The Real Glue

In 2012, will be celebrating the 9th anniversary of our Community Builders Awards, which we started in 2003 to celebrate our 30th year of publishing Northern Life newspaper in Sudbury. We felt the mission of our awards program, “to discover and honour residents of Greater Sudbury who inspire the rest of us to reach our potential,” summed up what we had learned as publishers.

Michael Atkins Laurentian Publishing

I’m not a fan of celebrating anniversaries, well wedding anniversaries would be an exception if you have any intention of staying married, but generally I don’t believe anyone should get points for surviving or for that matter enduring.

We get points for passion, for empathy, for excellence, for love and for courage.

Community living and the civility that often builds it, is a diminishing dynamic in our extraordinarily urbanized world.

We are lucky in Sudbury. We have the size and intelligence to be a global player, and a size that allows us to remain connected to one another.

The technology we use to be connected in community is quite different than the technology we use as traders. Community is found at parent-teacher meetings, Tim Hortons outlets, hockey arenas, baseball diamonds, soccer pitches, high schools, our ethnic clubs and halls, hospitals, council meetings, shopping malls, churches,  beaches, and the simple statistical reality that if you do much of anything in a town this size you will see friends and family around town because you can’t avoid them.

That said, what makes Sudbury different is not its size but its quality.

It is extraordinary.

I think it comes from our shared experience of risk (economic and social), diversity (historical immigration from around the world and the country), and the exhilaration of living in Northern Ontario.

In the last five years we have found and recognized teachers and students, principals and politicians, health-care workers and sportsmen, artists, and business people who have lifted us up with their strength and vision and compassion.

Tonight, we celebrate the best among us, the people whose sheer determination and focus is an example to us all.

We take this one moment each year to celebrate the riches of our community, and in so doing re-energize ourselves to make our own contributions.

Thank you for coming and making this event so special to the people who make Sudbury a better place to live.

Michael Atkins