Hugging itself to the red sandstone cliffs near the eastern point of Prince Edward Island’s crescent profile, the community of Souris has ever been tied to the sea.
First settled by Europeans in the early 1700s, farming, fishing and their associated industries have been the major employers of Souris’ people ever since.
But like so many other small communities in Atlantic Canada, this one has had to learn quickly how to survive in a world that seems to change faster every year.
The most recent challenge?
The day in 2011 when Newfoundland and Labrador-based seafood company Ocean Choice International (OCI) closed its lobster processing plant in the town, putting more than 300 people out of work, in a community of only about 1,100.
Souris Deputy Mayor Denis Thibodeau vividly recalls the sense of helplessness that permeated in the community for a good long while after that announcement was made.
“It was quite significant, quite devastating. Being on council, you receive the news and then here are these people who are not going to be employed, they’re not spending money in your stores,” said Thibodeau.
The empty shell of the 30,000-square-foot building was left to remain at the heart of the community and stood to remind locals of what they’d lost. To make matters worse, the province and OCI sued each other and battled in the courts for years.
Eventually, the province agreed to write-off almost $8 million in outstanding loans OCI owed taxpayers in exchange for the company making a lump sum payment of $1.5 million and turning over the keys to the fish plant, which it did.
But it was Thibodeau and his fellow board members on the Souris Harbour Authority Inc. (SHAI) that took possession of those keys. Thibodeau is the chief executive officer of SHAI, in addition to being on council.
While OCI and the provincial government had been working out their grievances, SHAI had been negotiating a deal to take over ownership of the fish plant. It finally did so in early December of 2014.
It currently rents storage space in the plant’s freezers to local fishermen and a California-based biotech firm called the Centre for Aquaculture Technology Canada has leased a third of the building. The board is currently still working on a deal to lease the remaining empty third.
Taking possession of the plant was a huge moment for the community, said Gerry Grant, a business development consultant who has worked with SHAI since its inception.
“Somehow people started recognizing that we could do it on our own, not necessarily with outside companies — but that we needed to pull our bootstraps up ourselves. That’s really why we saw it as an opportunity,” said Grant.
But the OCI plant acquisition was not the first time SHAI has flexed its development muscles in its small town.
The harbour authority was originally founded in 2006 after Transport Canada started the process of divesting itself of all but a few of the nation’s busiest ports. The port in Souris was early on that particular chopping block.
After the federal and provincial governments failed to hammer out a deal, Transport Canada turned to the municipality. The SHAI was formed by a group of local residents with support from the town council to manage the port property. They were granted $20 million from the federal government, some of which had to be used on necessary upgrades and the rest had to be invested so SHAI could operate on the interest.
Right from the onset they knew they had to start looking into buying land, said Grant.
“The port doesn’t make money and the object is to have a sustainable, viable company and the port certainly wasn’t going to do that for us,” he said.
“So the decision by the board was to move to land-based development at which we can make money and build up a business that way. Which is exactly what we’re doing.”
“If we’d just sat on our grant money, eventually that would have run out.”
Since 2006 the SHAI has purchased 13 properties along the town’s waterfront for industrial and business development.
It also built a subsidiary business called Eastern Cold Storage, which is adjacent to the former OCI fishplant and provides freezing capacity to local berry growers and more than 300 fishermen. It also built a large vessel storage facility that rents space to more than 42 owners.
It has also taken over ownership of the Souris Lighthouse from the federal government and turned it into a tourist shop attraction, as well as building a waterfront restaurant, operated by a leaser, in a vacant school.
SHAI also has interest in live lobster storage, ice and has constructed a wind turbine to help cut power costs at Eastern Cold Storage.
“There’s always something that comes up and we’re always looking forward to the next project we can do to enhance our earnings over a long period of time and also create some employment in the process,” said Thibodeau.
They haven’t replaced all the jobs lost when OCI left, he added, but the port authority’s holdings have brought work, seasonal and full-time for at least 50 people with more on the way.
“We’re very happy with how everything turned out,” said Thibodeau.
As for the SHAI’s future, Thibodeau added that the board is focused on finding a tenant to take the rest of the space in the former OCI plant, but beyond that he couldn’t say just yet.
They’ll have to wait and see what opportunities present themselves.
Photos submitted by the Souris Harbour Authority.
