After nearly 23 years with Toronto-based equipment supplier William F. White, Dan St. Amour, VP of commercial production services, will retire on May 27.

St. Amour started his career at Whites Toronto in 1994 as a package truck driver. He was then named manager, commercials in 2001, a job he held for nearly 10 years. He was appointed to the post of general manager, Whites Toronto in 2011, where he oversaw daily operations, and was promoted to the VP, commercial productions services role in 2013.

During his time at Whites, St. Amour spearheaded the launch of Whites Interactive in 2009, an initiative meant to provide a cost-effective production solution to the then-burgeoning digital production industry.

“We were getting approached by a lot of independent producers and production managers and our commercial clients [about digital production solutions],” St. Amour told Playback Daily.  “We were all struggling to supply a market that was underfunded at the time. It was a new market we were all trying to wrap our heads around and understand.”

To address that market need, St. Amour developed the Whites Interactive production vehicle, featuring lighting and grip solutions and a package producers “could just drive away with” – it was the first production vehicles producers could rent and use without hiring a driver.

“Whites Interactive was groundbreaking for us. Really, nobody had done that before. It was a completely new area of involvement for our company’s business,” St. Amour said, adding that there are now eight Whites Interactive vehicles now available across the country. Other production vehicle projects he lead while at Whites included the 2013 launch of White’s Mini-Mobile Package Truck, geared towards mid-range shoots, and the 2014 launch of the High-Speech Package Truck.

In addition to the Whites Interactive launch, St. Amour said another one of his greatest career accomplishments was helping to establish Whites Sudbury in 2014. When speaking to various DPs and production managers, St. Amour said he saw a need for increased production infrastructure in the Northern Ontario region following the introduction of additional financial incentives, such the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund and regional tax credit bonuses. As such, Whites was the first supplier to open up a shop in Northern Ontario, St. Amour said, with production in the region continuing to grow with shoots like Sienna Films and eOne’s Cardinal.

Looking back at his career, St. Amour said he credits Paul Bronfman, chairman/CEO of Comweb Corp. and William F. White, and Paul Roscorla, Whites EVP, for allowing him to take chances and explore new areas of business for the company.

“They have really let me run with things. They let me take those chances and they supported me. The staff all backed me up with these new initiatives. They saw what we were trying to do and we were all charting new territory,” St. Amour said.

Whites is still working out succession planning for who might take on his responsibilities after he retires, but St. Amour does have some parting words of advice.

“My words of wisdom – and is something I have always lived by in my career here – would be to anybody who is doing this kind of work, no matter how big or how small the job is that your customer is working on, to them, that job is their life and their world at that moment. So you take it seriously,” St. Amour said.