Shorefast’s Senior Operations Manager, Colleen Penton, shares her time at the GGCLC

From May 22 to June 5, the 2026 Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference welcomed participants from across Canada to reflect on this year’s theme: Leading Canada’s Sustainable Prosperity. Among them was Shorefast’s Senior Operations Manager, Colleen Penton, who travelled from Fogo Island, Newfoundland to Quebec, Alberta, and Ontario, sharing perspectives with Canadians from various communities and industries during two weeks of intensive conversations, visits, and activities.  

A Well-Earned Opportunity 

For over 40 years, the GGCLC has explored new ways of building up Canada through a unique process of debate and discovery designed to enhance the leadership qualities of its members. This year, 250 members, often emerging leaders, were chosen from each province and territory and from sectors that range from business, labour, government, academia, community, and culture.  

Colleen was one of seven participants accepted from Newfoundland and Labrador, and one of the few selected from a rural community. In her current role as Senior Operations Manager, she oversees Construction and Maintenance, as well as the Property team, working to support the community businesses and buildings owned by Shorefast on Fogo Island. Hailing from the community of Fogo, Colleen inherited a strong, community-minded entrepreneurial streak from her family. Her natural leadership qualities extend beyond her full-time role with Shorefast; she also juggles being Secretary of the Fogo Island Ferry Committee and President of the Fogo Island Central Women’s Darts League. This made her ideally placed to share insights garnered not only from Shorefast’s work, but from her life on Fogo Island. 

Zita Cobb Joins the Opening Plenary 

Participants were divided into study groups made up of individuals from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, each assigned to tour a different area of Canada. Before setting off, they all gathered in Québec City for a two-day opening plenary. 

There, Colleen met the other members of the Alberta Study Group she was assigned to, visited the city, and heard from high-profile speakers. One of these was our Founder and CEO, Zita Cobb, who shared the history of Shorefast, its work on Fogo Island, and how it led to the creation of the Shorefast Institute for Place-based Economies. Colleen noticed how impressed the audience was by Zita’s speech. “I felt like a bit of a celebrity for a second,” she says, adding that fellow participants were able to relate what Zita said back to her. “People were especially interested in Fogo Island Inn and the Shorefast Institute. They wanted to know if we had partners in their home province or territory, and how many people, like me, returned to Fogo Island after their studies to work and live.” 

On An Albertan Adventure 

After the plenary, it was off to Edmonton for the beginning of an Albertan adventure. In total, the Alberta Study group visited 62 places, with activities starting early in the morning and ending with debates around the day’s learnings that continued late into each evening.  

In Edmonton, the group endured military training, witnessed the reclamation of space at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples, and learned about the need for trades at a local carpentry school. Colleen described these first two busy days as feeling like a “social experiment,” where the group’s different personalities sometimes clashed, but a need for mutual understanding often won over. For Colleen, this understanding happened in unexpected places. While meeting with Salma Lakhani, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, Colleen connected to Her Honour’s story about having to flee her home country of Uganda. Lakhani quoted Canadian poet Rupi Kaur: “It isn’t what we left behind that breaks me. It’s whatever we could’ve built had we stayed.” The poem reminded Colleen of her home, once threatened by resettlement. “It was inspiring for me to hear that,” she says, “because I come from an island where we refused to resettle, and look what we did because we did stay.” 

The trip continued to Fort McMurray, Calgary, and surrounding regions, where contrasting experiences highlighted the current realities of Alberta. They toured the Oil Sands Discovery Centre, visited a buffalo reserve established by a First Nations community, and heard from scientists about the impact of oil extraction on the local wildlife — all while seeing the landscape still scarred by 2016 wildfires. Throughout the many stops in her travels, Colleen was surprised at the connections to Fogo Island she discovered. “I realized that farming is a lot like fishing,” she says, “and automated grain feeders on a cattle farm reminded me of parts of a longliner!” 

Reflections On a Big Small Place 

This recognition in places she’d never been reminded Colleen how small a big country like Canada really is. At a mental health and addiction centre in Calgary, she found herself eating next to a client from Newfoundland. “Canada is just made up of small communities,” she says, “It’s much smaller than I thought.” The kinship she created with participants from places far removed from Fogo Island reinforced this feeling. “I connected with folks from the north quite a bit, from Iqaluit in Nunavut and Kuujuaq in Northern Quebec, because of the way we identified from where we’re from. The communities are quite small, we eat a lot of the same things, like caribou, seal, and berries. Many things are dependent on the seasons, and the extracurricular activities are similar, like snowmobiling and going to the cabin.” 

This reflection inspired one of the Alberta Study Group’s projects. At the cattle farm near Calgary, the group learned about branding cattle, and how a brand must be created with family, history, and values in mind. The group created their own brand on a piece of wood: two Cs linked together under one roof to show that “communities in Canada must be connected to prosper together.” The brand was gifted to outgoing Governor General Mary Simon during the conference’s closing plenary in Ottawa, where every study group presented their learnings from their tours. 

From Shore to Shore 

While Colleen was travelling with her study group in Alberta, the Newfoundland and Labrador Study Group spent a day on Fogo Island, visiting a Fogo Island Co-Op processing plant, Growlers, and Fogo Island Inn, examples of the place-based economic development model advanced by Shorefast through the work of the Shorefast Institute. The group’s visit was evidence that what was built here, because the community chose to stay, is worth studying and sharing across Canada, just as Colleen observed during her tour.