Awards Ceremony Celebrates
Outstanding Business Achievement
By Ted Jones

Entrepreneurial spirit and business excellence were celebrated at the annual Saint John Board of Trade Outstanding Business Achievement Awards held at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre.

Emceed by CTV Evening News Anchor and Saint John Native Steve Murphy, the November 29th awards ceremony featured a number of categories including Entrepreneurial Achievement, Emerging Enterprise and Business Excellence. 

As well, the Outstanding Business Achievement Awards also featured the Big Heart Award, which went to the Saint John YMCA- YWCA, the Chairman’s Award, received by the Atlantica Centre for Energy and the Young Entrepreneur award shared by Marc Robichaud and Leah Anderson.

In the Entrepreneurial Achievement category Mariner Partners received the gold while Commercial Tent Rentals & Sales was awarded the silver with the bronze being awarded to Handworks Gallery.

Mariner Partners (MPI) was founded by Gerry Pond, Bob Justason and Curtis Howe in 2003 for the purpose of performing consulting in the information and communications technology sector.

The companies 3 distinctive areas of business include Management Consulting, Professional Services and Software Development.

Commercial Tent Rentals & Sales have grown from humble beginnings to become the largest tent rental company east of Montreal employing over 40 people.

The company got its start back in the summer of 1985 when brothers Allen and Tim foresaw a business opportunity and pursed it.  Their father, an evangelist held meetings in a tent he owned and was often approached by people wanting to use it for various functions.

Seeing an opportunity, the brothers decided to buy a couple of small tents to service that market and as they say, the rest is history.

Operating as a commercial gallery specializing in fine art and crafts created in New Brunswick, Handworks Gallery employs 4 fulltime people and six part-time people between their uptown location in Saint John and their satellite location in Rothesay.
Under the direction of Shannon Merrifield, a trained French Chef, and Cliff Turner and established artist who purchased the uptown gallery 2001, the gallery has evolved into a branded, successful fine art gallery representing over 80 New Brunswick artists.
The Rothesay location was opened in May of this year.

In the Emerging Enterprise Category, Evolving Solutions took home the gold while, Workplace Health Outcomes Inc. received the silver with the bronze going to Workin’ Folk Art.
Established in 2001, Evolving Solutions specializes in high-end custom software development, web design e marketing, databases, web applications and Intranets.
The company’s flagship product, OfficeGateway is an online collaboration suite for small and medium sized businesses, that leverages the Internet to allow business teams to work both remotely and together, sharing schedules, documents and information.
Workplace Health Outcomes was established in 2005 by Tim Kelly  to assist organizations in the Atlantic Region to manger and lower their disability management cost, absenteeism, turnover and drug costs and to strengthen their retention  efforts.
Workin Folk Art was established in 2003 by owner Holly McKay whose unique artwork appealed to a wide range of people and sold quite well.

As her paintings grew in popularity, she began to look for alternative ways to reproduce her work in grater numbers without the price of an original piece. That led to the introduction of  greeting cards and prints and T Shirts featuring her work.
In the Business Excellence category, the gold went to CenterBeam Inc. with T4G taken the sliver and the bronze going to University of New Brunswick BookStore (Saint John Campus).

CenterBeam is an Information Technology outsourcing company that provides enterprise level computer infrastructure services to mid sized organizations.
Established  in 1999 in California, the company currently has  180 employees , 120 of which  are located in its North American Solution Centre here in Saint John.

T4G was established in 1995 by a group of seasoned IT professionals to provide fully integrated solutions in business to business and business to consumer situations that span strategic planning, infrastructure deployment, application development, interface design and communications and multi channel management and business intelligence areas.

The University of New Brunswick Bookstore has grown in leaps and bounds from its humble origins as a tiny space in the Ward Chipman Library that operated as a satellite of the Fredericton to become an autonomous bookstore in 1986.
In 2005, the University of New Brunswick Bookstore was the recipient of the Libris Campus BookSeller of the Year Award, a national award presented by the Canadian Booksellers Association.

CommunityLens extends its congratulations to all the companies and organizations on their respective awards.