KENTVILLE, N.S. — Throughout her life, Lisa Tanner has strived to find balance, focusing on her journey and not her destination.
Tanner was born in the Annapolis Valley and says she can’t imagine ever calling any other place home. She spent her formative years in Kentville, even representing the town in 1988 as Princess Kentville in the Valley’s Apple Blossom Festival.
When she was about to graduate high school, Tanner's guidance counsellor asked what she wanted to do next, but Tanner had no idea. He suggested she study nursing and provided with her with all the information, saying she would be good at helping people.
The idea made sense to Tanner. As a child, she remembers playing nurse with her younger sister, who was always the patient.
“I would instruct her to lay down on my mother’s ironing board and examine her,” says Tanner, who wore a costume, complete with a white paper cap adorned with a black strip of electrical tape serving as its band.
Upon graduation from the Canadian Nursing Assistant program at Hants Community College, Tanner was awarded the Nova Scotia best bedside nursing award. She then went on to a career, starting at the Blanchard Fraser Memorial hospital in Kentville, and later at the Valley Regional, as a staff nurse with the surgical unit.
It was while at work many years later that Tanner had a special reunion. The guidance counsellor who had set her on the path became ill and she was able to give him the same compassion and care that he had shown her years before.
“When I introduced myself at his bedside, he did not recognize me and, of course, my married name, but I told him that if it were not for him, I would have never become a nurse or found the best version of myself,” she says.
“I still remember how his smile lit the room as I said it, and I was so fortunate to have had the chance to thank him one last time.”
CROSSROADS
While maintaining a busy career, Tanner was also working behind the scenes, not only raising a family of four daughters with her high school sweetheart, but also running a successful Labrador retriever breeding program for almost 13 years.
Then she found herself at a crossroads, with so many paths to take that she says she was not crossing the finish line at any of them and merely strolling along.
With the dogs, she said it had come time to either raise new pups or retire, and since there was no longer a house full of kids to help cuddle and puppy play, that part of her life ended.
So too, did her nursing career.
“My career in nursing had become more work than passion, and I felt I owed it to myself and those patients under my care to walk less on that path,” she says. “A sick person deserves someone passionate about the profession as their advocate. They do not have a choice to be there, but the care provider does.”
So, after 28 years, Tanner retired from a career she had loved, deciding to explore other passions silently waiting within.
This break sent Tanner on her next journey.
She and her husband are franchisees of the Burger King restaurant in New Minas, a business which has been in the family for more than 40 years. Although she had not been active in the business before because of her responsibilities running the kennel and her nursing career, Tanner says she found herself in the thick of it in 2018 when the restaurant underwent a major remodel and renovation. This, she says, sparked a renewed enthusiasm.
She is now a full partner in the Burger King franchise, whether that means greeting customers, washing dishes, scooping fries or problem solving with employees. It’s good to be part of a team again, she says.
CREATIVITY
Besides her business and work endeavours, Tanner is an accomplished artist and can repurpose almost any item. Her love of interior design, she says, stems from when she was a child.
“Sometimes when my parents were out, I would rearrange their living room furniture before they got home," she said. "My mom always praised me for this; however, the next day Dad’s Lazy Boy recliner was back in its usual spot, with her rocking chair adjacent to it.”
Tanner says she has been creating things ever since she was little and credits her mom for allowing her to decorate the tree with mostly Lisa-original ornaments.
“My mom believed in both me and Santa,” she laughs.
After retirement, Tanner says she started taking her art more seriously, painting every day, having started with coloured pencils and moving to other mediums. Largely self-taught, she says experimentation, books, and online lessons have helped her grow and develop.
“Art is meditative to me and I consider it therapy,” she says. “I’ve learned so much from this process, about myself and the world around me, I now see colours I once never knew existed.”
One of Tanner's best-kept secrets is that she has a third-degree black belt in karate. Having started training at the age of 10, she continued to practice throughout the past 40 years, with a few sabbaticals thrown in. As a former instructor with Young’s Uechi Ryu Karate and Fitness, Tanner has now stopped teaching so she could devote time and energy into strengthening her own martial art skills before progressing further.
She continues to attend seminars by North American masters in the United States once or twice a year and, in 2020, she has plans to visit the United Kingdom for a two-day seminar with some of Europe’s best martial artists.
“Karate keeps me motivated, balanced, and continually learning,” she says. “My goal is to practice it for a lifetime, for the goodness of mind body and spirit.”
Tanner says her life philosophy is that when she becomes involved with something, it is about the journey not the destination.
“I bite off more than I can chew but take it on as a personal challenge much to the chagrin of my family,” she says. “I am and, always will be, a dreamer and believe that happiness is just one smile away, and is contagious, so spread that joy.”
