He started studying the science of life and then went onto life in the arts and never looked back. Hailey Verbonac is Cree Metis, originally from Inuvik, Northwest Territories. He did his undergraduate degree in Biology with a minor in drawing at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. With just 5000 people in the town of Sackville, this felt more manageable for him coming from Inuvik which had 3000 people. He did theatre on the side while he was in school after watching it on tv with interest given there wasn’t much theatre going on where he was from. He did management and design for theatre rather than acting on stage. He got into visual arts sketching dissections as he studied for his anatomy midterms.

Four years later, he was really loving theatre, so he applied to theater programs and got into the national theater school in Montreal for their production design and technical arts programs. It included lighting design, sound design, video design, stage management, technical, direction, and production management. The wide range of topics allowed him to figure out what he liked to do and he found he loved lighting and video design. He graduated three years later and worked as a theater designer in lighting and video and as an illustrator, making his own content in video design. Recently, he moved into a management role with the Great Northern Arts Festival, bringing up artists to Inuvik and working in the Arctic arts scene.

He's inspired to do the work that he does because it aligns so much with his interests. “I love stories of all kinds. I love people talking about themselves and hearing about both personal stories and stories from, especially cultural stories, Indigenous cultures. I think that's just so important to keeping things alive and keeping teachings and language alive. Learning from a textbook is on some level useful, but it's not how people were traditionally taught, and it's not the most interesting way to teach, I find,” he explains. Verbonac has been able to be part of touching stories from a variety of places as part of his work with Indigenous theatre. As an intensely visual person, he is drawn to this form of storytelling.

His advice for Indigenous people leaving their community for their education would be,

“Take it slow and just be secure that home will always be there, and even if it takes a couple goes. Keep going but if things are not feeling right or not going well, it's totally okay to go back home, figure yourself out, take some time and try again… Not succeeding is such an important part of developing.”

He encourages exploring education for education's sake if it’s an option instead of just thinking about what will make the most money or what’s the right thing to do. While he's not using his biology degree, he doesn’t regret doing it.

“It's alright to take stuff in smaller steps,” Verbonac adds, sharing how he only learned how stoplights worked in university given he didn’t really have to know that in his small Northern community. He was glad he chose a smaller place but he still experienced culture shock given Inuvik was mostly Indigenous. In retrospect, he wishes he had integrated more with the community.

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If he could give a message to his younger self it would be to eat more to avoid being hangry and “Don't walk into a room and think that you need to prove anything or that you need to make people like you. Just know that you have and are offering something and be secure in that.”  

To maintain his wellness, Verbonac makes sure to eat and sleep regularly. He tried running but found it boring. Yoga, on the other hand, was something he really enjoyed. He's found trying to do things he doesn’t enjoy isn’t sustainable but leaning towards good habits and making small shifts is much more likely to be successful. He's also enjoyed finding people who share his interests to be much more nourishing than trying to fit in with people who enjoy things he doesn’t.

As far as obstacles, Verbonac felt isolated and lonely and like the way he was feeling or trying to be was wrong. He spent a lot of energy trying to figure out what people wanted from him or thought about him or shutting himself off from people and ultimately realized it’s a lot easier to just be the way you want to be. Verbonac also had to work to redefine the ideas he had in his head about what it meant to live well, which included reshaping his habits and routines around calling home so he would still enjoy and look forward to it. He had to learn to take a break to eat and sleep even when he would rather keep going on a project.  

For Verbonac, wellness is related to both mental and physical and he sees the two as being closely tied. He sees wellness as something that needs to be sustainable and finding joy in the way he's living. He needs to be functional and pleasant to be around and given he gets migraines, he has to be mindful of the way that can impact how he lives his life. Doing contract work, he has to allocate his energy accordingly so he can attend to his wellness, something he doesn’t think he could do as well in a corporate job.

When it comes to someone struggling on their path with wellness, identity or life, Verbonac would say, “It's super normal, and things take exactly how long they take. Nothing can be forced and not to focus too much on, especially in terms of identity, with labels or trying to fit in boxes…Just let things happen organically… Just take your time… Things are going to shift. You don't have to invest too much. It's going to change anyways so just enjoy it, let it happen. If it is a struggle, then if you have a community to lean on, lean on them. If not, then there are plenty of resources to look into and if you have to take time away to focus on yourself, then that's very healthy, very normal.”

Studying the science of life was his starting point but he found what he really loved was life in the arts. Hailey Verbonac went from a small town to a slightly bigger town and found interests he couldn’t pursue back home. He went from sketching anatomy to sketching out new dreams and finding opportunities he never imagined as a new career took center stage.