Touch of Joy

From the moment she started walking at eight months old, Joy Stewart hasn't stopped moving. By the time she was 12 she was singing professionally in her native Philippines, which led to work as a VJ and in films. While still in her teens Sony Records sent her to Japan as a singer and just a few years later she was producing shows.

“I was always go, go, go. If I'm not busy I get bored!” she says. She'd home-schooled herself and had no TV growing up so when she met her future husband, a Canadian, in Japan she'd never heard of Canada. “He said, 'You know, smoked salmon, maple syrup, hockey?'” Joy explains, “but I'd never heard of any of them.”

Despite that hurdle they got married and she moved from Tokyo to Victoria with him where they had their first child. “It was quite the culture shock. I'd always worn suits, I was used to directing 150 people and suddenly I was a young mom in a new city and I felt very out of place.”