I came to this work the long way round
Infantry, then trades, then nine years of ministry, most of it on the street. The training came after, because the people in front of me had run out of what I knew.
I came to this work the long way round
A short 15-minute call to discuss your goals, no commitment.
Professional Credentials
Education & Training
- Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology (MACP), Yorkville University, 2025
- Master of Divinity (MDiv), Carey College, 2022
- Diploma in Professional Counselling (DPC), Pacific Life Bible College, 2012
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- Specialized training in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, Narrative Therapy, ACT, Mindfulness interventions, and Family Systems Theory
Professional Status
- Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC)
- CCPA Member #11252849
- Extended health insurance billing available
Experience
- Nine years pastoral ministry: church planting in Victoria (2013-2016), now The House of Shiloh; then pastoral counselling and crisis intervention at The Mustard Seed Street Church (2016-2022)
- Canadian Armed Forces infantry service (2001-2005)
- Plumbing business owner serving Victoria, Nanaimo, and Vancouver (2022-2026)
My Story
I spent years as a plumber, which teaches you early that the thing people phone about is almost never the thing that is broken. Then I spent nine years in ministry, most of it on the street, and kept meeting the same shape of thing in people. What was in the room was rarely what was wrong.
In 2011 I was a licensed plumber with a settled future, and I went back to school anyway. What I understood at the time was that I was meant to study counselling. Not to be a counsellor; to study it. Fifteen years later I am still doing what I was told.
The full story behind this practice
What Actually Helps People Change?
In 2011 I was a full-fledged plumber with a safeguarded future and a street ministry downtown that was going well. One night I knelt down and decided I was not getting up until I had some answer about what to do with my life. I came away with two words and a distinction I have never quite got over. Study counselling. Not be a counsellor. Study it.
I offer that as what it is, the meaning I made of a night on my knees, not as a mechanism I can hand anybody. It is why there is a diploma in 2012, a Master of Divinity in 2022, a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology in 2025, and why I have not stopped since.
What I actually learned in between came off the street, not out of the classroom.
The community I served downtown had been evangelized to the point of static. Every week somebody well meaning turned up with bagged lunches and a tract. These were people who had been let down so many times they had gone cynical about being helped at all, and nothing anyone said landed until they had been shown up for, week after week, long enough to be believed. After that, a word at the right moment could do what a thousand right words could not.
That turns out to be as true in an office as it is on a sidewalk. Trust comes before the message. Not as a courtesy. As a precondition.
The rest is mechanics, and the mechanics matter. Distress does not sit in one place. It sits in what a person thinks, and in a body still braced years after the danger has gone, and in who they can stand to be close to, and in whether any of it means anything. Work on the thinking alone and the body keeps pulling the alarm. Work on the mechanics alone and you can be entirely correct about someone’s life and still miss the part that hurts.
The Foundation: Lived Experience
Three things shaped how I work before I ever opened a textbook. Infantry. Trades, and a business of my own. And nine years of ministry, most of it street-level crisis. I also carry lived experience with PTSD. None of that is background; it is the equipment.
Military and trades (operational stress)
Infantry from 2001 to 2005. Then years on the tools, then my own plumbing business across the Island and the mainland.
Trades teach you something a counselling program does not. Nothing complicated has one cause. You get called out for a stained ceiling and the fault is three rooms away, behind a wall somebody closed up in 1978 and hoped about. You learn to work back from the damage without mistaking the damage for the story.
They also teach you what running hard costs. The things that make someone good under pressure, going quiet, going numb, needing nobody at all, are real skills, and they work; they work so well that a man can get twenty years down the road on them before anything looks wrong. Then one day you are home. Nothing is on fire. And they are all still running.
The same gear that kept you upright is now holding everyone at arm’s length.
That is the common ground I have with a lot of the people I see. Not sympathy from across a desk. I know what it is to believe therapy is for people with more time than me.
There is a part of me that came out of the infantry and the job site and never fully stood down. The fighter. For a long time I treated it as the problem. It is not the problem; it is the reason I got through some of what I got through. What it needed was not exile. It needed supervision, and something to do besides scan.
That is usually the work with people who come to me from those worlds. Not getting rid of the part that kept you alive. Giving it a job that fits the life you have now.
Pastoral leadership and crisis work (9 years)
I planted a church in Victoria in 2013 and led it until 2016. It still meets, under the name The House of Shiloh. From 2016 to 2022 I pastored The Mustard Seed Street Church.
Nine years, and most of what I carry from them is crisis. People sleeping rough. People in withdrawal. Staff burning quietly down to the wick. Families coming apart in the church kitchen. And funerals; more funerals than you expect at that age.
Three things from those years I could not have got from a book.
Change keeps its own schedule, and hurrying it is usually my anxiety wearing a helpful face.
Sitting still beside someone in the worst hour is not what you do until the real intervention arrives. Most of the time it is the intervention.
And when a person asks why this happened to them, they have not asked a clinical question. Answering that with a symptom list is like answering “was it worth it” with a receipt.
Lived understanding of PTSD
I carry lived experience with PTSD.
So I know it from the inside. That the body keeps a watch nobody ever relieves. That braced stops feeling like braced and starts feeling like awake. That the habits which once kept you safe, the scanning, the flat voice, the needing no one, do not switch off when the danger does. They just change what they cost, and start charging it to the people in the next room.
Which is why I do not hurry anyone who tells me they know they are safe and still cannot feel it. Knowing and feeling run on different clocks. That gap is not a failure of effort, and being told to calm down has never once closed it.
The Framework: Clinical & Theological Integration
Two disciplines hold this practice up, and they do different jobs.
Counselling trained me in how to love. Theology trained me in what love is. You cannot take theology into a hospital room and expect it to do the work of sensitivity and a listening ear; I have tried it, and it does not.
Which is why you should not have to choose between the evidence and the question that has you awake at three in the morning. Where that meeting point is explicitly Christian, it shapes my Christian counselling work.
Credentials, training, and clinical framework
Clinical Rigour (The “How”)
Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology (MACP), Yorkville University, 2025
Diploma in Professional Counselling (DPC), Pacific Life Bible College, 2012
Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC), CCPA Member #11252849
Focus: Empirical understanding of psychological mechanisms and evidence-based therapeutic frameworks including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), mindfulness-based interventions, pastoral counselling, narrative therapy, and family systems theory.
Existential Depth (The “Why”)
Master of Divinity (MDiv), Carey College, 2022
Nine years pastoral counselling and crisis intervention experience
Focus: Theological and philosophical frameworks for engaging questions of meaning, purpose, suffering, and identity. This training addresses questions that psychology alone cannot adequately answer: suffering that demands meaning-making, loss that requires narrative reconstruction, transitions that involve fundamental identity questions, and the search for purpose beyond symptom reduction.
Who I Work With
Some people want a counsellor who already knows the shape of their week.
Veterans and first responders. Tradespeople. Ministers and deacons. Business owners. Anyone whose work leaves little room for falling apart, and who has started to notice that not falling apart is costing them something.
I am not the right fit for everyone, and I would rather say so here than have you find out in session four. A free fifteen-minute call is usually enough for both of us to tell.
Client profiles and service areas
Common client profiles:
Veterans and first responders dealing with trauma, hypervigilance, moral injury, and the particular stress of high-stakes operational environments
Trades professionals on the front lines managing physical demands, time pressure, and the grind of hands-on work
Business owners and leaders who feel misunderstood in their roles and need someone who gets what leadership actually costs
Ministers, deacons, and those in spiritual leadership navigating the unique pressures of pastoral care
Current and former faith community members navigating spiritual uncertainty or existential doubt
Individuals in high-stress careers experiencing occupational stress and burnout
Diverse clients navigating life’s challenges and seeking support
Primary service areas:
Trauma and PTSD therapy
Anxiety treatment
Spiritual and existential exploration
Stress and burnout
Relationship patterns (individual work)
Grief and loss
Intrusive thoughts and rumination
Depression and mood concerns
Family of origin work
The goal: Movement beyond symptom management toward restored capacity for living; addressing both the psychological mechanisms maintaining distress and the meaning structures within which that distress exists.
Outside the Office
A bit more about me
Whether it’s a weekend morning spent making a mess in the kitchen, a walk through one of the trails around the Westshore, or just a quiet evening at home, those are the moments that matter most to me. Being a dad has changed how I see almost everything, and it’s made me a better therapist.
I spent a good chunk of my younger years beating up my body playing rugby, football, and training Muay Thai. Eventually my body made it pretty clear that I needed to find ways to stay active that didn’t involve getting hit or hitting someone else. These days I channel that energy into trail running, backpacking, and getting out on the water in a kayak. There’s something about being in the backcountry or paddling along the coast that resets things in a way nothing else quite does.
I also play guitar; not well enough to impress anyone, but well enough to enjoy it. It’s one of those things that forces me to slow down and be present, which is probably why I keep coming back to it. My wife and I love to travel when we can; having a kid hasn’t slowed that down so much as shifted what it looks like. We’re figuring that out as we go, like most things in parenting.
I mention all of this because I think it matters. The person sitting across from you in therapy isn’t just a collection of credentials.