We Are the North Shore,
Kamloops North Shore Business Improvement Association

Three months into the job (August 2013) and Steven Puhallo, Executive Director of the North Shore Business Improvement Association is loving it!

Steve Puhallo at the new Kamloops festival Overlander Days

I’m a Westsyde boy. I left Kamloops back in the 90’s came back a few times and have spent the last 15 years or so working in government and corporations doing a lot of marketing, administration and organizing.

My wife and I moved back here just a little while ago to raise our kids and my daughters will be the fifth generation of our family on the North Shore. My great-grandfather planted an orchard in Brocklehurst in the 1920’s and it just makes sense to come home and raise our kids with family.

Being Executive Director of Kamloops North Shore BIA is just the perfect job. I love the fact that I can take the skills, knowledge and experience I’ve built up working globally and across the province and bring it to bear in my hometown to promote the part of the world I love the most.

The North Shore is such a beautiful multicultural story. The North Shore was multicultural before multicultural was multicultural.

The North Shore was settled by people from The West Indies, India, Japan, China, Americans, Germans, Southern Mediterranean people, Yugoslavs and Italians and it’s been just spectacular. They all farmed together and took care of each other. There’s a great mosaic of cultures and we see that in the street names and in their descendents of the North Shore that we want to celebrate everyday.
 
We have a great heritage room at our corporate headquarters, Wilson House. Everyone is invited to drop by and see how the North Shore has grown. I just can’t say enough about the North Shore. I love living here, I love the community, I love the culture. It’s a good vibrant Canadiana culture.

When everyone crosses the finish line together that’s what’s important and so the vision of our team at Kamloops North Shore BIA is three-fold: promotion, beautification and relations. We really want to build a lot of North Shore pride.

We have over 13,000 households on the North Shore so it’s not so much about attracting people to the North Shore but rather showing North Shore residents what they have right here.

Our promotional piece is “We Are the North Shore” and what we’ll be doing over the next year or two year is instilling community pride, community dedication and community spirit.

There’s a lot planned over the next year. We have Treat Street on Halloween where businesses will get dressed up for Halloween and parents can come into participating North Shore businesses for their own trick or treating before heading out into the community with the kids.

We have some winter galas planned including a big truck parade for the contractors.

We also plan to re-launch the Farmers’ Market in a different format. The market will be once a month at Spirit Square from April thru October and will include crafts and arts as well as the farmers’ market.

Watch for our updates and make sure you follow us on Facebook and through our website for announcements.