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Bill Monahan was born in Owen
Sound and moved to the Toronto area with his family when he was a boy. It was in 1997 that he first discovered
the future of residential construction in “smart homes”. At that time he had been working in the field of
Property Restoration for eighteen years as a project manager and estimator. In all those years of fixing every kind
of damage to every kind of home he learned house construction inside and out, through every era. He also learned about
people. People and their homes. He knew better than anyone that your home is as personal to you as the clothes
you wear. And it's much more important. He saw firsthand how families related to their homes, through their eyes.
When he learned of the new technologies for electronic control of residences he saw at once that they held the promise
of a new way of living in our homes. There were few companies at the time looking at the holistic approach to home electronics
but there were companies who specialized in security, or high end audio and video, or camera surveillance systems. He
determined to add to his project management experience an expertise in these new options for a home. That meant starting
at the bottom again, this time in the field of electronics. He already had a million ideas about how these new technologies
could be put to use, giving the homeowner pushbutton control of everything. Home buttons. Now he needed to learn
how to make it happen.
 He began pulling cables for
a security company in 1998 and never looked back. Starting from the ideas of what might be possible, he needed to gain
first hand experience in all the skills needed to get there. Systems Integration, known as "Smart Homes"
were far from the mainstream marketplace but industry organizations like CABA provided the beginnings of a nascent
industry. They predicted the advent of large flat screen TVs and wireless video transmission in real time, voice transmission
over the Internet and long range remote control and they published special reports that allowed their members to understand
how they worked. These advances were due early in the twenty-first century and, true to prediction, they showed up on
time. While following the developments through industry periodicals, and contributing his own articles to the forum,
he installed and serviced security systems, CCTV surveillance systems, home theatres, audiophile installations, lighting control
systems, home automation systems, telephone systems and door entry systems, each in turn. He worked for a number of
companies in the GTA, and he watched as the new industry coalesced around him.
The long term personal plan, for
Bill Monahan, was to gain expertise as the market gained ground so that at some point he could apply his skills in the locale
of his choice. It had to be a place where there will be residential building carrying on into the future. He saw
that the beauty of Collingwood and the surrounding area was becoming recognized internationally and, whatever the economic
ups and downs of nations, the area will continue to grow. The growing market has allowed him to return to his
birthplace and to bring up-to-date home systems within the reach of his neighbours.All homes need some level of these low voltage technologies. In some cases, just to keep
up. There are ways to combine the old with the new to meet new needs in an old house. And there are companies
that have worked for a decade and a half to create automation and audio-video systems that take home ownership to a whole
other level for a new dream home. Across that wide range of needs and budgets, in every case, there are people.
Bill Monahan has brought homeBUTTONS to the Georgian Triangle to work with people. People need homes. And homes
need homeBUTTONS.
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