The Best Seats
In The House

Administering Roman Catholic schools scattered throughout the western portion of eastern Ontario, the Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic District School Board is comprised of over 30 elementary schools and 11 secondary schools in the region.

As part of their equitable and inclusive education standards, the schools residing within the board are built on the foundations of discipleship, scholarship, and stewardship. As such, a number of the schools are equipped with specialized rooms that allow for a quiet or safe place for students who sometimes thrive by being temporarily removed from the often noisy and busy environments characteristic of the classroom.

Taking a different approach to traditional child care, Children of America is education-focused in caring for the next generation. Following structured curriculum, Children of America has grown to become the number-one preschool in the United States and currently serves children and families in 12 states across 64 individual locations.

During the winter months of 2018, our team was in contact with key stakeholders from within the organization as they were in the market for some durable and safe wall padding for their location in Woodbridge, Virginia. The location had a specialized playroom for children that had become a slight safety concern as the room contained a variety of corners and pillars that could pose potential hazards for children at play.

Celebrating over ten years since opening in the Greater Toronto Area, the South Asian Autism Awareness Centre (SAAAC) is where one of our most recent projects landed us.

The centre was created as a direct response to the growing need for awareness and support for South Asian families impacted by ASD and other developmental disorders.

The centre has experienced exponential growth over the past decade, now servicing over 150 families. In the fall of 2017, they reached out to our team for help with a new facility.

As part of their expansion, the SAAAC had plans in place to take over a building that had been donated to them by one of Toronto’s school boards.

One of our recent projects landed us in coastal New England, home of chowder, warm hospitality and some of the world’s most formidable sports franchises. While the region spans a total of six diverse U.S. states, this project took place in the picturesque state of Maine.

Located in Westbrook, a suburb of Portland, is the Spring Harbor Hospital, a 100-bed non-profit psychiatric hospital offering services for both children and adults.

Part of Maine Behavioral Healthcare, the facility has three adult units totalling 60 beds, a child unit with 14 beds, an adolescent unit with 14 beds and a 12-bed unit for patients with developmental disorders.

After some unfortunate water damage to certain areas of the hospital, the facility was undergoing some fairly heavy-duty renovations. During the process, stakeholders from within the organization got in contact with members of our team in search of fire-rated wall padding for one of the rooms in the hospital.

America’s game is played on diamonds of all shapes and sizes across North America. As one of the continent’s most popular sports, with an estimated 14 million participants in 2017, the need to ensure these spaces are safe for play by participants of all ages could not be more apparent.

While for some of us, grounding balls or catching pop-flies on a dusty old diamond in a former hay field was a rite of passage. For others in larger communities, well-groomed infields, pitching mounds and green outfields are more of what some are accustomed to.

In a game where so much attention is paid to the small round projectile, player safety can become an oversight. As we are in the heat of baseball season, we wanted to take the opportunity to showcase a few products aimed at keeping your diamond and players safe for many seasons to come.

With campuses in both Vancouver and Kelowna, the University of British Columbia (UBC) is the province’s oldest and most established post-secondary institution. With a strong background in scientific advancements, the Vancouver campus is located a mere 10km from downtown and is home to roughly 65,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students across its two campuses.

In addition to housing the world’s largest cyclotron in the school’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, it is also home to the Thunderbirds, representing UBC’s student athletes, with teams in football, basketball, soccer, rugby, swimming and baseball. As part of a complete redesign to the Thunderbirds’ baseball park, our team was enlisted through our partners at RecTec Industries to lend a hand with the seating and customized padding for the stadium.

Long known as the heart of any school, the gymnasium means much more than a place in which to play sports for many students and members of the community. These facilities are now hubs for meetings, assemblies, athletic competition and community events. As such, more schools and other facilities are quickly recognizing the branding power these areas possess.

In addition to customized flooring, score boards and bleachers, facility operators often look to the permanent wall padding installed on the walls of the gymnasium as a safety precaution as another place where their message, logo or team colours can be presented.

One of our more recent projects brought us back to the historic city of Montreal. Nestled along the St. Lawrence River, the vibrant city is a pleasure to not only visit but to do business in as well.

The call came in a few months ago from a general contractor who was looking for assistance in designing some highly-customized wall padding for the high school located just outside of the city’s downtown core.

Before organizing our first on-site visit to the school, we were provided with some technical drawings to help our team better understand the challenges ahead. Given the complexity of the design of the space we were immediately connected with the school-commissioned architecture firm with whom we visited the location with.

Nestled along picturesque Lake Champion in northern Quebec lies the small Cree community of Nemaska. Located nearly 1,100KM north of Montreal, the community is a wonderful place to relax and enjoy the area’s outdoors and diverse wildlife.

Nemaska, which means “Place to Fish” is well known as a premiere fresh water fishing locale and promotes sustainable methods of tourism in the area with help of the local residents.

Born and raised with a strong connection to the outdoors, residents are well versed in hunting, fishing, trapping and other outdoor pursuits and continue to cherish and pass down this heritage to the next generation. Serving as home to such a diverse selection of outdoor activities, the community is known for camping and canoe tours during the summer, ice fishing, dogsledding and snowmobiling in the winter and various other events and activities throughout the year.

Directly translated as “the path of harmony through martial practice,” the martial art of aikibudo is unique in that both the attacker and the defender are referred to as partners rather than adversaries. The Japanese martial art is unique in that the traditional philosopher recognizes neither a winner nor a loser.

Tracing its roots back to the 1930s, this martial art has gained international acclaim in recent years, particularly in France, as well as in Europe and North America.

As part of one of our more recent projects, we were introduced to the art of aikibudo by the highly-trained team at Judo Aikibudo in eastern Quebec. As a borough of beautiful and historic Quebec City, the team at Judo Aikibudo specializes not only in aikibudo but also in other martial arts such as judo, tai-chi and self-defense training for women.