Theo Fleury takes a shot at a new goal
EX-NHL star joins UIC First Nations management team
Retired NHL star Theoren Fleury is lacing up dress shoes for a new venture in an ever-evolving career, this time building up business for a Calgary construction firm that works with First Nations on reserve projects.
The former Calgary Flames forward and Stanley Cup champion — who became an author and motivational speaker — is now business development manager for UIC First Nations.
Fleury, whose family shuttered a concrete business five years ago, said he is taking another shot at the construction industry, having learned some of the pitfalls of running a small company.
“I figured out that I was way too honest to be in that business,” he said in an interview, referring to Fleury’s Concrete Coatings.
The company sold decorative concrete to residential and commercial clients until the 2008 market crash, when the business took a major hit. But there were other problems, Fleury said. “We were taken advantage of at every opportunity, at every corner, (by) every dog-and-pony show that came through the door trying to sell us stuff,” Fleury said.”
UIC First Nations, whose general manager is Fleury’s friend and construction industry veteran Patrick McCallion, aims to forge partnerships with aboriginal communities across the country to build schools, water treatment plants and other community projects on reserves.
Fleury said he visited nearly 70 reserves on speaking tours after publishing his eye-opening 2009 memoir, Playing With Fire, that detailed his drug and alcohol addictions and the sexual abuse he suffered in the 1980s while playing junior hockey.
Fleury said he saw scores of unfinished housing, elders lodges and schools in the communities he visited, the result of what he said were bad construction deals. “We’ve seen a lot of projects that have been incomplete because the construction company that came and promised, promised, promised, later says we ran out of money,” Fleury said.
He later talked to McCallion about finding a company that was already established and could help aboriginal people learn skills and find jobs to become self-sufficient.
After some negotiations, Alaskabased UIC Construction Services agreed to open a Calgary subsidiary. At UIC First Nations, Fleury will seek out deals with aboriginal communities, adopting a financial model he said would avoid the pain of expensive, incomplete projects.
The books on every project will be open and subject to the scrutiny of the First Nations partner, Fleury said. All funds for the work will be placed in an escrow account requiring aboriginal signatures before they are released for project payments, he said.
The fledgling startup has not yet signed any deals, but it’s pursuing seven projects in Alberta, said Margaret Nelson, business development manager with UIC Construction Services, the holding company.
The company aims to hire at least 70 per cent of its crews for any given project from the aboriginal community involved, Nelson said. Those living on reserves can receive on-thejob training throughout construction projects and get extra help to learn how to maintain the buildings after the work wraps up, she said.
“As we are growing and becoming a larger community, we wanted to reach out across native nation boundaries to help share that,” Nelson said.