Summus Inc

06/01/2023

12/30/2021

Yesterday was a tough day.

The World Junior Hockey Championship was canceled, the Brandon Wheat Kings played their last game for a while in front of an empty house and we all feel like things might never get back to normal.

Usually I'm big on telling people to look forward, look beyond right now and see what we can get to. But today I suggest we look backward to remind ourselves what we enjoyed in the past and want to have again.

6 years ago yesterday the Summus team went to a Wheat Kings game and we brought some friends. One of our friends was Dancing Gabe.

Thanks to Brandon Wheat Kings Hockey Club (WHL),Joe Beavers, Bar And Grill and many others, Dancing Gabe made his Brandon debut to a packed house. Gabe didn't disappoint. His energy was infectious, the crowd was feeding off Gabe and the Wheat Kings stormed back in the 3rd period to win on a breakaway goal. It remains my favorite Wheat Kings game I've ever seen.

So please enjoy these pics of that night and find a memory of your own to remind you of why it's important we keep our chin's up, get through this rough patch and one day soon reintroduce ourselves to the joys we shared together in the past.

P.S. Whoever it was that gave Gabe that Wheat Kings Scarf as a Christmas gift at the book signing, he never did take it off that whole day.

Ted

12/24/2021

2021 was a big year for us at Summus. The year started in a fog of uncertainty. Covid-19 had upended our 2020 and even by Jan 1st 2021 we still didn't really know what to expect in the coming year. We made a conscious decision to grow and adapt. We knew whatever plans we made would need to be flexible, but we were going to have a plan and to act with intention.

The first choice we made was to hire. We believed we would find a safe way to work and our services would be in demand. That was true and we ended up hiring 3 people in 2021. Those hires increased our capacity to deliver solutions to our customers, both in volume and in the quality of the solutions.

One of the lesser known effects of the economic starts and stops of the past 2 years has been how hard it's been on apprentices who need to acquire work hours to graduate as trades people. In May of 2021, for the first time ever Summus took on an electrical apprentice. By virtue of Fred being a Journeyman Electrician, and after some discussions with Apprenticeship Manitoba, we took on Eric, a level 4 electrical apprentice who was out of work and needed about 900 hours to complete his education. I am proud to say Eric got 958 hours with us and returned to school in November to complete the final stage of his education. We look forward to helping graduate more apprentices in the future.

One of the highlights of the year for me was traveling to Victoria in early December to be with the staff at our monitoring centre and thank them for all they do for our customers. I was especially touched that they had been following our work with Everyone Eats and sent me back with a $100 donation to help provide meals to people facing food insecurity in Brandon. It reminded me that community is more than geography and for that I am grateful.

I am also proud of how our team uses local problems as learning opportunities. High speed internet options in rural Manitoba have improved but it's still not available to all. We have a fiber connection in our office with blazing fast 500mbps speeds, but 100 meters south of our office is a railway line and if you live on the other side of it you don't have access to fiber or any decent internet options. One of our neighbours already had mobility issues prior to Covid and was socially further restricted by the pandemic. His lifeline to the outside world became his internet connection and it just wasn't working. We worked with RFNow to bring a second fiber connection into our building and then used a wireless point to point system to beam a stable and fast internet connection over the train tracks and to our neighbour's house. This is not a service we offer, but a special project we wanted to see happen and we learned a lot from it that has helped us solve problems at our more challenging job sites.

2022, whatever you've got in store for us, we have a plan, we are adaptable and will act with intention.

12/16/2021

This is our friend Olivia out there making thing happen. Special thanks to Ross (The John Howard Society of Brandon), Flo (Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation), Amanda (Prairie Oasis Senior Centre), Dawn (Second Harvest) Bethany (Peak of the Market) and everyone else that’s pitched in to make this real.

Olivia played a role in organizing Everyone Eats Brandon when we first started and she championed the idea of a pay-what-you-can-afford grocery store as an add on to the program.

We are big supporters of food rescue and believe in a safe community everyone eats every day.

Come down and support Olivia’s vision on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 5pm to 7pm at 31 9th Street, Brandon MB.

See you there,

Ted

Local residents who are environmentally conscious or just want to save some money may want to check out Brandon’s new Food Rescue Grocery Store, which opened Wednesday. Located within the Blue Door Project in downtown Brandon, this store sells a variety of perishable and non-perishable food items ...

11/25/2021

Fred has been the Sergeant of Arms for the last two and a half years with the Royal Canadian Legion Branch #3. He has just been announced the President of the Volunteer Board. It is with great pride that we congratulate Fred Pritchard.

11/10/2021

I wanted us to all take a moment and acknowledge what tomorrow - November 11 - represents.

Let us remember the courage, bravery, sacrifice, and service for all those that have fought and those we have lost for our country and our freedom.

We are so honored to have Fred involved with the Royal Canadian Legion Brandon Branch #3; to honor our Veterans at tomorrows Memorial Day Service, and paying respect to them each and every day as Sergeant-at-Arms of our local legion.

11/04/2021

We are hiring again and who better to tell you about working with Summus than Matt.

Matt has been working with us for just over 2 years, and this year we were proud to have him obtain his Class M electrical license.

If you're interested in working with Matt and everyone else at Summus, please introduce yourself to us with a resume and cover letter by emailing [email protected]

Please Visit: https://summusinc.ca/careers/
for more information.

10/15/2021

Jigar Patel (JP) is an entrepreneur. He is a franchise owner of the Pita Pit Canada franchises in Brandon, as well as several other restaurants in town.

We have been working with JP since 2018 and we at Summus are so proud of all his accomplishments.

Show JP some support by stopping by, or visiting his page.

07/01/2021

Happy Canada Day!

Canada Day is not a declaration of superiority or celebration of perfection.

That wouldn’t be us.

For us, Canada Day is a celebration of gratitude, specifically for the teammates we have from coast to coast to coast.

We celebrate the Canadians that cared for us, for our families and for our friends on the front lines of our medical system.

We celebrate the teachers that reinvented their profession to safely and bravely educate in an unknown and scary new world.

We celebrate our restauranteurs who innovated to feed their customers with new business models and courage to try when success was uncertain.

We celebrate our service industry workers who had their lives turned upside down to keep us safe at great person cost to themselves.

We celebrate all the volunteers who found ways to help their communities weather this storm.

We celebrate everyone who took on an extra role of caregiver for a loved one, neighbour or friend.

We celebrate those that set the historical record straight and showed us the truth about our past so that we could come to understand the world as it is from more perspectives than just our own.

We celebrate the bravery of our new team members: immigrants. They left a known life behind for the promise of something better here, with us and we are all better for it.

We celebrate the generations of Canadians that came before us. You were imperfect people in an imperfect world, doing your best. It’s your best that built what we enjoy today and inspires those of us with lots to enjoy, to build a tomorrow that includes ever more people in all of Canada’s opportunities and privileges.

We celebrate our youth who we see finding ways to thrive in spite of chaos and the unknown. We want to offer you stability and certainty as you enjoy childhood, but there’s limits to what we have to offer. Instead we see your resilience as you adjust, readjust and readjust again to a world that will not settle. Faith in your ability to constantly adapt brings us hope and confidence in our collective futures.

When we say “Happy Canada Day” we are saying thank you for being on our team and allowing us on your team.

Happy Canada Day from everyone at Summus.

06/07/2021

It's that time of the year that everyone has been looking forward to. The snow is gone, and summer is on its way! That means that most of us will be heading to the beach or lake in the upcoming months.

While visiting Riding Mountain National Park, we encourage everyone to support our friend Chris by stopping by Onanole Home Hardware. Please take a moment to visit Onanole Home Hardware's page and give it a like to show them just how much we care!

05/26/2021

This wasn't a planned photoshoot we swear, but we sure love it. We want a happy ending to this story. Please everyone stay safe.

BPS and City of Brandon, we're happy to contribute to the costs of a safe capture and relocation.

05/21/2021

Happy May Long Weekend! Our office will be closed on May 24, 2021 as homage to the late Queen Victoria’s birthday.

Queen Victoria was born on May 24, 1819, and was the reigning monarch for 63 years, seven months and two days. Following the passing of Queen Victoria in 1901, Canada officially named the holiday Victoria Day, and we celebrate it the second last Monday in May.

A few facts about Queen Victoria
1) She became queen when she was only 18 years old, when William IV died. She had to propose to her future husband Albert because of her position, who was her first cousin.
2) There were six assassination attempts on her life.
3) When her husband died in 1861, she began wearing only black, and continued to do so for the remainder of her life.