Each year, we get to work with the most incredible group of young people. They all have rich stories, have shown resilience and fortitude and they are worth getting to know. As part of their work with us, we ask the staff, in their own words, to share the parts of the stories they feel comfortable with others knowing - and the parts that reveal more of their depth. It's not an easy thing, to be vulnerable in your own words, and we commend each one of them for digging deep to share these beautiful bios. Please read with care and understanding. 

Alae

My name is Alae and I’m 16 years old. Living in Thunder Bay is nice. People help lots and it is a calm city that I feel safe in. It’s a very beautiful city. Justin Trudeau sent me here. I was in Lebanon before Thunder Bay and I lived there for 5 years working three jobs every day. Every day in Lebanon was hard and they didn’t like us there and it wasn’t safe. After 5 years the Canadian government called my dad and a year and a half later we were sent to Canada. We landed in Toronto for a day then were sent to Thunder Bay. We lived in a motel for 2 months and I started learning English. I arrived in the winter when it was so cold. I still have a lot of family in Syria and Lebanon who want to come to Canada.
I’m proud of keeping going for my future – I want to work towards being a doctor. I’m an older brother and I have to take responsibility for my brother and sister.
Hard for me now is doing English in school and having to learn everything. I’ve made friends and people have been great. I’m saving my money this summer to help my dad buy a house for our family.
Every day I go to MMA, kickboxing, Jujitsu and wrestling. I want to get very good at this and represent Canada in it.
Thanks J

Aaron

My name is Aaron and I’m 16 years old. What is most important to me would be my family, friends and pets. I consider these most important because family is your blood and you help them out when they need it. My friends are important because without them I’d have no social life. Lastly my pets because they’re furry. That’s my only reason for them to be important.
Things that are hard for me are math, school in general, conflict between people in my life, waking up early ad comforting people during hard times – I try to avoid it as much as possible.
Working at Roots to Harvest means good relationships with co-workers and leaders, getting to be outside all day most days and money – the money’s a bonus. When I’m asked what I hope for my future I never know what to say. I want to be successful, but who doesn’t, so I guess I’d have to say I want to live a good life, that’s what I hope for my future.
What I’m most proud of is my independence. I never used to like doing things on my own but then I kinda just started to and I ended up here at Roots to Harvest and I’m glad I did – I really like it here.

Brayden

My name is Brayden and I’m 17 years old. I’m interested in working outside and camping and fishing. I wasn’t always this way but a friend of mine is what got this started for me. We’re not as close rigt now because as life goes on people grow apart. I live totally on my own since one month ago because Dilico wants me to begin to adjust to being on my own for when I’m 18.
I like coming here to work because is keeps me busy and when I’m alone sometimes I over think things. A year and half ago I came out of treatment – I had been there for 3 years and I worked my way out. I really regret what I did and even to this day I barely forgive myself. I’ve scarred up my arm because it helped me manage my regret.
Growing up for me was difficult because of what my family was doing and I’ve seen more than I should have. I’m glad I haven’t followed their path. My dad is proud of me for where I am now and says my mom would be too if she were alive. My mom was important to me because she brought me into this world. She always made sure I had enough to eat before she did, and she would make sure someone was there to look after me if she went out.
I’m motivated to change my life around because I want to make a better name for my family, and do the opposite of what they did. I feel positive about my future because I have my mind set on what I want to do and places I want to travel alone or with someone else. After school I want to get all of the training and licenses I need to work in mines around Pic Mobert. I’m not sure where I’ll end up but I’ll follow where the wind takes me. 

Cornelius

My name is Cornelius and I’m 17 years old. My family is important to me and when I was young my younger brother passed away. It was hard for my mom and me and my grandma because he was sick and passed away suddenly. I remember seeing him and hearing my mom and grandma yelling in terror for the ambulance. After that memory I have forgotten some parts until we moved back to my reserve at Summer Beaver to be closer to his grave. There were dark times for my mom then but I admire her so much because she has been through hell and back starting at a young age and I find it very inspiring because she has so much will power.
 
Her courage inspires me.
 
My mom and me are very close and our reconciliation of our relationship started when she apologized for mistakes. In grade 7 when I was 12 I was still grieving the loss of my brother and I didn’t want to feel the pain. I starting harming myself in different ways – self harm and smoking and drinking. Talking to my mom, and sharing my story is important because I want other people to find strength. I went from being quite withdrawn to feeling lighter and confident. It feels uplifting to tell my story now. Starting theatre in grade 10 helped me get out of my shell too.
Now for me, school and my education is a challenge. I feel like there’s an expectation that I should keep going to school. But I just want to do me. I want to get a job and make some money and go on adventures and maybe open my own business.
When I’m alone, and in my spare time I like to read. I read non fiction because it increases my knowledge of how to do things but I also like fantasy books. I have a special notebook where I braindump all of my thoughts.  I like to have conversations there and with people.
I expected to hate working at Roots to Harvest because of getting dirty and waking up early. I actually enjoy making the garden beautiful and seeing the crew everyday and I like receiving the compliments of my work. The people here have different stories to tell and I like to listen to them. We always have good laughs together. 

Dennis

My name is Dennis and I’m 17 years old. So far working at Roots to Harvest is really fun and it’s better than doing nothing all summer. I like talking to and meeting different kinds of people there. Family is important to me – my grandma and uncle and my sisters too. I don’t like school very much – some of the teachers look like they don’t want to be there, some look angry and some look tired but some are still nice. I like being around mature people, not too talky (except one who makes me laugh). A lot of my friends are at other schools or places now. For fun I like to play sports with my friends – football, basketball – not too competitive though. When times get hard for me I try to calm my mind down and get quiet inside until I can move on. My uncle taught me to do this when I was younger and more jittery and I still do it now when I need to. But I don’t like to be alone too long – I like to talk to my friends. Thunder Bay isn’t the best place. It’s kind of dirty and sort of racist at times but there’s a lot of history here – with my family. After residential school, my great grandma came here and found it better here.
Right now I don’t really know what’s in my future – I’m looking forward to it. Thinking about my future makes me happy.

Ethan

My name is Ethan. I’m 16 and clearly working for Roots to Harvest. This job means a lot to me as it is my first real job and a chance to increase my social skills. This job is important for many reasons. My siblings, guardians and two friends are important too. My guardian and I lived together for most of my life. My siblings, a younger sister and brother are the only traceable family. My father passed away due to a poison. My mother hasn’t contacted me or my guardian. I have never been proud of myself with anything. Somebody could do better. The only challenge I face is sleeping. I have had insomnia for over 3 years. I feel that my future is safe as long as I have my friends and family. 

Julia

Hello my name is Julia, I’m 18 years old.
Recently I learned to love myself for who I am. It was very important to me because I haven’t for many years, I didn’t think myself worthy of any love, but challenges inspired me to be who I was meant to be. My future isn’t set in stone but if I love myself and keep going and strive to be a better me, I know I’ll love myself as much as I do now. My family is important to me, having them by my side, in my heart. They’re not there in person but inside my heart, where they belong. Working with Root to Harvest was my turning point because I wasn’t to sure I’d have a job this summer and amazing co-workers. It changed my point of view. Oh there are challenges but working with awesome people makes the challenges a little better. Having this job at Roots to Harvest changed my perspective on what kind of job and work environment I’d want. I’m grateful for my life, family and job. It’s not always easy, but having awesome people makes it a little easier. 

Malory

My name is Malory and I’m 17 years old and I go to Westgate. It was really easy to adapt to and understand how to work at Roots to Harvest because we got to know one another so now I understand the people I work with. Right now I’m attempting to write a story that is fantasy/sci-fi. I find it easy to entertain myself by coming up with situations and stories in my head and put them on paper. I enjoy the stories I come up with though I’m not sure other people would get them because I haven’t shared them.
Anything physical is pretty challenging for me because I have a bad back. My plan is to get better and when I’m older possibly join the army as an engineer. For me, school is difficult because I find it hard sitting in a chair answering questions. I think I would learn better if I had to actually do things that are real life. In grade 9 there was a choice I had to make – stay with old friends that might not be a good influence or be with new friends who I believe could be a good influence on each other and I chose the new friends. I think if I would have made a different choice I wouldn’t be here with a job, I would be more unhappy and I wouldn’t have as good a relationship with my mom. My mom is important to me because she always helped me make good choices. I get my sense of humour from her because we laugh at each others jokes. She and I are very similar that way. She keeps me in line.
My plan with all of my money from this job is to buy a new back brace and some video games!

Owen

My name is Owen and what’s important to me is to have a bed to sleep on, food to eat and a roof over my head because it feels great to have a place to call home and feel like home. The most important people in my life are my mom, my grandma, grandpa, my brothers, my dad and my friends because all the important people in my life really tried their best to help me get through whatever I was going through.
 
I have positive feelings about my future. I got goals I want to accomplish, I got plans to travel in the future, but Thunder Bay will always be my home. I love working for Roots to Harvest – most importantly I enjoy what I do and look forward to coming to work everyday and seeing the great people I work with. What I’m proud of is that I am not lazy, I love running and the feel of movement (parkour). I just wish I could do more with this movement.
 
The biggest turning point in my life was leaving my toxic family. No one did anything but think about themselves and trying to get what they wanted or needed and they practically left me alone to grow up and I am glad they did because I believe I’m taking the right path. I just want a normal life.
 

Shaynah

My name is Shaynah and I am 16 years old. I was born in North Bay, but grew up here in Thunder Bay. I moved here when I was 2 years old to live with a foster family. I’ve been living happily with them for 14 years, although I admit there have been ups and downs. Mostly it just came from drama at school, but a lot of it was not understanding if they were really my family or not. The last time I saw my biological family  was when I was 8 years old and the only explanation I got from Dilico (social services) was that they were telling me things that they weren’t supposed to and lying to me. I hear a lot of different stories about why I was taken in the first place, but the one I believe came from my foster family, that my mother couldn’t handle raising three kids on her own. I like to believe it for its simplicity. I also like to think that they’re all doing well now, but of course that’s not how life operates. My biological sister found me on Instagram about a year ago, and I learned more about the whole situation. My mother has three children. We all have different fathers so technically they’re my half siblings. Oh, and another minor detail – my dad’s dead and my mom struggles with addictions. I honestly don’t care at this point which one it is. I lost all curiosity about my biological family years ago, but I kind of was just forced into having any relation at all to them when my sister contacted me. I just don’t care, and maybe that’s harsh, but they’re just strangers that happen to have the same blood as me. After 8 years only one has bothered to try to talk to me, anyways. I consider my true family to be the one who raised me – my foster family. They’re my whole world. It consists of three great people that are always there when I need them. My best friend though, is my sister. She helped me with my homework even though she’s two grades below me, let me play with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures when she wanted to play Barbies, cheered me up when I’m in bad moods, had snowball fights with me in the winter, cheered me on when I play video games and even puts up with me when I constantly quote memes.
Unfortunately, even my family was a victim of life’s wrath. Recently, my dad’s packed his bags and decided he’s leaving my mom. Of course it’s had quite an impact on us, my mom especially, but we’ve treated it like a wakeup call instead of just sitting down completely. I started paying attention to money, because I noticed now we didn’t have that much on one salary. I’d been living a luxurious life and now I wasn’t. I decided to take initiative for myself instead of just saying ‘I’ll get to it’ like I used to. I’d been wanting a job for a while, and an opportunity came at the beginning of 2nd semester in the form of Alia. She suggested I apply before my dad left, but I didn’t take it seriously until after. I realized that if anything at Roots to Harvest was half as kind as Alia was, it’d be a pretty nice community to be in, especially when I needed a place like it now more than ever. Roots to Harvest made me appreciate the beauty in pretty much everything, even when I was only seeing the bad. For that, I thank them. 
 

Taha

My name is Taha and I’m 17 years old. I came from Syria on September 7th of 2017 at 6:00 pm.  I came to Thunder Bay with my parents and two brothers because I want to start a new life here. I worked in Turkey on a sheep farm when I was 13 – 15. We left Syria to escape war and went to Turkey. In turkey, everywhere was the mafia and it wasn’t safe for us. Instead of going to school I worked to help my family.
Coming to Canada is good because it’s safe and a good life. But it’s hard sometimes because we miss people from home. When we do Eid here it was very hard because it makes me miss Syria so much. When we were children on Eid my grand parents gave the kids money and people were so happy because we were together.
Here in Thunder Bay I love to go to MMA class. I like to learn it because I want to be a police officer and maybe it will save me some days. I want to be a police officer because I want to help people when they want help.
I like to work with Roots to Harvest because I like the farming like what I’ve done before. My grandfather has a big farm in Syria that he still runs. I’m looking forward to starting football again when school starts.
 

Anthony

I’m Anthony  and this is my story. Throughout my life I have been having an issue of being bullied and a positive of being naturally stronger than my friends/classmates. The main thing that is important to me is my strength and happiness which go hand in hand, one feeds the other and so on. The biggest motivator and supports I have, have been my family, more specifically my grandmother and mother. Also life for me right now is great with fuelling my passion for work and working out they too go hand in hand. I feel very positive about my future both in my strongman career, my schooling and my work experience. Working with Roots to Harvest is, to put bluntly, amazing. I enjoy the work and I enjoy the social aspects like making friends and treating everyone truly equal. Finally the greatest turning point in my life would have to be after a breakup (before I found weightlifting). I ended up doing drugs, alcohol and being very angry towards the people who care most about me until one day my grandmother bought me an Olympic weight lifting set and got my god father to show me basic exercises of powerlifting. After that I found hope for the future and soon after I bought a membership to a gym and started training as much as I could. With a bright future with strongman and school I have forged the dream of becoming the worlds strongest man, working as a body shop mechanic and living by the motivation that no matter what I go through, no matter how bad it gets, no matter the downfall or how many times I hit rock bottom I will rise again and take back my life and that is what I promise myself, my family, my friends, and you. From being a skinny kid being bullied everyday, hit rock bottom and turned to drugs, alcohol and suicide, I was shown the light, found weight lifting and found happiness, made friends and made a life worth living. I  am Anthony and that was my story