Nowadays, with the onset of Enronitis, Nortelitis, Arthur Andersen Pox, Analyst Whooping Cough, CEO Lockjaw and other communicable diseases that have relegated the stock market to sickbay, we offer a port in the storm – good news.

If you’ve been watching Report On Business TV or CNBC as they flog the dead horses of the blue-chip market, this may come as a shock, but there is a bull market.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching! No, Henry Blodget, the disgraced former Merrill Lynch internet stock analyst, did not put us up to this.

Amid the wreckages of Enron, Nortel, Tyco et al, there has been a quiet mini-bull market rearing its head in the small-cap world. And we’re not just talking about the gold stocks that have been on fire as investors look for a safe place to bunker down in a stormy market.

Several unloved Canadian small caps in out-of-favour sectors beyond the gold sector have been staging phenomenal rallies in the past year. Most of these companies are in mundane businesses that were ignored during the ’90s bull market that drove large caps and tech stocks to obscene levels.

Say you were a fund manager and were dumb enough a year ago to launch something crazy called The Canadian Rodney Dangerfield No Respect Fund featuring stocks with no sex appeal – a door maker, a brick layer, a slush vendor, a yogurt mucker and a soil cleaner.

Today, you’d be the toast of Bay Street with your fund up 267 per cent in 12 months. Overall, Canadian small caps have bucked the bear market with a decent return of about six per cent over the past 12 months, but those who did their homework have been hitting home runs.

The door maker, Masonite International (MHM-TSX), is up 135 per cent from a year ago. The brick layer, Brampton Brick (BBL.A-TSX), is up 100 per cent. The slush vendor, convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard (AATD.A-TSX), is up 300 per cent. The yogurt mucker, CoolBrands International (COB.A-TSX) is up 300 per cent. And the oil cleaner, soil contamination company Bennett Environmental (BEV-TSX), is up a whopping 500 per cent.

Actually, two of those unloved companies are top holdings in Canada’s best performing small-cap fund of the past year. The Sprott Canadian Equity Fund, the brainchild of Eric Sprott, was up an eye-popping 74 per cent for the 12 months ended May 31 with the unlikely one-two punch of CoolBrands and Bennett Environmental.

In statistics through May, the second best small-cap fund in Canada was the Clarington Canadian Small Cap Fund, managed by Calgary portfolio manager Patrick Slater of QVGD Investors. The Clarington fund features unsung heroes such as BW Technologies (BWT-TSX), Cascades (CAS-TSX), GTC Transcontinental Group (GRT.A-TSX) and Meridian Gold (MNG-TSX).

But if you’ve been subscribing to the conventional wisdom of the mainstream media and its love affair with the market’s household names, you’ve probably never even heard of these companies. And certainly not owned them.

See, it pays to beat the bushes for bargains.

* THE FUTURE IS: Quite frankly, not so friendly. Telus’s slogan, The Future Is Friendly, is ringing kind of hollow for some frazzled Cadvision Internet customers these days. Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, which is pulling the plug on its Cadvision Internet services in July, had a terrible time telecommunicating with one of its Cadvision customers last week.

During one call, the customer was put on hold three times as customer services reps struggled to explain the transfer to Telus Internet, and the customer was eventually deserted on the third hold.

All the customer wanted was an explanation why a Cadvision residential dial-up account that was just paid for a year isn’t good for the same deal with Telus. When the customer called back, a fourth rep explained that for a Cadvision customer with a year’s unlimited Internet service, Telus is offering a year at 100 hours per month.

The rep did not mention that after 100 hours, the charge is $1.50 per hour. Of course, that made Telus’s offer of a refund the most attractive option.

Ironically, Cadvision, which goes to the kill file July 12 for residential customers, was built by Calgary entrepreneur Geoffrey Shmigelsky on a reputation of personal service and reasonable rates.

Telus, a troubled telecom that recently announced it was offering buyout deals to 11,000 employees or 40 per cent of its workforce, acquired the company from Shmigelsky about two years ago. The service seems to have been deteriorating since then.

A web message from Telus to Cadvision customers says ‘you’ll enjoy the same reliable service you’ve come to expect.’ If that’s the case, then why is the customer still waiting for a Telus supervisor to return a message to clarify the transfer of service?

* STREET TALK: Canaccord Capital’s Michael Manford recently echoed the sentiments of many market watchers perplexed that stocks aren’t responding to a positive economic environment.

“Is anyone out there paying attention?” Manford asked in a note to clients.

“While the market’s latest worries may keep it in a trading range in the short run, it may well wake up and smell the air soon and find it’s smelling like roses. People have to stop looking at tech stocks to see what this recovery is all about.”

* SAGE WORDS: “Bottom fishing is a popular investor pastime, but it’s usually the fisherman who gets hooked.” – Peter Lynch in his book, One Up On Wall Street.



HOT ALBERTA STOCK: Winalta Inc.
WTA.A-TSX Venture $2.00
Up 47 cents (+30.7%) on 14,100 shares (for week ending June 14).
We were about to say that Winalta has put the Alberta outpost of Enoch on the map, but we can’t find it. No matter. Stock in the home manufacturer has pounded out a home run for investors, increasing five-fold since Jan. 1. After the Friday close, Winalta announced a contract with St. Michael’s Healthcare and Community Care Canada to manufacture assisted living facilities (ie. extended care homes) in Alberta and an initial project in Vegreville expected to generate $2.4 million in revenue.



COLD ALBERTA STOCK: Global Thermoelectric
GLE-TSX $3.67
Down 82 cents (-18.3%) on 324,000 shares (for week ending June 14).
Fuel-cell tech companies like Global used to be all the rage. But a show-me-the-earnings investor mentality continues to take its toll. Calgary-based Global’s stock has crashed from $18 a year ago and $50 in 2000. Global's latest quarterly report showed a net loss of $6.4 million or 23 cents a share.