Learning Mandarin is just one of the many ways that Carlo De Masi shows his devotion and implication in all aspects of the company, in particular, the decision to treat everyone, whether employee or contract, with the respect and honour they are due. Each and every person involved is as important as the next. At Prolex, the small company gets the same treatment as the multi-million dollar contract.

With 600 active customers, ranging in size from little start-up operations in someone's garage to companies as large as Bombardier, Prolex manufactures everything from connectors to components to whatever is electronically driven; they can service it all. “A customer will come to us and say, 'Listen, I've got a new computer product that I need to have manufactured. Can you help me out?' And we'll produce the PC board, the metal casing, put it all together for him and give it what you call 'turnkey production,' where he just gives you a blueprint and a list of materials and you produce the entire unit for him, in a box, ready to go on the shelves of the store or shipped directly to his customers.”

Nearly 40 years ago, father, owner, and president, Mike De Masi, saw a need in the Canadian marketplace for a company that would be able to service the small to middle-size people, and he went for it, branched out on his own, and created, first, Prolex, and then IGG Electronics. “When companies become a certain size, they are less likely to deal with customers who are asking for 100 parts, or 50 pieces of something,or 100-dollar orders... ” says son, Carlos De Masi. “They are more likely to ask for minimum order quantities. A company that's into millions of dollars of sales...and that is multi-national and is a global company is not going to want to fill an order for 50 parts to a local guy in Vaudreuil here who's developing something, which one day could be really cool, like Boomerang, the car security company. They were a local start-up. Everybody's got a Blackberry in the world, right? That was a little start-up company in Ottawa.”

A proud milestone recently, Prolex contributed the cabling and connectors for the new LED (Light Emitting Diode) traffic lights. But Di Mai's proudest accomplishment remains watching the company grow every day. “Hiring more people, employing more people, being a bigger contributor to the economy. That's the pride I get.”

No individual project stands out as supreme for De Masi. It would lessen their commitment to the little guys, he says. To De Masi, each project retains as much value as the one before and after. “It's not like when there's a big project everybody drops everything and celebrates. We have to focus on each and every one. That's the reason my father started this business...so he's hammered that message home. We treat every customer the same. When we're in front of a customer, regardless of whether he's asking for 10 parts or a million parts...to him, because he is putting the life of his company in our hands. Every single customer no matter how big or how small has to be treated with the same level of importance.

“You never know when they're going to grow. We've seen it time and again; customers that are 1000 dollars a year to us, all of a sudden explode because they're onto a really good idea. And we were there when they were small. Generally speaking, they keep us around when they grow. Business shouldn't be more complicated than providing a responsible service to a customer who is kind enough to give you his time.”

At the rate they're going, De Masi expects Prolex to grow dramatically. Twenty years ago, they were strictly doing connectors. “As the market changed, we changed with it. We started doing what you call 'value added.' We went from connectors to cable assemblies which have connectors on them. From there we went to custom molds... So we've grown. Recently, we acquired a company that has a 'proprietary touch technology,' which is competitive. There's only two or three companies in the world that have something like this cause there's only so many ways you can patent this principle, and we have one of these companies.

In spite of their recent acquisitions, the numerous new contracts and hirings, Prolex wants to keep things simple. They do not want to lose site of their original mission. They are trying to grow slowly and continue to do business here as well as abroad.

They feel fortunate to be able to manufacture in both Canada and China where they employ over 500 people. De Masi implicates himself fully in the business operations there as well as here and has taken it upon himself to pay tribute to his Chinese employees and their culture; he is studying Mandarin, having, to date, mastered the language insofar as to make simple sentences of gratitude, greetings and appreciation. Learning Mandarin will give De Masi, at the very least, an insight into the culture; He will gain additional respect for putting in the time to learn one of the most difficult languages around. Because the Chinese have worked very hard to learn his language, in order to do business with him, he feels he should at least do the same.

De Masi has put his devotion to the test and is giving the individual employee in China the same attention and time as the large company in Canada.

Eduardo Aparicio has been singing for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for numerous years. He has traveled across the world, from the Netherlands, to his native Chile, yet when confronted with his musical success— I am a dentist, he responds with assertion. “Verdi Requiem,” he continues, “is a magnificent piece of music, a very huge piece of music, with choir and orchestra...”

Aparicio sang with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for over 23 years, going with them from Carnegie Hall through the United States and Europe. Now whenever they have big pieces of music, they call, he says. His musical contributions remain timeless in Les Trojans, Carmina Buranna, and L'Enfance du Christ. Five years ago, he was a major contributor in the 350 years of Montreal Anniversary Presentation at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Verdios Requiem is what he performed. “I enjoy my music,” he persists. “It is a hobby. It is a part of my life...if you are sad, you have music to express your sadness; if you are happy, you have music to express your happiness. Music is part of our lives.”

Music, he says, always came naturally to him. Then the crossroads. What to choose as a life career? What to decide? His original intention was to become a doctor, but due to an overwhelming amount of applicants for medical school that year, dentistry was the next logical choice. He wanted a solid-based profession. Music would always be there— and, with dentistry, he'd get to use his hands. Perform.

Aparicio, in fact, considers himself both an artist and a scientist. “Dentistry is a science, but it's also art; you create smiles, you preserve smiles, you reconstruct smiles, and you have to have art to do that. You have to be like a sculptor. You have to carve, with your hands, a piece of art to put into the face of somebody.” Music, on the other hand, is quite openly an art, but it is also science. “You have to have a mathematical mind in order to cut time into little pieces. Rhythmically, some pieces are longer than others, shorter than others in order to create music.” Also, says Aparicio, to interpret what is written, you have to have the ability to divide time and rhythm.

The biggest challenge for Eduardo Aparicio to date has been to re-validate his degree upon his arrival from Chile. He had to be an intern, a resident at McGill hospitals and finally, to pass the required and stringent examinations. “This was a very difficult exam, because the coverage is so wide that you have to be excellent in all the things that they ask.”

He completed all the requirements in only one year and a half. Afterward, he was free to be an entrepreneur. He started his own dental business over 30 years ago. Now, he implants teeth and music into people.

“I like my independence,” he says—with Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' playing in the background.

Former theologian and pastor, Ralph Loewen, takes on the business world, turning Itergy into a Gold Certified Microsoft Company, and winning the coveted top spot in the Profit Magazine. In 2007, they edged out Garda and RIM based on an impressive 30 to 50% growth per year.

In very large enterprises, Itergy will architect, design and implement systems the business applications including accounting, human resources, security, servers, web portals, etc. When one logs onto a network and puts in their password, Itergy is likely to have set up the security system behind it. When sending e-mail, they are possibly the ones who put the servers into place.

Loewen says business has always been a part of his life. Inspired from watching his father, he started his first business in high school and hasn't stopped since. “Running a business is much more secure than having a job. There's some sense that we control our future. We like the rewards that come with success, and we accept quite easily the difficulties that come when you're not a success, cause as you know, it takes a few failures for every success when you're an entrepreneur.”

Loewen and partner established Itergy just a few months before the dot com crash. Their first client went bankrupt; the client that had placed them with the first client went bankrupt, and they lost their startup funds. “So we had to build the company on a totally new model than we had planned on. We had to recast the vision very quickly in the beginning. We switched from a product company to a services company. Everybody thought the Internet had arrived, hundreds of thousands of companies went bankrupt within months. There were no business fundamentals behind them.” You're as good as the people who work for you, says Loewen, the quality of your consultants and your client list.

Itergy grew without marketing--and managed to win awards for it. “We learned that you hire on demand,” says Loewen. “These are things we learned from the dot com crash late 1990s and 2000. You have to have a business plan, and it has to make sense for what your shareholders are expecting. We are in the services business, there is no room for error.”

Fixated on bringing business value to every client, whether here or abroad, Itergy has opened a support office in the UK, with 24/7 monitoring services, and plans on expanding and adding as need arises. “You don't spend the money before the money is there. Every piece has to work for itself. When each piece is built and it makes sense financially and technologically, then we keep going. Acquisition should do the same thing.” Loewen plans to continue acquisition activity, to increase capacity. “It makes sense to bring together certain companies...

“I've always been technical but have not always been passionate about IT. I've always been passionate about people,” says Loewen. “Our faith has always been very important to us. We built a business ethic right off our own sense of ethic. Ethics are necessary. At the same time we have a clear vision, one of which is family. RRSP plan, insurance...we always make sure that people are properly taken care of. We spent a lot of time doing the rights things--not always doing it right. Processes need to follow.”

Loewen's best advice to entrepreneurs is to keep the complex things simple. Business must always make sense. “Technology exists for us, we don't exist for technology. Get rid of things that are unnecessary. People spend way too much time on the wrong things. You've got to spend time on things that add value. It's better to be number one or two, than to be number six, seven, eight, nine or ten, then you're lost.”

I went to a barbecue this past weekend and was amazed by what I found in the host's enormous back yard. He had an entire ghost village consisting of haunted objects and entrances of every kind, from stained glass to smoked wood, to broken wagon wheels and heads, secret chests full of costume jewelery, ponds full of fish, turtles under a wired fence, bridges, streams, skeletons, old-style lamps, hidden benches, arches. He even had smoke equipments, and bubble- and snow-making machines!

It was incredible! What lucky kids, I said to myself, imagining the thrill of his boy and girl exploring the woods behind their house! Their woods! Their backyard.

Later I went downstairs to what seemed to be a tiny basement room. It wasn't. In fact, behind the trick door which looked like a bookshelf I found pinball machines and detailed train sets the complexity of which you would only find in movie sets.

It turns out this father, train lover, and haunted maze maker runs Ivan and Co., which does special effects for show businesses. 

Now, many have interesting jobs, but not many bring it home. This father brought it home for his kids, and the whole neighborhood too, it turns out, to enjoy. 

Every Halloween Ivan and his wife Joelle welcome trick-or-treaters with smoke effects, haunted creepy sound effects, and discretely positioned costumed humans who reach out and grab you by the neck—just before they give you candy. 

"How long did it take your father to make this?" my daughter asked his five minutes into our visit. 

"A week," Julia answered.

In fact, Ivan has been adding to it for 29 years.