First of all, I apologize for not having notes. I have a business to run and it's not always easy.
I want to share my story of where I'm from and how I was able to overcome some of the adversities that I faced. I come from a small rural community in northern British Columbia. A lot of first nations people live in the small town. My mother was a Cree woman. My Dad was English, whatever, but before I was born my Dad had a workplace injury and he lost his foot. That was before anything I can remember, of course, and he and my mom had split up before I was old enough to remember.
My mom comes from a pretty rough home. There was a lot of loss and dysfunction growing up. My first experience with loss and dysfunction was from an uncle who committed suicide after he got out of jail for murdering his brother, my other uncle. Not long after that, I had the experience of watching another death. My auntie was in the federal Kingston Penitentiary after spending some time in Vancouver's Downtown East Side, and watching how that all happened was an experience I will never forget. In our family, poverty was a bit of a side issue. It wasn't a forefront issue. There was more than enough for us to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Holding our family together at times seemed like a tough task for my mom.
As a teenager starting to deal with the effects of drug abuse, my older brother overdosed when I was about eight or nine years old. Again, it becomes something that you expect, not something you think isn't normal. These adversities kind of come.... I don't know if it's the effects of poverty, but—I'm sorry, I'm kind of at a loss for words here—you realize that you don't have any out.
Back to my father, he wasn't able to work. He was trying to live off about $450 every couple of weeks from workers' compensation, so the effects for him, with not only his physical disabilities but the mental disabilities.... For our family, I know it was very tough to get by with a single mother who was on and off welfare and a Dad who was in and out of jail.
As a teenager, and as a child, I was able to partake in sports and activities like that, and that was a big part of my developing social skills and confidence. It allowed me to set goals for myself, and one of those goals was being drug-free. At first it was to get to the time I was 15, then it was 16, then 19, 20, and so forth. I started to set some goals as a teenager. I'm not here saying I didn't have my issues as well.
There was a lot to deal with, but when you're trying to overcome substance abuse, even though I didn't have substance abuse, when your loved ones are suffering from it, you are part of it. Setting those goals was a big part of my success in getting out of my teenage years, which was a critical time, drug-free and alcohol-free. As an adult, I started developing more skills.
I worked with first nations youth for four years in a mentorship role. That experience was a big eye-opener, working with kids who are born with disabilities. It's tough to get off the reserve and it's tough to go to school when you're a healthy first nations person on reserve, never mind when you have some of the disabilities that are prevalent in first nations communities.
I set a goal to make sure that I could get into a position where I could go back to help a lot of those people. In my late twenties I started a small business, and that business will have over 40 employees soon. In this next year we'll do around $10 million in revenue. This is rather irrelevant in this discussion, but what is relevant is that it would have been very easy to follow down the same path as every one of my family. I lost my brother in 2006 to his addictions on reserve. For me, even as an adult, things keep creeping up.
But setting goals for myself has been a big part of staying sober and getting into this world of entrepreneurship. I know that if a couple of things had gone the other way; if a couple of mentors and people hadn't come into my life, I could be down that same path.
Today I'm very proud of who I am and very proud of what I've been able to accomplish. Having young first nations people come up to me and tell me that I was able to be a part of making a difference for them provides a good feeling. I have some good ideas, I think, about what worked for me and what I stress with some of the young people who work with us, both first nations and non-first nations.
I just came here to share my story and hopefully answer any questions or maybe share some of the things that worked for me in my upbringing.