On a trip to give a presentation on winning with diversity and inclusion in hiring, organized by Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce, our team decided to connect with some diversity and inclusion champions and take the temperature of diversity and inclusion in the city, especially after the wildfire and the economic downturn.
With the scars of the 2016 wildfire still visible in the woods overlooking the city of Fort McMurray, couple with the fall in oil prices that lead to an economic down turn, it is a miracle how the resilient people are rebuilding and welcoming people from all over the world who want to make Fort McMurray home.
Fort McMurray, or Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo as Fort McMurray and surrounding municipalities are known, is endowed with abundant oil riches. Besides resilience, there is another aspect which arguably the area is a leader in Alberta and Canada for but never mentioned – diversity. The diversity of the people of Fort McMurray per capita is arguable the largest in Alberta.
“It’s changed substantially over time and has become a very multicultural community over time. It is fantastic to see this change,” MLA for Fort McMurray-Conklin, Laila Goodridge, generously squeezing her warm family time to talk to Diversity Magazine late in the evening on hours notice.
The Executive Director for the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce, Alexis Foster, the business leader who invited us, and I must say the youngest Executive Director of a chamber of commerce in Alberta, weighs in the diversity conversation, “We are noticing that we live in a very multicultural community and lot of people don’t realize how diverse Fort McMurray is. So it’s really great to be able to highlight that right now. We are seeing more employers using that to their advantage and bringing in different cultures and giving them a comparative advantage”.
The sun has just risen above the Fort McMurray horizon. It was a bright sunny day inviting for a walk. A walk we took to see for ourselves how the wonderful people of Fort McMurray are thriving, especially being our very first time in Fort McMurray . It was in the morning of October 17, 2018, hours before our presentation.
Diversity Magazine team made its first stop in downtown, at the Multicultural Association of Wood Buffalo, where the wonderful Rodas Asres, and the exciting Luay Eljamal shared with us their programs, projects, and an endless list of events. It was interesting to know that they already offer cultural awareness training to interested organizations.
Luay expresses his love affair with Fort McMurray, “…there are many things to like about Fort McMurray, but my favorite is that we don’t have kind of pocket of people that exist in the community when it comes to Diversity. Your neighbour might be from India on one side, on another side from Korea. We don’t have kind of little India, little Korea. Because we are a small community, everyone is forced to integrate together. We kind of thrive off each other as we are a small community. Everyone is happy to help…”. They recommended us to the Local Immigration Partnership (LIP) meeting taking place that same morning on the other side of the city, at the spectacular MacDonald Island, in the magnificent Shell Place. They shared that they were hiring for an Executive Director, and other positions, before calling a taxi for us. Within 20 minutes, we were in the spectacular MacDonald Island.
The LIP meeting brought us face-to-face with organizations on the ground in Fort McMurray making a difference in diversity and inclusion, included but not limited to; Fuse Social, Waypoints, Keyano College, YMCA, ACFA, RBC, Reheboth Alliance, Welcome Centre, and the Municipality of Wood Buffalo. They passionately share the work they do and was happy to pose for a group photo.
We had the opportunity to learn about the new project on diversity and inclusion by the Municipality. The passionate Jamal-e-Fatima Rafat shared with us the Municipality’s project on November 16, 2018, to mark the United Nations International Day of Tolerance. Pick up a free T-shirt, fill in the blanks and share the photos. Fill in the sentence “I’m different because…”.
Jamal recommended us to cross over to the Homeless Outreach event taking place downstairs in the complex. On our way, we stopped for a brief chat with Kouame Adie, who shared the fantastic work of the francophone newcomer welcome centre, in French called, Centre d’accueil et d’établissement du Nord de l’Alberta, is doing to welcome 300 French speaking newcomers every year.
We finally arrived at the 8th annual Homeless Connect, where Social Program Adviser, Cait Evans, shared with us a one stop shop to support homelessness and low income people in Fort McMurray, as part of the Municipality’s policy to tackle homelessness.
Our trip ended with a presentation to the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce at Quality Hotel and Conference Centre, which is where we were destined, located at the other end of the city, the entrance to Fort McMurray from Edmonton. We had the opportunity to share our observations, spiced up with our experiences, research, and stories, on diversity and inclusion in Alberta. Our presentation let to a great conversation with some enthusiastic participants such as the supportive Vanessa Cheeseman from Alberta Labour based in Fort McMurray, the employee hunter Dawn McKenzie of Greenleaf Cleaners, and the wealth management gang of Arun Nair, Brian Wanner, and Roger Hamm. This left us with lots of take home for our next presentation.
Alexis Foster concludes with a passionate call, “Fort McMurray is a great place to live. There are lots of opportunities here. There are lots of opportunities that you may not get in other places in the country. We are very inclusive. There is so much diversity here. If anyone is ever considering a move here, I will definitely recommend it. We have lots of trails, we are surrounded by rivers…it is really a land of opportunities. Forget about the stereotypes, come out and see it for yourself”.
We could not have summarized our observations any better. Till next time, have a lovely week, and keep reading Diversity Magazine.
