HISTORY OF SCOTIA BUSINESS CENTRE LIMITED
Scotia Business Centre originated from the efforts of various Lunenburg County groups and individuals to identify and target the needs of single parents. In June 1977, developmental funds were obtained from LEAP (Local Employment Assistance Program) to establish Scotia Business Centre to provide telephone answering along with office support, office overload, photocopying, bookkeeping services and wake-up calls.
The business officially opened on January 3, 1978, with its objective to employ and train single parents and strive to become a viable operation. In June of 1979, Scotia Business Centre became incorporated and over the following years, under the direction of its volunteer Board of Directors and a series of office managers, has grown into a creditable business operation.
Scotia Business Centre has been operating without LEAP assistance since 1984 and is one of the few LEAP projects to survive its subsidized stage and become a viable business.
The business community has come to rely on us and we have expanded our services to include voice paging, alarm and fire phone monitoring, police dispatching, facsimile mailing, word processing, and legal discovery service, as well as the original telephone answering/secretarial services. We now boast a regular clientele of approximately 200 customers.
During the first years of operation, staff had been limited to single parents, many of whom had little previous training and limited job experience. Training was provided by Scotia Business Centre.
As Scotia Business Centre grew, both in number of clients and number of services provided, qualified staff became a prerequisite to both obtain and retain credibility among the businesses it serves. Thus, hiring practices had to change and qualified personnel were hired outside the target group, if there were no single parents readily available.
In September of 1985, the Board of Directors decided to sell Scotia Business Centre Limited. Although the building and equipment formed some tempting assets, the business itself had only recently become a profit-making operation and no buyers could be found. In late 1985, Nancy Cassidy – who had been managing the business for two years – and her husband, Doug, took an option on the business and operated it as a team for 6 months. Several significant changes were made during the option period with regard to staffing, pricing and increasing efficiency (mostly by decreasing expenses, wasted energies and wasted resources). In mid-July, 1986, Nancy Cassidy bought Scotia Business Centre.
In October 1995, the building and business was sold to Yvonne Townsend who had started with the company October 2, 1984; becoming assistant manager in 1990. The mission and philosophy of the business; to provide effective communication services at a reasonable cost and that the office must be a pleasant and interesting place to work, stayed the same. Yvonne focused on updating aged equipment, and tried to slowly adjust staff and herself to her new role of “owner” as opposed to “co-worker”. The business once again became incorporated (Scotia Business Centre Limited) in July 1998.
Emergency Services:
-
-
- Bridgewater Police Dispatch (fixed-schedule and on-call 1980 – 2005)
- Fire Dispatch (36 fire departments)
- Private and Public Security Alarm Monitoring
- Elevator Phone Monitoring
- Utilities Systems Monitoring
- Fan-out Telephone Notification (for community emergencies)
- Ambulance Dispatch (6 month period in 1998)
-
General Business Services:
-
-
- Private Radio Dispatch
- Telephone Answering (approx. 80 business clients)
- Public Faxing, Photocopying
- Word-processing
- Court Reporting
- Temporary Personnel and Employee Placement
-
Personnel:
-
-
- Employs 6 full-time and one part-time staff on site, as well as temporary personnel off site. All staff have taken post-secondary training, primarily in the secretarial field.
- One staff member is a volunteer fire-fighter.
- One staff member successfully completed the Fire Communications Course through the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO Institute). (2002)
- 2 staff on duty Monday-Saturday 9am-7pm; Sun 10am-4pm.
- One staff on duty remaining times; one person on-call at all times.
-
Building:
-
- Company-owned, 2 storey, 26′ x 40′ building in downtown Bridgewater.
- Commercial space on street level, SBC on top floor.
- Full unfinished basement.
- Gas generator for backup power during power outages.
