Hatfield celebrates 50 years
Mar 04, 2024
It is with great pride that Hatfield celebrates 50 years of serving our clients and our community.
Hatfield was founded in 1974 by Chris Hatfield, a young fisheries biologist with a passion for biology, science, and the environment. Before environmental consulting was even recognized as an industry, Hatfield Consultants was born, with Chris initially convincing reluctant pipeline companies in northern Canada of the need for his services. Soon after, Hatfield’s small team based in Deep Cove, BC, saw a large opportunity to help organizations meet their environmental management and monitoring needs, marking the beginning of our roots in a community we still call home.
With this early focus on high-quality, impactful, and ethical work, it wasn’t long before Hatfield began making waves in the environmental consulting industry in BC and internationally. In 1989, emerging opportunities in aquaculture and other resource-based sectors led to the creation of PT Hatfield Indonesia. Based on our long-term presence in Southeast Asia, we built a reputation as the most highly regarded environmental consultancy in Indonesia. Also beginning in the early 1990s, Hatfield played a key role in highlighting the environmental and human health effects resulting from the use of the herbicide Agent Orange during the US-Vietnam War. Since this time, we’ve continued to work closely with regulatory and medical authorities to measure and monitor ultra-trace levels of contamination in both humans and the surrounding environment in Vietnam, ultimately resulting in mitigation of human health risks.
Extending our international reach, we opened Hatfield Consultants Africa in 2010 in Gaborone, Botswana – supporting clients in the development and water resources sectors with remote sensing, GIS, and knowledge management services across Southern Africa. Throughout this time, Hatfield’s growth continued in Canada with the opening of offices in Fort McMurray, Calgary, Fort St. John, New Westminster, and Terrace.
Today, with more than 200 employees in Canada, 40 internationally, and eight office locations, Hatfield has grown into one of the largest independent environmental consultancies in western Canada. Our continuing success is a testament to our amazing clients who continue to work collaboratively with us over the years and whom we’ve built meaningful relationships with, our dedicated and hard-working employees, both past and present, and the communities that have been with us every step of the way. We are very grateful to be able to celebrate this milestone with you all, and we thank you for being with us on this journey.
Hatfield also acknowledges that as a company we must act on reconciliation with Indigenous communities and nations. We are committed to building and maintaining effective, long-term relationships with Indigenous people and communities based on a foundation of transparency, respect, and trust. We appreciate and acknowledge that our head office in North Vancouver is located on the traditional and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
At Hatfield we are constantly evolving and growing, adapting to the changing landscape within our industry, learning more about the clients and communities we serve, and striving to better support our employees through a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. While our sights are set forward, we will never waver from our core purpose and values – focusing on high quality and ethical work, fostering collaborative partnerships, developing science-based solutions that support thriving ecosystems and communities, and enriching lives inside and outside of our organization.
We take this milestone as an opportunity to reflect on our past, celebrate where we are today, and look forward to the future. It is more important now than it has ever been in history to come together and protect our environment, our ecosystems, and the health of the entire planet, while ensuring development is done so both sustainably and ethically. We take our part in this very seriously, and look forward to the next 50 years!
In Memory of Chris Hatfield 1945 – 2022
