The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition Brookfield Asset Management is a boring but beautiful company to portfolio manager Paul Harris at Avenue Investment Management in Toronto. In a Globe special, Kira Vermon quotes Mr. Harris as saying, "We do nothing but boring stuff here," describing his investment philosophy. "For us, a company that slowly plugs away and pays a nice dividend is not boring. It makes the stock more attractive." Brookfield Asset Management sticks with what it knows: infrastructure. It buys timberland, ports and power generating companies, and it does it well, Mr. Harris explains. "They're very skilled at buying those assets and they buy them at the right time." Meanwhile, Jeff Mo at Mawer Investment likes Stantec for boring but dependable. Mr. Mo manages a small-cap portfolio and is always on the lookout for what he calls "small cap, blue chip" companies. Stantec makes his list because it focuses on run-of-the-mill engineering work that is quietly vital to the economy, such as gas station soil sampling or parking lot structural-integrity inspections. Years of research have shown that slow-and-steady stocks often outperform flashier offerings, producing solid long-term earnings.