About a week ago, I had the honour of attending the Calgary Business Hall of Fame. The Calgary Business Hall of Fame is an event which takes place every year to celebrate Calgarians who’ve prospered in the business field. Each year, a select number of candidates are chosen to receive awards. Normally, tickets to this expensive gala cost about $400, but thanks to the Junior Achievement program, several other ambassadors, myself among them, attended for free! And I can easily say that that was an experience I never would have passed up. The cool thing is, Junior Achievement (an organization for youth) actually began this event, but today it attracts the highest business leaders. In fact, I believe one of the first speakers was Arlene Dickinson (If you’ve ever seen Dragon’s Den, you know how big of a deal this is). As soon as she gave her kind words, I knew that the rest of the night would be something to remember.
The CBHOF took place in the Imperial Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Since over 800 guests were scheduled to be there, you can imagine the extreme preparations that took place. Now it isn’t called the Calgary Business “Hall” of Fame for nothing – before the ceremony, all of the guests mingled in a very long hallway. Complete with coloured lights, drinks of every type, and hors d’ouvres, this event was absolutely breathtaking. Now, one of my duties was to keep the guests entertained, so with my fellow ambassadors I had the pleasure of making small talk with people whom I otherwise never would’ve spoken to. Although I met remarkable people from all over the world, an individual who really stood out to me was Robert Thirsk. (Yes, the guy who the high school is named after) The funny thing is, when we first spoke to him we didn’t know that he was Robert Thirsk, and somehow his name slipped by all of us ambassadors who approached him. But maybe that slip actually helped the conversation, because we weren’t as starstruck at that point. If you don’t know who Robert Thirsk is, he is the current record holder of the longest space flight for an astronaut in Canada. (no wonder the school mascot is an astronaut!) Mr. Thirsk was very easy to talk to, and thinking back, what I learned from that experience is that even the people who seem inhuman because of what they’ve accomplished are still people like the rest of us at the end of the day. Actually, Mr. Thirsk was quite familiar about the Junior Achievement program, and he even informed us that there have been films produced about JA! Check out Risky Business, for example.
Robert Thirsk.
After a fun portion of mingling, the guests trickled into the Imperial Ballroom for the ceremony. Another Ambassador and I had the chance to sit with employees of the Calgary Board of Education, whom all seemed to thouroughly enjoy their jobs. One of the individuals who I spoke to actually knows every single Principal in the city… and that’s a pretty impressive feat, if you ask me. Over a salad of pickled oninons, arugula, and other vegetables which I never knew existed, I had a hearty conversation with the lady sitting next to me. We talked about, well, life. I asked her about her story, and how she decided she wanted to be a teacher. In response to this, she said “I was going to be a dentist, but then I realized that I needed to do what I actually enjoy. So I became a teacher”. I guess that reinforces her next piece of advice, which was
“You may have your own plan, but the universe has a completely different one for you to follow”.
For an individual with OCD like myself, which in my terms means that I always have to plan everything out or else I become very flustered, her words certainly changed my outlook on life.
Here is the Imperial Ballroom in which the Gala was held:
As we settled in to the main course of the meal, the ceremony commenced. Here are the honorary award winners of the 2o15 Business Hall of Fame!
You can read more about these men and their amazing accomplishments (which I can’t even begin to sum up) here:
John Dielwart, Keith Macphail, Doug Ramsay, and Ralph T. Scurfield
After watching four inspirational videos, the effect on me and the other ambassadors was imminent. We all felt immediately refreshed and inspired to work hard, and succeed in life. Now there was one particularly interesting things that I discovered between many of the winners. It turns out, they married their high school sweethearts – what are the odds? Just thought I’d share that heartwarming piece of information with y’all.
All of the winners received a trophy like below:
The night flew by, and my only wish for it is that it would’ve been longer.
Here is me with the lovely Amanda, another Junior Achievement Ambassador who is also a member of the YVC steering committee! (apologies for the quality of the photo)
Here are a few of the other ambassadors holding this month’s issue of the Magazine!
Thank you so much to Junior Achievement for giving us this wonderful opportunity! It was definitely an experience that I will never forget.