Minding their businesses
Classic arcade games, life skills for people with disabilities and shrimp for 700
Arcade at Ceilidh House
When Justin Kavanagh bought a bar in 2009, didn’t plan to run a bar. He bought Ceilidh House because his wife was a server there, she liked her job and the place was for sale.
Six years later though, he manages operations at the Hess Village pub. He says one of the biggest changes in recent years has been in demographics.
“When we first came in it was 19- to 22-year-olds and that has gone away — especially on George Street,” Kavanagh says.
The popularity of other neighbourhoods has drawn away some of the former Hess crowd. And, Kavanagh says, new places are focusing on good drinks and good food.
These establishments are offering more than just a club scene. The second floor of Ceilidh House has opened as a sort of sister business.
Arcade opened at the start of June. The rec-roomy concept is a bit of a fantasy if you grew up in the ’80s — classic arcade games with disabled coin slots. That’s right. Free play forever.
Kavanagh has two pinball machines (these do cost a quarter to cover the cost of maintenance) and 10 free arcade games including Ms. Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, Crystal Castles and Asteroid. Kavanagh went as far as California and Quebec to find them.
Camelot Centre
You can’t change the world, says Bonnie Sylvia, but you can change one little corner. That was her thinking when she founded Camelot Centre in 2006.
The non-profit registered charity offers a day program for adults with intellectual disabilities. Sylvia started it after her daughter Robyn graduated from high school. At the time, there was nowhere for Robyn to go when she was finished her schooling. Community living programs, one of the only options, had a two-year wait list.
Sylvia looked around and found adult day programs in Brantford, Cambridge and Brampton, but nothing in Burlington.
That’s when she got together with other parents who were in the same position. They came up with Camelot — a continuing education and life skills facility for adults over 21 with an intellectual disability.
Sylvia says she decided to stay away from a government-funded model to avoid the potential pitfall of having funding pulled. She says they have navigated non-profit waters fairly easily. Today, Camelot has five staff and 20 students.
Sodexo
It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly Sodexo does. Partly, that’s because the company does it all.
“We do everything that isn’t core to the business (of a business),” says Katherine Power, vice-president of communications for Sodexo.
That means that, in a school, Sodexo does everything but the teaching. In a hospital, Sodexo does everything but patient care. This includes food services, security and facilities management.
Sometimes it happens locally, at Appleby College in Oakville for instance, and sometimes it’s further afield, at oilsands sites.
Companies working in the energy and resources industries have realized it’s a tough sell to get employees to leave their families for weeks at a time to work in difficult conditions.
One of the ways these companies make the jobs more attractive is by turning to a place like Sodexo, which has experience managing all aspects of the living quarters.
“If you go to some of the new ones it’s like going to a resort as long as you don’t go outside,” says Power with a laugh.
The Paris-based Sodexo has four locations in Canada — Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver and Burlington. Roughly 100 employees work out of the Burlington head office.