A Summit in Motion: Lets Move Canada at Zoomer Media
We had a great day – we being Lets Move Canada™ and our National Health & Fitness Summit on June 7th. Where do I start? So many gems of wisdom for social media, plenty of great wisdom and lots of actionable insights.
The Summit, I’ll confess, was a little bit of chaos in action. That’s the result of a volunteer organization with outsized ambition, to have a summit that drives the conversation to make Canada the fittest country on earth by 2030. We were fortunate to be working with Zoomer Media to stage the event as a live broadcast from their television studio in the trendy Liberty Village neighborhood of Toronto. Zoomer’s Darija Ivankovic and Lets Move Canada’s Monica Jacko, somehow turned the chaos into order, even with last minute scheduling changes driven by speaker’s changing agendas, it came off really well.
Before getting into some personal highlights for me, I want to thank the sponsors, including a private foundation, Brett Robinson and the Canprev® team, Adam Barnard and the Nature’s Emporium® team and yes, my team at SierraSil® who gave me time to work on the Summit. Canprev is a competitor to my business but in the natural health products industry we often come together on shared values. In Canprev’s case, their specific vision is, “Feeling Better Together”. That nicely fits with ours at SierraSil, “Restoring Joy and Ability to people with mild to moderate pain”. Likewise for our retailer customer Nature’s Emporium, a Toronto based grocer with 3 locations, priding themselves on “Helping to Nourish Healthy Communities!” and who provided a fantastic lunch curated by their people and RHN Samantha Gladish.
We had other wonderful speakers with amazing insights. In the first panel some take aways for me included Brent Bishops 5&5 for office workers, Erin Phelan talking about resilience and injury recovery, Gaetan Boutin adding that greatness doesn't come without hardness. At lunch Samantha Gladish challenged some food trends and connected food to energy and even sleep. It was very insightful and I look forward to reading her book The 30-Day Hormone Solution: The Key to Better Health and Natural Weight Loss.
After lunch Meghan Reddick or the TransCanada Trail touches all provinces and territories and includes popular walks right across our country. Then Dr. Kaitlin Link shared here journey from ER medicine to pro-active health, including founding Benchmark Health; Ted Temertzoglou (Life is Athletic) energized us with what could be possible to develop healthy habits through our schools; and Marc Lebert challenged us with the critical role of personal values being key to maintaining a fitness commitment. One of the panelists noted our medical system is good at "Survive" but misses the importance of "Thrive".
We had a session on technology with Noah Bloom (RunGo) and Dr. Scott Rollo (GoGetFit & Cdn Military) revealed how digital tools, from route apps to behavior‑change science, can amplify movement but also the irony of trying to de-tech lifestyles to encourage physical activity.
Senator Marty Deacon, who is a true champion of healthy lifestyles on Parliament Hill, Federal Secretary of State for Sport Adam Van Koeverden, and John Weston (Lets Move Canada and Canadian Constitution Foundation) each spoke about a vision for a healthy future and projects and program that can be catalysts for that. Monica McAlduff (CEO of the BC FNHA) provided helpful insights on the multiple First Nations of BC and the work of the First Nations Health Authority to improve health outcomes. Monica also talked about the influence of environmental, social cultural and economic factors that affect each of us.
Our concluding keynote was Dr. Ben Sporer, author of Output, which is a really good read – my hard copy has lots of notes in it! Ben highlighted that we are all performers, whether NHLer competing for the Stanley Cup or the plumber or care worker doing their jobs every day. And to perform we need to pro-actively have a plan and he shared highlights of what we need to consider and how we do that - just buy his book!
Monica Jacko kicked of the 2025 Lets Move Canada Challenge and I encouraged people to live the mission, and invited feedback to help Lets Move Canada make the 6/6/26 Summit even more outstanding.
Please join the Lets Move Canada challenge at www.letsmovecanada.com. And together, lets empower healthier families, workplaces and communities.