The winter weather testing industry in Thompson grew out of informal contacts and is largely based on personal relationships over a very long period, which is why sustaining and expanding it can sometimes prove difficult, Thompson Chamber of Commerce members heard at their April 4 meeting.
Volker Beckmann outlined the history of the industry, which began with car companies coming up unannounced to do things like see how well their vehicles started after being left outside and unplugged overnight in the winter or to conduct tests and analysis on their heating systems. This was what he referred to as the ad hoc phase.
“We didn’t really know what it was all about but car companies were showing up,” he said.
Later, snowmobile manufacturers were attracted by the snowmaking capabilities at Mystery Mountain Winter Park, which enabled the building of test tracks for use in November, before the snowmobile racing circuit got underway in the United States.
That exposure, which began with Arctic Cat and later grew to include Yamaha, led to Thompson later becoming a test site for Ski-Doo at the request of top racer Blair Morgan after he switched companies.
“They wanted him to test this new sled in Quebec and he refused,” said Beckmann. “He said, ‘I don’t want to take my semi and my technicians my mechanics all the way from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan all the way to Quebec and all the way back.’” He told them Thompson had a great course and that he’d done testing there for three years. So he convinced the whole engineering race division of Ski-Doo to come all the way to Thompson.”
Unfortunately, another hallmark of the industry – companies’ desire for secrecy – helped contribute to the collapse of the snowmobile testing industry.
“The Bombardier groomer that belonged to the ski club broke down,” Beckmann recalled. “It had some severe hydraulics problems. The new board of directors of the ski club knew very little about this because it was secret for the first four years. They decided no, they couldn’t afford the equipment. So I had to turn companies away who phoned me month after month after month.”
Later, associations were formed by Thompson residents, including car dealership owners, and the city proved successful in attracting car manufacturers like Ford and Honda to conduct testing, and eventually the National Research Council chose Thompson as the site for the GLACIER aerospace engine icing test facility south of the city.
In many ways, though, the key selling point to attract this business isn’t the cold.
“I would say, ‘We’re the cold testing capital of North America,’ and they would say, How cold does it get there?’ and I would say, ‘Well, it gets 40 below,’ and they’d go, ‘No, no, no, we don’t want to test when it’s 40 below,’ and I began to realize not everybody is looking for cold weather,” said Beckmann, recalling a trip to a snowmobile race in Duluth, Minnesota where he talked to racers. “They want snow and ice in November before they get on the race circuit and when all the snow’s gone in North America, they’ll do some testing on our lake at Paint Lake where there’s still ice but there’s no snow. And we kind of realized, ‘Let’s stop promoting ourselves as the cold weather testing centre. Let’s talk about ourselves as a winter weather testing capital.’”
Much of what brings winter weather testers to Thompson has nothing to do with the weather – it’s the infrastructure like transportation networks and hospitality businesses.
“Winter testers in a way are tourists,” Beckmann said. “They’re here for a short period of time, they’re visitors, they stay in hotels, they eat meals in a restaurant. There’s a whole bunch of economic benefits to having a winter testing industry.”
While services are important, trust is a key component of the industry, says Curtis Ross, who has facilitated testing in Thompson by Ford and Honda as well as other companies like Bell Helicopters. Unfortunately, that leads to specific people being the contact points for companies, which can pose problems in trying to establish longer-term relationships.
“I’ve been in this industry now for 15 years and I’m getting to the point where I want to transition so you talk about succession planning and the opportunity for those who want to take over,” he said. “It’s very much relationships with these companies. They feel very, very comfortable with that one person and that’s how it exists and that’s how it remains and you’re not going to change that culture because what happens within an organization is their faces are going to change 10 times but they say, ‘Curtis, he will help you in Thompson.’ Whether it was Ford, whether it was Honda, it was the same thing. We’re going to have to prepare ourselves for those changes within Thompson so we’re going to have to have those entrepreneurs take that on or we’re going to lose the industry.”
Beckmann suggested that the chamber and Thompson 2020 could consider convening a roundtable of people who’ve been involved with the industry so they can share knowledge and develop information to market the city as a winter weather testing centre.
