Although not common knowledge, I’m sure some of you already suspected there was a connection to the late great Jimmy Buffett who passed away just last week on September 1st, and the name Landshark Drilling.

Many years ago, John Riggs – our partner in the Landshark Traffic Services division, took both his mom and mine to see Jimmy Buffett play at the Kingswood Theater at Canadas Wonderland in May of 1984. My mom brought home the double LP of “You Had to Be There” and it quickly became my favourite album of all time – an album I still have in my collection today! Needless to say, I have been a Parrothead since I was 15 years old and living in small town Northern Ontario was about as far from Duval Street in Key West imaginable!

Now fast forward 30 years; When I sold a previous set of companies called the Itech Group, Drilling was originally part of it operating as Itech Precision Drilling Inc. doing mostly just environmental decoms on our own projects with a GeoProbe. The Drilling component did not sell with the other companies so I put it to the guys to name it whatever they liked, but everything they came back with seemed to be taken. But one day they came to me with “Landshark Drilling”, which I initially said wouldn’t work as everyone would think it was a Jimmy Buffett thing… but apparently, I was the only one who made the connection at the time!

Needless to say, the name kind of works for what we do, providing subsurface drilling investigation services and now Hydro-Excavation, Locating, Environmental Remediation, Geothermal Drilling and Traffic Control Services.

On Friday September 8th we had our regular office staff meeting, our first since the passing of Jimmy Buffett. To that end, today we had a Parrothead day meeting with everyone in their Hawaiian shirts with a beach bum atmosphere! Even Ivy got into it – she is a dog we are raising for Autism Canada and has been at the office every day since we brought her on board and has become part of the family. She is moving on next week for the next phase of her training to become an autistic child’s service dog.

Now you know the rest of the storey!

Rest in Peace Jimmy Buffett.

Fins Up!

Dean Gough, Founder of the Landshark Group of Companies