The Best Seats
In The House

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.

Established in 1923, the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa serves nearly 5,000 children between the ages of six and 18 in the greater Ottawa area. With an established team right here in our hometown, Ottawa’s Boys and Girls Club continues to give local children and youth a place where they can develop confidence and life skills while making friendships that last a lifetime.

The club operates seven locations across the Nation’s Capital with two locations in the west end, three in the east end, and two in the south region of the city.

In addition to the main clubhouses and satellite locations scattered across the city, the club also operates Camp Smitty in the town of Eganville in the picturesque Ottawa Valley.

As one of New York City’s largest commuter towns, the need for a quality childcare facility in South Orange, New Jersey is something Dana Kearney noticed early on. Beginning with a babysitting service operated from her home, Kearney used her fifteen years of nursing experience to provide the best care possible for her children and the children of others in the community.

As her business grew over the years, she outgrew her small home-based business, registered an LLC and created what is now known as Village Babies Development Center. With a spacious facility, Kearney’s business now offers not only care to children between the ages of six weeks and five years of age, but a variety of learning programs for children in each age category.

When shopping for any type of padding, whether it be for an athletic institution, for use on walls for protection or for tumbling exercises such as gymnastics, you have likely been met with some confusing verbiage.

As each type of padding is filled with a different type of foam, the materials used and the way in which it is constructed can vary widely depending on the intended use of that particular piece of padding.

When reading specifications, the “ingredients” used to describe what they are made of can elicit the feeling of ready obscure ingredients found in some of your favourite foods. For many of us, we are unsure of what exactly they mean, what they are made of and which are good for us.

Two such ingredients found in most of our padding are polyethylene and polyurethane. While somewhat confusing by name, their differences are quite important when selecting padding for your home or facility.  As such, we will break each down below and give a few examples as to which each is best suited for.

Looking west to the beautiful state of California, one of our most recent projects took place to the campus of Columbia College located in the heart of the state’s “Gold Country.”

Named after the miners from Sonora, Mexico who originally settled the city, Sonora maintains its historic charm while modernizing itself with museums, art galleries and a number of theatres. Located a mere 75 miles from Yosemite National Park, Sonora is also an outdoor recreationist’s dream. With access to hundreds of resorts, campground, lakes and National Parks, Sonora provides residents and visitors alike with ample opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors.

Heading indoors, we were contacted by the instructional support technician at Sonora’s Columbia College who was looking for a padding solution to cover the entire gymnasium at the growing college. Kicking off a project that would end up being one year in the making, our team worked closely with key stakeholders at the college to ensure a smooth and efficient experience.

Heading back down to the United States, our team was recently involved in a project with the Oakland Board of Schools in New Jersey and with our partners at Tri-State Folding Partitions.

Having done business with the Oakland School district for many years, Tri-State has helped a number of schools in the area with annual preventative maintenance on all their equipment, including partitions, bleachers, basketball backstops, and climbing walls.

In addition to the maintenance, their team has also proudly installed a variety of new equipment including basketball hoops, fold-up divider nets, partitions, and wall pads.

On this particular project, the team at Tri-State worked closely with the Principal and head custodian of Manito Elementary School. As part of the Oakland School District in New Jersey, the school serves approximately 350 students in the close-knit community.  Constructed in 1961, the school has only seen three principals tenured in the institution’s front office since its inception, a credit to school’s long-standing commitment to student-focused education.