Thank you for the question.
In fact, the “over a century” reference was just to the Irish side. My family's aboriginal side, of course, has been there forever.
It's a great question. The boom and bust cycle is important in a lot of ways because it drives different things, just like how war increases technology and all that stuff, which is not the nicest thing to say. The boom and bust cycle really throws in a lot of money, and you can see it fairly well in Alberta, where a lot of stuff comes in. My father always uses a saying famous in Alberta: “Please, Lord, give me one more oil boom. I promise not to mess this one up.”
I came onto the scene in the nineties when the gold was coming out, and diamonds just came out of nowhere. When I was in high school and then graduated, all my friends went into the diamond industry. They were graduating from high school, and then a year later, they were making more than the principal was. That was really good for the community.
There was a really good program wherein the people of Hay River, where I'm originally from, got housing. If you worked in the diamond mines and you lived in Hay River, there were programs in place. As soon as they got rid of that, almost everyone moved down to Okotoks and Calgary and those kinds of places.
That's the big thing, and I think that's what everyone is saying too. When these cycles happen, how do you leave something behind? It's the infrastructure and the economics of businesses.
Again, Buffalo Airways was built on a boom and bust cycle in the seventies with oil. We grew during diamonds, and we're growing right now with gold. I think it's an important part of the system.