A woman of Irish, Scottish, English and Metis ancestry, Alaina is grateful to call nature connection and cultural repair her life’s work. As the Owner and Director of Thriving Roots, she is inspired by the journey of life-long learning and the multi-generational quest to cultivate culture and community in connection to place.

Growing up on traditional Sto:lo Nation Territory in the Fraser Valley, Alaina’s connection to nature was sparked through magical camping trips with her vast extended family and watching her parents affectionately tend the gardens and wildlife around the house.

After completing her degree at SFU in Political Science and French, she shifted gears towards environmental work, teaching food systems and ecology in inner-city public schools of Vancouver, guiding therapeutic horticulture programs at the BC Children and Women’s hospital, and teaching beekeeping in inner city community gardens.  She also trained and taught yoga for 4 years. Her continued quest for deeper meaning and the instinctual and mysterious pull of nature led her to study at the Wilderness Awareness School in Washington from 2013-15. This experience was deeply transformative, introducing her to a kind of interconnection with land that she trusts her ancestors once new. It ultimately opened a new path for her in nature connection mentoring and cultural repair back home in BC.

She became Director of Thriving Roots in 2018 and worked as a mentor and guide at Wisdom of the Earth on Salt Spring from 2016-2020. She continues to direct Thriving Roots while also in ongoing studies with Animas Valley Institute in eco-based depth psychology. She has recently began studying with Shauna Janz at Sacred Grief.

In 2022 she collaboratively purchased a large parcel of land in the Highlands with the vision of anchoring a place for deep nature connection for the region. The land is to be a future home for Thriving Roots programming as well as nature-based wellness workshops. She currently lives there and humbly hopes to continue stewarding the land and vision so the future generations can find their way back to their own wild belonging, amidst all that pulls at them in modern times.

Alaina is also a song carrier and community song leader, passionate about the magic that forms between us when we reconnect to our birthright of singing together. She can also be found in her new pottery studio, apprenticing to clay and the art of shaping and being shaped by the Earth herself.