In yesterday’s blog, we discussed a recent report that revealed that the mighty fast food chain McDonald’s will be spending upwards of $1 billion on renovating all of its Canadian restaurants. Wow! That’s a lot of money. And that’s a lot of restaurants. Reports have noted that there are about 1,400 McDonald’s restaurants in the country.

One article from The Canadian Press announced that leather furniture, plasma televisions and fireplaces would be replacing the plastic seats and childlike colour scheme that has made the fast food restaurant so popular with children for decades. The exteriors of the restaurants will also be getting makeovers as the red roofs of McDonald’s stores are apparently out.

A similar facelift for the chain’s American locations is also in the works. So on the heels of this information, we felt it necessary, here at Synergy Merchant Services, to remind our great clients that no business is either too small or too big to renovate. In fact, we had this very discussion with one of our clients yesterday.

“I found that renovating my store was just what I needed,” remarked this entrepreneur, “The fresh look gave my business a fresh start. Customers made comments about how much nicer it looked and this sparked up a lot of conversation. I found that many new customers were coming in mentioning that someone had told them about the changes at my business.”

Word-of-mouth promotion, as many of us know, is the best type of advertising. When other customers are talking about your business, it provides the most honest feedback about your brand. Renovations have long been known to convey that your company is “hip to the game”, “with it”, “forward moving” and “on top of things”.

McDonald’s, it seems, wishes to convey all of the above. The restaurant chain realizes that customers who visit restaurants don’t just come in for the food. The atmosphere has a lot to do with the dining experience. The CEO of McDonald’s Canada, John Betts spoke about this in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Said Betts: “People tend to linger a little bit more in restaurants today. They want to enjoy their meals take a break from the busy lifestyle that they lead and we think our restaurants today are certainly doing that a lot better than in the past…The business we’ve been enjoying from our reimaged restaurants or remodelled restaurants is close to double digits.”

Renovations are among the most popular of choices for Canadian business owners when considering ways to improve their businesses. As we have written in numerous blogs before, renovating your store presents its customers with a newer and fresher image that connotes that you are changing with the times and committed to staying innovative.

Every so often, one of our licensed funding specialists will speak to a client who insists that he or she “doesn’t need to do any renovations”. Now, while things may be going fairly well for your business, it doesn’t mean that sprucing things up a little would hurt. In fact, all businesses need to renovate at some point or the other.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, renovating is an important part of remaining competitive in your marketplace. Just ask McDonald’s. Arguably the most popular fast food chain in the world, McDonald’s has pumped a lot of money into reconfiguring their restaurants over the past few years.

And they aren’t through yet! Yesterday, Christina Rexrode of the Associated Press released an article detailing the plan for McDonald’s to spend another $1 billion on renovating its Canadian restaurants. Now, some people may think that McDonald’s doesn’t have to do anything to increase sales. But that’s certainly not how this massive company thinks.

Do you know a company with more television commercials than McDonald’s? Perhaps, there’s a reason the fast food chain is popular, even in spite of all the evidence of how bad the restaurant’s food is for your health. According to Rexrode, the restaurant has plans to become more technology-friendly.

She writes: “The world’s largest burger chain said the changes, including fireplaces and flat-screen TVs, will create ‘more inviting and relevant’ restaurants. Dining rooms will be divided to accommodate for large groups and those who want to linger over the free Wi-Fi access.”

In addition, patrons of the McDonald’s can expect to see new colour schemes, stone and tile accents and wood tones. Apparently, there will be more of a focus on young adults than there will be on children, as the restaurant was commonly known for its play areas in the past.

Rexrode notes that money will also be put towards making the customer experience more enjoyable as some restaurants will receive added drive-thru order boxes to speed up wait times. Perhaps, these renovations are, at least in part, an answer to the more health-conscious adult who has decided to exclude fast food from his or her diet. No matter what, they prove that all companies can make use of renovations at some point.

In yesterday’s blog, we took a look at a few ideas on how Canadian business owners can pump up business during the fall season. With the new school year having started and the weather beginning to cool off, the reality that summer is ending is beginning to sink in. Entrepreneurs, of course, know that the season to increase business lasts all year round.

So with that, we reviewed an eHow.com article by R.K. Remenyi to locate some tips on how business owners can grow their businesses during the fall. It’s all about celebrating the season to get more customers excited about your business. And there are some simple yet innovate ways to do that.

One way is to create an autumn newsletter, says Remenyi. Although this is a marketing strategy that can also be used year round, you’ll want to encourage your customers to sign up for your emailing list so that they can take advantage of all of the autumn specials you will be offering.

Your newsletters should serve as reminders for them to come in and visit your store, since you will be making it such a festive environment. That is, if you follow some of the tips that were given to you in yesterday’s blog! Don’t forget to strike up conversations to see how their summers were. The more personable you are, the more they will enjoy coming into your store more regularly.

The fall is also a great time to use direct marketing pieces. This can be done by creating ads that also offer advice. One idea, according to Remenyi “is to send customers a calendar of all the autumn events happening around town, highlighting the ones you are taking part in or hosting.”

Finally, don’t forget to thank your clients. Keeping in mind that Thanksgiving falls within the fall season, it’s the perfect time to show your loyal customers how much you appreciate them. Send them cards wishing them a happy Thanksgiving and offer them thanks for supporting you throughout the year. Remember, that this is a gesture, not an advertisement.

As always, we hope that you will find these tips helpful. Just because the summer is over, it doesn’t mean the fun has to stop. In fact, there are a bunch of new ways that you can keep your customers excited throughout the next several months. Remember, even though autumn will soon be upon us, it doesn’t mean that your sales have to fall!

For many Canadians, there are only two seasons: summer and winter. And these seasons change back and forth depending on whether it’s hot or cold outside. So, for example, when the chilliness of the fall season hit Toronto as early as this morning, some of our esteemed Synergy reps feared that summer was indeed over.

We are sure that many students are feeling that way considering that they are heading back to school today. But luckily, local weather forecasts still have temperatures hitting the mid-twenties on the Celcius scale this week. No matter the weather, however, the season for growing your business never ends.

And while it is not officially the fall season as of yet, it’s certainly the right time for business owners to be considering ways in which they can increase sales during autumn. On eHow.com, R.L. Remenyi writes about a few ways that entrepreneurs can implement new and inventive marketing strategies for the fall season.

Keeping your business visible to your target audience will take some clever planning that should centre around the joyous occasions that take place during the fall. Firstly, the advent of the season itself should be celebrated at your store. Remember that making your customers feel good should be the core of all of your plans anyway.

Therefore, it’s a good idea to introduce a fall special. “Cut prices, offer a discount on your services, give away a free product with a purchase or hand out free samples,” suggests Remenyi, “This is especially good for places that people seek out in the fall. A good example would be a grocery store offering a half-off sale on pumpkins for a week.”

As well, it’s wise to participate in autumn events. If your community is hosting festivals or events that your company may be able to sponsor, you’ll want to get in on the action. One of Remenyi’s suggestions is to host a Halloween costume contest in your business. Again, celebrating the season should be central to your plans to get people excited about your business.

Not everyone likes it when summer comes to an end. We know quite a few reps here at Synergy who are already dreading the impending colder weather. But business owners across Canada should take the approaching fall season as an opportunity to do new things to gain new customers. We’ll continue to take a look at a few more ideas on how to do so in tomorrow’s blog.

With it being Labour Day today, workers across Canada are enjoying an extra day off of work. And it’s not quite the same as any other holiday. In fact, today is the day that is specifically designated to reward employees with some time off for the very reason that they work.

According to Wikipedia: “Labour Day or Labor Day is an annual holiday to celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers. Labour Day has its origins in the labour union movement, specifically the eight-hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest.”

Meanwhile, there are many citizens across Canada who likely wish that they had jobs that they could take days off from. Those who are currently unemployed and still looking for work are probably thinking that they have had enough days off of work this Labour Day. Thankfully, there is good news for the unemployed this long weekend.

Just before the weekend, QMI Agency reported that hiring intentions across the country are the highest they have ever been! A recent Conference Board of Canada report has found that the measure of employers planning to bring in new staff had risen by eight points to 127.3 in the month of July.

This all-time high, writes QMI, was achieved by gains in both June and July which actually offset the job losses in the spring. At this time, the index stands at over 27 more points than it did in December 2010. Evidently, there will be significant employment gains throughout Canada in the upcoming months.

Alberta posted Canada’s largest gains by posting an increase of 17.8 points. Quebec, posted the nation’s smallest gains with only a 0.9 point jump. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Labor reports that the United States has had its job creation practically stop altogether this summer.

Canada has long been known as one of the world’s most successful countries in overcoming the recession. This latest piece of positive news speaks to the nation’s ability to bounce back from the economic crisis. Especially with summer drawing to a close and the holiday season coming around the corner before you know it, job creation has never been more important.

If you are a business owner in this day and age, it only makes sense to have a company website. Having an online location for potential customers to check you out before committing to visiting your store and making a purchase is practically mandatory. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone, these days, who doesn’t browse online before going shopping.

Naturally, Synergy Merchant Services goes to great lengths to ensure that our website provides user-friendly access to information that we feel will be useful to any visitor who is curious about our merchant cash advance program. From experience, we are well aware that having SynergyMerchants.com has its benefits.

We wonder though, if our website ended with .synergy instead of .com, if it would be even more beneficial to us? In fact, we only started wondering this when earlier this week, The Toronto Star business reporter John Goddard revealed that there are new rules being imposed that may change the way we create internet domain names forever.

Goddard reveals that in June, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – the organization responsible for regulating domain names – voted to “stop restricting website addresses to such endings as .com, .net and .edu.” Technically speaking, we could then create a website that ended with .synergy!

Goddard notes that there are currently 22 suffixes and 250 countries-level domain names. For example, in Canada, many websites end with .ca. However, future-made websites may end up having names like learntoplay.hockey or howtomake.pizza. It may sound weird now, but then again the concept of the internet itself likely sounded weird a few short decades ago.

It already appears that not everyone is happy with the proposed changes to domain names. Paula Gignac, who is the president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau believes that “this initiative is a blatant cash grab.” Others believe that this will provide a whole new world of opportunities for business owners.

Peter Dengate Thrush is the chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Said Thrush: “We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.” The vote to lift the restrictions on domain names, by the way, was a whopping 13-1.

There is no word yet on when these new domain names will be made available to the public We will keepyou.posted!

It’s September. The month that most students dread is upon us. And depending on what school you go to, your first day of school is likely this coming Monday. Is it just us, or did summer go by way too fast? This is the same question that most kids ask themselves each and every summer, no doubt. The time for school is here.

Parents across Canada have been awaiting this day for weeks, knowing that the kids will be a lot busier once the school year starts. The approaching school season, however, has also meant that parents have been required to pull out their wallets for back-to-school spending, as of late.

Earlier this morning, The Toronto Star business reporter Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew revealed that parents are spending more this year than they were a year ago in preparing their children for their first days of school. Unveiling the findings of a recent Scotiabank poll, she writes that parents are spending an average of $423 on back-to-school necessities.

That’s an extra $31 more than they were spending last year. Among the most popular back-to-school items, she notes, are stationary, clothing, books and electronics. This spending, of course, doesn’t include the amount that parents will have to dole out for their children’s education throughout the school year.

Acharya-Tom Yew reminds us that parents are expected to spend about $403 on field trips, pizza lunches and other incidentals. The survey revealed that this will cost parents $50 more than it did a year ago. The study also found that a quarter of the parents polled have budgeted for these costs.

Many parents began saving three months prior to the beginning of the school year. In other words, once the last school year was over, preparations for the next school year began. We suppose that this is the smartest way to prepare your kids for each and every year of school. After all, back-to-school spending is a necessity, as we alluded to earlier.

Acharya-Tom Yew does offer some tips for those who may be doing some last minute back-to-school shopping. The Dollar Store is cheaper than Wal-Mart she reminds us, noting that the price for the same school supplies is nearly doubled in the larger chain. But don’t forget to confirm what you need before you buy. Your kids may still have some very usable materials from last year. Good luck!

One of the many things that Canada can boast about is the livability of its cities. Generally cleaner and safer than their American counterparts, major Canadian cities are often heralded as excellent locations for living. For nearly a decade, Vancouver, British Columbia has been able to brag that it is the most livable city in the world!

That is, until now. Yesterday, on The Toronto Star‘s website, Petti Fong revealed that a new survey released by The Economist magazine has dropped Vancouver down to number three on the ranking system. Melbourne, Australia and Vienna, Austria have taken over the one and two positions respectively.

Toronto – home to the headquarters of Synergy Merchant Services – came just behind Vancouver in fourth place. Fong notes that 150 cities were surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit to create these rankings. Vancouver, as always, ranked very highly, but somehow lost its bragging rights as the world’s most livable city.

Explains Jon Copestake of the Economist Intelligence Unit: “It’s a tiny difference between Melbourne and Vancouver. Vancouver’s score is 97.3 out of 100, almost perfect. You can’t ask for much more than that. There’s only a 0.2 percentage point difference between Vancouver and Melbourne.” Toronto, by the way, scored 97.2 per cent.

So what caused Vancouver to lose top spot? Fong writes that its lower infrastructure ratings were a factor. Between construction and an incident on the Malahat Highway that closed it down for hours last April, Vancouver was unable to keep this ranking at its normally high levels. It was, however, still better than Toronto’s infrastructure ratings, reports Fong.

Vancouver Board of Trade interim president and CEO Grayden Hayward takes issue with this, noting that the Malahat Highway is not even in the city of Vancouver. It is actually on Vancouver Island, some 60 kilometres away. Said Hayward: “Maybe we shouldn’t have been bragging so much if the criteria is that flimsy.”

Perhaps Hayward does have a point. But then again, at least he’s not living in Douala, Cameroon or Karachi, Pakistan. These two cities were ranked among the worst livable cities in the world. Lagos, Nigeria and Algiers, Algeria were also included with the bottom feeders on this list.

Yesterday, the popular water cooler topic around the Synergy Merchant Services office was the news of an attempted evacuation of New York City over the weekend. Due to the expectation of Hurricane Irene to the major city, the cause for alarm was high, prompting the first evacuation in the city’s history.

Many members of our staff questioned how a city the size of New York could possibly even be evacuated. Thankfully, Irene had been downsized to a tropical storm by the time it reached the state. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop flights from being canceled among many other travel delays in the big city, according to CNN reports.

Yesterday on Moneyville.ca, Francine Kopun wrote about the economic impact that natural disasters like Hurricane Irene have had in the past year. Evidently, damage, destruction and sometimes death are not the only results of hurricanes, tornadoes and tropical storms. Kopun writes that 2011 “has been the most expensive year for natural disasters in the history of the world.”

She reveals that customers are spending more on home insurance by buying bigger policies. With more possessions to insure and with natural disasters seemingly happening more frequently, Canadians have been forced to increase the number of claims that they have been making.

According to Leonard Sharman, who is the spokesman for The Co-operators, the cost of natural disasters has been multiplied by 20 since the 1970s. Says Sharman: “It’s becoming more and more clear to everybody that we’re seeing crazier weather than we have in the past. The one-in-100-year storms are occurring seemingly once every year.”

“What I saw on the news this past weekend was crazy,” mentioned one of our Synergy reps, “It’s truly incredible how much damage Hurricane Irene has caused. I’m glad the death toll is so low. I’m also glad it didn’t hit Toronto! But it does seem as if disastrous weather is becoming more and more prevalent these days.”

Kopun recalls some recent examples of “crazy”weather to further the point. She reminds us that “earthquakes shook New Zealand in February and June, and an exceptionally severe series of tornadoes struck the U.S. in April and May. In May, fire destroyed 40 per cent of Slave Lake in Alberta, triggering $700-million in claims.”

Not to mention, who can forget the disastrous events taking place in Haiti, Chile and Japan in recent months? Even in Toronto last week, severe thunder and lightning sent a bolt of concern throughout the city. And who could blame us? Kopun notes that since 2005, there has been $265 billion in losses worldwide due to natural disasters.

One of the primary objectives we have, here at Synergy Merchant Services, is to assist small to medium-sized Canadian businesses to grow. Business growth is essential to the national economy and as such, we work diligently to help business owners make smart decisions about the ways in which they can use merchant cash advances to grow their businesses.

Sometimes, the growth of a business is stunted when a business owner feels that that they may go further into debt by spending money on developing the company. And while these fears are understandable, it’s important to note that no business can truly survive in any marketplace without having any investment into its growth.

Thankfully, it would appear as if Canadians are growing more optimistic about being debt-free. Earlier today, QMI Agency reported that two brand new polls found that most Canadians believe that they will be debt-free by the time they reach the age of 55. Based on a CIBC survey, it seems that a positive mindset about finances is prevalent across the nation.

However, the same survey also found that only a third of Canadians in the 55-to-64 age group have actually gotten themselves into debt-free situations. A separate poll, conducted by ING Direct, found that 46 per cent of Canadians are finding it harder to save money today than it was just two years ago.

A third of the respondents from this poll reveal that they aren’t even close to the financial goals that they set out for this year. Nevertheless, most Canadians believe that they will be debt-free within 10 to 15 years of their current ages. At least, this is what the CIBC study also found.

Optimism seems highest in Alberta, QMI reports. Respondents from this western province expect to be debt-free by the age of 52. Their neighbours in British Columbia, on the other hand, are among the country’s most pessimistic, as they feel that it will take at least until age 58 to become debt-free. The Atlantic provinces seem to feel the same way.

Offered Christina Kramer, CIBC’s executive vice-president of retail distribution and channel strategy: “A key finding in this poll is that the passage of time alone is not enough to achieve the goal of paying down your debt. Canadians with a goal of being debt-free would benefit from having a realistic plan in place that includes extra payments towards their debt and a strategy to minimize their interest costs.”

At Synergy Merchant Services, we make it a point to ensure that small to medium-sized business owners always have an alternative source of extra working capital to grow their businesses. After all, it is small and medium-sized business owners who have been credited for having a big hand in Canada’s economic recovery over the past couple of years.

Therefore, we feel that it’s important for our company to have a big hand in helping entrepreneurs throughout the nation build their businesses through expansion, renovations, advertising or any other venture they are interested in. It’s not always easy for these owners though.

We’re aware that some businesses are seasonal, and quite often there are ups and downs experienced by just about every business anyway. One cannot always count on making as much money one month as he or she did the previous month. But we’re happy that things seem to be moving upward in Canada, as of late.

You don’t have to take our word for it, either. Yesterday, QMI Agency released a report that found that Canadians are making more this summer than they were last year for doing the same amount of work. Statistics Canada, in fact, found that in all industries, there were higher earnings being made overall in 2011.

With the exception of farming, all sectors collectively showed an increase of 0.3 per cent in June for average weekly earnings. Stats also show that the average work week is 32.9 hours, which is the same amount from last year. Wages increased in every province although Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island showed the slowest growth.

Alberta showed the greatest increase with the average weekly pay cheque climbing to more than $1040! According to StatsCan, “the best performing sectors in terms of pay raises were professional, scientific and technical services, as well as retail trade.” Canadians can only hope, of course, that this trend continues on into next year.

For business owners across Canada looking to make more money – perhaps to pay their employees these increased wages! – we encourage you to contact one of our licensed funding specialists. As always, they are happy to discuss with you the ways that a merchant cash advance can help you to grow your business and increase your wages!

In yesterday’s blog, we took a look at a Susan Ward article from About.com that provided suggestions on how business owners could make more money. As an entrepreneur, the concept of increasing your profits is likely on your mind all the time. There are some owners, however, who are not making full use of all of their resources.

Ward suggests ideas that are a bit outside of the box, but definitely worth considering. For example, she notes that if your current marketing strategies aren’t paying off in ways that you first anticipated, it may be time to shift your sales focus. She says that sometimes, the easiest way to make more money is to do the obvious.

Think of ways to get your current customers to buy more from you, insists Ward. It makes perfect economic sense to put effort into pleasing the customers that you currently have, more so than the ones that haven’t yet come through your doors. If you shift your focus to these customers, you will find that your products will become easier to sell.

Ward recommends a read of her “6 Sure Ways to Increase Sales” article, which we will take a deeper look at in a future blog. Another way to make more money is to lend out your employees, she advises. If you have talented workers – and you should – you may want to think about contracting them out to other businesses.

If you are able to loan your employees out to other companies for a certain amount of time, you won’t lose them completely. Instead, you will be entering into a contract with another company who will be making use of some valuable talent while providing you with some added revenue.

Finally, Ward recommends that you add value-added services and products. Don’t just sell your products. Provide ways that your customers can use them. Perhaps you can run seminars to demonstrate how valuable and useful your items for sale are. Maybe you can combine two products that work well in tandem.

Writes Ward: “Make more money by examining your products and services and brainstorming services or products that your customers might be interested in. Then choose the one you think will make the most money for your business and test it.” As always, we hope that these tips will come in handy in making more money for your business.

If you’re as optimistic as your summer-loving blogger, than you know that there is still a good month to go in our summer season. However, if you’re a student, the impending school season begins in about a week or so, making summer pretty much done. Business owners, however, know that the season to make money is always here!

It goes without saying that with each passing season, business owners are required to rethink their marketing strategies to cater to the changing needs of their customers. This is especially true in the clothing industry, for example, where the clothing on sale is indicative of the weather outside.

It’s not just the inventory that changes though. Sometimes, businesses just need a shake up to start garnering more interest and driving more customers into the stores. On About.com, Susan Ward lists a few ways in which business owners can gear their thinking towards making more money.

“Diversifying your income stream as the way to make more money is old advice,” writes Ward, “but in tough economic times, it’s advice well worth taking. The key to successfully increasing your business income is to be sure the cost of diversifying isn’t making your profits negligible or nonexistent.”

With that, Ward offers some advice that you may not have considered before. She begins by suggesting that business owners consider renting out a part of their business premises. If you’re not in need in all of your business space, perhaps there is a way to make money by renting out some of it to another business.

She notes that many small businesses operate out of a simple corner or kiosk. If there is a way to offer another entrepreneur some space that would be of great use to him or her, you have just opened up your business to a brand new revenue stream. Ward even suggests offering add-ins such as “shared secretarial services or computer workstations.”

Can you package your services as products? Quoting C.J. Hayden’s “Turn Your Services Into Products” article, Ward writes that “you can make more money by packaging your services as products rather than charging clients an hourly rate.” It helps to eliminate the reluctance of customers to sign on for what may be considered “open-ended projects”.

We will continue to take a look at Ward’s tips on how to make your business more money in tomorrow’s blog.

With NDP Leader Jack Layton’s passing yesterday morning, a wave of condolences began pouring in for his family from all throughout Canada. This sad occasion has helped to transform Canada into a unified nation – for the time being – collectively mourning the loss of one of the nation’s great leaders.

Although Layton was never Prime Minister, his leadership of the NDP helped to make the party the official opposition of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in the federal election a few months back. This feat, in and of itself, has garnered Layton a tremendous amount of respect throughout the nation.

His political accomplishments aside, Layton is well respected as a humanitarian and all-around inspiring individual as well. It’s no wonder that even those who vehemently oppose his politics provided words of sympathy and respect to his family over the past 24 hours. On his Twitter account, Jack Layton’s son Mike thanked the country.

“You amaze me Canada,” he tweeted, “All the kind words, love and condolences are giving us strength through this very difficult time.” In today’s edition of The Toronto Star, Lesley Ciarula Taylor highlights just how much respect Layton has received. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has offered Layton’s family the opportunity to have a state funeral.

“Canadians will have an opportunity to salute Jack Layton’s contribution to public life,” said the Office of the Prime Minister. Taylor writes that traditionally, state funerals are reserved for either current or former governors general and prime ministers. The honour is also bestowed upon current members of cabinet.

In what seems a fitting send off for Jack Layton, the state funeral will be held this Saturday. It will be the pinnacle of what is planned to be a week of honouring his memory. In a number of spots across Canada including federal buildings in Ottawa and Toronto, flags are flying at half-mass.

State funerals are fairly rare and quite the tribute. Taylor writes that the first Canadian state funeral ever was held for Thomas D’Arcy McGee who was a sitting MP and former cabinet minister, assassinated in April 1868. The last one that was held in Canada took place in 2009 for former governor general, Romeo LeBlanc.

Obviously, not all those who are mourning Layton’s passing will be able to attend the funeral. However, those wishing to leave their words of condolences for Jack Layton may do so on the New Democratic Party’s website.

Sad news has hit the political world in Canada today, as NDP leader Jack Layton has passed away. It was only a few short months ago when Layton was prepping to become Canada’s next Prime Minister. Falling short of that goal, Layton did lead the New Democratic Party to new heights, propelling it to become the official opposition party in the last federal election.

Amazingly, all the while, Layton was bravely battling cancer. You wouldn’t have known it from his strong and energetic demeanor during his campaign, which says a lot about his determination and dedication to being a leader. Layton is survived by his wife, MP Olivia Chow and his children Sarah and Michael.

This morning, David Akin reported that Layton’s family had issued the following statement: “We deeply regret to inform you that The Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday, Aug. 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones. Details of Mr. Layton’s funeral arrangements will be forthcoming.”

According to Joanna Smith of the Ottawa Bureau, Layton was primed to be a politician all his life, even though he had aspirations of playing football. She traces his family roots back to a number of born leaders who helped shape Canada to be the widely-respected and forward-thinking country that it is.

His grandfather, Gilbert Layton was a cabinet minister, his father Robert Layton was a chairman of the Conservative caucus. Even his great-grandfather, Philip Layton came to Canada as a blind teenager and founded the Montreal Association for the Blind. Evidently, leadership was in Layton’s family genes.

Whether or not you agreed with his political stance, it is hard to argue that Layton did an excellent job in leading the NDP. This past federal election, the party garnered more seats than it ever had before setting itself up as the official opposition to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

At the end of July, however, Layton was forced to take a leave of absence to battle his second bout with cancer. On his Twitter account, Layton wrote “Your support and well wishes are so appreciated. Thank you…I will fight this and beat it.” We are saddened today to hear that Layton’s fight was lost. He was 61.