BY REBECCA SHIELDS
There were moments when the project felt like it was slipping away.
Building sites lost. Timelines pushed back. Funding pressures mounting. Criticism building. And more than once, I found myself picking up the pieces and starting again.
By Sherri Stevens
It’s just past six in the morning. I’m perched at the edge of my bed. My cheeks are wet, but whether it’s from tears or cold sweat, I’m not sure. My attention is on the brown paper bag pressed against my face. I heave a shaky breath into it. I gasp the same air back in.
Out. I didn’t sleep all night on the red-eye from Calgary to Toronto.
In. I’m opening the breakfast at nine, and I can’t miss it.
Out. Over 200 events in one year. I’m exhausted.
In. I can’t do this. I can’t go. I can’t.
Out. I hate WXN.
No one saw that breakdown in my Toronto apartment. I kept this moment—and others like it—to myself. To everyone else, I was a confident woman leading a successful company. But this was a stark revelation that something had to shift. I was going to save the company and myself with it.
BY JACKELYN GILL
Lesley Steele had done everything they asked.
She wanted into the club—never mind that it was only men. They had the purchasing power and the education opportunities. It was exactly the kind of group a young, independent veterinary clinic owner needed to be part of.
The first time she knocked on their door, the threshold for entry was a million dollars in sales. “I was probably at $300,000 or $400,000,” she says, “but I was confident I could do it.”
When she got there, she knocked again. They moved the line. A million and a half. She hired another vet, stretched the business, and hit the target a second time.
So she knocked once more. Two million. And along with that number came the truth.
BY JACKELYN GILL
“Are you ready to face the wall?” Four contestants stand nervously at their baking stations as host Noah Cappe gets ready for the reveal. They cheer, “Yes!”
“This is your Wall of Bakers.”
The music crescendos. The lights flip on 12 of Canada’s biggest baking icons ready to taste what the contestants whip up and pick a winner. At the top of the panel of judges: twins Jenna Hutchinson and Ashley Kosowan, co-owners of Jenna Rae Cakes.
There’s just one thing.
“My instinct is to cower from the spotlight,” says Ashley.