Faces of Edmonton

"The garden ... I remember working here as a summer student out here weeding and tilling with the clients and now just seeing that continue over the years and that the clients still have the same passion for it and understand what it means … This is not just a garden to them. It’s a place where people come together as a community. It’s a place where people learn new skills, it gives people confidence. And on top of that, thinking about sustainable foods, it is a source of food … it’s a pivotal piece here at Mosaic especially during the summer."

"I love music. I like to sing ... I knew I wasn't going to be a performer. So then I thought, "What am I going to do with music. I'm going to be a music teacher." So I started off as a music teacher ... and it means to make a difference, to influence the future ... I'm on the tail end now. It's been a good run. Boys and girls, tell Shayne what's rule number 1."

"Never ask a lady her age," the grade three class says in unison. 

"I was born with albinism and growing up I faced a lot of adversity. Part of my albinism is that my vision is twenty-two hundred, which basically means that everything is zoomed out. If you’ve ever turned a lens or a pair of binoculars over, that zoomed-out look, that’s kind of how I see the world. Everything is in perspective, it’s clear, I see colours and shapes and everything, it just looks far away. I’ve seen like that since birth.”

“At five years old, I met with a disability counsellor who told me all the things that I wouldn’t be able to do in life. They told me I wouldn’t be able to play sports, that I wouldn’t be able to drive, that my career choice would be selective and education would be tough for me. So I came out of that meeting with drive and determination to prove that individual wrong, and prove that I could do anything that a normal person could do. It wasn’t easy. I grew up with a lot of battles and people putting limitations on me that I didn’t think existed.”

“Luckily I had great parents who supported me wholeheartedly. They always let me live out my dreams and do the things I wanted to do. I dirt bike, downhill ski, I played basketball in junior high and high school, and I played football on the varsity team.”

“I was assaulted by someone I had known for fifteen years. Eighty percent of survivors have experienced acquaintance sexual assault, so someone they know or someone they care about. So for me, it felt important to speak out, to give a face to a lot of peoples’ experiences and then it empowers people to start talking … it makes me feel that talking about it is worth it.”

“When I initially disclosed to a social group I was close with for fifteen years, which included my brother, none of them believed me, and they all stopped speaking to me and they still hang out with the person who assaulted me. That was incredibly painful and incredibly difficult because not only was I going though this, but I was pretty much completely alone. When I saw the I Believe You Campaign, it inspired me to talk about it. I decided I wasn’t going to hang on to this because it was toxic to me to keep holding this inside of me — not speaking about it and keep shoving it down is not healthy. So I decided to post about my experience on Facebook before I went to bed and when I woke up, I was amazed at the feedback I was receiving from people, things like, ‘That’s so brave of you, thank you for sharing your story, we support you, we love you’. It was huge and I think then I started feeling more comfortable and then speaking  about it in a more public way started to feel more comfortable. It is empowering to talk about it because it takes away that shame and the secrecy that is so toxic to survivors.”

“For me it was just the pervasive nature of family violence. I had seen it, obviously, through my career … My background is thirty-odd years in provincial government, primarily in the area of child protection … When I became involved in the Today Centre, it really brought out the need for coordinated response. You know this issue hasn’t gone away, it’s not going away, and it’s not up to just one agency … Family violence hits a lot of people and we need to have people there that can provide a timely response.”

“I work for The Family Centre, and I’m a youth liaison in south west Edmonton ... I was born in India and being in India you are exposed to poverty. I was in India for eight years and then moved to Australia and basically grew up in Australia. And my father is a single father and he raised us, so food security was definitely an issue for our family, but my dad did a really good job of hiding that.”

“I sort of fell into this field of human services so I lucked out because I really enjoy it and it feels natural to me. I’m happy to be doing the ground work and helping directly, you know. I like seeing the change. Just to have one kid say, ‘I don’t know where I’d be without your help,’ it really means a lot and reminds you that this is why I do what I do ... When you see the confidence of a child grow, it’s a huge thing. I’ve built relationships with kids so it’s comfortable. I really enjoy that. When kids realize the potential they have, it’s a huge moment. Sometimes they just need someone to flip a switch in their head to make them think ‘Maybe I can do this.’”

“When I was six, my father stabbed my mother to death in front of me in the middle of the night and so, he went to prison and she died. And I was stuck in foster care for the rest of my youth ... a lot of people think, ‘Maybe it was so horrifying that you blocked it out.’ I’m glad that I didn’t block it out. There are already enough holes in my life that I kind of tried to fill all the time. I like knowing that I was there and that I can count on my memories.”

“I think every day I feel something's missing. No matter what, I don't think that I’ll ever feel whole in that way. I feel whole as a person and I have a really whole full life. But I think there's always ... I always know that I can’t call my mom. You know, she didn’t come to my wedding. I’m pregnant and she can’t come to see that. There's always something missing. So you have to make the most of it and you have to fill it with other things. And I think that's what makes me feel so passionate about speaking and sharing my story and helping other people up. My favourite thing in the world is helping other people up and I think that makes me feel purposeful.”

“I wrecked July 25, 1998. I was paralyzed from my neck down for three and a half months before I could even get a twitch ... When I wrecked, I got hit in the head with a duck. I was riding my Harley Davidson. I looked down and I was doing 100 k. Then when I looked up, all I could do was hold on tight because a duck blew out of the reeds, missed my wind screen and bounced off my melon. So that was like Saturday night at the cowboy bar — just an explosion of lights and pain and down in the ditch I went. There I was laying on my face with my arms crossed underneath me and paralyzed from my neck down. I had to hang out there for forty minutes until I was found ... From there, it’s been onward and upward. I’ve had lots of support from family and friends, no one would let me give up ... One door closes, another one opens, that’s all.”

“My daughters were eleven and fourteen. With my WalkAide, I was able to walk my youngest daughter down the aisle. That was in 2011 I think.”

“Playing some basketball after work, I’ve played since I was a kid back home, in the Philippines … If I go back home, everybody is playing basketball in the streets, everywhere you can see boxing, basketball. I play with my community here. We’re all Filipino playing together so we can meet other Filipinos living here in Edmonton. We have a little community here and you can make friends even if you’re out of your country. It makes me feel good.”

“This is my second fiddle and I’ve had her for, let’s say, twelve years. My husband helped me get her when we were first dating, and she’s been with me ever since ... I realized it was helping me heal when I was taking the course at The Family Centre, talking about building new neural pathways and meditation. It feels like, when I play my instrument, that I’m meditating. And that’s how I figured out that it was healing me and helping me.”

“I was looking for help and I was calling around and got in touch with The Family Centre, and they told me about a program called Healthy Relationships. I felt like I needed to take it. I thought, ‘I came from this household that I didn’t even know was so toxic and abusive. I can't carry that for my family legacy and my children.’ So I decided to take that course. It took me eight months to complete. Every Tuesday night. That was how I started to shine the light on how to get out of the dark hole I was living in.”

“It was scary. There was like a denial phase. I was like, ‘No way am I pregnant. I can’t be pregnant.’ I mean, yeah, I was doing everything that you can do to get pregnant. But I can’t be pregnant right? It was hard when I found out. I didn’t even want to go tell my mom. Like this was unreal. Plus I never saw teen parents anywhere. Nowhere. Just saw them on TV. After telling my mom about it, it got easier because she was a really big help ... That was scarier. I thought becoming pregnant was scary. Telling your mom that you’re pregnant is probably ten times as terrifying. I was sixteen and then I had Gabriella at sixteen. And like a week later I turned seventeen. So yeah, I got to be sixteen and pregnant.”

“I left my school when I got pregnant because I didn’t know how people would react. So I did half of a semester of grade eleven by myself and then grade twelve ... because I didn’t tell anyone—I just kept it a secret—so that’s when I got involved with Terra. They helped me get through just being isolated all the time because I never saw my friends anymore. And in grade twelve I decided to go back to my regular high school. I’m glad that I did. People were very supportive.”

“I’ve been playing since July last year. It was a couple weeks after it came out ... This is a gym. So right now I’m battling a gym and I just took out this guy. Right now the blue team owns the gym and I’m going to take it for the red team.”