Having been born and grown up during the time of the Cold War, I always imagined that the End of the World was nigh. One of my most vivid memories was of the sonic boom of a jet during  my cousin, Lori’s, birthday party while we were doing somersaults in her bedroom (I think someone put their foot through the wall) and believing, for certain, that an atomic bomb had just struck my hometown, the unlikely target of Salmon Arm, BC. At a young age, I felt a real pressure to help save the world, save humanity, in some real and tangible way. 

My trip to Ottawa, a 4-day trip on Via Rail, at the age of 17 joining youth across Canada in the Rotary Club of Ottawa’s Adventure in Citizenship introduced the idea that politics may be the way to make a real difference in the world, to save the world, if you will. Enter a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (theory and international) and then a Master of Arts in Middle Eastern History - the answers seemed farther removed than Canada to me. I had stalked all theory classes taught by my then-favourite professor, Dr. Alberto Circia. The one and only quote (other than that famous one from Wayne Gretzky) that I can recite is from one of his classes on Anarchism (I think I took two), a quote that has been, and continues to be, the philosophy of my life - “Ask yourself what you need to learn to make this the kind of world you want to live and work in. Demand that your teachers teach you that.” (Prince Peter Kropotkin, Russian revolutionary, 1917). When I was almost finished with my Masters, my senior supervisor, Dr. William (Bill) Cleveland asked me what a girl from Salmon Arm, BC was doing studying Middle Eastern history. The truth was that I was looking for the key to help me understand what I needed to know to make this the kind of world I wanted to live and work in and that I was on a search farther afield than my initial rather limited view had foreseen.

After a particularly bad break-up, my dear cousin, Steve, (thanks for the music for the podcast, Steve) gave me a book to help me find myself and my way back. The book was Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want by Barbara Sher. I worked my way through the exercises in the book while studying Japanese one summer at UBC, prior to an interview in Japan (I didn’t get the job). I met my husband that summer, somewhat forcibly convincing him to complete Sher’s thought-provoking exercise, “Pick a colo(u)r”, where he described himself as aquamarine, thereby winning my heart, though I’m not certain that such was his intent, skeptical as he is of such activities. 

While I didn’t know it at the time, Sher was really my next teacher. Post-Wishcraft, she went on to write many books designed to help people decide what they really wanted to do with their lives in the spirit, or so I believe, of What Colour is Your Parachute, which I’ve never read so this may be a wild assumption. I had the pleasure of attending one of Sher’s seminars when she visited Edmonton in the early 2000s, and having a brief if impactful conversation after which I felt inspired to live the life of my dreams (I can’t remember what they were at the time though I like to imagine in my spare time that it was to take over Barbara’s legacy when she was gone, which, as it turned out, took place just this past year). 

Education has always been at the forefront of my life. Learning new information is essential to me, and, as such, I have spent most of my adult life in some kind of post-secondary. My most significant teachers have been the facilitators I’ve worked with the last 16 years in holistic health, as I’ve learned that it’s not the world that I have control over, but how I navigate within it that makes my life, my work, and my world both enjoyable and meaningful. 

I’ve gathered a plethora of skills on the long and winding road of learning in post-secondaries, public and private, both as a student and as a staff member, typically with a very millennial-sounding title - Residence Life Facilitator, Student Experience Coordinator, and, most recently, Experiential Learning Facilitator at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My real and most unique skill set is seeing patterns and connections other people may miss, particularly as this relates to bringing people and ideas together at the precise moment to create something bigger and more synergistic.

We all love to imagine that people see the world exactly the way we do, or to wish that such was the case, but I’ve come to recognize that such is not the case, and to celebrate these differences, as the synergy, the magic, happens when different ideas, different perspectives, different people come together at the right moment in time. This is, in fact, the aim of this podcast.