ATIKOKAN: Robbin Harper has lived in Atikokan for a short time, but as the old saying goes, home is where you make it. For Harper, Atikokan has become his home for many reasons. One of those reasons is work. As a tradesman for Ontario Power Generation, he contributes to Atikokan’s economic prosperity by walking the main street and shopping in Atikokan markets.
And throughout his daily life as a resident, he sees a future for the town outside of industry development, but a place where artisans can utilize their skills and bring their products to a larger market.
“What prompts me to run for mayor is the idea of a little level of democracy,” said Harper. “We have a current councillor, Rob Ferguson, who is running for mayor. The town is running in such a direction for quite a while, and I thought it would be nice to give the people a pull in a different direction. Based on the current declining nature of the town, I mean, for the last six or so years Atikokan has maintained a steady population but infrastructure has been slowly degrading and trying to bring business into the town hasn’t been good. The roads are just terrible, putting it mildly.”
Harper acknowledges that road construction isn’t as easy as just laying down asphalt. He knows that road construction can take a costly toll, but he emphasizes that construction projects must be within the municipal budget, but that also doesn’t mean that town’s people should drive over divots and mounts. The roads need to be fixed but in a finically responsible way.
“My key factor is making sure we do the research and discussions with the necessary experts for what can be done for our roads, Harper explains. “Every road and area in Northern Ontario is going to be different for the geological area it’s in. Sudbury is incredibly rocky. They have their own issues to work out, but budgets are a huge problem, and for us as well. Trying to do a mile a road in maniple millions of dollars. We can’t replace all the roads, so we have to do it in small sections of roads.”
One such way Harper is considering raising the town budget is by bringing in new business opportunities for the town.
Harper said, “Industry is a gold mine and every small community wants it. They will try to for it. There are a lot of rewards if you can get it. It’s absolutely amazing. We are definitely going to push for any sort of industry that we can bring to the community to open up new jobs but in the current market of what is available for small communities, even the smallest communities have been able to regenerate themselves, by doing small businesses. Such as, we have something available to us now that wasn’t available to us back in the 70s or 80s or 90s. We have an e-commerce structure that a lot of major organizations are willing to help small businesses. Small artisans outside of the community. If we can push small artisans to build a small pop-up business using some of the current unused infrastructures, we have to sell a small amount of goods or use online markets, then the small businesses can grow. Even if it out of their houses.”
For Harper fostering the community to build within will see growth for Atikokan. It will not only add jobs, but that type of growth will add to the community’s marketplace value. Small business is the building block of any community and going back to a model where the residents are the bosses of those businesses and not owners of a franchise where their franchise fees leave the town. The revenue from these small businesses stays within the boundaries of the town.
“You can’t rely on the outside world for the bigger industry to come in,” said Harper If we can focus and build our community by relying on each other then we can build our community back up.”
