Calling all Canadians: Save Juno Beach

Every once in a while, having your own column pays off. So, there will be no definitive manufacturing talk this month. No discussion of leadership, OEE, or gemba walks. Instead, I want to discuss something more important: condos.

Condominiums are, of course, a high-density type of housing in which each individual unit is owned separately and surrounded by, or incorporated within, a common area that is jointly owned. They are, in a word, ubiquitous.

They exist in every major urban and suburban centre in the country. They are a part of modern city planning and it’s even hard to imagine life without them. They are everywhere. Where they do not belong, however, is on Juno Beach. Our beach.

Seventy-eight years ago this month, on June 6, 1944, Allied forces left England and landed on the beaches of Normandy at five locations code-named (and from west to east) Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Each beachhead had its own separate challenges, which included immense fortifications and sandy shores. Now those sandy shores are being targeted again … by developers.

Gone are the Czech hedgehogs, pyramid traps, and ramps designed to keep people out. Maybe we should have left them in place to keep out French developer Foncim, who wants to build 70 beachfront condo units just metres from the Juno Beach Centre, which honours Canada’s 45,000 war dead.

I guess sacrifice has an expiration date.

Profit at any cost was the mantra of old-timey railroad tycoons, steel barons, and, of course, Gordon Gecko of Oliver Stone’s opus “Wall Street.” War profiteering, including this land deal, proves that greed is not, as Gecko said, good.

The Save Juno Beach campaign, which can be found online at www.savejunobeach.ca, is a citizen-driven campaign designed to raise funds for the Juno Beach Centre Association, the not-for-profit charitable corporation that operates the Juno Beach Centre. The group calls the condo land deal “questionable,” and has stated that attempts to negotiate, including more than two years of litigation, have failed.

Back in 1944, Canada’s 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade took Juno by force. Today I encourage you to reach out to your member of parliament and ask them to help take Juno again, this time by the force of our conviction.

Thanks for reading. Next month we can get back to solving simple problems like the skilled trades gap, inflation, supply chain disruption, outsourcing, and ask: Does manufacturing have a branding problem?