Project Arrow aims to reclaim Canada’s place as a leader in innovation

The path to great successes is sometimes marked by serendipitous moments that do not seem connected until you look back at them.

More than 60 years ago, this country announced that it could compete with the world’s biggest and brightest aerospace powers to create the Avro Arrow aircraft. Then, almost immediately, the government backed down, cancelled the project and wounded a burgeoning national psyche.

That decision leads us to today, where 302 companies — you read that correctly — have signed up to help reclaim the history of the Avro Arrow. Together, we are building an all-Canadian designed, engineered and supplied zero-emissions concept car, Project Arrow, that is getting attention all over the world.

The path that leads to this moment had a chance stop along its way. It took place 15 years ago in a quaint Ontario town known for its annual theatre festival, Stratford.

I spent an early part of my career working there for a commercial developer who was intent on building a shopping centre. I came to know the real city and learned how tough and smart its council and mayor were about the future of the community and the legacy it wanted to build.

Memories of my time spent there came back to me in 2011, when I read that Stratford had been named one of the World’s Most Intelligent Communities by the Intelligent Community Forum. I was not surprised and recalled a conversation I had a few years earlier with Stratford Mayor Dan Matheison after an especially rough council meeting about our proposed shopping centre development.

“You need to rethink who you are dealing with, because we are rethinking who we are,” he told me.

In 2015, when my organization was looking for a place to showcase the Canadian-made technologies being developed for the automobile of the future, we decided to run a fleet of demonstration vehicles in Stratford. Part of the city’s “rethink” was a 2009 decision to install Wi-Fi throughout the 14-square-kilometre community. This made it one of the only places in Canada where we could test how our cars could talk to each other.

Without the success of the Stratford project, Project Arrow wouldn’t be on the path it is today; partnering with companies from across Canada to lead and inspire a new generation of Canadian automotive startups.

This team Canada approach will feature the connected, autonomous and zero-emission product developments being developed along the Highway 401 corridor, along with its already globally recognized automotive manufacturing and information technology sectors.

It will include the raw ingredients for battery technology from Quebec’s mines in Val d’Or and Madawaska, and the artificial intelligence, machine learning and solid-state technology being developed by companies in both Montreal and Quebec City.

The path of Project Arrow is clear. It started with the legendary engineers and dreamers who envisioned the Avro Arrow, stopped in Stratford where a community made the decision to reinvent its city, and comes to today, where a new generation is partnering to make Canada a global centre of influence in the world of transportation and innovation.