Heroes In Black X Fashion Santa: Holiday Heroes And My First Billboard.

When Matte Black, founder of Toronto-based charity ‘Heroes In Black’, reached out to me to get involved with his charity and shoot some photos I couldn’t say no, and I had no idea what I was about to get myself into…

To say that 2017 was a blessing is an understatement, by far it was one of the best years both personally and entrepreneurially that I can ever remember having, and if there’s one thing I learned from my parents when I was growing up it’s about giving back.

I was contacted by Matte a while ago to get involved with his Heroes In Black charity, a Toronto-based organization founded by him after seeing a need to fix the current system from his first hand experiences being a homeless youth on the streets of Toronto on and off for 10 years. Matte’s story is one of struggle, pain and loss which turned to a beautiful  tale of opportunity, growth, making change and hope. It was after he was given a chance by somebody that helped get him off the streets for good, turn his life around, and find his passion in helping others that are facing the struggles he faced that he found his purpose in life, giving to those that he was once counted among. Honestly, if you hear Matte tell you his story I assure you you’d swear somebody just started chopping onions.

After meeting with the VP and Creative Director of OutFront Media we got the ball rolling. Matte had decided to reach out to Paul Mason who’s most famously known as Fashion Santa (or Sexy Santa as my mom likes to call him. lol) to collaborate and do this year’s Christmas Day Holiday Heroes event together in addition to a “Skate To End Homelessness” at Nathan Phillips Square where Paul would skate for 12 hours and collect donations from people who wanted selfies with him.

I’ll be honest, as this point I was pinching myself pretty hard. I was about to work on a billboard campaign with a Toronto fashion icon for an absolutely amazing cause. Neither of those 3 things had been on my bucket list for 2017 but they were about to be, and they were about to get crossed off.

After the mood boards were laid out and we knew what aqnd where we were working with we set up the shoot for a weekday evening down by city hall on what seemed like the coldest day of the winter so far. After a few hours of braving the cold we got enough shots that we knew we could use, flipped them to the designer, and the next thing I knew I was looking at digital mock-ups of something using a photo of mine that would soon be seen by hundreds of thousands of people across Canada for the next few weeks.

Once we shot and sent out the visuals I kind of forgot about them until my friend Josh sent me a message on Facebook with a photo of the billboard at Exhibition GO Station that he noticed on his way home one night.

I’ve been published in magazines, newspapers, on various media websites around the world, but let me tell you that there’s nothing quite like driving down the Gardiner Expressway and looking over to see your photo that size and seen by that many people for such a great cause. It truly made me thankful not only for Matte and him bringing me on to Heroes In Black, but also for everything in my career that got me to the point where he would think to bestow such an honor and responsibility on me. It reminded me that through all my adversity I faced in my life, and those times I pushed through when I thought it was pointless, that it was all for a reason and that there were awesome things like this to come, and to remember moments like this the next time I was feeling down.

On Christmas morning my father and I gathered with about 60 volunteers in the -30C temperatures and led by Matte Black and Fashion Santa ventured out to give gifts we had brought to the homeless on the streets of Toronto. I handed out packs of gloves, hats, socks, 2 chocolate bars and a $10 Tim Hortons Gift card (which was donated to me by the Tim Hortons at Hockey Hall of Fame. Thanks Angela!) and every single person we came across was so thankful to receive something we all take for granted.

What an fantastic and special way to spend Christmas morning.