Yesterday (Wednesday, November 30) I attended the Property Management Expo (PM Expo) which is currently running at the Toronto Convention Centre (south building) with our magazine's Publisher Brad O'Brien.

This is an excellent show for anyone whose business involves serving the waste and recycling needs of properties and their managers in the Greater Toronto Area, and places beyond as well. It's also a good event for making contacts in the construction industry, if C&D waste is your thing, since the PM Expo is held in conjunction with Construct Canada and two other building and design-related trade shows.

Most (but not all) of the waste service companies are in the PM Expo portion of the show, the entrance to which is at the base of the main escalators. (Note: Parking can be a problem near this facility. I suggest you park south of the event in the municipal parking lots near Harbourfront, then walk north to the "south building.")

Brad and I visited the staff at the show booths for VPF Waste & Recycling Inc. (Rocco Volpe and Vince Ciano), BFI Canada, Wasteco (Steve House), Waste Management (Dave Brown). We caught up with some familiar contacts, some of whom are old friends, in related environmental service companies such as FLR: Fluorescent Lamp Recyclers (Martin Hassenbach), Restoration Environmental Contractors (Don Bremner), Axxess Environmental (Craig Dewar), Terrasan (Rob Boyko) and Harper Detroit Diesel (Mark Lenarcic).

We also met briefly with Trevor Harris -- one of the original environmental service company founders in this country -- and wanted to say hello to another industry builder, Don Pinchin of Pinchin Associates, but every time we approached his booth he was swamped with customers (and we didn't want to get in the way of him potentially "making a deal"). We met with Nello De Carli of Wilkinson Chutes Canada, whose company will no doubt be busy in the next few years helping Toronto high-rises as they gear up to comply with new waste diversion requirements for multi-residential buildings.

After we toured the show, Brad and I headed up to the Prince Hotel to catch the end of the "Year in Review" environmental legislation conference. The event ( http://www.yearinreview.ca) was well-attended, and the coctail reception afterward was enjoyed by all. The one-day conference is put on by the Eco Log Group, of which Solid Waste & Recycling is a part.

And that reminds me of one last thing: I'd like to explain that our magazine, like the other Eco Log Group products, is published by Business Information Group (also known by the wonderful acronym B.I.G.). B.I.G. is a subsidiary of Hollinger Canadian Newspapers LLP, a division still owned by the company headquartered in Chicago that also publishes the Chigao Sun-Times (and other media entities). You'll likely just think of us in terms of our magazine name, but sometimes people have asked me who owns us, and now you know.

(As an aside, I was one of three people in a partnership who founded the magazine ten years ago and sold it to Hollinger in 2000, along with the magazine now known as HazMat Management, which I used to also edit.)