Matt Vincent is right where he needs to be to meet the health and safety needs of his 62 Degrees North clients.
A former paramedic, Vincent decided in 2012 to leverage his first responder background into a new experience running a medical business.
“I’ve always had an interest in business. I felt it would be a good fit. I decided to take a leap and go with it,” he said.
For almost a decade, 62 Degrees North has been providing medical training programs such as first aid through the Canadian Red Cross, procuring medical supplies for clinics and hospitals and contracting out medical professionals to work sites.
Its staff levels fluctuate between six and 15, depending on the time of year.
“There is more activity with exploration and mining camps during the winter. This winter we were pretty busy at remote sites like mines and construction sites. Staffing goes down in the summer,” Vincent said.
Before the pandemic arrived in the NWT, the company’s main challenge was finding enough skilled medical workers to hire.
“Aurora College trains nurses here so we can get them, but there are only so many paramedics in the NWT. At some point, you have to look elsewhere for specialist training,” Vincent said.
By the same token, the smaller population of the territory has made for a family-like atmosphere between 62 Degrees North and its clients, Vincent explained.
“We work with some great people here. If we were in a city of 500,000 people, there wouldn’t be that small-town feel. And if you get a reputation of doing well at a job site, sometimes word of mouth can be your best advertiser.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began 14 months ago, 62 Degrees North has been well-positioned to fill needs in the areas of personal protective equipment and COVID-19 testing for companies in the natural resources sector.
The pandemic initially dealt the company a negative blow when Yellowknife entered a lockdown in spring 2020 and the economy slowed.
Many of its in-person training programs were suspended or had to move online.
But it managed to adapt and remodel itself to respond to the new demands of COVID-19 by selling locally-made hand sanitizer, gloves, face masks and non-contact thermometers.
It has also become the only private company in the territory to offer COVID-19 testing using polymerase chain reaction tests at mining and remediation sites – that type of test can detect someone in the early stages of the virus. It also conducts some tests using the ID NOW rapid testing device.
Demands related to coronavirus have occupied most of the company’s time since the pandemic began.
“With COVID-19 we’ve kept pretty busy. We’ve managed to keep staff employed and kept the company afloat,” Vincent said.