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A local Quebec flower farm is leading the way in the Slow Flowers Movement

Learn about the secret to growing healthy cut flowers

During the month of August, Au Beau Pré is a sight to see. Over 300 varieties of Dahlias are in full bloom. They come in every shape, size, colour and texture that one could only dream about. This flower field gives visitors the option to come and cut their own flowers to take home. Walking through the rows of the field, it could be hard deciding which Dahlias to add to your bouquet. 

The methods of production for flowers have always involved the use of pesticides, which in turn harm the people that produce them. 2,000 Canadian farms are trying to find better solutions to produce them organically, without pesticides. The Slow Flower Movement (SFM) is one of those remedies in terms of how farms treat their soil.

According to Flowers Canada Growers, there are over 1,600 flower producers in Canada. Flower farms cover over 75 million square feet of land combined. Among these flower producers is Sarah Beaupré Quenneville, a young entrepreneur heading her family’s beloved flower farm. Au Beau Pré flower farm sits in Saint Anicet, also known as “Quebec Florida” for its higher humid temperatures than the rest of the province. Au Beau Pré implements the SFM.

The secret to success for this flower farm is in their soil. “For the soil, we put compost every year or every two years depending on the crop,” Quenneville explained. 

According to Architectural Digest, the Slow Flowers Movement refers to the methodical preparation of soil before a seed is even planted. Farms across Quebec are slowly adopting this movement, like The Enfants Sauvages, among others.

Before Quenneville took on her family’s farm, her parents Roger and Lilianne were in charge and adopted the SFM. They started the Au Beau Pré farm back in 2007. 

Lillian Quenneville cutting off the roots of the dahlia bulbs Dalia Nardolillo/ THE CONCORDIAN

“This is my parent’s project. They were selling Dahlia flower bulbs for years,” Quenneville said. “Before, they specialized in wheat production and made grain based products.”

Growing up, Quenneville had no interest in the agricultural sector and she didn’t want to be as involved in the farm.

“I saw my dad working hours and hours on end, with no days off,” Quenneville recalled.

With a family of her own, Quenneville explained that she didn’t want her children to experience the same memories she had as a child. 

Quenneville studied communications during her undergrad and worked in media for a couple of years.Though she would sometimes help, Quenneville never envisioned  the farm as a potential career opportunity.

“With each year that passed, my parents kept on asking me, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to do anything with the land?’” Quenneville recalled. “I proceeded to telling them, ‘No it’s not my thing, it’s maybe yours but not mine.’” 

However, one day her mother told her about the endless possibilities of utilizing cut flowers. A cut flower is a bud or a flower that is cut from its bearing plant. Customers usually opt to buy cut flowers solely for decorative purposes, such as a bouquet. 

According to Slow Living LDN, the SFM aims to not only have a better understanding of the soil before a flower is planted but also a more mindful consumption of how they’re cut.

Dahlia Flowers in the summer Dalia Nardolillo/THE CONCORDIAN

A TURNING POINT –

“We discovered I had a certain talent with selling flowers. I always helped my parents during the summer. My parents always said, ‘You’re good with the flowers,’” Quenneville recalled. During the times where she couldn’t be as involved in the field, she would help her parents with the website and the online selling of the products. “My parents are not really good with selling their stuff online, they’re good producers but not very good sellers.”

For newer flower producers like Quenneville, ressources and helpful guides are always available. At Flower Canada Growers in Toronto, Pest Control specialist Cary Gates explains that the SFM may work for some flower farms but not all. 

“I don’t know if I see a lot of farms embracing that kind of approach,” Gates explained. “I am supportive of it, I just don’t know logistically if it is super functional, I see it for smaller acreages as being very achievable.”

Smaller farms like Au Beau Pré implement the utmost care into the soil before the Dahlia flower bulbs are even planted. “I really like the focus that farmers put into soil health,” Gates said. The care that is put into the soil equates to better quality flowers.

Quality control is also very important to the family. Roger and Lilianne make sure that the Dahlia flower bulbs don’t have any illnesses; however, sometimes unpredictable things can happen.

“One year we lost 75 per cent of our bulbs, we didn’t know exactly what happened in the fridge but they all rotted. I tell our customers I am not selling ‘Post-Its,’ we are selling living things and sometimes things like that can happen,” Quenneville recalled.

With Quenneville taking the reins on her parent’s farm in 2019 came its problems. “The first challenge I really faced was that I didn’t know how to produce flowers,” Quenneville said.

As the years progressed, Quenneville took more of an interest in the cut flowers business and became  a project that she eventually took on. Quenneville explained that at Au Beau Pré, they sell flowers when they are cut from the stem itself. When guests come to visit the field in the month of August, they pay per flower stem. 

With the help of various workshops through an American cut flower guru called Floret Flowers, Quenneville learnt the ins and outs of how to produce cut flowers. 

Learning how to produce cut flowers with Floret Flowers also taught Quenneville another important lesson of the SFM: how to produce flowers at the most optimal time.

Au Beau Pré tries to keep up with business year-round. The winter season preparations start in October, right at the first freeze.

“We do some chores with an old tractor, but most of the time we work the soil manually. This way we don’t mess with the soil structure too much and we can start working in the field faster in the spring,” Quenneville said.

LOOKING AT OTHER PROVINCES – 

One of the ways floral producers band together is through flower associations to help each other learn about sustainable ways of production.The Flowers Canada Growers Association (FCGA) has members all over Canada, including Bailey Dueker, owner of The Boondock Flower Farm in Saskatoon. 

Dueker got into the business by accident, she recounted. “This will be my fourth season growing in 2023. In the spring of 2019 I was sick of Facebook so I joined Instagram. I wanted to see flowers in my recommended page, so I started to follow all these flower farmers,” Dueker said. 

Seeing the flower farmer feeds inspired her to get into the field and she did not return to her regular job following her maternity leave. During the fall of 2019, Dueker did what she called a “soft-launch.” She acquired all the sunflowers and zinnias from her garden. Over the winter she spent her time buying seeds. “You really don’t know how much you don’t know until you get into it,” Dueker explained. 

Across Canada, flower farms are underestimated in terms of the leg work that it takes to produce. According to a Chatelaine article on the subject flowers have brought in an estimated $158 million in profit in 2021. 

FCGA represents floral producers all over Canada. Their members across Canada include greenhouse growers, distributors and importers/exporters all dealing with cut flowers, potted plants, bedding plants, cut greens and specialty suppliers and services to the industry.

Dueker explained that the main goal of being a part of the FCGA is providing more knowledge about the floral industry to others in the country. When you have a question that needs to be answered, there’s always someone there to help. “Connecting and marketing with other growers is the main idea of the association,” Dueker said.

Dueker also explained that there is a Facebook group for the association where members can connect with a community of flower growers.

According to Deuker, the future of cut flowers lies with the grassroots movement, which has a similar idea to the Slow Flowers movement. “I see a lot of people getting out of it in a couple of years because they come to realize that you have to do quite a bit of an investment to make it a living,” Dueker explained. Dueker has seen within the industry that perhaps selling to florists is maybe the way to go. 

Roger Quenneville preparing the Dahlia flower bulbs for winter at Au
Beau Pré Dalia Nardolillo/THE CONCORDIAN

FUTURE OF THE AU BEAU PRÉ FLOWER FIELD – 

As the farm plans for the future, Quenneville explained that the future lies within the flowers themselves. “I really want to try to make products from the flowers themselves. We worked a lot from the dried flowers and we liked working with them.”

Working with the dried flowers over the past summer was a trial and error process. We weren’t quite there in terms of the final product with the dried flower bouquets,” Quenneville recounted.  

Before perfecting any sort of dried flower she wants to master the production of them. 

“We try different things, of course our Dahlia bulbs are our most popular product. We try to keep the cut flowers during the summer. This year was the first time that we tried the tulips but I don’t want to get into making my own seeds because that’s its own production.”

Quenneville believes that the future of her business lies with online sales through her website. While visitors travel to Saint Anicet during the summer to get the cut flowers from the farm, Quenneville wants to have flower-based products that she can sell year-round to customers.

The cut flower industry is always changing and florists are always trying to adapt, whether that is in the different dried flower products or brushing up on their knowledge of how to better treat their soil. Gates explained that the future of the cut flowers isn’t going anywhere for now.  “I see the cut flower industry as pretty stable, I don’t know if I see it expanding exponentially like other ornamental commodities grow.”

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Concordia Food Coalition to develop new food enterprise

EVAN LINDSAY/The Concordian

Following Concordia’s New Contract With Aramark, The Fight Is Still Not Over For A Food-Sovereign Campus

In April, Concordia’s board of governors signed a new contract with multinational food services corporation Aramark to return as the University’s food supplier until May of 2026, with the possibility of a two-year extension. Aramark has been notorious for its ties to the US prison system ,and offering poor working conditions. 

The University’s decision to sign a new contract with the corporation goes against a continual effort to steer Concordia away from multinational corporations and towards social enterprises or not-for-profit food suppliers instead, in an attempt to make Concordia into a food-sovereign campus. 

In 2021, it seemed as though the University was seriously considering this alternate option.  “Concordia was making an effort to explore options outside of multinational corporations,” said Shylah Wolfe, executive director of the Concordia Food Coalition (CFC). 

Oliver de Volpi, Concordia’s Food Services manager, corroborated this claim. “We investigated some other options. The one that was even presented by Concordia Food Coalition didn’t pan out. They weren’t ready to bid.” 

Ultimately, the University did sign a new contract with Aramark. But, it’s not the end of the movement for a food sovereign campus.

Currently, the CFC is drafting a business plan for what they are calling the New Food Enterprise (NFE), which will be modeled largely off of Diversity Food Services (DFS), a social enterprise providing food service at the University of Winnipeg. 

The CFC’s website states that “the NFE will be an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable social enterprise capable of becoming Concordia’s campus food service provider. We are building a coalition of community stakeholders and local food producers to supply affordable and sustainable food options at scale to the university.” 

The NFE will bring together the Concordian Student Union, the Hive Cafe, SEIZE, and collaborate with the University’s senior administration. The CFC website states that “there is already broad understanding that the NFE is the transformative model that Concordia needs. Our job is to bring it to fruition.”

The Concordia Student Union has contributed $50,000 total to the NFE project. The CFC has taken $10,000 of the aforementioned funding to contract Chief Operating Officer of DFS Ian Vickers as a consultant. The VP Student Services Office has also pledged $25,000 to the project, Wolfe told The Concordian, with the remaining funds supporting additional planning, financing and partnership development.

“They’re putting their money where their mouth is, and taking us a bit more seriously. Now that we have four years to develop an alternative that is not just lip service, it will be an actually fleshed-out plan,” said Wolfe.

The money was pledged by the University before Aramark won the Request For Proposal (RFP) bid, with the CSU’s funding coming in during the bidding period. 

Since 2020, and during the RFP period, the CFC and other student representative groups sitting on the Concordia Food Advisory Working Group (FAWG) advocated for Concordia to adopt a model similar to that of Diversity Food Services. This would include cooking from scratch, more involvement in local food economies, and providing better benefits for staff. 

“What we’re doing now is essentially taking a provenly successful model at the University of Winnipeg with Diversity, and essentially building out an offering on a silver platter to the administration that we would run it with Diversity closely consulting,” said Wolfe.

According to Wolfe, the business would be owned by stakeholders made up of the University, the CFC, and DFS.

According to the University’s sustainable food systems plan, Concordia and Aramark are making efforts to be more sustainable and improve upon their last contract, by bringing in more local products, removing Aramark’s rights to operating vending machines on campus, and making meals offered in cafeterias one-third vegetarian, one-third vegan and one-third meat by 2025. 

De Volpi further stated that while Concordia did decide to re-sign with Aramark, the decision was not motivated purely by finances. 

“75% of the criteria for coming back to campus is not financially related. It’s sustainability operations, it’s nutrition, it’s that part of it. And Aramark won the bid. They’ve made contractual obligations to be easily a leader in Canada in both sustainability and nutrition. We’re going to hold them to it as well,” he said. 

But many advocating for a new food service model feel that their current goals aren’t enough.

“I think that the goals that the University has are commendable, but they’re not transformative. I think that it is difficult for them to ever do anything transformative if they continue with the bureaucratic processes that they are using,” said Wolfe.

“That last 25 percent is weighted twice as heavily as the other 75 percent,” explained de Volpi.

Erik Chevrier, a part-time professor at Concordia who did his PhD on building food-sovereign campuses, and a Concordia FAWG member, explained why Concordia’s sustainability goals can’t be too transformative under the current RFP model. 

“If you look at the targets, they’re not too hard to meet. So the targets are somewhat written for the big food service providers to be able to meet them, because if not, they’re setting unrealistic goals. So in some way, the idea that if they make this criteria too stringent nobody could actually fit the criteria. They’ll have no food service provider,” said Chevrier.

Financial aspects are involved in the RFP process. According to Chevrier, Companies need a minimum of $5 million annual revenue in food service before being able to bid. This requirement makes it difficult for small or new food service entities to compete for a contract. This is to help ensure that the companies Concordia partners with can remain viable throughout the year, and makes it harder for smaller-scale or new companies to compete during the RFP.

“There’s a big risk for us. We bring in [a food supplier] who’s never existed before that, you know, a month in and they say we just don’t have the personnel to operate anymore. We’re going to close down. Then what do we do with 1,000 students that live here and the rest of the population that depends on us?” said de Volpi. 

Wolfe feels that the risk is on the CFC and now with the ability to develop their own business plans, when the next RFP comes around in 2026, the New Food Enterprise will be able to prove their viability.

“We’re basically taking all of the risk for them, to develop this, to garner the support, the political will and also build out the actual back-end with a supply network. We’re essentially going to build them a business that will do all the things that they said they were going to do, but give them none of the risk,” said Wolfe.

Chevrier pointed out that Concordia has a number of student-built food initiatives that have been able to remain viable for many years.

“We’ve created them in the past, or students have, like the People’s Potato,” said Chevrier. “Nobody believed that it would last 20 years when it was first incarnated.”

Across Canada, Concordia has one of the strongest student-run food economies, with seven organizations operating in 2018. 

JAMES FAY @jamesfaydraws

These economies all work together across Concordia in a way that Aramark doesn’t. 

Aramark makes half of their money off a mandatory meal plan for most students in residences. This plan provides flex dollars that can only be spent at Aramark’s other retail locations across campus. Chevrier believes that allowing flex dollars to be spent at student locations would be largely beneficial. 

EVAN LINDSAY/The Concordian

“First of all, it’ll create competition for the big food service providers, maybe get them to behave a little bit better. And second of all, it could actually provide a local economy, where students can actually choose where they want to go,” said Chevrier.

While DFS, the business the New Food Enterprise is based on, did struggle during its start-up phase,  has now yielded a better performance for the University of Winnipeg than their previous multinational supplier, Chartwells. 

“The University does better with us than they ever do with Chartwells because we sell three times what Chartwells did. People actually want to eat real, made from scratch food a lot more than they wanted to eat that processed food.” said Vickers.

The new contract with Aramark is an improvement on the last, but the problem many have with it is not Aramark themselves, but Concordia continuing to work with multinational corporations. 

“There’s a lot of evidence to show that actually, the global food industry is decimating our planet. So basically, most of these big corporations, externalized costs in that they basically externalize them to people,” said Chevrier. 

Concordia has a long history of working with multinational suppliers. Their relationship with Aramark began in 2015, and prior to that they worked with Compass-Chartwells and Sodexo, two other multinational food supply and hospitality corporations.

Combined across Canadian universities, these corporations make up 60.8 per cent of the food suppliers among universities in Canada, according to Erik Chevrier’s thesis on building food-sovereign campuses. 

“Each of these corporations really relies on supply chains that actually drive down costs as much as they can by externalizing the environmental and social costs,” said Chevrier. 

“Concordia, as an innovator, I think should actually be looking towards how we can better the world, especially in some of the industries that they’re actually partaking [in.]”

The advantage of moving away from multinational corporations and towards social enterprises like DFS is that they are able to better interact with local farmers and food producers. Currently, according to University Spokesperson Vanninia Maestracci, 43 per cent of food offered in cafeterias is local or sustainability sourced. 

JAMES FAY @jamesfaydraws

Vickers stated that last year, 72 per cent of food served by DFS was locally or sustainably sourced. Purchasing locally most of the time is naturally better for farmers, who have experienced a 31.5 per cent increase in total outstanding debt across Canada since 2017, according to Statistics Canada. 

By working with more local food suppliers, DFS is able to better manage its supply chain and from-scratch cooking is made more possible to attain.

“Our cooks come in first thing in the morning. They bring in fresh turkeys, the first thing the chef will do is throw the turkeys in the oven instead of roasting them off so that she can slice them out and then cut it down and that becomes turkey sandwiches. She takes those bones and she puts them in a pot and starts making turkey stock. Then she can make gravy for what’s going to go on the poutine, as well as make soup,” said Vickers.

According to Vickers, the cost of bringing in local food is largely the same as well.

“We tend to be between two and three per cent less expensive,” he claimed. 

Independent food suppliers have the freedom to work with as many producers as they like and don’t suffer the same turnaround times for payment as larger corporations do. 

“When it’s an independent business, being able to pay farmers for cash right at the farm gates or out of their delivery truck is more possible,” said Wolfe. “We can work with as many suppliers as Diversity does, which is sometimes up to 100 different local producers.” 

“Large corporations like Aramark or even the University would not be able to do that because they have like sometimes 90- to 120-day payment processing so they have to work with huge distributors,” she stated.

“Part of the reason Diversity is able to do this is because, while they are a for-profit business they are also a social enterprise,” explained Vickers.

“What would normally be the profit that you would pay to your owners, is invested instead in environmental, social, cultural, or local economic sustainability,” he continued.

“What [the University] charged myself and the rest of our management team with is taking the profit and reinvesting it into being a good player in the global economy. So what does that mean? It means that we buy as locally as possible every single time.”

Additionally, under this model Diversity Food Services is able to offer a living wage, benefits and pension plans to all of their employees. 

EVAN LINDSAY/The Concordian

There is a lot of money to be made in these contracts — a study by the CFC found that the food service providers who won the RFP process in 2015 stood to make a minimum of $7 million in revenue annually. 

Under the new food enterprise model, any money made by the business could then be reinvested.

“The profits, if there are any, would be in the community,” said Wolfe. 

“That money would be reinvested in the business so that it’s cheaper, so that meal plans and generally food is cheaper, or so that workers get more money or it would be donated to the community organizations that need funds to run their projects.” 

Creating a project like DFS at Concordia is ambitious, and bringing in more local food to supply the 3,000 meals a day that CFC provides is a big task. It’s one that Vickers says will need a really solid plan, but he doesn’t think its impossible.

“Your local agriculture is so much better equipped to do this than we are,” said Vickers. “It would be incredibly feasible.”

The spread of COVID-19 and the surge of entrepreneurs

Why bored twentysomethings are starting businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic

I was three weeks away from starting a new season as a tour guide in Europe when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic. My company cancelled all their trips, and I was left unemployed. Bored and unstimulated, my options were to get an uninspiring job at the grocery store or the pharmacy, which were the only businesses open during the peak of the first wave. Or, I could go back to school.

The fear of boredom pushed me to pursue a new career by going back to school while the world waited to return to normal. I had everything to gain by trying something new.

I found a graduate diploma program in journalism, an area that intrigued me, and was accepted. For the last few months, I have been studying harder than ever, but, for the first time, I am thoroughly enjoying school.

I noticed that the people closest to me were also understimulated and started using their free time to challenge themselves in new ways. But they chose a third option: starting their own businesses.

Friend after friend launched new online businesses hoping to make a little extra money, but most of all, to keep busy while the world was at a standstill.

Here are some of their stories.

JESSICA MCLAUGHLIN (Age: 26), OTTAWA, CANADA

In the Great White North, a national lockdown was announced in March. Non-essential employees were forced to work from home and social gatherings were banned, which was horrific for self-declared extrovert Jessica McLaughlin.

“I needed to find something to keep me busy because I was going crazy,” said McLaughlin. The 26-year-old government employee said that while she was thankful to keep her job, the loss of social activities left a void in her life. So, McLaughlin focused on the one hobby she could do alone within her house: baking.

Thus, Sweet Ginger Bakes (SGB) was created. Named after her red hair and love for all things sweet, SGB offers people in the Ottawa and Montreal areas various baked goods, the most popular of which are the customizable sugar cookies.

“I was a big ‘procrastibaker’ during undergrad,” she said. “I would bake to put off studying or writing papers.” In her spare time, McLaughlin would spend hours intricately decorating goods for friends and family, who saw the potential for her to start a baking company.

SGB opened its virtual doors on Instagram in April, and, for the following six weeks, McLaughlin was extremely busy.

Instagram calculated that, in 2019, 83 per cent of users discovered new products and services on the platform, which allows small businesses like SGB to find marketable audiences. Acquiring 138 followers since her launch, McLaughlin earned enough revenue to buy a new baby blue KitchenAid mixer and quality sprinkles, which, she says, “are deceptively expensive.”

Though McLaughlin doesn’t see herself doing this full time in the near future, she isn’t stopping either.

“I think the pipedream would be to open an actual store,” she said. But even if this never happens, McLaughlin said all the effort it took to get the business going, like decorating at 2 a.m. or running to the grocery store for last minute eggs and butter, were worth it.

“I find joy in making new designs and making people happy through baking,” she said. “It’s nice to be part of someone’s moment … knowing that something that I enjoy doing can make others happy.”

MARTA SANTO (Age: 28), COMO, ITALY

Italy was the first European country to enter a lockdown on Mar. 9, when the virus took over the northern region of Lombardy before spreading across the country. Marta Santo, an Italian tour guide, was working in Austria when Italy announced it would soon close its borders.

Santo was in the middle of a 21-day tour, but had to leave her group with another guide and race home or risk being stuck abroad. The journey took several days, but she made it home in time. From then on, “It was full-on crazy,” she said.

The lockdown in Lombardy lasted two and a half months, during which people were only allowed to walk a short 200 metre distance from their homes.

“There were police everywhere; they used drones to check on people,” she said.

Then, in August, Santo contracted COVID-19 and was quarantined for 18 days. With boundless time on her hands, Santo, a trained artist, started drawing again.

“It was like people baking bread, but for me it was painting stuff,” she said. Santo hadn’t painted in five years, due to her nomadic job limiting her ability to carry art supplies.

But her family, friends and the boredom of unemployment inspired Santo to open an online art store on Etsy, an e-commerce site focused on selling handmade crafts. The store, called UnaTea, launched in October, selling prints of Santo’s illustrations, as well as personalized paintings, drawings and magnets.

Santo even used the time to teach herself how to draw on her iPad so that her work could be safely stored and printed, and — when tourism resumes — will allow her to keep drawing on the road.

Since its launch, UnaTea has sold over a dozen pieces, the most popular of which are the personalized items drawn in Santo’s unique style. Santo can spend up to nine hours creating a single piece, from the conceptualization of the work all the way to the final touches.

“It’s sort of my meditation, I think, when I paint and when I draw,” said Santo, adding that she feels no pressure to make UnaTea her main source of income.

“I think it’s always going to be a hobby to be honest, and I’m happy with that,” said Santo.

TOBY MOORE (Age: 26), MONTREAL, CANADA

Starting an online business has become increasingly easier, with little-to-no funds needed to create Instagram, Facebook and Etsy business pages. According to Stats Canada, national retail e-commerce sales grew by 99.3 per cent between February and May of 2020 and many new online businesses have appeared since the pandemic.

One of them was created by Toby Moore.

Moore had just graduated from McGill University with a master’s degree in urban planning when the virus spread globally.

“That first job … that’s generally the hardest barrier to get over, so having a whole global pandemic on top of that is definitely not conducive to helping someone [find a job],” said Moore. But the 26-year-old saw his ample free time as an opportunity to learn and expand his interests.

“It started with a few ideas, interests or passions of mine,” he said. Moore had been DJing as a hobby for eight years, so naturally streaming his DJ sessions was the first step. But he wanted to expand on this idea and brainstormed, “What other online events or things can I do to bring people together?”

From inside his childhood bedroom, he created T1K, a diverse entertainment company providing trivia nights, a podcast, roundtable discussions, a radio show and many more events.

“T1K is about bringing people together in a knowledge/education/learning environment where people can share, discuss, grow [and] have fun in a positive way,” said Moore. Topics like management, the environment and careers are discussed on the podcast and at events to engage listeners and dive deeper into current issues.

The podcast, playfully named “Toby or not To be,” explores the different career paths and choices of interviewees. Moore also created a roundtable discussion centred on sustainability and has welcomed guests like Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Mayor Sue Montgomery and Councillor Christian Arsenault.

T1K started in June but has not made any sales as of yet.

“I’m continually thinking of how I can incorporate a financial side into it,” said Moore. He believes that the company is still too small to charge customers for services and selling ad space doesn’t support his business concept.

But the project has been fruitful in other ways. T1K attracted the attention of Sur Place, an non-profit that offers free experiential arts education, where Moore is currently on the board of directors and occasionally offers workshops on podcasting.

“It’s been such a big opportunity, experiment and learning process, and I think that’s what I wanted,” he said.

***

Victor Hugo wrote in Les Miserables, “There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering — a hell of boredom.” And right he was.

A wave of boredom spread around the world just as fast as the pandemic, but McLaughlin, Santo and Moore turned it into an opportunity to develop their hobbies.

While the businesses differ, what is common among all three entrepreneurs is that their ventures were not created with the aim of making money or becoming a full-time job. Instead, it allowed them to use their time to do what they love within the confines of their homes.

 

Photos courtesy of Paula Sant’Anna

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