By Alex Soloducha

Transwest Air tackles fitness of North Sask. residents

Oct 4, 2015 | 8:20 AM

Transwest Air is doing their part for northern communities, by getting people into shape.

Garrett Lawless, COO of Transwest Air, said they have developed a three-tiered focus on health, education and fitness.

“The reason we’ve chosen these three pillars of community building is, what we’re trying to accomplish most in the North is to help the people that live in these communities overcome the barriers that they currently face in achieving great and lasting success,” explained Lawless. “It seems to us, that the most important barriers are within those three fields.”

They’re taking on fitness, or lack thereof, in some remote communities in the province.

That’s where Joel Pederson, owner of Fitness 2J2, comes in.

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His mother’s family is originally from Fond du Lac, and he grew up in Prince Albert, so he still feels strongly about northern Saskatchewan.

Pederson joined the military in 1987 and has been a member of the Saskatoon Police Force for over 20 years. Now, he has a focus on helping others achieve fitness. 

For the past year, Pederson has been touring throughout the North, with the help of Transwest Air, visiting each community and putting on week-long training camps at each place he travels, hoping to enhance lives through the discovery of fitness.

“The North is definitely my home in my mind,” said Pederson. “I am drawn to the North; one of my intents is to go to every community in northern Saskatchewan and provide this programming.”

According to Pederson, his goal is to travel to each area, provide initial fitness programming and mentor future fitness instructors so the programs can be sustained.

“I’m certainly thankful for the opportunity to be able to go up and to work with a lot of people in the community and to provide an example of what a healthy lifestyle can be,” said Pederson. “I certainly didn’t envision myself as being a big role model but I think out of my journey in life, that’s kind of where I’ve gotten to.”

On each trip, Pederson offers fitness instruction to elementary classes, school sports teams for strength and conditioning and to adults as part of ladies only boot camps or daily work outs.

The camps are usually run out of schools in the areas, since many remote communities don’t have formal fitness facilities. 

“It’s an opportunity for the programming to really take root. It allows the sustainability of it to continue on by assisting with those who are interested in becoming fitness leaders and instructors in their community,” said Pederson.

Pederson has travelled to six communities so far, one every two months, for about a year.

“The partnership with Transwest Air has been very positive and they’ve provided me some opportunities that I probably would’ve had some challenges with,” said Pederson.   

Lawless said he hopes to continue to supporting the project.

“He’s a wonderful guy and I’m very proud to be doing business with him.”

Lawless said their plans have many benefits, to their customers, their employees and even to them as a company.

They provide jobs to about 225 employees in the province. Because of their locations, the employees live in almost all the communities they service, with 75 per cent North of Saskatoon.

“It is important to us to have healthy communities for ourselves to live in,” said Lawless.

It’s also beneficial from a business stand point, he explained.

“Because we are in the business of directly servicing the economic needs of the north, we feel that our success is really limited by the success of these communities achieve,” said Lawless. “Anything we can do to make these communities more successful, will turn around and make us more successful too.

“As their success grows, their need for our services will grow, and then our success will grow too.”

In order to help people with their education, the company has donated 50-plus plane tickets to those travelling home to northern Saskatchewan from post-secondary schools.

To improve health, they’ve donated equipment and personnel to build greenhouses so people have access to fresh produce.

Next, their goal is to establish fitness facilities which are lacking in the North. 

asoloducha@panow.com

On Twitter: @alex_soloducha