BURNS LAKE -- There are geologists, surveyors, map makers, data analysts, clothing and tool outfitters, machinery merchants, truckers, but one of the hardest professions to dig up at Minerals North 2012 was a miner.
"I don't know if you've noticed this yet, but Minerals North is not a mining conference," said Don Bassermann. The retired longtime Prince George city council member was at the conference representing the Omineca Beetle Action Coalition, promoting northern B.C.'s diversity of industries and cultures. "This is a conference for economic development in general."
One of the exhibitors was Timberspan Wood Products from Prince George. Very little business comes to owner Joseph Cvenkel from the mining industry, he said, "but I've been able to connect with people I've been selling wood to for years."
And there is no ignoring the potential of the mining industry, he added, because he has sold timbers from his custom milling operation to Mount Milligan's early developers.
"We supplied quite a bit to them last fall," Cvenkel said. "They use some of it for building small bridges, for structures at the camp, we don't even know where they all used our wood."
Perry Cook of Galaxy Broadband said he sells Internet and cellular services to mining camps and small exploration companies but these trade shows also put his business in the eye of other industry professionals and rural residents.
Diversity is the need for every business involved in northern B.C. industrial professions, said Tam Jansen of Aberdeen Helicopters, one of several air service providers exhibiting at Minerals North. For Aberdeen, it was their first trade show in company history, a test of their new plan to market to a wider audience. She admitted she was nervous but excited to market the company in this new way.
"Forestry is the backbone of all of the helicopter companies around here, but we can't forget the opportunities in other industries," she said. "The landscape is changing, the environment is changing, commodity markets go through changes, so a business in the service sector as we are has to be adaptable. I am a firm believer in being good at a number of different things, in business and in life, so you can be useful for a number of people in different ways."
Organizers were aware of the cross-promotions happening on the floor of the Tom Forsyth Arena and the adjacent Burns Lake Curling Rink. It wasn't part of the plan, "more of a happy accident," according to event marketing co-ordinator Leone Creighton.
"I think a lot of industries are overlapping. It's natural to fit into more than one sector if you're involved in industry."
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