Running three businesses does not leave most owners much room for anything else. Monique Barrie has spent close to seven years involved with #NotInMyCity, Calgary’s anti human trafficking initiative founded by Paul Brandt, on top of running a dental hygiene practice, a Montessori school and, more recently, a film company. She has also supported Women in Need Society and Closer to Home, and in March 2024 was White Hatted by Tourism Calgary, a civic honor reserved for people seen as ambassadors for the city.
None of that is required of a small business owner. All of it was a choice, and this year it turned into something more concrete than advocacy: a produced documentary, Not In My City: The Paul Brandt Story, currently nominated for five AMPIA Rosie Awards.
Community Work That Outlasted The Business That Started It
Barrie’s dental practice gave her the standing and the schedule flexibility to get involved locally. What is notable is that the community work did not stop when the business model around it changed. She stepped back from day to day dental practice operations, opened a school, then a film company, and the #NotInMyCity involvement kept going through all of it, eventually becoming the subject of a film she wrote, produced and directed herself. Nearly seven years on one cause, capped with an AMPIA-nominated documentary about it, is not a photo-op commitment.
White Hatted Is A Small Ceremony With A Real Signal
Tourism Calgary’s White Hat ceremony looks, from the outside, like a nice photo with a cowboy hat. What it actually signals is narrower and more specific: the city has decided this is someone worth putting forward as representative of Calgary to visitors, dignitaries and media. It is not an award anyone can buy or lobby their way into with a large donation. It is closer to a character reference from the city itself.
Why This Belongs Next To The Business Story, Not Separate From It
Alberta’s business press tends to split entrepreneurship coverage and philanthropy coverage into two different files, as if the two are unrelated. Barrie’s record argues they are the same file. The relationship-first instinct that turned a paper route into a functioning business model at eight years old is the same instinct that kept her involved with an anti trafficking initiative for going on seven years, then turned that involvement into a film industry professionals are now nominating for awards.
Calgary has no shortage of successful business owners. It has a shorter list of people who stayed in the room for community work well past the point where it stopped being good for their personal brand and started just being the right thing to keep doing.
What local cause has earned your time longer than you expected it to?
