Travelling through Prince George, our advisory council member Mona Forster snapped this photo at Summit Insurance.
We called Summit partner Hugh Delwo, whose family has owned and operated the business for the past 16 years, to learn what it signifies to him.
"What it signifies for us is support for the local economy,” Hugh told us. “We want to support the economy, the future growth of BC, through the things we have at hand that we can produce ourselves rather than selling off to foreign countries and have them get the benefits.”
The words “This business supported by timber dollars” are literally true in the case of Summit, it turns out. Hugh told us that before his family owned it, its predecessor had a hand in constructing the first specialized logging insurance program in the 1970s.
Today, he regards Summit’s business as being dependent on a whole range of activities connected with the timber value chain, as well as mining and supporting activities.
What’s the future of British Columbia from his perspective?
“It’s natural resources, because without that I don’t think BC or Canada as a whole could survive just on technological research. It’s the nature of BC, it drives the economy. I believe the figure is 78 per cent of revenue comes from the northern communities based on natural resources.”
At the same time, Hugh told us that technology is ever evolving, with greater awareness today of how to preserve the lands where resource activities take place.
Hugh figured the sticker had been in the window at Summit for a good dozen years and was taken at face value by customers and passersby. “We’ve never even been asked about it, until you called.”
More stickers like this, displayed at supportive businesses like Summit, could be a way for businesses to make known that they recognize the value of British Columbia’s intensive, pervasive supply chain of goods and services enabling resource benefits to flow.
