Energy companies
CARRIE KELLY The Pipeline
Barb Jewers, campaign chair for the United Way 2010 campaign in Fort McMurray, rides a ‘cherry picker’ to suspend a community thermometer. The energy industry is a great help in ensuring the United Way in Fort McMurray raises millions of dollars each year — the highest per capita in the country.
Photo: Lindsey Walsh of The United Way of Fort McMurray.
Energy companies contribute to the economy by paying royalties and providing jobs, but they can also be a lifeline to communities by bestowing gifts in the form of needed services and infrastructure.
Grit Industries in Lloydminster, along with Grithog Sand Control Systems, made a $100,000 donation this year to the Thorpe Recovery Centre.
The donation will help bring the addictions recovery and treatment centre one step closer to completing its $16.25 million project of building a new facility near Blackfoot, Alberta. The new 72-bed complex is expected to open in the spring of 2011.
“We look to ourselves as being the little company with the big heart,” says Wayne King, president of Grit Industries Inc. and Grithog Sand Control Systems Ltd. “What we are trying to do is encourage other small companies to step up too.”
King was born and raised in the Lloydminster area and his children and grandchildren live in the area. In the past, Grit Industries supported many charity events, but realized that might be spreading its focus too thinly, he says.
“We want to move toward projects where the long-term value to the community is clear. We consolidated our efforts and are hoping it will have a long lasting benefit to the community.”
King believes the treatment centre is an important project, as entire communities can be affected by addiction issues at work or in the home.
Whether a company employs 50 people or 5,000, their donations are making a difference.
Oilsands giants Syncrude and Suncor are instrumental in making the Fort McMurray United Way campaign the most successful in Canada for four years in a row.
18 WESTERN CANADIAN PIPELINE | FALL 2010
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