Saskatchewan produces top corporate talent

The path to the big time often starts small, and sometimes on a windswept Prairie farm

By Gordon Jaremko

December 01, 2009

What is it about thinly populated places like Saskatchewan? The royal jelly that feeds great careers is abundant where making a living is notoriously hard. Five of six recipients of Alberta Oil’s first annual C-Suite Stars awards [p. 29] are from the Prairies or small centers.

Saskatchewan roots have always been common in the drivers of Canada’s economic locomotive, from entrepreneurs to regulatory agency chiefs. Among energy industry pillars with Prairie pedigrees are Daryl (Doc) Seaman, Ken Vollman, Gerald Maier, Doug Baldwin, Bob Peterson, J.R. (Bud) McCaig, Bill Mooney, Murray Edwards, Hank Swartout and Charlie Fischer.

Bonnie DuPont bumped into the shared heritage all along her route from a Swift Current farm to Enbridge Inc.’s executive floor and a breakthrough term as the first woman president of the Calgary Petroleum Club. “I was struck by the number of people in senior positions who come from small towns, the Prairies and farms.”

She has a theory. “After you left the farm, nothing that you did was as hard as farm work. Going to school was easy by comparison. Working in an organization wasn’t like slogging away out in the fields and barns.”

Rural and small-town upbringings on farming or industrial frontiers forge character – the right “values,” DuPont says. “In part it’s the work ethic, the feeling that you always have to give an honest day’s work. It’s just required in farming. Do anything less and you’ll have nothing to harvest.”

She expands on her theme as a role-model speaker at events such as a Women of Influence luncheon sponsored by Deloitte. “Farm life means quite literally reaping what you sow and it means not always having complete control of the situation. It means continuous preparation, but it also means the tremendous satisfaction of seeing the direct results of your labor, the sense of community that comes from neighbors helping each other,” DuPont says. “It was on the farm that I learned about the bedrock values that underpin a successful life: integrity, personal accountability, resiliency, involvement in the community and productivity.”

Instincts formed in the country transfer well into urban industry. DuPont describes strong firms as consciously collective successes where employees know how their livelihoods intersect. “High performance is not a solo act.” Rejecting popular caricatures of industrial and business leaders as prima donnas puts her in good company. Qualifications for rising to the top include an ability to set aside a big ego and work in groups as the only way to have enough expertise for tasks that simultaneously raise issues in multiple fields from geology to finance and law. All of the Alberta Oil C-Suite Stars executives emphasize they are team members, not stars.

“This is not a mechanistic model. This is an organic system. In fact, it sounds a little bit like a farm,” DuPont says. “On the farm, you don’t succeed in isolation. Your fate is tied to the fortunes of your family and friends, the health of your livestock and fields, the wisdom of your parents and grandparents.”