From real estate to rink-side: How this B.C. woman is shaping young hockey stars | Canada Voices

Shannon Veitch believes that volunteering is less about having the time, and more about having the heart and the desire to help.

Ms. Veitch, who has been a realtor in Creston in the Kootenay region of British Columbia for 30 years, is currently the president of the Creston Valley Thunder Cats junior ice hockey team. She has also been the volunteer billet co-ordinator for the team for most of the past 15 years. Ms. Veitch describes her volunteer work as a “second full-time job,” but says she wouldn’t have it any other way.

In this series, Reimagining Wealth, we explore the evolving definition of wealth in today’s world. We meet Canadians who are thinking beyond traditional measures of success to maximize happiness and well-being. Here Ms. Veitch explains why hockey has become such a fulfilling part of her busy life.

Tell us about the volunteer work you do.

My husband, Scott, and I started billeting for the Creston Valley Thunder Cats in 2009. I’ve been the billet co-ordinator most years since 2010 and the president for almost three years.

As president, I oversee absolutely everything, from the orchestration of the games to all the financial aspects. As the billet co-ordinator, I find good homes and families for our out-of-town players during hockey season.

It definitely could be a full-time job, and I often say I could do such a better job if I was retired. But I’m somebody that’s pretty good at multitasking. Also, I’ve hand-chosen all my billet families. Every one of them is someone I’ve met through listing or selling [as a realtor], so they’re people that I know personally already. I know where they live, I know they’ve got that spare room, I know what kind of people they are, so my job works extremely well with the roles I have with the team.

Why is billeting the players such a key part of your work with the team?

These boys are 16 to 20 years old, and the majority of them move here from somewhere else, so they need quality, caring families to live with. I’m looking for families that are going to treat them like part of their own family, feed them properly, [give them] a warm and comfortable room of their own, but also [who] will take a vested interest in their hockey endeavours as well.

For many of these boys and young men, it’s their first time away from home, and sometimes they get quite homesick. I’ve heard some horrible stories over the years about kids who have bad billeting situations and that just breaks my heart.

It’s very important that this is something the families want to do because they get very little financial compensation for taking these players in. If they’re feeding them properly, it’s probably costing them money to billet, but it’s important to me that they are families that genuinely care about these young men so that their parents at home don’t have to worry about who their son is living with and they can be comfortable. Otherwise, they’re not going to want to stay here and play hockey in Creston.

If [the players] want to stay, then they want to play well and chances are, we’re winning.

How did you get involved with junior hockey in the first place?

I genuinely like hockey. I grew up in a house full of sisters and my dad had no one to watch sports with, so that was me. Then, we had boys of our own that played hockey, and our youngest son was billeted so I understand the situation from both sides.

We’ve billeted every year since 2009. My husband often jokes, ‘When are we going to stop?’ because our own kids are in their 30s now. But we’ve met some wonderful people along the way, we’ve been invited to our [former] billet’s weddings, we’ve had billets who have children of their own now.

What keeps you motivated to continue to work so hard for this team and these young men?

I always say that volunteers don’t necessarily have the time, but they have the heart.

Just in my time [with the team], I know of two players from Creston who have gone to the NHL and that is huge when you think about how many young men are playing junior hockey. It may never end up going anywhere, or it may end up going to university scholarships, but for most of them that’s always the dream. It really can come true, and [it’s nice to know that] you were there along the way to get to the end goal.

The other thing is if I did not volunteer, I would just fill up all my time with work. That’s the kind of person I am, I would just work my regular job morning ‘til night, seven days a week and I think I would be quite burnt out.

This gives me something else that I really enjoy, that is completely different than my job and I’ve met some wonderful people along the way.