zlacker

St. Thomas is a small city (less than 50k, and it's not a suburb of a bigger city) in Ontario, Canada that is probably almost devoid of any tech or startup action, so it's cool to see one that stuck there and made it work instead of moving to Toronto or SF.

I would doubt anyone in that city isn't aware of the one big success in tech they have going right now and are probably happy to see them actually giving back to help out the folks who live there (which likely include the founders and employees). It's not like they are buying the naming rights to an arena in downtown Miami, it's a small park on the outskirts of their hometown.

I live an hour away in Kitchener-Waterloo, we have RIM park and there has been a culture around these parts of companies putting money back into the community, sponsoring events and helping develop areas and I would view this more in that realm than anything shady. I've been all over South Western Ontario and I still haven't made it to St. Thomas because it's out of the way (even when visiting nearbyish London) and there is like nothing there, so I don't see this as something dirty or they would have spent their money on somewhere that it would make any marketing impact at all.

Good on them for trying to help out their own community.