Southern Shore Girls Prove Their Prowess In Provincial Softball Play

Baltimore School and Mobile Central High both claimed silver medals in their respective divisions of the provincial high school Varsity Slo-Pitch softball championships held the weekend of October 19.

Baltimore hosted the 2A Girls Division tourney, losing a squeaker in the championship to J.M. Olds Collegiate of Twillingate. Baltimore finished in first place in regular tourney plan with three wins and one tie going into the play-offs.

Baltimore pounded E.A. Butler All Grade School 19-0 in the opening game of the tournament, beat Bishop White School 14-1 and Dorset Collegiate 11-8, before running into a scoreless tie against J.M. Olds ahead of the championship game. Abby Boland won Baltimore’s Sportsmanship Award for her play in the tournament.

In the 3A championships, Mobile lost 10-4 in the final against Glovertown Academy. The tournament was hosted by Indian River Academy in Springdale and King’s Point.

The Monarchs had two wins and one loss ahead of the championship game. The loss was a 25 – 15 beating in the opener against Glovertown Academy. Mobile recovered from that with an 11-1 win against Pasadena Academy and a 16-13 win against Templeton Academy. In the crossovers, Mobile whipped Indian River High 10-0. Grace Joyce was selected as Mobile’s Most Spirited Player in the tournament, while Laura Sullivan was selected the Most Valuable Player.

From Pumping Gas To Collecting Millions, Kenny's Journey So Far

By Craig Westcott | Irish Loop Post

Innovate or die. That’s the message Fermuese native and technology entrepreneur Karl Kenny delivered earlier this month as the guest speaker at the Celtic CBDC’s annual general meeting held in Bay Bulls during Small Business Week.

Kenny, who got his first introduction to the important of technology to the modern world as a member of the Canadian navy, sketched a resume of his career to date, the lows as well as the highs, and offered a bit of advice for the small business operators in the room.

"Someone said to me the other day, 'Karl, we're seeing you in the news a lot, you've been a real overnight success.'” Kenny said. “I said, 'It's been a really long night baby, a really long night.'"

The member of Newfoundland and Labrador's Business Hall of Fame has had a rollercoaster career in the high technology industry, earning millions in company divestitures at some points and crashing to a receivership on the bottom end at another point. But he is still clearly hooked on the opportunities available in high tech.

Kenny said his first job was pumping gas at Jim Kenney's gas bar in Fermuese. "It was great, I was making 35 bucks a week, which worked out to about 65 cents an hour at the time,” he recalled. “Then I joined the navy and had a great career and learned a lot. I was a kid and I learned a lot about leadership and persistence and doing hard work."

Kenny said there is an important distinction between innovation and invention.

“People think they are the same, and they’re not,” said Kenny. “Invention is the creation of something, and innovation is taking that invention and making it better. I’ll put it into kind of a context here: John DeLorean lost $200 million building the DeLorean car. He invented the DeLorean. Steven Spiegel took it and did the Back to the Future series and made almost $2 billion in profit by innovating the DeLorean."

Sony is a similar example, Kenny argued. It invented, with its Walkman, the idea of walking around with a compact, mobile play list of music. "Look at what Apple has done with that?" he said. "That's what innovation is really all about."

Kenny said after leaving the navy he moved to Seattle and became a contractor to Microsoft.

"I didn't invent the mouse,” he said addressing a popular myth about him Newfoundland business circles as to how he made his first million. “The mouse was invented back in '65. I sold that company in 1990. I had some options when Microsoft went public. It put some jingle in my jeans. I was only a kid, I was not even in my 30s then, and I took three years off and travelled the world.”

In 1993, said Kenny, he began work with an electronic charting system, the kind of technology that others eventually refined into Google Maps. “I sold that company to an Italian firm in '93. Again, you think you're doing something really smart, but I didn't see the Google Maps play, so I sold way ahead of time,” said Kenny. “The big news in my life so far has been Telepix. I started Telepix in '96... I sold that for $100 million. People say, 'A hundred million dollars!' It didn't all stick to Karl's fingers, I had lot of investors and shareholders and bankers... But again, a little bit of jingle goes into the jeans. But I should have waited, because a couple of years after that along came Instagram and facebook and Snapchat and youtube with enterprise values in the billions. Missed it again!”

Kenny co-founded Marport in 2003, a marine technology company in St. John’s. It had actually started in Iceland some years before. His main partner was St. John’s businessman Derrick Rowe, who had famously, at least in local business circles, been part of a group that ousted Vic Young and the board of directors of FPI Limited in a hostile takeover. The pair bought and reconstituted Marport as a St. John’s company. It garnered many headlines for technological successes, but like many high tech start-ups, struggled financially. It eventually went into receivership with ACOA chasing it at one point for $2.3 million in unpaid loans. Some of its high tech sonar products, as did Kenny, survived.

“That was really, really cool stuff,” Kenny said of the products Marport developed, some of them in use in his current company, Kraken Robotics. “We got a lot of patents, international awards,” he said. “We brought in a private equity group out of Boston that I made a really bad deal with. It was a big mistake, lost a lot of money, the jingle in my jeans and the other things sort of went down the pipe. And that was bad. But I exited with some really cool technology, synthetic aperture sonar technology and a handful of really, really smart boys and girls in terms of engineers and scientists.”

That’s when Kenny started Kraken, with six employees in 2012, operating out of the same building where Marport had been located.

"We're now 60 people, (with) international operations,” said Kenny. “We started off doing sensors, this thing called synthetic aperture sonar. It does really high-resolution imaging on the seabed, it lets us find very small objects at very long ranges. It was designed primarily, initially for military applications, but now it's getting a lot of attention in the oil and gas sector and we just finished some major projects there offshore. These things sell for around $350,000 to $400,000 a pop. So they're not flying off the shelves like hamburgers or stuff that, but there is a market for them."

Kenny said at first Kraken sold the sensors to other companies for use in their robots. "But then we said, let's move up the food chain, let's start building our own robots and adding value to our own building and material costs."

Along the way, Kenny said, Kraken Robotics has leveraged significant investment with the company going public three years ago on the TSX. "We're exporting to 10 countries we have 60 people, (including) 10 PhDs, and as a small company we're pursuing about $250 million worth of business internationally right now,” said Kenny. “So we are not hunting elephants. The technology has been validated. But this is not about the boat, this is about the sailors, it's about the team that allows us to get where we are today. This is not the Karl Kenny show, this is the Kraken show."

A while ago, Kenny said, the people at Kraken sat back and looked for ways to increase its profit margins on sales, someone it was able to do.

"Our average selling price now ranges from $50,000 to over $3 million (U.S.) a pop,” he said. “This is a very broad portfolio… So we got good margins out of this which allows us to invest continually into our R&D. And that's one of our strategies, relentless innovation to be able to drive these products to these types of customers - Lockheed Martin, Boeing, the US Navy, Atlas Electronic in Germany, Ocean Infinity. These guys aren't fools, so the level of due diligence that's done in our company in terms of commercial, technical and intellectual property is pretty intense."

This fall, Kraken technology is been used by Ocean Infinity in a project offshore Newfoundland. Ocean Infinity is also an investor in Kraken, Kenny noted. The international marine surveying company is running sea trials on two underwater robots offshore Newfoundland on a ship that is using Bay Bulls as its local port. The underwater visualization gear is Kraken technology.

"This is the way of the future," said Kenny. "We're going to be taking people out of harm's way and putting robots down deep. We're operating at depths of up to 6,000 metres, the full ocean depth, to get down deep and find everything from underwater mines to pipelines to cables to treasure."

Kraken recently won awards for technology that is being used in offshore wind farms, Kenny noted.

"You've got to know where the money is, you've got to go to where the money is," said Kenny. "I see a lot of small companies blow their brains out by chasing opportunities they can't ever realize, they run out of cash and then they die… We firmly believe that robots are changing everything, everything from manufacturing to production to medical, we've all heard about the Google self-driving cars, we're going to see the same thing in our world. The dull, dirty and dangerous jobs that humans are doing today, machines should be doing... And the market is growing significantly. It's a huge, huge opportunity for us."

Kenny’s speech drew rapt attention from audience members, a good many of whom pressed him with questions and requests for advice.

"So what have I learned so far? I've learned a lot,” Kenny said. “I've learned you win, I've learned you lose, and I've learned you make money and I've learned you lose money. And as I said earlier, it's not about your boat, it's about your team, it's the sailors round that that, that's what's going to get you there. And the most important things in life aren't things. I used to think it was. But after you buy a couple of fancy cars and you get all that stuff, there are more important things. Money to me just gave me financial independence, it just gave me a little jingle in the jeans (so) that I didn't have to do crap that I didn't want to do... Don't be miserable. How many people do I see who are miserable in their job and they're not happy. Do more of what makes you happy, whatever that is. When Dad was alive, we used to go rabbit hunting up in Fermuese. And I'd say, 'Dad, there's a rabbit, there's a rabbit, there's a rabbit, let's go chase the rabbit.' And he said, 'No, no, no. We're going to get one rabbit, because if you chase a whole bunch of rabbits, you're going to go home hungry.' So the lesson there is stay focused on what you do. And it's hard sometimes, particularly in small technology companies... Stay focused on what you do. Also know where you're going. And if you don't have the courage to cannibalize yourself, if you don't have the courage to continue to innovate, the competition will and you will be out of business."

Bay Bulls Council Celebrates Its Municipal Founding Fathers

By Craig Westcott | Irish Loop Post

Their portrait sits on the wall of the council chamber inside the town hall, their smiling faces looking down on the current crop of citizens who have volunteered to serve on Bay Bulls council. Earlier this month, the current group honoured the founding fathers of the town’s municipal council by holding a special ceremony to thank them for their contribution.

Three members of the town’s first council, elected when the Town was incorporated in 1986, have since passed on. Their family members joined the four founding councillors who are still alive to accept plaques of recognition from Mayor Harold Mullowney, who offered a heartfelt thanks to the current council’s first predecessors.

Mullowney thanked Town staff Sandra Cahill and Askley Wakeham for making the event possible. "This was put together largely by Ashley and Sandra, who went back through the records and gathered tremendous information," said Mullowney.

The mayor said he was glad so many showed up to recognize the town's first councillors.

"We all owe a debt of gratitude to those who've gone before us," said Mullowney. "In many ways, they’ve set the standard for the Town of Bay Bulls. They were a tremendous group of volunteers. They gave their successors a base from which to grow, and we’ve certainly worked at that and tried to grow the town over the years. I still remember when I first came on council over three decades ago and we had a budget of less than $100,000. It’s 15 times that now, so we’re growing continuously, and we’ll continue to grow in this area. In many cases, those who went before were an inspiration to us. They were mentors to us, and they’re still there to help us when we need it, on occasion, and for that we’re very grateful. Their dedication and commitment is not to be forgotten and will be acknowledged here today, and they will be remembered for this. Again, our most heartfelt thanks. "

Mullowney then read a poem about volunteers and the dedication and selflessness they show for others.

"We are still completely a town run by volunteers, and this is a volunteer position," the mayor noted. "There are a lot of towns in this province that are not completely volunteer. I remember at a joint council meeting in Ferryland a few nights ago, we asked how many towns were paying any stipend. I don’t think there was a single town on the Southern Shore taking a stipend; they all are completely volunteers. So, it’s great that we can still find some individuals to step up and take that on."

After the reading, Mayor Mullowney handed out plaques to each of the first councillors, or their loved ones. Betty Mulcahy, wife of the town's first mayor, the late Alphonsus, or Phonse Mulcahy, accepted the plaque. She also cut a ceremonial cake in honour of the occasion. Jill Hearn, daughter of the late Ambrose Hearn, who was a first councillor and the town's second mayor, accepted on behalf of her family. Gordon Williams Jr. accepted the plaque on behalf of his late father, Gordon Williams Sr. First councillors Dave Walsh, Kenny Williams, Irene Ploughman and Bud O'Brien were all on hand to accept their plaques personally.

Ploughman well remembers those years on the town's first council.

"I guess I was in my active days," said Ploughman. "I was with the (fisheries) union, fighting for union workers’ rights, and I thought I’d give it a try and I got elected. Surprise, surprise!"

Ploughman can't remember how many people ran for election that first year, but recalls it was a fair number. She was the only woman to win a seat.

"I was the first woman and they were all mostly businessmen except for Kenny and Phonse, or Mr. Hearn," said Ploughman. "But you were up playing with the big boys. It was alright, you know. We got some things done."

Ploughman said the men treated her fine and were respectful towards her.

Like many town councils, the new one in Bay Bulls had to consider whether water and sewer services were feasible.

"Water and sewer was discussed, but it was way out of reach for our first council," said Ploughman. "We were worried about not trying to overtax the people of our community. We had to be trained and broken in. It was different.”

Walsh, who ran the local Foodland supermarket, one of the busiest at the time in the Sobey's chain, was the only person elected who had some municipal experience. He had worked as the chief assessor with Metroboard. In fact, it was the looming expansion of Metroboard into Bay Bulls that motivated the local business community and citizens to establish a council.

"Well, I knew what was coming, so I figured we could do a better job on our own, and I think we did," Walsh said. "A lot of red tape was overcome. We just used common sense, but it’s not that common anymore... So we got together and we thought we’d like to have a little input into our own destiny. And I must say, they were a great crowd of volunteers, and not only those of us who served on council, but also the people in the community. They were all behind it."

Walsh served six years on council, four of them as Deputy Mayor. He remembers the first election drew a large turnout of interested candidates.

"Phonse was the man," said Walsh. "He came first."

Walsh placed a very close second.

"But none of that matters, you know," said Walsh. "We just took it that way: whoever had the highest vote was the mayor, and that’s the way we did it. Gordon Williams and Ambrose Hearn, and Phonse Mulcahy, they were great fellows to work with, but now they’re all gone."

Fortunately for the town, that first council, with as diverse a cast of characters as has ever served, were all smart individuals and all dedicated to looking out for the community's best interests.

"It was energy plus," Walsh allowed. "I figure the first town council was like the Energizer bunny. It was just go, go, go. But we balanced our budgets, moved forward one step at a time, got familiar with everything, went to some meetings, learned a little bit about what it’s about. It was a great learning experience."

Walsh looks back on those years fondly, and not only because of the council experience. He and his family loved living in Bay Bulls, he said. "On a personal level, the happiest days of our lives were up here, working alongside of each other and serving the people of Bay Bulls and the Southern Shore," said Walsh. "It left a big impact, a big footprint on our lives. To speak on behalf of the remaining four (councillors), it was certainly an honour and a privilege for us to serve."

O'Brien too has many memories of the first council. At the time he was owner of the town's fish plant and the biggest employer in the area. He played a key role in convincing the provincial government to let Bay Bulls form its own administration instead of falling under the auspices of Metroboard.

O'Brien said Metroboard had a been a headache for a while, sometimes interfering whenever somebody in the community wanted to build or develop anything.

He remembers talking about Metroboard with local businesswoman Rosemary Gatherall and the pair decided to call a meeting of 10 or 12 people in the town who might be like-minded, such as Terry Crane and Gordon Williams.

O'Brien arranged a lunch meeting with the deputy mayor of Municipal Affairs and put the questions to him as to how the people of Bay Bulls could go about getting their own council. "He said if you've been able to totally exist without it (a council) you're better off, but if you can't exist without it, you're going to be forced into something like this Metroboard," said O'Brien. "He said, 'Perhaps you are better off with your (own) council.'"

The deputy minister had further advice, O'Brien recalled - not to overburden the town's tax base by spending too much on heavy equipment.

"I said, ‘The Bay Bulls crowd will not be fond of paying taxes,'" said O'Brien. "'We've got to make sure we keep those taxes very low. And I've got a vested interest in that. I don't want to pay high taxes either. I own a business and I'll be the one who is grabbed (for extra taxes).' So we went home and we called together those 10 or 12 people and we said, 'Now boys, let's put together a committee to put this other crowd (Metroboard) out and to put in a council.' And we did. And we had lots of people who ran, and boy, we had a good council. It was a lot of fun."

O'Brien said the new council set the mil rate at 1.5 mils, the lowest on the island. "So that didn't hurt anybody," said O'Brien. "And we said it's impossible to have water and sewer. Bay Bulls is huge, it's long. If you went from the Quays on the southside right down to Gunridge on the North side, you're talking about four or five kilometres… The other thing was street lighting. We figured we were going to need 30 street lights. I said, 'Why don't we put one on every second pole?' They thought that over... and so we did that. And we worked it like that."

Despite the collection of strong personalities, O'Brien said there were no big rackets. The first council was greatly aided, he said, by the personality of Phonse Mulcahy, who was a retired government worker with a huge interest in his community. "Phonse did a lot of work," said O'Brien. "He'd get out of his bed every morning and he'd go right around the harbour and he'd notice things."

O'Brien said the first council also understood the importance of helping businesses and not hurting them.

"It was an interesting council," said O'Brien. "Now sometimes they have trouble getting quorum. We never did, they were all interested and they all put in their two cents worth."

Bay Bulls mayor lining up potential work for Town lawyer

Bay Bulls Mayor Patrick O’Driscoll can probably expect a nice Christmas card from the town’s lawyer this year.

That’s because the mayor is loading up the lawyer’s firm with lots of work and potentially billable hours.

At the town’s public council meeting Tuesday night, O’Driscoll requested a number of items be referred to the town’s lawyer. The first was a copy of the digital recording of council’s February 8 meeting.

"I want to make a motion to send a copy of the digital copy of the recording of our last meeting to our Town lawyers to have on file and to be used in any future litigation that might arise," O’Driscoll said.

Deputy Mayor Harold Mullowney asked whether the mayor intends to send the recording of every meeting to the lawyers, or just the February 8 one. The February 8 meeting marked the first time that clerks with the town started recording the sessions. That followed a motion from O’Driscoll in January that each meeting be taped to help with the preparation of minutes but with the stipulation that the recording be destroyed immediately afterwards.

O’Driscoll said his new motion pertained to the February 8 meeting only.

"Why this one?" asked councillor Madonna Hawkins.

O’Driscoll said there was a reference made during the meeting about "a legal party" and he wants the recording kept "as evidence of what was spoken."

Mullowney said he had no problem with keeping a digital record of the meeting, but worried about the potential cost of placing it with the town’s lawyer. "If we send a digital record to our lawyer, that’s two and a half hours of tape or so, they’re going to charge us $300 or $400 an hour to listen to it," he noted.

O’Driscoll said he only wants to send the tape to the lawyers, not have them listen to it, unless it becomes necessary.

Mullowney suggested in that case it would be simpler to copy the recording onto a memory stick and store it in the town’s safe.

Councillor Rick Oxford said he saw no problem with sending the recoding to the lawyer as long as the town is not billed for it.

Put to a vote, the mayor’s motion passed with Oxford and councillors Jason Sullivan and Gerard Mulcahy supporting it. Mullowney, Hawkins and councillor Joan Luby voted nay.

The next item that O’Driscoll wanted referred to lawyers pertains to land on Dunn Drive.

Three years ago, the developer of the subdivision, EMA Enterprises, offered to donate a free building lot for a tot park. The donation was matched by a $15,000 grant from the provincial government and a promise of $8,000 from the town council to go towards playground equipment. Around the same time, the developer ended up in a dispute with council over the town’s handling of competing applications for land for a new subdivision. In the end, the building lot was never ceded over to the town.

"I’d like to send it to the town lawyer ... to review any legal action the town can take to move this forward," said O’Driscoll.

Deputy Mayor Mullowney pointed out it might be cheaper in the long run to meet with the developer to discuss the situation.

"I just want to send it to the lawyers, get a recommendation or get some legal opinions on it and see where it goes from there," the Mayor countered.

"What’s the problem?" asked councillor Luby. ""You’re saying you want to go after the company, is that it?"

"I’m just saying send it to the lawyer to open a file and get some correspondence," the mayor replied.

Mullowney said he is worried about the cost of getting a lawyer to "open a file" on the matter.

Luby was also skeptical of the wisdom of such a move. "I’d like to know the reason why they didn’t give the land," she said. "It’s going to cost us money and the lawyers are the ones who get rich in the end... For a lawyer to look at this, how much is it going to cost? And then how much is it going to cost to go to court and everything else? Is it worth it?"

O’Driscoll said the town is not going to court, only asking the lawyer to look at it.

"This is going back three years and to be fair the proponent has been asking to meet with us for three years too on issues and we have not met with them," said Mullowney.

O’Driscoll said those issues are separate from the one regarding the playground. "You can’t link the two together," he argued, then called the vote. His motion passed 4-3 with Mullowney, Luby and Hawkins voting against it.

"I still want to talk to these people at some point," said Mullowney.

"So do I," said Luby.

The next issue O’Driscoll moved to place in the hands of lawyers is a moratorium on all new Crown Land applications until such time as the Town develops a policy to handle such requests.

Deputy Mayor Mullowney asked what timeline the mayor has in mind for such a move. O’Driscoll wasn’t sure at first.

"We’ll have to meet with the lawyers," he said. "Whenever it gets created it will be done, but until we get one developed I think we should not accept any more Crown Land applications."

Councillor Mulcahy seconded the mayor’s motion.

"I have no problem with it, it’s an idea (that should be looked at) but it should be time stamped in some way," said Mullowney. "We should put a time limit on it. I wouldn’t want it to last for three or four or five years."

O’Driscoll said it wouldn’t last that long. The process would depend on council sitting down with its lawyers and planner, he said.

Mullowney said he would still like to know a firm timeline, suggesting the mayor’s motion was open-ended.

"I’ll say a maximum of 12 months subject to change," said O’Driscoll.

"I have no problem voting on it for a year, but realize it could effectively shut down any development by individuals who have a single acre of Crown land that they want to apply for, Mullowney cautioned. "Much of the issues we have been dealing with are larger plots of land people are applying for (for subdivisions)."

Councillor Luby said she wouldn’t like to see people stopped from applying for single lots.

"Why would you go treat one group of applicants differently than another?" said the mayor. "Treat everybody the same. Your policy applies to everyone."

Put to a vote, O’Driscoll’s motion passed unanimously. The moratorium won’t affect large Crown land applications already in the works, such as councillor Sullivan’s 50 lot subdivision in the north end of town.

Basement apartments targetted for review

In other council news, the mayor has ordered staff to compile a list of all houses in Bay Bulls that have basement apartments and to hand it over to the provincial Municipal Assessment Agency to have the property values of the homes reassessed, a move which could mean higher taxes for the owners. O’Driscoll is also ordering staff to contact Service NL to have the septic systems of the homes inspected to see if they meet capacity requirements for having two families in one home.

"We have no approval process in place for basement apartments," the mayor said, introducing his motion.

Councillor Sullivan seconded the motion.

O’Driscoll noted if someone wants to build a shed or garage they have to apply to the town for a permit, but there is no such requirement for basement apartments.

The motion passed 4-3 with Mullowney, Luby and Hawkins voting against it.

Keep on Trucking

Council has voted to buy a new five tonne truck from Royal Garage for $111,838. That’s about $1,200 higher than the lower of the two bids it received, with the slightly cheaper one coming from Hickman Group.

Councillor Sullivan said the Royal Garage truck is on the lot and ready to be picked up, while the Hickman vehicle would have to be ordered and would take some 12 weeks to come in. The Royal Garage truck also has more useful features, including a better plow, he argued. The Royal Garage truck he added, would allow the town to take over its own snow clearing if it ever decides to do so, instead of contracting it out, as it does now.

Town must pay in

And finally, the Town of Bay Bulls will have to pay the Canada Revenue Agency a little over $5,000 after an audit revealed a discrepancy from the HST monies collected and paid in for the year 2013.