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as a central hub, and world-class facilities like its Center for to be able to deal with things.”

Marine Simulation an indispensable driver. When people ? rst think of Newfoundland & Labrador, it’s a

The reason that the province developed such an array of good bet that the ? rst thing they think of is not technology. But unique maritime expertise is actually fairly simple: they with a proven track record and leaders like Chris Hearn, that had to be. is changing fast now.

“We have a long history of maritime trade, including the “The companies that grew out of research projects, that ? shery and through to what we have now [with a long-es- are either at the university or here at the institute, whether tablished offshore energy industry],” said Hearn. “We have they be in the ocean tech or whether they be in ? sheries and this in our DNA, it’s part of what we are. So there’s this resource gathering or they’re in maritime or offshore,” said connectivity between all these different entities. Hearn. “Radar systems [like Rutter’s] that are able to do an

What has happened is we’ve grown this tech sector to be amazing job in ice, came out of projects and then grew into primarily focused on the maritime and oceans industries companies that are now very successful and doing work all because we needed to. There were opportunities to grow it over the world. You have this self-sustaining circle of the here because a lot of technology that was available – or not education and training pieces, like we would do here at the available – didn’t re? ect, or couldn’t deal with [our unique] institute or at the university, spilling out these really bright operational challenges, the reality of our conditions: this minds of these people who are working with the industry, mixture of weather, ice, sea state and isolation, as well as the and see a really good idea and say, “I have to do that.” variability and quick change in the weather patterns here.” Then, to support all of that you have the groups like Oceans “We had a provincial government that recognized that very Advance and the techNL’s and these other associations that early, but again, it re? ects life here. We are innovative by na- are really blowing air into this ? re that’s growing here all ture because we had to be. I heard a great quote one time about the time for the tech sector. It’s this combination of the need

Newfoundland & Labrador: it has a landscape that makes you to do it and the want to do it that sustains it in an isolated want to live up to it, but it doesn’t provide you the resources to place with a small population. We’re not that far away, but do it! We’ve had more than 500 years of living here, and be- we’re far enough that it drives the spirit of “let’s ? nd a way cause we’re isolated, we had to grow something here in order to do this.”

Image courtesy Greg Trauthwein

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