Sean Petrus has helped lift more than 10 long-term drinking water advisories across Northwestern Ontario.

As a senior project manager with Colliers Project Leaders, Sean has overseen the construction of water treatment plants in First Nations communities—many who’ve gone years without drinkable water.

“I love making positive changes in the region I grew up in,” says Sean, who is from Thunder Bay.

It’s not only water treatment plant projects that he’s skilled at managing. He’s been in charge of the construction of schools, healthcare centres, housing projects, administrative facilities, and wastewater treatment plants. 

“I make sure that the best engineers and contractors are retained to ensure that capital projects are built on time and on budget, while overseeing the entire construction process on behalf of the client,” he says.

“Most of the credit, however, goes to the First Nations who retain me to manage these projects,” Sean says. “They’re out there advocating for, and coordinating, these developments.” 

It’s a far cry from Sean’s original career ambitions. 

He studied business administration at Lakehead with plans to work in the financial sector, possibly as a stockbroker.

At the end of his third year, though, Sean decided to switch to civil engineering.

“I couldn’t see myself working in downtown Toronto. I wanted to be in Northwestern Ontario, so I decided that civil engineering would be a good fit.”

His first venture into this area was as a project manager with Frecon Construction, an Ottawa company that had contracts with the Department of National Defence at the armed forces base at Petawawa, Ontario.

After a year in Ottawa, Sean headed to the Alberta oilsands where he was a field engineer on a multi-billion-dollar construction site, where he oversaw the construction of heavy civil earthworks projects including the building of roads, tailing dams, and mechanically stabilized earth retaining walls.

“We moved a lot of dirt,” he laughs.

Since then, Sean has tried his hand at an even broader range of endeavours.

He’s been a quality control coordinator at the Detour Lake Goldmine north of Cochrane, Ontario, and managed large-scale drilling projects to support the construction of 407 toll roads in southern Ontario, rapid transit projects, and Toronto’s new east-west subway line.

“I was part of a team that designed geotechnical instrumentation to monitor the subway line to make sure that, as they tunnelled through the earth, the existing infrastructure didn’t collapse,” Sean says. “This is when I really got into project management and decided it was what I wanted to do with my life.”

While racking up engineering experiences, Sean also managed to finish his remaining Lakehead business courses and received his Bachelor of Administration degree in 2016.

Every project that he takes on comes with unique challenges.

“In 2019, I was fortunate enough to be able to work with the Shoal Lake #40 First Nation on their drinking water project,” he says. 

It required a complicated water distribution system—several kilometres of marine water lines had to be installed on the bottom of the lake. The outbreak of the COVID pandemic not long after construction began added to the difficulties, and extensive safety protocols had to be developed.

Despite this, the Shoal Lake water treatment plant won the Ontario Public Works Project of the Year award for Small Municipalities and First Nations Communities —and Sean was delighted.

“Collaborating with First Nations on meaningful projects in Northwestern Ontario is what I find most fulfilling,” he says.

by Donna Faye

Anything can be collectable, according to Cameron MacDonald (BAdm’17), the owner of The Cave Collectables in Orillia.

Books, records, cards, and plush, for example.

“It’s up to you,” says Cameron. “Anything that is valuable or sentimental to the collector. Other people may see a monetary value, but to you as a collector, that shouldn’t matter.”

Cameron’s passion started when he was a child, collecting Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

“It began as something I did with my dad. He would take us to card shows at convention centres.”

Although some cards sell for millions of dollars, Cameron says, as a kid, you don’t think about that.

Eventually, he started to dream of opening a collectables store one day.

Born in Brampton, Cameron spent his teenage years at Wasaga Beach, which he considers home. After high school, he went to George Brown College in Toronto for Pre-Business and Advanced Financial Planning.

After graduation, he transferred to Lakehead’s Orillia campus, allowing him to be a little closer to home and family.

“It’s a great school,” Cameron says. “As a transfer student, I was only there a year and a half, but that time was meaningful, and I made lifelong friends.”

Lakehead built on his pre-business studies and had a significant influence on his next career steps and would allow him to land the kind of fulfilling work he was looking for.

“The people and atmosphere at Lakehead drove me to not give up on pursuing the position of financial advisor as a career option.”

One week before convocation, Cameron interviewed for a financial advisor position at Scotiabank, a five-minute drive from Lakehead. They offered him the job on one condition – that he finish his degree. He graduated in the spring of 2017 and started working in May. He was there for four and a half years and was promoted to senior financial advisor.

But during his university studies and career in banking, Cameron never lost sight of his childhood dream.

“I always kept the big picture in mind,” he says. “I started with savings I could put together, and now it’s just mind-blowing when I look at what we’ve accomplished.” The store opened at its downtown Orillia location in October 2021 to both in-person and online shopping.

The Cave has something to offer customers of all ages looking for either vintage or modern collectables, including NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, the latest arrival on the collectables scene.

While 70 per cent of their customers are adult collectors, they do see younger customers as well.

“A lot of kids come in. We teach them about grading and starting a collection. And we give them branded merchandise like stickers.” 

Cameron says his hope for other students like him is to see that anything is possible. “If you’re passionate about something, don’t give up.”

To learn more visit thecavecollectables.com.

Katie Lemieux has been drawing ever since she was old enough to hold a Crayola. 

Today, the Thunder Bay artist is an internationally recognized sculptor who’s participated in group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe, and South Korea.

“When I was a kid, I was attracted to sculpture after seeing marble angels beside gravestones,” Katie says. “They seemed so sad and mysterious – I wanted to know why they were always in cemeteries.” 

After high school, she enrolled in Lakehead’s fine arts program where she was influenced by the divergent styles of 19th-century American sculptor Edward V. Valentine and 20th-century Swiss surrealist sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

“Their work made me realize that I could combine traditional and contemporary strands of art and create my own narrative,” she says.

Kasia Piech, a Lakehead ceramics instructor, also spurred Katie’s artistic development. It was through Piech that Katie was able to travel to China’s celebrated Jingdhezhen Facility to complete a six-week artistic residency in 2015.

“It was the first time I’d been to such a vastly different culture and one that was so storied and skilled in ceramics,” Katie says. “It made me want to participate in this international conversation.”

Later, at a workshop in Croatia arranged by Piech, Katie met the head of the ceramics department at the University of Wisconsin’s Peck School of the Arts. 

At his encouragement, Katie completed a Master of Fine Arts at Peck before returning to Thunder Bay in 2019. She’s now fully embraced the life of an artist and is buoyed by the critical success her work is enjoying. 

One of her main sources of inspiration comes from her second job as personal support worker – a career she chose because of her fascination with paraverbal communication, as well as to supplement her income.

Paraverbal communication is a term used to describe ways of communicating without words.

“There’s not as much awareness of non-verbal communication as there should be,” Katie says. “People who are deaf, hearing impaired, or autistic express themselves using body language and facial expressions.” 

The theme of paraverbal communication runs through her current solo exhibition at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery called Ending Up.

“It’s a two-part show that explores non-verbal communication by arranging my sculptures in certain ways to express the idea of conversation without words.”

The exhibition features headless figures that call to mind both ancient Greek statuary and Giacometti’s elongated and unsettling sculptures. Her work is described by the Art Gallery as “multi-gendered and androgynous clay subjects that are vehicles for a complicated range of human expression.”

“I wanted to present something that wasn’t particularly pretty or aesthetic,” Katie says, “because confronting things that are challenging can open up potential.”

The show is also described “a voyeuristic look into the studio of a sculptor” where small finger-like objects and figurines jostle each other on wooden shelves.

“If you could go back in time to the studios of artists like Giacometti and Michelangelo, you’d see crowded dusty spaces,” Katie says. “I wanted to give viewers the chance to see behind the curtain.”

She has been overwhelmed by the reaction to her work.

“The support that Thunder Bay has shown for this exhibition has been amazing,” Katie says. “And after two years of quiet from the pandemic, it’s great to see people talking again.”

Ending Up will be on display at the Thunder Bay art gallery until June 19, 2022.

A love of Russian literature influenced Tamer Ibrahim’s (MA'10) life in an unexpected way.

Tamer, who has a BA in English from York University and an MA in English from Lakehead, was especially fascinated by writer Leo Tolstoy’s explorations of the privileged world of the Russian aristocracy and the light he shed on the plight of the country’s peasant farmers, who barely eked out a living.

“I was attracted to literature’s ability to interpret sociological environments – like various social classes,” Tamer (MA’10) says. “It relates to what I do today.”

He joined the Laidlaw Foundation seven years ago – a Canadian grant-maker that aspires to create a society where all youth have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. 

“I work with a group of champions interested in the well-being of young people,” Tamer says. “When the systems designed to support them aren’t working, they ask tough questions and then work to change them.”

Since 2019, Laidlaw has been helping youth negatively affected by the justice, education, and child-welfare systems become healthy and engaged citizens. Often, these young people are struggling with racial, economic, and social barriers.

Tamer says, for example, there’s a lack of comprehensive data and knowledge-sharing between organizations that operate in the child welfare sector. 

“At one of our roundtable discussions, experts told us that young people would deliberately come into conflict with the law to escape group homes with toxic, or even dangerous, living environments. That needs to change.” 

Tamer’s compassion for youth who’ve had the deck stacked against has defined his career.

“Fresh out of Lakehead I was hired by UforChange – a grassroots youth-led organization in the Toronto area that offered fashion, film, and photography workshops to newcomer youth,” he says. As the Operations & Community Development Manager, Tamer helped developed UforChange’s fundraising strategy and prepared grants. “I also managed special projects with incredible partners like Google Canada, Artscape, and the Inspirit Foundation.”  

Currently, Tamer is Laidlaw’s Youth Collective Impact Manager and has shifted his focus from assisting individual young people to tackling systemic barriers faced by youth across Ontario. The project is a partnership between the Laidlaw Foundation, the McConnell Family Foundation’s Innoweave initiative, and the Government of Ontario.  

“We want to decrease youth homelessness and increase employment and graduation rates,” he says.

How exactly does the Laidlaw do this?

They team up with community groups and organizations who’ve identified a problem, such as high drop-out rates among people of colour in a certain city or region in Ontario. 

Laidlaw then works with this local coalition made up of people with lived experience and members of school boards, mental health centres, community centres, and anti-racism groups to design an integrated strategy to improve the graduation rate. Laidlaw also supports these coalitions through coaching, workshops, and funding.  

In his spare time, Tamer is the Board Chair of the For Youth Initiative, a non-profit organization that enables Black, racialized, and newcomer youth to navigate systemic barriers, plan for the future, and access the resources and mentorship they need to thrive. 

It’s another way that Tamer makes sure that he is always there for young people who need someone in their corner.

Singer, actor, dancer…destroyer of invasive weeds? 

Julia Johnston is not a typical university student, but that’s what makes her such a dynamic member of the Lakehead Orillia campus.

“My entire family sang in church and community choirs,” she says. “My dad – who we lost to cancer in 2014 – and my mom taught us that music and the arts are powerful things.”

Julia took their lessons to heart. She attended the Randolph College for the Performing Arts, a Toronto Theatre School, and then founded two performing arts schools of her own.  

“For the past 12 years, I’ve been offering vocal and drama training to all ages, including adults,” she says. “It’s my joy and my passion.”

Lately, though, Julia hasn’t been content with being a triple threat in the theatre world. 

In 2019, she took an environmental management course at the University of Toronto. The experience prompted her to enrol in the Lakehead-Georgian Partnership's environmental sustainability degree-diploma program.

“I love that I’m learning, and I love what I’m learning,” Julia says of her studies.

It may seem like a big leap from the performing arts to the sciences, but according to Julia, “I’ve been a tree hugger and avid environmentalist all my life.”

“I just had to get up my courage,” she adds. “I’m a mature student and I hadn’t been to school in 15 years.”

In the summer of 2021, at the end of her first year, Julia saw an opportunity to apply her newly acquired fieldwork techniques after spotting a group of invasive plants called Phragmites australis in Orillia’s Tudhope Park. 

Phragmites australis, also called European common weed, is one of the biggest threats to North American wetlands and waterways.

It arrived in Canada from Eurasia in the 1930s – probably from ballast water in ships travelling down the St Lawrence seaway. Now, this weed is spreading rapidly and endangering plants and wildlife.

Phragmites australis, which grows to nearly 20 feet tall, wreaks havoc by suffocating the ground so that other vegetation can’t grow and by sucking up water and creating islands in fragile wetland areas. Besides making it inhospitable for other plants, this weed also drives away native insects, birds, and reptiles. 

“Phragmites australis doesn’t play friendly,” Julia says. 

She knew that she had to take action and slow its spread in Simcoe County.

Removing the weed from Tudhope Park, however, was a more complicated endeavour than she anticipated. She had to secure permission from the city, find volunteers, and pay for proper equipment to remove the plants.

Undeterred, Julia launched a successful GoFundMe campaign that raised money to support the weed removal efforts, including purchasing necessary supplies like safety boots. 

When Julia and her volunteers finished weeding Tudhope Park, they moved their activities to city property used to store road sand and cleared a 500-600 metre section of Phragmites australis that had popped up. 

All of this hands-on work is great preparation for what Julia wants to do when she graduates.

“I have a deep desire to work for the Nature Conservancy of Canada, specifically in invasive species ecology with a focus on education, because I have a special connection with kids.”

People from all over the world dream of making it big in Silicon Valley – the headquarters of tech giants like Apple and Facebook. 

Lakehead alum Marcus Khoo is one of the select group who has thrived in its rarified atmosphere.

“I’ve no regrets about coming here,” he says, “but Silicon Valley is a very unforgiving place. Once no longer marketable, you’re cut loose.”

Marcus has 40 years of experience in the electronics and semiconductor field. Twenty-five of those years have been spent with California tech companies, in particular, the Intel Corporation.

“When I started in the semiconductor industry, there were humans working on the manufacturing lines,” Marcus says. “Now, it’s only robots because robots don’t make errors.”

So how did Marcus get from Lakehead to Intel – the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer and renowned developer of personal computer microprocessors?

It was a bit of a winding journey. Marcus grew up in Malaysia and went to high school in Toronto. 

“I wasn’t an “A” student,” he says, “but Lakehead took a risk and offered me a place. Lakehead made me what I am today.” 

Marcus excelled at chemistry as an undergraduate and was helped along by supportive professors.

“Dr. Manit Rappon had the most influence on me,” Marcus says. “In classes, we would frantically take notes, and not really take in what our professors were saying, but Dr. Rappon would tell us: ‘Slow down and try to understand. Learn something when you’re here.’” 

After graduating in 1983, Marcus found a job in Singapore’s semiconductors sector with Siemens and then Hewlett Packard.  One job led to another, and his time overseas stretched into several years.

This turned out to be a good thing because it was in Singapore that Marcus met and married his wife. The couple left the country when a cellphone manufacturer, Novatel, offered Marcus a position to start up their new manufacturing facility in Calgary.

“I told my wife that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to go back to Canada.”

Later on, while at Raytheon Calgary, Marcus earned a Master of Quality Assurance degree from Loyola University in New Orleans. This degree, which was sponsored by Raytheon, allowed him to go in a different career direction.

“Quality Assurance is about predicting and preventing design and manufacturing problems before they happen,”Marcus explains.  

In 2020, Marcus was promoted to Intel Technical Program Manager to focus on quality system improvements in semiconductor chip design.

Quality problems are common in the chip industry because the chips are so complex. These tiny components made of silicon – and used in products like cell phones, computers, and automobiles – have become indispensable to modern life.  

“We’re always trying to push laptop and computer technology one generation ahead,” Marcus says. “Chips for laptops and computers have to be ready two years in advance so that laptop and computer manufacturers are able to design their next generation of end products. We are constantly reinventing ourselves. Every error I’m trying to prevent is one I’ve never seen before.”

Marcus’s day is long, starting at 7 am and ending at 7 pm, with a few breaks in between.

“Typically, I spend 6-7 hours on conference calls. Intel has 120,000 employees around the world, including Israel, Ireland, Shanghai, and Costa Rica. This means that it’s always daytime somewhere.”

Despite the pressures he faces, Marcus is passionate about his profession, and he encourages any Lakehead grad with Silicon Valley aspirations to contact him. “I’m more than happy to help them get there,” he says.

There is one thing that Marcus does regret.

“I haven’t been back to Thunder Bay since I graduated. It’s on my bucket list to visit Lakehead, walk around the campus, and see how it’s changed.”

When she was just a high school student, Megan Rafuse (HBSW'09) lost her mother to cancer. 

“Her death really drove my career choices,” Megan says. “It made me unafraid to take risks, because I learned that you don’t get a second chance to live your life.”

And in a short period of time, Megan has transformed her private counselling practice into a company with services and clinicians across Canada. She is the CEO of Shift Collab – a mental wellness company that offers individual therapy and counselling, public speaking, and education.

“Typical challenges Canadians are dealing with,” she says, “include anxiety, depression, grief and loss, life transitions, obsessive compulsive disorders, and eating disorders.”

Megan grew up on Cape Breton Island and did an undergraduate psychology degree at St. Francis Xavier University. She followed this with an Honours Bachelor of Social Work at Lakehead’s Orillia campus, a master’s degree at the University of Toronto, and work at SickKids hospital. 

Her professional life, though, began in earnest organizing home care for seniors with an Ontario Community Care Access Centre (CCAC), while simultaneously expanding her private practice.

Five years later, Megan realized how much she loved being a clinician and that having two jobs wasn’t sustainable, prompting her to become a full-time mental health therapist.

“It’s such a privilege to share a journey with someone and witness their growth,” she says. “I believe that when one teaches, two learn.”

Within three months, her private practice was entirely full, spurring her to hire 10 clinicians and a receptionist. Around the same time, she’d been chatting with Jordan Axani, who had a business offering mental health workshops and training for workplaces.

“We both wanted to make mental wellness more accessible, so we decided to work together,” Megan says.

Although the founding of Shift Collab should have been a time of excitement and celebration, it became a period when Megan’s perseverance was tested.

“I suffered a catastrophic major concussion in a car accident and was off work for six months while I recovered,” she says.

But this setback didn’t slow her down for long. She and Jordan, who is also her life partner, threw their energy into building Shift Collab.

Today, their company has several divisions. Shift Collab provides individual therapy and counselling. Shift People  provides mental health workshops, public speaking, and training for businesses and organizations throughout North America. 

“Our goal is to challenge the standard EAP – employee assistance program – and offer more robust and innovative programming,” Megan explains. 

Through a partnership with the Maple network of virtual health care providers, they have 85 clinicians available in cities from coast to coast.

“I’m really proud of the fact that we offer practicums to Lakehead students and that we’ve hired nine Lakehead grads as clinicians,” Megan adds.

Their Best Practice division is a community of over 1,000 therapists supporting each other in building modern mental health clinics.

Shift Collab was also responsible for joining forces with an insurance company to create Real Campus, Canada’s largest independent student assistance program. “It provided mental health counselling to about 250,000 students, paid through their student benefits.”

Since she’s started her career, Megan has seen a huge shift in people’s willingness to speak out about mental health. “They don’t wait until it’s a crisis before getting help,” she says. 

“We’re in a society where it’s very easy to compare our lives to someone’s social media highlight reel. But we have to remember, it’s just their reel – not their real life.”

Megan Rafuse is just one the exceptional alumni, students, researchers, and donors featured in Lakehead's Annual Report. Stay tuned for the official report launch in February to find out how Lakehead has been making a difference this past year. 

In the face of the brutality of racism, Lakehead alumnus Paul Popo-Ola (HBCom’10) is shaken, but unbowed.

The Lakehead alum has set his sights on helping Toronto inner-city kids escape the lives of poverty to which they are often condemned. In 2020, Paul and a group of friends set up the Black Health and Wealth Fund to provide university entrance scholarships to grade 12 students. It’s Paul’s latest advocacy project, and one close to his heart.

“My family left Ghana when I was eight years old to come to Canada,” he says.

They ended up in Toronto’s Rexdale area – one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the country. “There’s a lot of poverty and government housing,” Paul explains. 

In Ghana, Paul’s father was a bank employee and his mother was a registered nurse, but in their new homeland, they found themselves at the bottom of the social ladder. Paul’s mother worked at McDonald’s until she requalified as a nurse and his father worked in factories before becoming a church pastor. 

Along with these hardships, their young son was confronting harmful prejudices and stereotypes. 

“Most of my friends are Black, and when we were kids,” Paul says, “we thought the only things we could be were athletes, rappers, and drug dealers.”

Paul began getting into trouble, to the distress of his parents and older brothers, but the YMCA and Rexdale’s Albion Neighbourhood Boys and Girls club threw him the lifeline he needed.

“Sports got me out the bubble I was trapped in. Coaches waived my registration fees and helped me buy basketball shoes,” he says. “If I got a bad grade, my coach would say, ‘Paul you can do better.’”

When he finished high school, Paul went to Lakehead University on a basketball scholarship. He enrolled in the commerce program because it offered financial security and career avenues beyond athletics.

But Paul wasn’t just concerned about himself. As a university student, he volunteered with the Thunder Bay Boys and Girls club (he was named their 2011 Volunteer of the Year) and Shelter House.

Since graduating, Paul has become an Investment Advisor with RBC Dominion Securities based in Toronto. He frequently counsels newcomers to Canada, and he encourages financial literacy as the host of the Cash Rules Financial Podcast.

His success, though, doesn’t mean that the struggle for racial equality is over.

Paul and friends were traumatized by videos of verbal and physical attacks against Black people – especially the murder  of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer – that occurred in 2020. The assaults galvanized them to support the current generation of kids growing up in Rexdale through the Black Health and Wealth Fund.

They quickly raised over $40,000 for 12 scholarships and forged connections with Canadian universities, including Lakehead, who donated tuition credits, meal plans, and other services to the students (next year, they hope to increase the number of scholarships). They partnered with the Albion Neighbourhood Boys and Girls Club because, as an existing non-profit, they had the authority to distribute scholarship funds.

Pictured right:  Paul (centre) and his fellow members of the Black Health and Wealth Fund executive are changing the lives of vulnerable youth.

The Black Health and Wealth Fund members are also committed to nurturing the students.

“We didn’t want to hand the kids money and say, ‘See you later,’” Paul says. “Every one of them received mentorship in different areas – financial literacy, public speaking, good life habits, healthy living.”

Although Paul is doing his part to make the world a place where everyone is valued, he would like to see the media – and ordinary citizens – better educate themselves and overcome their biases.

“Black Canadians aren’t monolithic,” he says, “so don’t put us in a box, just give us a fair playing field.”

Watch the Black Health and Wealth Fund video to learn more about these transformative scholarships and how you can make a difference:  https://youtu.be/lGnh9OUnzuc

Mike Carlson knows firsthand some of the challenges faced by reporters today, especially with many people believing that the news is fake. 

Mike earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Education – both at Lakehead University. He is a professional sports photographer who has covered the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, and Major League Baseball. 

His advice to prospective journalists is that they must have persistence. 

“Journalism/photojournalism is a truly rewarding career, but with the recent developments in calling everything ‘fake news’ and disdain for the job by many – it does make it more difficult. 

“No one I know, and no one I’ve trained ever goes into it with an ‘agenda.’ I believe in presenting the truth without bias, and it’s an important trait for successful journalists,” he says, adding that it is also important for journalists to be multifaceted – so they can contribute in many different ways.

“I have the rare opportunity in professional sports to work with teams who have writers, videographers, and photographers – in many instances in journalism today one person should be prepared to do all of that,” he says. 

Based in Tampa, Fla., Mike also teaches digital multimedia courses at River Ridge High School. His students learn photography, illustration, graphic design, and video – skills they can eventually use in journalism. The school displays their work on its website and social media pages, among other places.  

It has been an interesting journey since he graduated from Lakehead University in the 1990s. In 1997, he moved to Istanbul to teach and bought a new printer that included a 35 mm film camera. 

“I figured since I was seeing a whole new world I may as well take some photos – and that’s when I became hooked,” he says. 

When Mike moved to Cairo, he would often visit a photography store owned by an Egyptian man who had lived in the US. That man soon recognized Mike had an eye for photography. 

“He gifted me an old Canon T50 – a fully manual film camera, which forced me to slow down and concentrate on all of the settings. This allowed me to really learn how all settings combined in a photo.” 

When his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, photography gave Mike a brief break from reality – and photography has continued to do that in the years since her passing.   

Mike, who grew up in Thunder Bay, says his favourite sport to photograph is either football or hockey. 

“I love the challenge of football because so much is potentially happening on every play. It means balancing three cameras and choosing a position carefully while at the same time reacting to the plays and fakes at NFL speed. It moves a lot faster down on field level. 

“But, I also love hockey – it’s the Canadian in me. It’s a different challenge shooting through a small hole in the glass and reacting at NHL speed . . . plus it’s a lot more comfortable in an arena than a 110 degree field in the Florida sunshine,” he says. 

Mike says the introduction of digital photography changed the game for professional sports photographers. 

“The challenge with digital in today’s world is the expectation that the results are delivered instantaneously, especially in sports. There is a constant race to have the photo out first. For most NFL games and big events, we all have internet-connected cameras that transfer photos of big plays to an editor, with the goal to have images available to post within a minute or less of them happening.” 

One of the highlights of Mike’s career occurred in 2013 when his photo of Alex Rodriguez ran on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

When he isn’t photographing winning touch downs or goals, Mike looks back fondly on the years he spent at Lakehead University, which he says changed his life.

“Being able to get into the concurrent education program allowed me to follow my passion at the time and get into education – both of my parents were long-time teachers in Thunder Bay,” he says. 

“It was also at Lakehead where I met and made connections to other teacher grads who headed out on the international school circuit and who introduced it to me.” 

While at Lakehead, he often frequented the Outpost Campus Pub. 

“I lived five minutes from campus, so the Outpost was where I spent time on campus with friends from out of town or who lived on campus. Studying, socializing, it gave me the chance to meet and get to know people who became life-long friends,” he says. 

Not only did Mike love attending school, he also enjoys teaching. Since graduating, Mike has taught in Canada, the United States, Turkey, Egypt, and Tanzania. 

“Through all of the diversity in schools/curricula/countries, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the students. Working with them on projects, on the fields, in the gym, in my studios, I just enjoy the energy and creativity (and chaos) of the teenage mind.

“It’s hard to truly explain, but a teacher will understand,” Mike says. 

Mike would love to hear from friends and former classmates. He is on Instagram (@carlsonphotos) and his website is mcarlson.photoshelter.com. 

John Hammill is the regional publisher of OrilliaMatters, an exclusively online site that provides breaking news and vital local information to its readers.

After joining forces with Village Media, which has perfected the online news model over the past 10 years, John and his team launched the site on January 8, 2018 – only six weeks after Postmedia shuttered the Orillia Packet and Times.

He had worked for a few different newspapers before becoming the regional advertising director at the Orillia Packet and Times, which is why he was ready to move forward with OrilliaMatters when Postmedia closed the newspaper on November 27, 2017.

And he hasn’t looked back.

Even before launching, OrilliaMatters had overwhelming support from local residents and businesses.

“Orillia had a daily newspaper for over 50 years and that daily news coverage ceased with the closure of the Packet and Times,” John says.

“Advertisers and readers were accustomed to the daily news cycle and that was pulled out from under them with no notice. We had launch sponsors lined up two weeks before our go-live date, which was a great indicator of things to come.”

From the Orillia Packet, John brought in regional editor Dave Dawson, reporters Nathan Taylor and Tyler Evans, and around a half dozen regularly contributing freelancers.

During the lead-up to launching OrilliaMatters, John didn’t experience much negativity about their plans, but some people were a bit confused about how the news site would operate.

“There were some questions about the format, so we launched a campaign to educate readers on adapting to our online news website,” John says.

“As soon as they experienced OrilliaMatters and saw first-hand how easy it was to navigate and find the content they had been missing, all was good.”

Providing timely, accurate and vital important information about COVID-19 helped OrilliaMatters grow even more, although the site’s numbers were strong from the beginning.

“We broke 650,000 monthly page views in our first month, which was a remarkable start,” John says. “Our current monthly page view average is 3.2 million.”

By selling advertisements and encouraging donations from readers, OrilliaMatters is thriving in a community that was hungry for news.

John says the secret to succeeding in the news business today is simple: Quality journalism is the solution.

“It's just the delivery mechanism - the internet - that has changed. Whatever the delivery mechanism, it always comes back to valuable, quality, verified journalism.”

The best way to offer that, John says, is by hiring journalists who know what they are doing. 

“We rely on trained, professional reporters. While we definitely encourage and publish user-generated content, nothing can replace newsgathering from a properly trained, unbiased reporter.”

John graduated from the BAdmin program at Lakehead University Thunder Bay in 1996. He truly enjoyed living in the city, including spending time outdoors. It was also where he met his wife Laura.

“It was great to learn about Finnish traditions as my wife’s family are Finlanders. We spent a few mornings at the Hoito (Restaurant) – that’s for sure. Walking/running at Boulevard Lake and swimming/diving at the Canada Games Complex. Starting a round of golf at 6 pm in May was always a cool experience too.”

John also appreciates living in Orillia, home to Lakehead’s newest campus.

“I love the sports amenities, parks, etc. here as they are all fantastic. The baseball/softball community is huge here and playing/coaching has been a blast over the years.

“There are lots of active service clubs such as Kiwanis, Lions and my Rotary Club that really do make a difference in and around the community. Mariposa Market, enough said. Orillia is truly Mariposa,” he says.

He appreciated studying at Lakehead University.

“I loved the fact that the classroom sizes were smaller than other universities; I found I was able to pick things up fairly quickly,” he says.