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Pandemic Generosity · Amplify Canada

• Linda Amplify Canada is a Pattison Media initiative celebrating and elevating small businesses, the backbone of our economy. When the world changed in 2020, Amplify Canada highlighted the strength, determination, and generosity of small businesses across the country. Through uncertainty, closures, supply chain disruptions, and unprecedented challenges, these business owners found ways to adapt. Support their communities and keep moving forward. In this third season of Amplify Canada, we return to the businesses and entrepreneurs whose stories inspired Canadians during the pandemic and go deeper into the economic pressures facing small businesses and the country today. In this episode, we're tapping into what's at the heart of so many small businesses in this country: generosity. How even when times are tough, they continue to give back. We'll visit the why and speak to the reality of giving in this country, from economics to community growth. Before we dive in, I want to ground this in where Amplify Canada began with small businesses. Honestly, it's every smile, every nice comment, every cup of coffee doesn't have to be a huge amount of money to spend on giving. The more you do it, the more joy you'll feel in your heart. This story was going kind of viral where this barber in the States was to promote literacy, giving away free haircuts if you read him a story. These two friends of mine started saying:” Well, you gotta do it, Dave”. Such a good idea. Me and my mum are just talking one night, so we decided, you know what, why don't we open our restaurant on Christmas Day? No one's turned away. We do a free Christmas dinner for everybody. Linda What is the essence of life? To serve others and do good. Words often credited to the Greek philosopher Aristotle some 2300 years ago. The instinct to give back has been with us a long time. Through the hardships of the pandemic, businesses found resilience. And many found it by turning toward their communities. But what does generosity actually mean in economic terms? Is it an investment in trust, loyalty, and community capital, or something that sits outside the bottom line? And is Canadian generosity rising or falling? Ask different surveys and you'll get very different answers. To make sense of it, we turned to David Williams. His career in economics spans four countries, from the Bank of Canada to Oxford to the International Monetary Fund. Today, he's vice president of policy at the Business Council of British Columbia. And he says the giving data is a warning sign. David I think that companies want to build some social capital and reputation in the community as well. And there are times like during the pandemic when local business owners were very concerned about the well-being of their local communities. Giving is local. So in those sense, it absolutely can be very important to business and their reputation in the community. Statistics Canada data. You look at those kinds of sources, say volunteering, and the percentage of the population that gets involved in volunteering has dropped from 79% in 2018 to 73% in 2023. What is happening is that it's becoming a more concentrated burden. So volunteerism is declining in Canada. And then when you look at donations, we had very strong population growth over recent years, but there hasn't been a change in the total value of donations. It's gone from about 68% of the population in 2018 to 54% in 2023, according to Statistics Canada. The donations, again, made by the top donors is unchanged. But the base is shrinking. And anybody who's got young children and you make a block tower, the broader the base, the more resilient and stable it is. But the more narrow you make it, anything happens to those top 10% of donors or top 10% of volunteers, we're much more vulnerable. You could see some big swings in that as a result. And in terms of the percentage of income that people donate to charity, that's gone from point six four percent of income in twenty thirteen to 0.61% of income in 2023. So the bottom line is that volunteerism and donations in Canada are declining overall. I think the most important thing for Canadians to understand that a successful economy leads to successful businesses, which leads to a better workforce with good paying jobs and people who are connected and care about their communities and more likely to volunteer their time and to give. And so when you see economic data that shows Canada's economy is not doing very well over the last ten or eleven years, it's then not surprising that you see in the Statistics Canada data declining volunteerism and declining donations and a narrowing base of people who do volunteer and who do donate money. You know, you just see this correlation between an economy that's been tracking sideways or declining in some ways and giving through time or money that's also been declining and narrowing and becoming more fragile. We need to be thinking about creating good reasons why a company would want to base and build their operations in Canada. Linda Good reasons to build in Canada. And for some small business owners, the reason is the community itself. Even through economic hardship, the numbers paint a sobering picture, but they don't tell the whole story. In communities across the country, small businesses are showing up even through economic hardship. They've kept giving at the heart of how they do business. We first met Amanda Wilhawk in 2020 as she and her husband were building a life for their family in the beef jerky business in Spruce Grove, Alberta. They did well through the pandemic and have kept growing. And we'll get to that. But first, listen to the kindness this family lives by. It was the middle of the summertime and she couldn't move. Amanda Her legs weren't really working. She had a walker that was garbage. It didn't have wheels, it had tennis balls on it. And then I was like, where is she going? Like she's never gonna make it anywhere. And so I ended up pulling the truck around and I approached her and he was like, Hi, my name's Amanda. Can I give you a ride somewhere? She really just wanted to go to a good real store to buy a VCR. So I just phoned my husband. I'm like, I got this lady in my truck and I'm gonna take to the house and I'm just gonna give her our VCR. And he was like, Of course you are. And I gave her my VCR. And then it was months that went by and I just couldn't stop thinking about her. And I went and my husband and I knocked on her door just prior to our twelve days. Linda Remembering back, it was the twelve days of Christmas that you started. And where are things now in the sense of that giving back to community? Amanda My gosh. That has turned into its own monster. It is massive. I don't know how, but it keeps growing and growing every year. So we would be entering into our 10th year on December first. I'm actually having my first meeting today after this to start laying out the skeleton, like the plan of those twelve days. So for people that aren't familiar with what the 12 days are, can you just give us a Kohl's notes version of how it all comes together and what you do? When we started this company, we had to sell everything. We sold our rental properties, our trailers, our investments, everything, quit both of our jobs and just jumped all in. And so we got to December and we were just incredibly grateful really to the community because we would be nothing without our customers coming in that door, purchasing our beef jerky and purchasing our sausages. And we just felt this overwhelming gratitude. How can we say thank you to them? And so it just kind of landed in my head, let's go out into the community for twelve days. And on every day we're going to somehow in a different way say thank you. So we start on December first and we go all the way till December twelfth, which is our anniversary. We will have stories and we'll pick a family in our community. Last year we had the story of this husband and wife, and the husband was in ICU and he wasn't coming out. And they had two little boys. She didn't have a driver's license. She couldn't get to the hospital. She had to still run her day home and they have no life insurance. We told the community, we told all of our social media, we have a huge following and we showed them the story. This is what's happening in your community right now. These are our people. And we are gonna cover the costs. If you would also like to donate to this family, you can. Please, you can send your EMTs and drop off cash. And we had over sixty thousand dollars come in. incredible. And the community really rallied around them and he, he did pass. That was a hard one. That was a really hard one. We picked up a senior that my daughter, Olive, knew of. She works another job. She's a waitress at a steakhouse here in town. And she's like, Mom, this older gentleman, his wife just died. And he eats Sunday night dinner with us every Sunday in the restaurant. And I was like, wow. And I love how that affected you, Olive. And did you sit with him? Were you allowed to be with her for a minute? She's like, Yeah, our boss is awesome. And she lets us visit with him. And so we picked him up. And we went for a Sunday drive. That was it. It was Trevor and myself and we picked this gentleman up and we drove out on the countryside for two hours and we just chatted with him. Linda And what a great, strong message. I think so many people need to listen to, you know, and trying to not get too teary listening to these incredible stories because what you're doing and how you give back and the examples you're setting for your family and for your community. All while building this incredible business. Amanda, congratulations to you and your family for all of that. Thank you. So often small business owners there is so much going on in our economy that they want to give back, but they find that it's really hard and they worry that they can't afford to do it. So what would your message be to those businesses? Amanda Honestly, just giving your time, like when we're not working at Brickhouse, my husband and I would go work for another business and clear bush. At the dog park because they're trying to set up their brand new company. That's the other way to give. It's really important. Like you don't have to start suddenly giving $10,000. Our first year of 12 days, we never could have projected the amount that we give now. We have chosen as a business to try and help someone like directly in our community. And that's how these stories end up happening. Also, just by giving a smile and a compliment to your customers, I'm please don't let the pressure of it bury you because we need you to survive first. The company has to make it first. But the amount of giving that we've done has come back to us a hundred times over. What's been so cool is the amount of kindness that has actually spread. After one of the first few years, we received a package in the mail and there was like 25 cards handwritten by students with a $10 bill in every card. And the teacher had spent the entire first 12 days reading out the message to her students. And at the end of the 12 days, she gave every one of her students a $10 bill and said, Here's the cards, here's the $10 bill. Please write Amanda and Trevor a note and tell them where you want this $10 to go. And I thought that was so incredible. So then all these little kids were like, We wanted to go to the senior lady at Copper Sky Lodge. We wanted to go to that little girl that didn't have any clothes. The teacher read the message to them and then empowered them and then she gave them that choice. So that was just to see like it grow through communities that are not even in our own community has made it worth it. That alone has made, you know, keep going. So I'm I'm trying to keep going. We'll see. Linda You've shown the community how to be generous and how to give. And that's what this message in this particular episode is all about. And you've told that so beautifully. When times are tough, it impacts the ability to give back. It impacts just our ability to function, to keep our businesses going. And with everything that's the economy has been throwing at small businesses lately, how have you held up? And how do you see the future for small businesses in Canada? Amanda So I think because of our giving, to be honest, it completely has carried us through every blip in the economy. Like even during COVID, we had no idea what was gonna happen to us. We were allowed to stay open because we were groceries, but our phone was ringing and customers were like, Are you guys okay? I would like to buy ten dollars of beef jerky. And that is honestly what's carried us through, our business through. So the giving has definitely carried us, it's gone back. The community has lifted us up through every single part of it. Not only yourself, but your husband, Trevor, and your children setting such an incredible example for how businesses can succeed in Canada, how small businesses can grow into bigger businesses, which you have shown. I guess I should say too, one of the other spinoffs that happened with our givings is we had so many people coming into the shop. Customers or strangers essentially that wanted to help, wanted to give. So we actually ended up covering our front window in our storefront with stories, other stories that were not going to be a part of the 12 days. You know, like my baby needs a head shape helmet, but it's $3,000 and I can't cover it. Or we had like, I'm a single mom and I don't have enough food, or my senior neighbour I notice him and he needs homemade meals. So we ended up putting all these stories up on our window. And then we opened it up to the community and they come in and essentially pick a story that resonates with them. And then they took it ho off the window, took it home, worked with their own families. And I thought that was so amazing. So we've kind of opened up an avenue for the community to come in and essentially have their own 12 days. So that's really magical to see. Linda Thank you for your time. I know your life is busy. I really appreciate checking in with you again, hearing your voice. You are a wonderful human. Don't change a thing. And thanks for doing those 12 days. Amanda Thank you. Linda Give and the community gives back. Amanda's lived it, but the research suggests the most powerful thing a business gives its community may not be a donation at all. Let's go back to economist David Williams. David One of the things that we see in the academic studies is that it's not necessarily the giving of the business that's really important for the community. It's the presence of good jobs and good incomes. That people have by being part of that business that widens the pool of people who give to their community. Because giving is local. So the more people you've got in your community who feel that they're doing well and feel that they want to give back, it's a positive cycle. So when the economy is not doing well and shrinking, you've got more and more people struggling and they do start pulling back on their time and their giving. I think during the pandemic, giving was very visible and very local. We were giving to our local communities as businesses, as I say, local businesses, local owners were concerned about the people around them and their communities. And they wanted to help and they gave away PPE and they gave away free meals and and did all sorts of other things. And everybody was local because we had to stay home and we went to our local shops and everything. So that's kind of where we were at that time. But the broader point is, and I'm referring to a study by Card, Hallock and Moretti in the Journal of Public Economics from twenty ten that found this really important link between having successful firms in your community and it's not the giving of the company that's most important. It's actually the employment that they create and the jobs and the incomes that go with it. And that vibrant economy, that vibrant community wants to give back to their local communities. That's what really builds up charitable giving. Linda From economic pressure to the balance of building community, we go back to our first visit with Dave Lawrence, owner of that 50s barber shop in Nanaimo, British Columbia, when he first told us about the Fresh Start program he created. Dave This story was going kind of viral where this barber in the States was to promote literacy, giving away free haircuts if you read him a story. These two friends of mine started saying, well, you gotta do it, Dave. It's such a good idea. Sure, I'll do the free haircuts for kids if they read to me, but why don't we help all these people in the community who are falling through the cracks? So you guys help me collect school supplies, backpacks, clothes and books. And then that way we can really help them out. Linda Fast forward to today, 20 years behind the chair, and we wanted to know how the giving and the business are holding up. We reached Dave Lawrence by phone in Nanaimo. So how are you doing these days? Dave I'm doing well. Linda ….twenty years is a long time to have a business going. ….Have you seen a direct impact at all from what's going on in the economy reflecting in your business? Dave ….I have bounced back. Since the pandemic, business is going very well, still in the same spot for 20 years, still a staple in the downtown area and yeah, it’s great. Linda Now….I've always thought at least that's one sector that can't be hit because people still need their hair cut. Dave Cutting hair is such a personal thing, barbers and hairstylists have to be good at communication so that’s a big part of it to…I think we will be say for at least 100 years. Linda Yeah… I would agree….. It's that personal touch that you have with your stylist. …. it's their social outlet to have an opportunity to speak to their barber or their stylist about what's going on in their lives. And it's it',s it's kind of nice to have that 'cause not everyone has that elsewhere. …it's like the bartender, right? You come and you give them all g tell them all your problems. Dave …it is exactly the same for me, and that’s realistically part of the job as well and I know there there are some older gentleman that come in and they go home and they are alone don’t have a lot of people to talk to and that is why I will spend time talking to them, this is their social outlet. Linda Yeah, you travel the world and the country and even your own community through other people's stories. Yeah. Dave Yeah, exactly. Linda Community is so important. …. the hub of a community can often be the barbershop, the cafe. …. it's where you go, it's where you have the conversations like we were just referring to. And it connects community. And you've taken it one step further because you started a program called Fresh Start in your community. …And this year marks twelve years that you've been giving free haircuts and school supplies to kids in your community. Amazing and congratulations on that. Dave Thank you so much, I am very proud of it. Linda You should be. So for those… that don't know what the Fresh Start program is, can you walk us through what you do? Dave It all started 12 years go…. first year we had 75 kids come,...that was probably one of the hardest barber experiences of my life, that is a marathon, but to get there in the morning to see people lined up around the block, it was just crazy, but it was such a great experience we felt like we were getting down to it and really helping people in our community. …we started off with just haircuts and backpacks…but in talking to teachers we whats so sad heard that students would come to school without a winter coat, and a lot of teachers would pool their money, so then we expanded to clothing, shoes, winter boots - what else can we do to help, it brings a tear to my eye because people just want to help and they have tears in their eyes they are so excited to help people, gives them hope - people helping other people, it has been amazing journey. Linda And such a strong message to communities to hear this story and even for individuals to see what one person, an idea that you had that you know came from an idea that somebody else had, but then you grew it into your own program with fresh start in your community. And now you've got volunteers and others helping, and then it's even expanded as you said, with giving coats and other things that the community needs. …. what an incredible way to bring people together. Dave It’s great, people have such a great sense of community when they help out like that, I think a lot of people who donate have gone through child poverty and I was raised by a single mother and things were really tough…I remember a time in the winter running around the playground and I got hot and took my coat off, we got home and she asked where is your coat…run down and try to get it and when I got there someone had taken it, and my mom was crying, as she didn’t have money to get me another coat. So that is a big part of it, every year the stories do remind me of my youth and that’s what I aim to do, it is not a lot but gives them some hope… Linda It's really heartfelt to hear someone who has experienced something like that in their own life and then that's at the root of of why you do what you do….., and also to show others the importance, including your your own kids. Dave My kids, it has been amazing, they have helped, this year my younger two came and helped out, they were so excited, amazing to see, gives them a new perspective on life society and all of it. Linda (13:59) Well, they've had an incredible role model….I'm sure it will continue on into their lives too in some way, shape, or form, that that give back piece - because it is so important. And we hear for businesses that are struggling in this country that it can be hard to find ways to give back. And in this particular episode of Amplify Canada, that's what we're focusing on is is that ability to give back and the reasons why and how it can so often come full circle. What would your advice or,...words to other small businesses be about giving back in that generosity piece? Dave It is important to help out your community…realisticly it does come back, there are people now that come in and the first they heard of me was through the charity…there are people who take notice of that and they want to help they say okay I am going to help that business, I have friends who shop that way or work that way, they see people to help and they support those businesses. Linda Now I'd before we we go,....I'm looking at….the background 'cause it is called that's that fifties barber shop. Can you describe what… your place of work looks like? 'Cause it looks super cool. Dave My shop is a bizarre one, one of a kind…I didn’t have a lot, I had an Elvis picture, James Dean, people started coming in, they liked the name, they said you need to get more stuff, and they would start brining stuff in…and people would say my neighbour has that in his garage and I would say not anymore he gave it to me…I brought is a pezz…people started taking pictures with them…we have a bunch of records attached to the ceiling…its like a little 50’s theme park. Linda …. I love the fact that community's giving back to you in the sense of, you know, pieces that they have and they're like it would look really good in in the shop and you know, they were there for you during the pandemic as well and I I'm sure that that ….connection will always be because of the help that you received, you know, during those hard times. Dave Definitely. Yeah. Linda That's what it should all be about. Can't we all learn more from that, Dave? Linda Well you were awesome. It was so great to reconnect with you. Dave's story comes full circle. But what does the evidence say? Does generosity pay off for businesses? And where does the evidence run out? Let's find some answers with economist David Williams. David Are generous firms more profitable or do more profitable, well-run firms just have more ability and slack to be generous? We're not sure which way the causation goes, but when we're on much stronger ground, the presence of, say, a new corporate headquarters in a city adds roughly 275 high income earners to their city and it's their personal giving and fundraising leadership that drives the increase in charitable giving. And it doesn't crowd out government funding either. It's additive. So the real mechanism isn't necessarily the business's reputation for generosity. That may be true, but it's the presence of the business itself and the concentrating of income and talent and fundraising leadership that then flows to the community's giving capacity. Giving is overwhelmingly local. So when the local economy is thriving, then local giving is better as well. I think of a quote from Gary Banks, who was the chair of the Productivity Commission in Australia years ago, and he said, “A country can't redistribute income that it did not generate. So if we're not generating the income in the first place, we don't have the ability to redistribute it through the tax system and we don't have the capacity to redistribute it.” By charitable giving, donations, volunteerism, because everybody's flat out just trying to look after their own family and their own businesses. So that's kind of the risk. I think we need to be thinking about the economy and the community as inextricably linked. So if you want a healthy community, you need to have a healthy economy. And vice versa. A healthy economy and a healthy community, each one feeding the other.” Linda During the pandemic, the small businesses we met on Amplify Canada proved it, giving back when they had the least to spare. But when everyone is flat out just looking after their own, who keeps investing in our neighborhoods? Wellington Holbrook spent 30 years learning banking so he could do it differently. Today, he's CEO of Vancity, a credit union whose story began with a simple idea: put money to work where it matters most. Wellington, it's great to connect. Let's go back a bit and tackle how and why Vancity came to be. Wellington Right from the beginning, the original 14 founders at the time the banks wouldn't lend money in East Vancouver because they saw it as the place where immigrants were, where impoverished people were, where people who were struggling were. And there was literally a red line in the city. And Vancity came together because these 14 people said we can do this differently. And they created Vancity out of literally that desperation. We're very deliberate that we put a lot of our capital, a lot of our balance sheet to work in very many different ways than many traditional financial institutions or banks. We are very deliberate in making sure that when we're putting capital to work, we are taking seriously, for example, financing the clean energy economy, making sure that we're putting more of our dollars to work to finance affordable housing so that people can actually afford to work and live in places like Vancouver, which we know is a stretch. And we're putting more and more of our balance sheet to work to support the small and mid-sized business communities that we live in every day. Linda That's what Amplify Canada started on. That was the foundation of this podcast series during COVID was to go and see these small businesses. How are they doing? What are they doing? And what was amazing to me as I spoke to all these businesses was the incredible amount of generosity that these businesses gave back to their community. And the reason they did that was because they know how important community investment is. So, how important is community investment through the eyes of Vancity and that community connection for organizations? Wellington It's critically important. It's a pretty tough place for Canadians right now. The price of a barrel of oil has more to do with the economy at those stats level than really how people are living every day, which is what happens on Main Street, not Bay Street. And those businesses that are deeply rooted in local communities across this province, across this country for that matter, are actually the employers. Linda Why does investing in a community make a business stronger, not just the community stronger? Wellington Strong local businesses fuel strong local communities. Strong local communities support strong local businesses. And it does go hand in hand. Our members, the folks who bank at Vancity are the people who own us. So we're accountable to them. That's one of the reasons we're the only financial institution in Canada that contributes 30% of our profits every single year to supporting local community organizations. Last year that was over $20 million that we put to work here in British Columbia in the communities where our members live. It's meaningful. Linda What would you then say to a business leader who sees community investment as a luxury that they just can't afford right now? Wellington I totally understand the perspective, but often we take that view when we're thinking about community investment through the lens of philanthropy and so on, which is also important. But community investment can be done in many, many ways. How do we prioritize supporting local businesses in our supply chains? How do we support employment here at home as opposed to perhaps somewhere far, far away? Small decisions like that go a long way to driving great economic outcomes right here at home. Linda So if I could ask you to give a message to small businesses, to the communities of people living in this country that will be listening to this, what would that message be? That bit of hope? Wellington It's a challenging world. And I wouldn't understate the importance of optimism and belief in ourselves. The current environment is going to force us to be more innovative, to bring out more ingenuity into how we're solving problems, constraints, and challenges like the ones that we are facing, drive innovation. And it's through innovation that we solve problems. I believe very strongly that these challenges we're facing now are going to make British Columbia and Canada stronger in the decade ahead. We've been through this before as a country. We've been through challenges before. It's just been a long time. So it feels hard right now, but you know, I have a lot of confidence in the folks that I know on Main Street. Who you choose to do business with will have a big impact on what your community looks like in the next decade, in the next twenty years. And your choices now will pay dividends later. Linda For Wellington, it all comes back to Main Street. So let's go back there. To a family restaurant that opens its doors every Christmas day. Fallon Moreland and the White Goose Bistro in Prince George, British Columbia. They started giving before COVID and continue giving to this day. Fallon Me and my mom are just talking one night and we're just talking about what way we could give back. So we decided, you know what, why don't we open our restaurant on Christmas Day? Everyone is welcome. No one's turned away. We decided to do a free Christmas dinner for everybody. Linda This is all about pandemic generosity, and you were one of the businesses that we visited way back during the pandemic. You had started a Christmas dinner. Talk about how that started and why. Fallon So we started about 12 years ago, and the concept behind it was no one should be lonely at Christmas time. We started doing it for people that say didn't have family, students that weren't going home for Christmas, seniors, single parents, just people that didn't have family in general. So we decided to open our doors on Christmas Day and the response was amazing. We love it. It's growing every year and it's just something we look forward to as a family. It's our way to give back and we probably can't see ourselves never not doing it. Linda Why as a small business do you think it is so important to give back to your community? Fallon I've always said you have to give back in order to receive and I think that it's kinda, like, justly as a family we decided that yeah, it does cost quite a bit of money to put it on, but we decided to use most of our advertisement dollars and put it towards that. Because word of mouth is always your best advertisement anyways. Plus it's like a win win. We feel fantastic about doing it. The people that are enjoying it love it. So I just think that if whenever possible you can give back, definitely give back because that's how the world does go around. Linda Small businesses are doing what they can and giving back to the community still really just warms my heart as a Canadian to show how much we care about each other, whether it's a Christmas dinner or just a helping hand. And a lot of times it's just giving back through time. And you see that as well because of the community members that help out, that they're there to support through their time, not necessarily from a financial perspective. Fallon Absolutely. Our staff did honestly Christmas Day. And you'd think it'd be hard on Christmas Day, but we don't even have to ask our staff. They're all there. They're asking if they can bring their families, their kids. There's times where it's kind of like it gets too much. So we feel bad. But we're like, hey, you guys can take off now because it's like there's so many people helping. We get so many calls and messages as well from just random people asking if they can please be a part of it and they want to come down and help that numerous people call and ask if they could even deliver to those that are not mobile. Everybody always wants to pitch it and help. There's never a shortage of helpers, that's for sure. Linda That's so great. Now your advice last time was just so simple, but such amazing words and that was - be kind. And the smallest acts go the furthest. Do you still believe that when business is tight? Fallon A hundred percent. Definitely. That's always the model to live by. Linda What would you say to another small business owner who wants to give back to their community, but they just think they can't afford to do it? Fallon I think those small acts, little things go a long way, like twenty-five dollars. Twenty-five dollars isn't a crazy amount, but it's something. That's kind of my advice for small businesses too. Like you can give a small amount, it doesn't have to be huge every time. When we look at our overall economy. Linda What advice in the sense of longevity in small business, what sets the small businesses apart, in your opinion, that succeed in today's economy? Fallon Start small. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of startup years that you didn't necessarily always get paychecks. And you know, you have to make it work and work together. What's kept you going? Definitely the passion of seeing people pleased. When you're dealing with food, food is love language. You want to see the happiness on their face. So that's what keeps us going. It's just pure joy. Like you're seating people, celebrating milestones. I get paid to go on everybody's date night every night. So it's fantastic. And we meet tons of people from around the world too, because with tourism, especially during the summer, I've met people from everywhere in the world. Linda Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to touch upon before we wrap up? Fallon Just keep supporting local businesses because without support then we won't have them anymore and when you're supporting them, we in turn can support everybody else. Linda You wrap that up beautifully. Small acts, a lot of heart, and a family business that has kept its doors open since two thousand and seven. That last part may matter more than we think. When economist David Williams looks at what drives community giving, the research points somewhere you might not expect. David One of the things that we see in the academic studies is that it's not necessarily the giving of the business that's really important for the community. It's the presence of good jobs and good incomes that people have by being part of that business that widens the pool of people who give to their community. Because giving is local. So the more people you've got in your community who feel that they're doing well and feel that they want to give back, it's a positive cycle. So when the economy is not doing well and shrinking, you've got more and more people struggling and they do start pulling back on their time and they're giving. Linda During the pandemic, small businesses gave because they could see who needed help. But this episode is also about what makes that giving possible. As economist David Williams reminded us, a country can't redistribute income it didn't generate. Vancity's Wellington Holbrook sees the same thing on Main Street Canada, and that's - strong local businesses fuel strong local communities. And the research backs them up. It's the jobs and the paychecks that small businesses create that widen the circle of people who can give back. Generosity doesn't start with a big check. It starts with a healthy local economy and with the small decisions all of us make about where we shop, who we hire, and where we put our money. A special thank you to David Williams, Vice President of Policy with the Business Council of British Columbia. He brings extensive international experience in policy advising, research, and teaching, with particular expertise in macroeconomics, productivity, monetary policy, housing and mortgage markets, business surveys, tax reform, and transport policy. David holds a PhD and a master's in economics from Oxford University. He's the past president of the Association of Professional Economists of British Columbia and a past national director of the Canadian Association for Business Economics. And Wellington Holbrook, president and CEO of Vancity, Canada's largest community credit union. With more than 30 years in Canadian financial services, he's focused on cooperatives and banks whose missions go beyond profit, holding senior roles at Connect First Credit Union, ATB Financial, and the Business Development Bank of Canada. At Vancity, he's led a period of transformation that strengthened its member-focused commitment to resilient, inclusive, and sustainable communities. He believes banking can be a powerful force for positive change and that values-based banking is not only possible, but a better way to do business. You've been listening to Amplified Canada, an initiative powered by Pattison Media designed to support local businesses and promote shopping Canadian. Amplified Canada was created for Pattison Media and produced by Everything Podcasts. Hosted, produced, and written by me, Linda Freeman. Showrunner Kat Cullen, Sound Engineer Producer John Massikar, Executive Producer Jennifer Smith, Production Support Eric Chapman, Video Producer Jordan Wong. For more information on this program, go to pattisonmedia.com. Another Everything Podcast production. Visit everythingpodcasts.com, a division of Pattison Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.