Returning to Foam Lake - July 23

Almost six years ago I had the opportunity to visit Foam Lake, Saskatchewan with former Saskatchewan Liberal Leader David Karwacki during the 2003 provincial election campaign. We had stopped, with some of the provincial media in tow, to visit a fairly new start-up company called Milligan Bio-Tech. Milligan was pioneering some innovative technologies to turn canola into bio-diesel, amongst other products, for which they saw a growing market in the years to come. After a tour of their fairly modest facility we filled up the tour bus with some of their new diesel fuel conditioner and headed back on the road to our next stop on the campaign trail.

I haven’t been back to Foam Lake since then (well, there was that one time that I ran out of gas on a cold December night driving down the Yellowhead and was forced to spend night at a roadside motel in Foam Lake until the gas station opened up in the morning…but I’m not sure that counts as “being back”), and more than a few things have changed with Milligan. Their modest facility has been replaced with a large new complex next to the highway, the site of a former car dealership. And with lots of hard work and a steady vision they have brought themselves to the cusp of the next level of success and international recognition. That pilot project I saw years ago now has the capacity to produce 10 million liters of bio-diesel per year. And just three years from now, their production capacity is projected to be a very impressive 150 million liters per year.

It was a real honour to be able to share the grand opening celebration of their new facility with the dozens of employees of Milligan and the people of Foam Lake (by the looks of the crowd, I think everyone in town was there, and then some!). This summer as we have travelled the province we have seen a consistent story emerge of small communities fighting for survival by using innovation, local initiative, and an entrepreneurial spirit to find new ways to survive and thrive in a very different reality than that of just a generation ago; Foam Lake is certainly no exception.