Douglas wins Arch Brown honour

Author: Michele Lawson

Date: Nov 20, 2009

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Michele Lawson

Donna Douglas won the Arch Brown Award at the Barrie Business Awards Gala held Nov. 11 at the Barrie Molson Centre.

BARRIE: After watching someone else take home the Arch Brown Entrepreneur Award in back-to-back losses, Donna Douglas almost quit this year’s race before it started.
But Douglas avoided the third strike, taking home the once evasive prize at the Barrie Business Awards Gala held Nov. 11 at the Barrie Molson Centre.
“If the chamber had told me who my nominator was, I would have called them, thanked them and told them I was going to withdraw,” Douglas recalls, thinking to save them both the embarrassment of a third defeat. “It’s not that I think I don’t deserve to win, but I just felt no one understood my business. I was surprised to hear my name.”
The former winner of the SOHO (small office, home office) Bell Canada Business Award, Douglas said previous winners of the Arch Brown award were more traditional companies with “bricks, mortar, people and products.” She thought the structure of her business-training company, Go Venture, might be too far outside the box to be recognized.
“The past winners are very worthy and have made a significant contribution to our business community,” she reflects. “And here’s this woman, who runs courses and workshops out of her home and rents an auditorium in a seniors’ home.
“But my services do produce a product and the product in this case is 1,200 businesses.”
The win this year was especially poignant for Douglas, who has been a long-time friend of award-sponsor and prominent business leader Arch Brown. Having regularly attended previous business galas and presented his award in person, Brown’s absence was noted, just as his impact on the local community was celebrated in words and video.
“I was trying to put it in perspective,” she ponders. “I’ve been asked if I would feel better to receive it from him in person.”
But with the presentation of the award being done in his stead by chamber executive director Sybil Goruk and local business owner Jamie Massie, she felt the torch was passed, defining Brown’s inspiring legacy.
“I didn’t need the award to get the lesson,” she says.
During her acceptance speech, Douglas recalled meeting Brown in the early 1970s. New to the city, she and her husband were renting an apartment in a house beside his store’s large parking lot downtown. Fed up with the noise of screeching car tires all night, she tracked Brown down in his office to complain and suggest he either put up a chain to restrict after-hours use, or add cement parking blocks.
He considered the issue and told her he wanted to continue to allow the nearby theatre nighttime parking so the chain idea wouldn’t work. He also said his snowplow would be impeded if he added the blocks, so he wasn’t prepared to do that either.
He did, however, assure her that the noise wouldn’t bother her once she moved, she laughs.
“I didn’t come out of his office with a solution, but I did leave with a friend,” she says.
Douglas is the 13th recipient of the award, which is given to the person “who best exemplified the entrepreneurial spirit, seeing success in such areas of growth, profit record, participation in grant programs, participation in total quality management programs, and innovative employee relationships,” according to the strict stipulations determined by Brown.
The gala also celebrated the year’s best in 11 categories for the Barrie Business Awards.
Initiated by the Greater Barrie Chamber of Commerce and the City of Barrie in 2003, this year’s gala was sponsored by OLG and OLG Slots at Georgian Downs, co-presented by PowerStream Barrie Hydro.
Individual awards were sponsored by local businesses.
Among the winners were long-term organizations – both the Canadian Mental Health Association Barrie/Simcoe (winner of the Mayor’s Employer of the Year award) and the United Way of Greater Simcoe County (Bell Canada Community Award) are celebrating 50-year anniversaries – and start-ups (RePower Canada, which began operations in 2008, won the Greater Barrie Chamber of Commerce Green Community Award).
There were also winners in every other stage of business development.
“It makes you feel the three years of hard work has paid off,” says Laurie Warwick, owner of Laurie’s Sweet Treats and Café and winner of the Hospitality Business Excellence Award. “It’s a nice acknowledgement.”
Nominated by her regular customers, Warwick was also up for the OLF & OLG Slots at Georgian Downs Retail Business Excellence Award which lead the evening’s presentations.
“When I didn’t win the first one, I thought do I really have a shot at this?”
Not knowing whether she should prepare an acceptance speech or not, she decided to heed her husband’s advice and wing it. “In my life, it was the icing on the cake.”
During her impromptu speech, the scratch baker spoke of the chocolate cake she serves at the café standing the test of time.
“I’ve been making that cake since I was 12 years old,” she says, recalling the now-dog-eared cookbook her aunt and uncle gave her as a child.
All winners were determined by a panel of judges comprised of economic development and trade minister Dave Aldersey, TD commercial banker Gary Charters and Georgian College’s Lisa Eveleigh.
Acknowledging the November 11 date, the gala incorporated a tribute to the veterans conducted by CFB Borden Honorary Colonel Jamie Massie.