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Canmore is growing not only as one of Canada’s hottest tourist destinations, but also a preferred location to launch a new business. Canmore’s small-town mountain lifestyle, convenient access to the city of Calgary and its international airport, and high-speed broadband internet access are some of the top incentives for locating a business here.

Here are four success stories on businesses already working - and enjoying life - here in the mountains.

Partners in Economic Development

  Town of Canmore
  Tourism Canmore
  The Biosphere Institute
  BOWDA
  Mountain Arts Foundation
  Canmore Community Housing Corporation
  MD of Bighorn # 8
  Chamber of Commerce

Associate Membership
Canmore Business Registry

Karina Birch and Cameron Baty are making a clean sweep of it this year as the Rocky Mountain Soap Company continues to grow from their business base in Canmore.

The bath and body products company was named by Profit Magazine as one of the top 50 start-up businesses in Canada in 2002. The same year it received the 2002 Entrepreneurship Award from the local Chamber of Commerce. They continue their exponential growth trend, named by Alberta Venture Magazine as the 4th Fastest Growing Company in Alberta in 2004.

When husband and wife team Karina and Cameron purchased the company three years ago, it was a much smaller, locally-based business. Now 15 local staff work between their downtown Canmore and Banff stores and 3,000 square foot manufacturing plant, with four working out of their homes. Business gets an even greater boost with 13 sales reps across Canada.

Rocky Mountain Soap Company sells its products in gift shops throughout Canada and the U.S. and to Save-On Foods and Pharmasave. Their new line Glacier Mountain will soon fill the shelves at The Real Canadian Superstore.

Working out of Canmore suits the couple's outdoor lifestyle. They find their staff are like-minded people with similar interests and the Canmore business and community at large have been a great support to their business endeavours.

"I wouldn't think that it's the ideal place to be for manufacturing, the rents you can probably get to cheaper in a big city and you probably have more access to staff in a big city but we love to be here," says Cameron. "We didn't really know it would get as big as it has or as big as it's going to be. It has more potential than we ever dreamed of.”

Phoenix Consulting - Simon Vieyra

Moving from big-city Toronto to mountain-town Canmore was one of the smartest business choices Simon Vieyra says he’s made.

"I can take on less here," says Vieyra, a business ethics consultant who has lived and worked out of Canmore for just over 11 years.

Which means he can pay more attention to detail and draw on the inspiration he garners from what he and friends like to call "sense of place".

As an executive vice president for a non-profit organization in the big city, Vieyra says he would dream of stepping out on his own away from the corporate world to find a quiet mountain retreat in which to live with his wife.

These days he works closely with the United States Government in developing best business practices programs for the Europe’s former Eastern Bloc.

"I find I can produce a better quality product for my clients here than I can in Toronto," Vieyra says. "I know cost of living can seem high (in Canmore) but as a consultant it would cost me way more to live in Toronto. And from the point of view of my clients it doesn’t make a difference where I live."

However, before making the final move to Canmore there were some more requirements other than an idyllic mountain setting that weighed on Vieyra’s decision.

The Phoenix Consulting head says the infrastructure afforded to Canmore for the 1988 Winter Olympics, including high speed Internet access and the TransCanada Highway, were crucial.

"I could not live in Golden or Nelson like I might," Vieyra says. "In

Canmore I’m an hour and a quarter from being at an international [airline] counter. And Calgary is not like Kamloops. I can fly anywhere from Calgary. Otherwise I can be at an appointment in downtown Calgary in less than an hour."

Information technology consultant Thomas Beyer is also a proponent of being "location independent."

"One of the key premises of being a consultant, especially a software consultant, is that where you live is not where you work," Beyer says.

The head of Lightyear Consulting said he was working as the project manager on two contracts at the time of publication from his Canmore home. One involved collating more than 100,000 individual records for state correctional services in Washington, the other managed financial movements for motor vehicle services in Kansas.

Beyer says making conference calls between Washington, Kansas, California,

Calgary and the United Kingdom is all in a day’s work from his Canmore home-office. He also uses high speed Internet and, when he has to, he schedules meetings with clients in Calgary or flight arrangements to meet them on their own turf.

"The ability to do these kind of jobs without being in the big city but still being close to the city is awesome," Beyer says. "It’s smaller city living but still close to the big city stuff."

CAUSE Canada - Small town ideal for non-profit

When Paul and Beverley Carrick moved their well-established, not-for-profit organization from Montreal to Canmore 10 years ago it wasn't for business benefits or the outdoor lifestyle, it was for the low humidity and high air quality that the mountain community offered for their severely allergic daughter.

For 19 years CAUSE Canada (Christian Aid for Underassisted Societies Everywhere) has offered public health education, water and sanitation development, refugee assistance and credit programs for people in West Africa, Central America's Guatemalan region, the Honduras' Mali, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast.

Relocating to Canmore brought numerous benefits to the organization, says Paul Carrick. It is close to an important Canadian city that provides access to an international airport, a necessity in work involving frequent international travel.

The couple has made a large impact on the relatively small community of Canmore and say they find that more gratifying than making a small impact in a large city.

Paul and Beverley Carrick constantly volley for more resources to meet the needs of rural people, seeing urban migration as a huge problem, especially in the Third World. Living in a small community allows them to live a lifestyle they promote.

Although they miss the multi-culturalism of a big city, being tri-lingual in predominantly English-speaking Alberta (both Paul and Bev speak French, Spanish and English) had an unanticipated benefit. The couple is frequently requested by the Canadian government to do consultation work on foreign policy in Ottawa, more so than when they lived in Montreal

This year CAUSE Canada's annual income will be $2.6 million dollars. The organization also supports eight employees in Canada and up to 200 in the developing world.