Some problems are difficult because they are new. Others are difficult because everyone has become used to them.
For years, Canada’s working harbours have carried on with a patchwork of experience, paperwork, photographs, separate systems and decisions made under pressure. It works—until a changing environment, an aging asset or a missed warning turns a manageable situation into a costly one. The challenge is to assemble a clearer picture while there is still time to use it.
Gary Stairs, CEO and co-founder of Stellar Futures, has spent much of his career preparing for that moment.
A Life Shaped by Preparedness
One of Stairs’ earliest encounters with emergency response came during the 1973 flood in Fredericton, New Brunswick, when he aided a senior flood victim with the recovery of her home and managed the registration of numerous disaster evacuees. That latter work was practical and immediate: people displaced, information incomplete, decisions having to be made quickly. It introduced a lesson that would follow him through the decades—the value of reliable information rises sharply when time is short.
His leadership foundation was built during 13 years with the Government of New Brunswick in emergency management and public safety. His responsibilities included preparedness for nuclear and conventional incidents, work connected to the development of New Brunswick’s 911 system, and support for reform of the Fire Marshal’s Office.
“The best emergency outcome is often the one whose consequences are anticipated or reduced before it occurs.”
That conviction travelled with him into education, communications, technology and business. In 1996, the Government of New Brunswick seconded him to the University of New Brunswick to direct strategic planning for special academic programs, including work connected to the Premier’s task force on a job-ready information technology workforce.
Graduate studies at Simon Fraser University deepened his interest in turning complexity into useful knowledge. Later, his company’s work for Daimler, Mercedes-Benz, United Nations organizations and several Canadian national sector councils helped deliver digital learning programs to more than 500,000 learners in 21 languages.
Bringing Intelligence to the Working Harbour
Today, that experience has brought Stairs back to the Atlantic coast. From his home in Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia —a small fishing community where weather, water and working lives remain closely connected—he now leads Stellar Futures Inc. with a straightforward mission: making harbours, boats and workers safer.
The company grew from an exploration of how artificial intelligence, environmental data and predictive technologies could improve preparedness. It led Stairs and his team to the working harbour: economically essential, socially important and still underserved by integrated technology.
Presently, Canada’s 950 small craft harbours support fisheries, seafood processors, vessels, workers and entire coastal communities. Yet information about their assets, infrastructure, operating conditions, maintenance requirements and risks may remain scattered across paper records, photographs, spreadsheets, separate systems and institutional memory.
Stellar Futures is addressing that gap through a connected technology architecture. Harbour Atlas™ creates a practical digital record of harbour assets, conditions, maintenance needs and capital readiness. Harbour Sentinel™ adds environmental monitoring, earlier warnings, operational awareness and decision support.
“We are not trying to make harbours digital for the sake of technology. We want to give the people responsible for them a clearer picture and more time to make a good decision.”
The longer-term ambition is to connect individual harbours into intelligent coastal corridors and, eventually, a shared national capability that respects local knowledge and decision-making.
Vision with a Discipline
As Stellar’s CEO, Stairs works across strategy, partnerships, financing, government relations and product direction. He tests opportunities against three questions: Does this address the problem Stellar Futures exists to solve? Will it create genuine value for working harbours? Is the company positioned to do it now? National ambition, in his view, must begin by proving value locally and building outward from evidence.
Experience has also taught him to separate conviction from rigidity. Changing an approach is not abandoning the problem; it is learning. That requires colleagues willing to question assumptions, improve unfinished ideas and bring different disciplines into productive contact—what he calls ‘causers of collisions.’
His leadership philosophy combines strong expectations with fairness, compassion and empathy. He does not pretend to possess every answer, and he gives capable people room to exercise judgment. Strategies and technologies can be rebuilt; trust is much harder to recover.
Achievement Measured by Lasting Value
At LearnStream in the late 90s, Stairs was part of the leadership team which tripled employment while the company increased revenue from approximately $2.5 million to $12.5 million. Over several decades as a director and board leader, he supported publisher Goose Lane Editions’ tenfold revenue growth and now serves as Director Emeritus. His honours include the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contribution to the information technology sector in Canada. In 2025, Stellar Futures won the AWS Canada PREDICTif national pitch competition.
The Intelligent Working Coast
Climate change will increasingly affect coastal infrastructure, insurance, public safety and communities. At the same time, AI, sensors, satellites, GIS, telecommunications and edge computing are making it possible to move from monitoring conditions to anticipating consequences.
Stairs is also exploring an independent Institute for the Working Coast—a neutral place to observe, convene, and test options for the future with coastal communities. Its form and location remain open. Whatever emerges, he argues, must reach smaller communities, use trusted and explainable data, and strengthen rather than displace the knowledge held by people who work on the coast.
That principle is personal. Atlantic Canada is home, not simply a market. Its generations of knowledge about weather, oceans, fisheries, boats and adaptation could combine with advanced technology to create a distinctly Atlantic Canadian moonshot—developed with communities rather than imposed upon them.
A Legacy of Possibility
Stairs encourages younger leaders to look beyond the conventional idea of a career. Experiences often reveal their value only years later. His advice is to remain curious, venture beyond one’s profession, give credit generously and treat failure as information rather than identity.
“Entrepreneurship demands too much time, energy and resilience to be sustained by money alone. Work on something meaningful.”
If Stellar Futures succeeds, working harbours and coastal communities will be safer and more resilient. It will also show that meaningful technology companies can emerge from places such as Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia—not despite their Atlantic Canadian location, but partly because of it.
For Gary Stairs, the legacy may ultimately be simple: helping people see what is coming, showing them what is possible and bringing good people together to build things that matter.
