Hedgehog Technologies

Burnaby electrical engineering firm Hedgehog, founded in 2001 by president Michael Wrinch, started getting seriously involved with Indigenous communities about 12 years ago. It all began when the company won a contract to build a smart grid in Hartley Bay, a coastal community near Prince Rupert.

“By doing that, we discovered that it's more than just coming to Indigenous people with the facts,”

Wrinch recalls. “We needed to understand their point of view and that it wasn't really about us coming to do the work; it was about us working with them, and allowing them to be trained enough so that we didn't have to come there anymore.”

Wrinch and his team dubbed people in the community “energy champions,” training many of them to run IT systems.

Currently, Hedgehog's 20 employees are partnering with the Haida Nation to help it convert Haida Gwaii to 100-percent renewable energy. “The Haida Nation has got social buy-in, and we're working with them and their energy coordinators to make sure people are trained to do that,” Wrinch says.