WEYBURN – An entrepreneur from Prince Albert, Cody Demerais, shared his life’s journey with the Weyburn Chamber of Commerce, at the President’s Dinner and annual meeting on March 27 at the Weyburn Legion Hall.
Demerais is an entrepreneur and motivational speaker, as he likes to share about how he overcame a life of addictions and destructive habits, and turned his life around to where he can share his story with others to help people with their struggles.
He noted that as he grew up, he began to do something quite dangerous at a young age: he began to compare his life with others.
Demerais had a fairly good life as his mother worked for Weyerhauser in P.A., but it became a struggle for her when she and 700 others were laid off, and she had to find different work.
Her income went from a $30-40 an hour job to $15/hour, if she was able to find work.
“Things got a lot tougher, and instead of going out, family trips happened less and less,” he said. A family friend would take him to Prince Albert Raider hockey games, as he wasn’t able to afford to go any more.
While he had this positive influence, he began to turn to alcohol and drugs as a young teen, noting he had his first drink of alcohol when he was 11, and did drugs when he was 12, 13 and 14, and was known as “a rambunctious kid”.
“That’s a history I own now, because I’m a highly-addictive personality,” said Demerais, noting he’s clean now, and is married with two young daughters. “I don’t know how I’m going to take it if my girls go in this direction.”
When he was 16 years old, he was given advice that basically warned him to change his direction, or he was going to end up in jail, and his life would be over before he had a chance to live it. Three years later, he added, he was exactly where he was told he would end up, as a prisoner in the P.A. Men’s Correctional Centre.
A major turning point for him was getting into a bad accident with his best friend after leaving one party and driving to another one, he said.
The fortunate thing was, he and his best friend both survived, but he saw his best friend hooked up to tubes and sensors in a hospital bed, in very bad shape in a medically-induced coma for a number of weeks while his body healed.
One of the hardest lessons he had to learn, said Demerais, is “I had to basically stop acting like a victim. I would look at everything going on and would see the worst possible scenario. I had to change things – and if I didn’t, my luck was going to run out.”
He noted that he used to believe that it was a sign of weakness to ask other people for help, but he has since learned, “It’s one of the strongest things a person can do. Finding a purpose in life was one of the things that saved it. It’s helped me heal and helped me to be the person I am today.”
One of his new purposes in life was to create his own line of clothing, and start a store in Prince Albert, and another was to find the love of his life and marry her, and start a family with her.
At first, starting the store worked well, but it was only a few months before COVID hit and locked the country down. He ended up having to close his store down – but then someone from the local Co-op approached him about supplying them with his clothes, and now a number of Co-ops in the province carry his product.
In addition, he has become a certified life coach, and with his motivational speaking, is able to reach out and help other people who face struggles like he faced.
Business-wise, he ended up winning the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award at the ABEX Awards, and he noted, he’s only one of maybe five business people from P.A. to win an ABEX.
“When you believe you have the ability and capacity to do great things, that’s when your life becomes limitless,” said Demerais.
