Mattamy Homes. A few words of explanation. One product, lovingly crafted, humbly sold and proudly owned. That's how it starts for most companies. That's how it started for us, in 1978.

Peter Gilgan took a look around and saw an opportunity for Mattamy Homes to create something different in a world of sameness.

He studied home design concepts from all over North America and especially of a growing movement called New Urbanism. This new movement called for homes to be more individual in character and designed into friendlier communities with integrated green space and consideration given to people over cars. Mattamy Homes initial foray into New Urbanism resulted in community design with lots configured by width not depth.

WideLot™ homes helped Mattamy evolve into Canada's largest builder of new homes.

Today, we are involved in every single aspect of community planning. We acquire the land, we design the homes, we plan the streets, we create the park spaces and walking/biking trails and other community features. We also constantly look for ways to improve what we do. We have built more than 46,000 homes in over 100 communities in Canada and the United States.

Today, the watchword is "affordable" and we have created new ways to provide homes at affordable prices without diminishing our standards for quality and attention to detail. An inspired example of this thinking is in our new collection of homes in Hawthorne Village called SPIRIT™. These homes fit easily into our most successful and largest WideLot™ community in Canada. They appeal to the contemporary needs of young families.

We also have spent no small amount of thought on how to make better use of the natural environment in our neighbourhoods. Our most recent success with Ottawa's first WideLot™ community of Fairwinds in Kanata, inspired us to create a community called Half Moon Bay which sits along the edge of a major river in Barrhaven and makes great use of the natural setting.

Our Milton communities also make great use of the natural surroundings which include the Niagara Escarpment. We have planted more than 50,000 trees and shrubs, for example, that when grown will serve as attractive habitat for songbirds and wildlife. Through careful planning, innovative designing and environmental consideration, we have built a great family atmosphere for more than 8,000 families.

The search for the most satisfying homes we can build is never-ending. We have even built a factory that is capable of building complete homes indoors so we can avoid the harshness of Canada's winters.

Our first community in Calgary is now open and brings WideLot™ thinking to western Canada in a community called Windsong in Airdrie. The homes here will be as spacious and open as a prairie sky and offer unique family living in a master-planned environment.

We are also currently (and bravely) building homes across the United States with communities in Phoenix, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Jacksonville and Orlando.

Our communities have been honoured with many awards for their uniqueness but the most important honour comes from the comments of satisfied homeowners. Our homeowners have earned us 3 consecutive (as of 2008) top rankings in the J.D. Power and Associates survey for customer satisfaction among homeowners in the GTA. We also earned the very first J.D. Power and Associates award in Ottawa where our homes and communities have been incredibly well received. In our first 2 years in Ottawa we have sold 800 homes.

Today, Mattamy is involved in every single aspect of community planning. We acquire the land, we design the homes, we plan the streets, we create the parklands. We also constantly look for ways to improve what we do. As a company, we have built over 25,000 homes in 76 communities throughout the GTA. We've done this one home at a time.

Projects like Cornell in Markham, Rouge Park in Scarborough, Upper Country Club in Cambridge and Canada's first all WideLot™ community, The Orchard in Burlington are living testimonials to the effectiveness of our approach to creating diversity of choice while finding affordable, innovative designs to increase density without increasing crowding.

'Home' is a simple word with a thousand complexities. Our job is to learn and master all those complexities. The better we are at it, the more we will succeed. For now, we know one thing for sure. We must treat what we do with great importance because 'home' is where everyone longs to be.