“I feel like I'm going to be learning for the rest of my life, and that that really excites me,” shares Shayla Chalifoux. She grew up in Edmonton and moved out to the Fraser Valley, BC to pursue her education. When she lived in Edmonton she moved furniture and worked at a grocery store, trying to find her path. She took an insulator readiness program with Women Building Futures and worked in commercial and industrial buildings. She worked on the Redwater refinery and got to see how much people could accomplish when they worked together. Eventually, she got laid off and decided to go into the cannabis industry.

To pursue that goal, she went to Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) for horticulture because she couldn’t get into UBC for botany. She started working at the greenhouse at the school for minimum wage and her dad helped her with rent money. She applied for all the scholarships she could within KPU but looking back she wishes she had applied for outside scholarships like Indspire. She decided to continue on and get her degree, a Bachelor’s of horticultural science with a major in plant health.

She realized she didn’t want to work in cannabis anymore, the sterile environment, the heat of the greenhouse and the single crop growing. She wanted to grow many plants. In her last course, she had to do a research project and one option was to study the native plants of her community. Given she was connecting to her community near Lillooet, BC, that’s what she chose. After graduation, she got a job at a native plant nursery, a Coast Salish plant nursery. She worked there for a year and now she does consulting and educational workshops on native plants.

On a typical day, Chalifoux might meet with landscape architect clients, compile lists of plant recommendations, make social media posts and spend time in her language class. She’s also working on her business plan so she can look at land to lease through the Young Agrarians land matching program.

Chalifoux has wanted to be self-employed for a long time and hasn’t enjoyed working for other companies. She worked for her dad who was a sub contractor and her uncle had his own business dispatching movers and she worked around him, too. Having worked at three nurseries and knowing the operations and having the education, she realized she could do it, she just had to figure out how to get there. She participated in an Aboriginal management program through Chinook Indigenous Education in partnership with Sauder School of Business at UBC. She’s learning to hone her public speaking and accounting skills but she got a chance to pitch her business to Geena Jackson of Bear’s Lair.

Having found her own path, being able to make her own schedule, building a business that follows her values and is impactful motivates Chalifoux. Connecting with people in the community, with other plant people and learning from them brings her joy. While she loved school, she’s learned she can learn in other settings, too.

Her advice to others moving out to BC for school is to have some savings and to keep an eye out for scholarships. She thinks making the move was the best decision she ever made. “I took a big risk coming out here, but the payout was just incredible,” she reflects. “Even if you move for a little bit and you don't like it, you could go back, but at least you tried and you learned, whether that was your path or not,”she continues. If she could share a message with her younger self it would be “Follow your heart. It’s okay to do it scared. “

To balance her mental health, Chalifoux talks to her doctor about her symptoms and is looking for a counsellor to help with her anxiety. “I think movement is medicine, and getting outside has been really good for me,”she relays. She goes to the forest and the ocean for a fire with her medicines.

When it comes to inspiration, Chalifoux looks to her niece who has been teaching her art techniques. She also looks to her sister who is going to SFU for her BA with a minor in environmental regulations and the language program with her. Spending time on the land also inspires her, seeing plants and animals thriving. It makes her want to be of service to the land at a time of climate change.

It took some time for her to find her path but now Shayla Chalifoux is blossoming like the plants she tends to. She went from moving furniture to insulating to horticulture and her future is growing with her knowledge of native plants. She thought she wanted to work in cannabis but it turned out she had a different calling.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.