As a vocal proponent of the growth and potential of Atlantica, I occasionally have been challenged by those who don’t necessarily share my belief in the concept. The greatest challenge I have faced has been the lack of concrete evidence that something that creates exponential value actually exists within the geography of the region. In other words, how can we make money here?

I spend a great deal of my thinking time at the proverbial 30,000-foot level, so that’s where I went looking for tangible examples of Atlantica in action. I recently was in Bangor, one of my new favourite places to visit, and I had a wonderful meeting with James Page, the president and CEO of James W. Sewall Company, which has its main office in Old Town, Me., and additional offices in New York, Kentucky, and North Carolina. It’s engaged in engineering and consulting and has been around since 1880.

When I spoke with James about Progress and the upcoming Reaching Atlantica Conference, he began telling me about his business dealings in Halifax and in other countries. His partner in Halifax is Eastcan Geomatics Consultants Ltd., a quiet subsidiary of well-known and successful engineering giant CBCL Ltd., also of Halifax.

The two firms united when Eastcan was bidding on a project in Puerto Rico and the management team realized the company needed a partner to fulfill a portion of the bid requirement. Enter James W. Sewall Company. The two firms put together a successful bid and

began working in international markets; they are now bidding on work in Costa Rica. It was a case of two companies coming together with complementary assets to beat global competition. That’s what Atlantica is all about.

Or at least part of the story. There is so much more, and the potential is growing. For example, the number of opportunities is increasing as we work more closely together and as developing countries emerge as major markets. There is a tasty little aside for those of us who have been promoting corridors as the connectors for Atlantica: Every time James Page drives from Old Town to Halifax, he likes to stop at the Truro Power Centre. He finds it caters specifically to him as someone who spends a lot of time travelling within Atlantica.

This example of Atlantica in action points out the added benefits of working together as a region. The two engineering firms could be anywhere in Atlantica; they happen to be in the Bangor area and Halifax, but they just as easily could be in Edmundston and Corner Brook or Augusta and Summerside.

Atlantica is about all of us within the region finding ways to work together to substantially increase our profits, networks, friendships, and prosperity. Our purpose is to become a region that offers opportunities for everyone—because if all of us don’t have the opportunity to succeed, then we will most assuredly continue to fail. The past 138 years have made that perfectly clear.