The most amazing gift you could have given us this year was to champion our mission with millions of views, thank you! Now we’re even more stoked to find more people whose journeys amaze and inspire you to make that life-changing decision to love what you do. We’ve had a fantastic year at True Calling, and we’d like to thank you for helping us close 2017 with a bigger community, new partnerships, an awesome award, great stories, and even more passion for our work. We’re just about ready to call it a year and celebrate the possibilities in 2018, but there’s one last thing we’d like to ask before we head into the future: there is a person you know that loves what they do, and has a story that needs to be told—please tell us about them! That’s how we came across these incredible people that make up your favourite True Calling stories of the year:
1) This Raptor Biologist Works to Conserve Wildlife Using Modern Day Dinosaurs
Kristine Kirkby is a raptor biologist and works on the falconry team at Vancouver International Airport. In an amazing partnership between human and bird, Kristine gets to pursue her passion and work together with wildlife, in order to protect it. “I love the relationship that I’ve developed with the birds. They are definitely our teammates and we’re very, very attached to them. I feel lucky that I’ve been able to find a way to make a living working with the animals that I love so much.”
2) Only a Man Can Do It
Michael Keaton did it first in Mr. Mom. As a stay-at-home parent, Ben Brunton is doing it all: cooking and cleaning, repairs and renovations, and breaking down outdated gender roles. “I take a few ribbings from my friends here and there, and some of the older generation. I do think there’s a social stigma. You’re definitely challenged and it’s hard to contend.”
3) My Father Could Have Been a Great Comedian
In this True Calling original animation, Jim Carrey imparts work advice about taking a chance doing what we love. “So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dare to ask the universe for it. I’m saying, I’m the proof that you can ask the universe for it.”
4) How Food Writer and Lifestyle Expert Jackie Kai Ellis Found Fulfilment from the Power of Choice
When Jackie Kai Ellis left her old life as a graphic designer to study pastry in Paris and open Beaucoup Bakery & Café in Vancouver, she found her true, authentic self. Jackie is now a travel and food writer and author of her first book, The Measure of My Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris. “It was the perfect life, according to culture and society. I woke up one day and I realized I was more miserable than I had ever been in my entire life. And I wondered why because all these things were supposed to make me happy but they didn’t.”
5) Gingerbread Mompreneur: How a Family Tradition Became a Thriving Business
Kat learned how to bake from her mom, who used to make gingerbread houses every holiday season. Now, she owns a successful bakery business where she specializes in buttercream cakes and gingerbread. It is the most meaningful work—Kat is able to build a business around her mother’s legacy, work from home and be present in the lives of her children, financially support her family, and continue the family traditions of bonding over gingerbread-making. “These days, even though Mom has Alzheimer’s and can’t do her baking, she gets a gingerbread house every year from me. I definitely think my mom not being present gives me extra passion to keep the tradition alive.”