James Scongack Fireside Chat

I don't think I missed anybody in that.

I'm looking forward to the fireside chat, but there are a few sort of things that I wanted to share with people.

And it really ties in, I think, with the heart of the Pearson Center.

And I spent a little bit of time this weekend and really just, you know, I always like to reflect on history.

I always like to reflect about where we've come from.

And a lot of people don't know this, but anytime if you drive into the Bruce Power site, you know, Mike Grencheck will know this.

His office as CEO has the best view of the site, by the way.

Let's give Mike a big round of applause for all his leadership.

A great mentor and friend.

But, you know, anytime you come onto the Bruce site, you take visitors through, the first thing you always show people is there's this beautiful white dome.

And you say that was Canada's first ever commercial nuclear reactor.

It's called Douglas Point.

Now, I don't know if this had anything to do at all with the Pearson Center.

But the prime minister who built Douglas Point was Prime Minister Pearson.

It was the first ever commercial size nuclear power plant in Canada.

Second only in the world.

When they started clearing the site of the Bruce Power site to construct this, they actually used horses to clear the trees out in the

1960s.

That very quickly became a success story in the Prime Minister's vision of investing in science and technology.

Even though Canada was a similar sized country proportionately to other G7 or G8 countries, Prime Minister Pearson was focused on investing in long-term science and technology, and they did through this project.

But what was also unique at the time was Prime Minister Pearson had an extraordinarily strong partnership with the premier of the province at that time, Premier Robarts.

So the construction of this Douglas Point facility, which we still show today as really the icon of starting commercial nuclear power operation in Canada, it led to the construction the nuclear fleet that we have here in ontario today you know i often say that my generation has been a bit spoiled and what i mean by that is that the standard of living that me and my family and all of us have in our communities we enjoy a standard of living because of decisions that people made generations ago you know blake hutchinson is here and he has a line He's here, so I have to give him credit for the quote because it's actually his quote.

But when he's not here, I let on like it's my own, Blake.

But Blake Hutchinson often says that a quarter in his business is not three months, it's 25 years.

And in the decisions that we are talking about, that is exactly the case.