I was born and raised on Vancouver Island and have lived in what has recently become the Juan de Fuca Malahat riding for 25 years. Sooke is my home. It is where my family and I built our home and a small farm, raised our children and where I opened a business, The Stick in the Mud Coffee House.

After high school in Victoria, it was overseas for a year before graduating from Toronto Metropolitan University, with a Bachelor’s degree in communications. For a few years, I worked in radio in Duncan, Victoria and in Vancouver.

I’ve been a business owner for about 30 years. I started writing for magazines and then operated a landscape design and maintenance firm.  In 2007, I opened The Stick in the Mud coffee house. After some negotiations last year, I passed along the cafe and bakery to The Sooke Community Investment Co-op - a group of about 400 community members and staff that recognized the value to the community of such an inclusive hub. They rebranded and reopened as Café Vosino last autumn. I kept the coffee roasting facility (The Stick in the Mud Roastoreum), selling beans and brewing equipment, retail and wholesale across the South Island.

Entering this campaign, there was much to consider. The future of my children is always top of mind; their success, their ability to own a home and find satisfying work that does not require 60 hours weekly to get by. It concerns me that our government continues to subsidize profitable industries while education, healthcare and housing seem to be afterthoughts. There are problems with the quality of our green spaces, the blue spaces, the air, the drinking water. In this big riding, transportation corridors are on my mind, transit inconsistencies, connections between communities with only one road…

I write this as a wildfire burns in the Sooke Hills, just a few kilometres from home. The seriousness of our drought and how our industrial practices have exacerbated natural conditions hits hard. And as campers are evacuated, I recall when summers were a source of joy, not dread.