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INUVIK
Times may be tough for contractors in Inuvik these days, but Northwind Industries Ltd. president and owner Kurt Wainman has definitely known boom times, and hopes to see them in the region again soon.

Northwind Industries Ltd. president and owner Kurt Wainman started his business from the ground up in 1997 and is hoping the Inuvik economy gets busier so he can put more people to work. - NNSL file photo

At its peak, the 100 per cent Inuvialuit-owned and operated company had up to 140 seasonal employees, providing rig moving and lease pad services, local hauling, trucking from the south, loader work, and snow removal, in addition to ice road construction and ice profiling for oil and gas companies that flocked to the region amid excited talk of the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline being built.

Northwind got its fair share of business from the exploration and seismic work, with Wainman, now 40, signing million-dollar contracts with oil and gas companies including Chevron/BP, MGM, Petro-Canada, and ConocoPhillips.

"I've worked with every company I think that's ever come up here," he said. "2006, 2007, 2008 was alright.

"Now, it's been so slow, it's scary."

With growing uncertainty over the pipeline, and constant delays over the construction of an Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk highway, Northwind is now down to about 15 employees, relying on trucking work down south, ice road contracts, snow removal, and highway maintenance work.

"To be sustainable up here right now is pretty difficult, there's just no work," Wainman said. "There's no pipeline, no exploration going on.

"Right now it's so quiet, it's just trying to get by."

Despite the currently difficult business climate, Wainman never considered getting out of the business.

"I don't think I could ever get out of it because I live, eat, and breath it," he said. "That's the difference between me and another guy -- this is what I've been doing all my life."

Wainman's love for trucks and heavy equipment operation was sparked early. Born and raised in Inuvik, his father Ray Wainman worked as a truck driver, equipment operator and on highways as a superintendent for the Department of Transportation.

"I watched my dad doing everything," Wainman said, recalling how his dad taught him to drive a pickup, and put a young Wainman on his lap while operating the loader.

He learned to drive by the age of 10, during summers working on his aunt's ranch in McBride, B.C.

At 13, Wainman picked up an after-school job, working locally for auto service company Arctic Tire for 14 years, as a driver, equipment operator and tire repairman.

Before leaving Samuel Hearne high school in Grade 12, Wainman had already started his first company,

Truk Enterprises — his name spelled backwards — was a labour company he registered at age 16, mostly as a place to keep the money he was making cutting wood and working for Arctic Tire.

At 18, he bought his first truck, and bought another two years later.

"I started from zero and I did everything myself by reinvesting, reinvesting, reinvesting," Wainman said. "Any money I made I just reinvested back into my trucks."

In 1997, Wainment started Northwind, and has grown his fleet to almost 200 pieces of equipment, including dozens of trucks and other heavy equipment.

Nowadays, there's not much work to do with his large fleet, and besides a few local maintenance contracts and trucking jobs down south, Wainman is using much of his time training future workers -- optimistic that when the boom time returns, he will have the labour available to take advantage of it.

"I went through one boom and now we're waiting for another," he said. "Hopefully it happens right away because Inuvik's really quiet."

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