Blossoming in 2024
MAGNA operates on a 5-year cycle of Planting, “Just Add Water,” Healthy Growth, Blossoming, and Harvest. Each stage represents our annual focus. 2024 was a year of blossoming—and how we blossomed! This year was busy from a company growth and project perspective. We made huge advancements regarding innovation, team development, and recognition in our field. We are so proud of how hard our team has worked. We have finished, started, and advanced many projects this year and we can’t wait to continue this progress into 2025! Some major milestones that happened over 2024 are:
Creating regulations for the Canadian Standards Association (CSA)! Our experts were engaged to support and create stormwater standards at a national level. We are proud to be a part of a community that is making progress for stormwater in Canada!
Our team grew 20%! We love our team and are so happy to have so many new faces.
Reaching $5 million in yearly revenue.
Finishing the feasibility study, as the Town of Bon Accord officially accepted our findings. We look forward to moving to the next project in 2025.
Future location of the Prince Rupert MBWS™ Pilot
January
In January, our MAGNA Biofilter Wetland System (MBWS™) pilot project for the City of Prince Rupert moved! The City decided to switch from Omineca to Moresby area. The logistics of working in this rainy, coastal environment means treating stormwater alongside wastewater with the MBWS™. This provides a unique opportunity to test the MBWS™ in a new environment with additional challenges and proves that we can adapt our system to any community’s needs.
Once completed, this MBWS™ will resemble a raised planting bed along the beautiful Moresby Trail and will help to prevent untreated wastewater from entering the ocean. This innovative, nature-based infrastructure solution will also reduce long-term costs for the community and protect the natural area surrounding it.
February
In February, our team was able to raise over $400 for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada by creating and selling Candygrams. It was so sweet to see all the messages our team sent one another! It is also wonderful to see our team pull together for a good cause. Our administrator, Corinne Brown, spearheaded this fundraiser and she definitely knocked it out of the park!
Check out this awesome picture of our intern at the Dawson’s Landing 2B MAGNA Stormpark™. It was so great that it was featured on the cover of Alberta Innovates Magazine!
March
In March, we were on the cover of a magazine!
Alberta Innovates (AI) featured MAGNA in their annual water-solution-focused publication, Making Waves. The article highlighted our collaboration with Source2Source Inc. (S2S) and our use of the S2S Nautilus Pond® in our MAGNA Stormpark™ designs. It also does a deep dive into how wetlands can be used for water treatment. We are so honoured that AI featured our work—one of our past interns even made the front cover! We love it when others emphasize the increased necessity for nature-based infrastructure solutions, and the steps it takes to implement it into more communities.
April
We won big in April!
First, our CEO, Jennifer Massig, was honoured with a Calgary Influential Women in Business (CIWB) Award—Small/Medium Enterprise category. This celebrates Jennifer’s dedication to MAGNA's growth and journey over the past eight years. She delivered a phenomenal speech during the award ceremony hosted by Axis Connects, leaving us all with this inspiring message:
“I am a mother, a woman, an Engineer, and a CEO. I dream for a world where being all these things at the same time can be the norm for a woman, as opposed to being remarkable.”
Here is MAGNA’s CEO, Jennifer Massig, holding the CEA Showcase Award of Excellence that MAGNA won in April!
Then, later in April, MAGNA received the CEA Showcase Award of Excellence in the Small Firm—Big Impact category. The award was specifically for the first ever MBWS™, located in Leslieville, Clearwater County. We are incredibly proud and grateful for the recognition of our efforts to improve wastewater management in rural communities! This award symbolizes exactly what we want to carry into 2025—Big impact.
May
May was a busy month for us! Foresight Canada awarded us with the Alberta Cleantech Adopter of the Year award; we had our official toilet paper/ribbon cutting on our MBWS™ Demo in Estevan, Saskatchewan; and our Alpine MAGNA Stormpark™ in Calgary began construction!
The Adopter of the Year award is all about celebrating sustainable practices; something we care about deeply at MAGNA. It is an honour to be recognized for our efforts to combat symptoms of climate change, like drought. This award is made even more special because Foresight Canada is an organization that is leading the way in environmental practices. We can only hope this recognition will continue to inspire other organizations to prioritize sustainability.
The MBWS™ Demo in the City of Estevan finished construction soon after this award! It is always so exciting to see one of our designs be commissioned and a stampede couldn’t stop our team from travelling to the City of Estevan for the official ribbon cutting. We even used our biodegradable, MAGNA-branded toilet paper as the “ribbon” to celebrate the occasion! Apart from the TP cutting, our team was able to participate in the first tree-planting. Overall, it was a great opportunity to celebrate our collaboration with Estevan and kick-off the MBWS™ Demo. We are so excited to see this project move forward, and we can’t wait to design more systems in Saskatchewan!
We broke ground on a new project! The Alpine MAGNA Stormpark™ is a collaboration with Dream Development for the community of Alpine, Calgary. The goal of this project is to protect native biodiversity and natural habitat while providing an inner community amenity space. In just 7 months, we are already around 75% done construction! It is always amazing to see our designs come to life. One could say it’s been a “dream.” We can’t wait to see the progress in 2025!
May “ribbon” cutting to celebrate the opening of the City of Estevan MBWS™ Demo
June
June brought the Calgary water main break, highlighting the impact of water scarcity in Alberta communities. In response, we launched the Lagoon Augmentation – MAGNA Biofilter Wetland System (LA-MBWS) program. With the help from grants from Alberta Innovates and Natural Products Canada, we were able to reach out to communities that might be at high-risk for drought.
Why did we focus on drought?
Because it has a significant impact on wastewater. Most wastewater lagoons have a one-year storage capacity. Once a year, these lagoons discharge their treated wastewater into natural water sources like rivers. However, if the rivers are too low; which is common during drought, municipalities are restricted from discharging their wastewater.
The LA-MBWS offers a solution to this. By using this small-scale MBWS™ as a polishing system attached to a wastewater lagoon, municipalities can discharge more frequently and decrease the impact on receiving streams.
But June wasn’t all about wastewater: In fact, one of our stormwater projects won an Emerald award for Project Initiative - Water! The Livingston Pond E MAGNA Stormpark™ is a collaboration with Brookfield Residential and the community of Livingston, Calgary. This MAGNA Stormpark™ uses naturalized technology to meet the unique needs of the community of Livingston: managing their stormwater needs and creating a beautiful, biodiverse park. We are proud that the Alberta Emerald Foundation donated to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) on behalf of this project! The IISD is an organization focused on finding sustainable solutions for the environment and humanity in collaborative, community-based projects. They care about quality, equity, and impactful change—all things MAGNA prioritizes too.
July
July brought the chaos of Stampede, but despite the busyness in Calgary’s downtown core, MAGNA was able to host our 3rd Annual Lawn Bowling Tournament! We had the privilege of hosting this event at Inglewood Lawn Bowling Club once again. We had a great turnout where we saw plenty of friendly faces and got to meet some new ones! We love hosting this tournament. It is a great way for us to connect with our clients, collaborators, partners, and team members—and be able to put faces to the names we read in emails and bodies to the talking heads we see on conference calls. One team even had the pleasure of bowling with MAGNA-brand toilet paper! Maybe they didn’t get the most points, but they faced the challenge, and they definitely had the most fun.
Look at all these happy faces on MAGNA’s annual camping trip!
August
As our team returned from their summer vacations, we were able to rally everyone up for our annual camping trip. This 3-day affair was an excellent way for our team (and their families) to reconnect after an extremely busy season. This year, our camp coordinators outdid themselves, scheduling our group for the first annual MAGNA “Olympics” as well as a talent show. Every evening was spent around a bonfire—much laughter was had! We are so grateful to have a team that gets along in and outside the office.
Also in August, we welcomed Anna Davison onto our team as Director of Operations! This role is crucial with the growth of the company this year. So far, she’s doing amazing. Anna has her Master of Business Administration alongside being a water engineer, making her perfect for this role at MAGNA. With 15 years of sustainability and operations experience, she hit the ground running to create organized systems for our growing team. She is collaborative, data driven, and perfectly aligned with MAGNA’s values. We are so glad to have Anna as a part of MAGNA.
September
MAGNA's competitive spirit shone through in September. This was the first year that we joined the Calgary Corporate Challenge. Our team played horseshoes, bocce ball, volleyball, cornhole, pulled trucks, ran races, and completed so many other events. Our company placed third in our division! We think that’s pretty good for our first year! This was such great opportunity to network and have fun. We are so grateful to operate out of a city that prioritizes community. Way to go, team!
Some of the MAGNA team got dolled up and came out to support Jennifer Massig at the EY awards!
October
In October, our CEO, Jennifer Massig hit a huge career milestone! She was awarded the EY Entrepreneur of the Year® 2024 Prairies Region Award. This award celebrates the amazing achievements Jennifer has made since beginning her journey as an entrepreneur. Jennifer’s revolutionary way of running an engineering firm, by putting her team first, really aligns with EY’s purpose: 'Building a better working world.' EY’s dedication to uplifting and empowering entrepreneurs around the world makes this recognition truly special—not just for Jennifer, but for the entire MAGNA team. Nothing tops being celebrated by such a purpose-driven organization and we are always happy to share our vision of engineering with nature and people and our passion for innovation with the world.
November
Every year, our annual corporate retreat lands in November. This retreat allows our team to connect with each other, as well as realigning with the company and organizational values. Our team this year was larger than ever, with a whopping 34 team members! Each member was given the opportunity to give feedback to the company and share in strategic planning through roundtable discussions. Then, after lunch (that involved amazing tater tots), Evan Dewald, a certified Enneagram Coach from Recess Creek Coaching, offered us all insights into our enneagram numbers and our defensive patterns. Overall, we learned lots, shared plenty of ideas with each other, and came out feeling stronger as a team.
Later in the month, MAGNA attended the International Water Association’s 18th International Conference on Wetland Systems (ICWS) for Water Pollution Control, in Fort-de-France, Martinique. We presented the concept and design of our MBWS™ at the last conference two years ago, and this year, we were excited to showcase its real-world application in Clearwater County, Alberta in a follow-up presentation. It is so amazing to be able to present our nature-based solution for wastewater management in cold climates on a world stage and talk with other like-minded scientists. Wetlands may be used worldwide in wastewater treatment, but not many remain functional in -40°C weather, and we hope that we can inspire other cold climate countries to implement similar nature-based solutions back home.
We took a quick break during our corporate retreat in November to get a group photo!
December
December is one of the slower months here at MAGNA. With no construction and the holidays right around the corner, it is time to go meeting-free. This means no internal meetings and as few project meetings as possible. We find this policy provides our team with the necessary space to catch up on tasks before the new year. It also hits the reset button, allowing us to see which meetings truly could be just an email.
Our big holiday bash also comes in December. It is the perfect time to celebrate our team’s hard work and dedication throughout the year We take our holiday party very seriously with lots of delicious food, good music, and fabulous outfits!
Conclusion
Looking back over the last year, we can’t help but be proud of all the work our team has achieved. Through our innovation and team development, we have truly ‘blossomed’ as a company, and it feels incredible to be recognized for all of our hard work.
In 2025, MAGNA will be entering our harvesting season. We plan to leverage our success from 2024 to continue reaching municipalities and developers across Alberta and beyond. We’re grateful for our team, supporters, and partners as we move forward in our mission to better water management and the environment.
From all of us here at MAGNA, we wish you a happy and fruitful new year!