, hence producing a complex living and play atmosphere that is safe, secure and responsible allowing a family to have the kind of life that leads to success and fulfillment