Picton resident ‘Rises’ to the challenge to receive resilience award
Administrator | Dec 06, 2024 | Comments 0

Emily and Fraser Cole with their children in this photograph taken by Steve Ferguson at the ribbon cutting opening of the Meadows Baby and Kids shop, 141 Main St, Picton.
Emily Cole, of Picton, was chosen as this year’s recipient of the Dr. Paul Garfinkel Resilience Award, from the group that helped her develop her idea for Meadows Baby and Kids, a second-hand children’s clothing and supply store.
The award was presented Tuesday night in a virtual ceremony by Rise, a joint initiative of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The Rotman Family Entrepreneurship Awards is Rise’s signature annual event that brings together the Rise community to honour and celebrate outstanding achievements of its clients and volunteers. Cole’s award was named after Garfinkel, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the university.
Rise shared the following story of Emily’s perseverance which it states “has never been an option—it’s been the only way to make it through a series of challenging circumstances.
She developed her sense of determination as a young person working multiple jobs to pay for school. Her goal-oriented mindset and dedication saw her through her early career, helping her secure a good job, buy a car, and purchase a home—all in short order.
Then, in 2017, when Emily was eight months pregnant with her first child, everything changed. Tragedy struck when her husband, a truck driver, was involved in a head-on collision after another driver veered across the center line into oncoming traffic. Emily’s husband survived but sustained a traumatic brain injury and other physical injuries.
“Obviously, our lives changed very quickly,” she says. “I went from a new wife to a caregiver, and then, a month after the accident, we had our first son.”
Suddenly, she faced caregiving responsibilities for her husband and new baby, all while working to make ends meet on her reduced maternity leave pay.
“We went through a lot,” she says.
After welcoming a second child, Emily and her family relocated from St. Catharines to Picton, in 2021. Quickly, she noticed a gap in the local community: there was nowhere to buy kids’ clothes, highchairs, or any other child or baby gear. The closest options were at least a half-hour’s drive away.
“There are a lot of low-income families around here who don’t have the option to drive to the nearest city,” she says. “They would be lucky to get a taxi once a month to get groceries and anything they need for their kids.”
With this gap in mind, Emily applied to the EnterpRISEing Youth+ Program (EY+) in October 2021. Through a combination of self-guided online learning, live workshops, and peer and mentorship support, she developed her idea for Meadows Baby and Kids, a second-hand children’s clothing and supply store.
“My mentor helped me to put together a business plan of what I wanted to do, how much space I needed, what the costs would be, and I was able to start approaching landlords and business owners about getting a space,” Emily says.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. “I literally knocked on every single door. I called every abandoned place, every vacant place you could think of in this area. Everyone kept turning me down.”
It took Emily over two years to secure a space. When she finally did, it was small, but it was what she needed to get started.
“The idea really took off,” she says. “We got a lot of great support from the community, all the families, and other community organizations.”
Within three months, Meadows Baby and Kids was on the move: “I was offered another space that’s larger, closer to me and my family and more central in our area, which has been fantastic. I couldn’t ask for a better space,” Emily says.
When asked about her entrepreneurial experience, Emily’s reflections are blunt: “It’s always hard being an entrepreneur, let alone a female entrepreneur, and being young as well. Businessmen don’t always take a young female entrepreneur seriously, let alone one who wants to build a business around kids and family, because they don’t think that way. It’s been very important to be resilient.”
With that perspective, her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is simple: don’t give up.
“If I gave up the first, second, or third time that someone said ‘no,’ I never would have been successful. It really does take perseverance. It really does take dedication, and you never know what the possibilities are if you don’t keep pushing. There will always be someone out there who will believe in your idea. You just need to find them.”
- Rise, headquartered at the Rotman School, is a national charity dedicated to helping people who have experienced barriers resulting from mental health or addiction challenges, to achieve financial stability through self-employment or small business ownership. Rise provides training, mentorship and low interest business loans across Canada with a goal to help eliminate barriers, improve life outcomes and strengthen individuals, families and communities.
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