Life Lessons: Grow and Learn

Starting a new job in a field completely unrelated to one’s career is not something most people picture themselves doing in their 50’s. But that’s exactly what Peggy Brown did last year when she began working at Mother Nature.

“In 2007 I retired [from my job in Richmond where I worked as a coordination manager in the community services division for the City] and moved to Powell River. My kids are here and I had fallen in love with the community.” For the first couple of years she tried to adjust to retirement and a slower pace of life. “But then I found I needed more,” she says.

Peggy called up Mother Nature, and her timing was good. “I love plants, and I loved the atmosphere in the store. I had an instinct that I would love working there – and I do!”...read more

Learning Takes Courage and Determination

Have you ever been to a foreign country where everything is unfamiliar? No one speaks your language, the culture is completely different – you may not even know what is going on around you at times?

It’s an experience everyone should have at least once in their lives for the simple reason that it helps us to understand people in our own community better, and be more empathetic towards them – particularly those who have arrived from other countries. It sheds a new light on what it must be like to immigrate to a new country and try to settle in to a place that is not like anywhere you have been before.

In the past four years Nikita Mokeev, 32, has had the experience of trying to settle into a new culture and country – a new life. He moved to Vancouver from Moscow, Russia in 2007, and to Powell River last year....read more in Powell River Living (page 26)