Some buildings hold stories — not just in their walls, but in the people who animated them. Some structures can fade or vanish, while memory and values persist beneath the surface. In hospitality and in life, our true legacies are not always the edifices we build — but the spirit we embed, the relationships we cultivate, the ideas we pass on.

My grandfather, Frank Baker, was never someone who simply ran a discreet café in a back corner. He was a restaurateur and hotelier who operated in full view — public, ambitious, and invested in reputation. In 1977, the year I was born, he famously invited guests to dine at his Vancouver restaurant The Attic with James Bond’s Aston Martin — an act that, at once, was theatrical, visionary, and unapologetically audacious. That flair was not only marketing — it was a statement: that hospitality should be memorable, aspirational, and tied to identity.

Growing up in that orbit, I saw how Frank staked presence in place — how he built not just rooms and tables, but expectation, image, and community recognition. Some of those venues have passed; some have transformed; others remind us that even landmark structures can fade. But what does not fade — when it is cared for — is the ethos behind them. After he passed, Frank Baker was inducted into the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame. 

My Path: From Public Legacy to Purposeful Innovation

I inherited more than a name or a reputation. The question Frank’s work posed to me — how to hold public imagination while sustaining operations — shaped my career. I moved through restaurants, consulted in tourism, then pivoted into education because I saw a gap: the next generation needed not only technique, but values, resilience, and a capacity to respond to change.

Every role I took taught me that you can’t simply rest on glamour or story. You must back it with rigour, sustainability, and relevance. The hospitality of 2025 demands more than façade: it needs regenerative agriculture, climate adaptation, ethical labour practices, circular supply chains, community rootedness — and learners fluent in each of those terrains.

Which brings me to the Okanagan College Centre for Food, Wine + Tourism — an effort to kit out that future, stationing it where values, place, and industry intersect, expected to open during the Autumn season of 2027.

Why Here, Why Now

The stakes are high. In the Okanagan and across Canada, food, wine, and tourism are under pressure. Climate stress is altering growing seasons, water availability, pest regimes. Consumer expectations are shifting — diners and travellers demand transparency, ecological accountability, and social justice. Hospitality must evolve, not just survive.

The region is ripe: vineyards, orchards, destination tourism, agricultural enterprises all intertwining — but the fragility is real: heat extremes, drought, labour shortages, supply disruption. We need learning and innovation on site, not in ivory towers elsewhere.

The Centre is conceived as a living, breathing response. It is not a distant research lab — it is stitched into the local industry, the land, the community, the challenges. It is meant to be visible — a literal stage for ideas, prototypes, collaborations.

The Centre’s Foundations: From Legacy to Regeneration

In designing the Centre, we have rooted it in five pillars (which echo both my personal values and institutional priorities):

  • Experiential visibility: Frank built spectacle; we build real guest, vineyard, kitchen, and tourism micro-stages for students to test, fail, iterate, and perform. Students will launch pop-up dinners, wine-tour circuits, immersive hospitality events.
  • Sustainability as default: Soil, water, energy, carbon — not optional modules, but core to every discipline taught (food, wine, tourism, operations). Circular systems and adaptive design will be our baseline, not our add-on.
  • Co-creation with industry: Our partners are not just advisors; they are active collaborators — offering land, vineyard plots, event venues, R&D challenges, market feedback, and apprenticeship pathways.
  • Honoring place and reconciliation: Indigenous knowledge, foodways, hospitality traditions, land ethics — these are essential, not supplementary. We will embed Indigenous-led curriculum, land-based learning, and collaborative custodianship.
  • Adaptive, experimental, resilient. The world won’t wait: We need agility — labs, quick prototyping, feedback loops, responsive curriculum, and ongoing innovation. The Centre must evolve with industry and climate shifts.

What Success Might Look Like

A few seasons from now, I envision alumni opening regenerative wineries, farm-to-visitor inns, circular kitchens, low-impact tourism circuits. I see the Centre hosting summer intensives, research residencies, co-lab projects, scaling to attract interest beyond the region. I see visitors tasting wine grown under climate-smart viticulture, dining food sourced from regenerative orchards next door, and walking hospitality designs that model low impact.

When I walk those pathways, taste those wines, watch young leaders lead, I will remember Frank — conjuring public imagination, staging dinners, hosting with flair — but I will also see transformation. His legacy becomes a starting point, not an endpoint.

An Invitation to Build Together

To restaurateurs, hoteliers, winemakers, foodservice operators: this is your stage, your field, your opportunity. Come in — contribute land, menu ideas, prototype problems, mentorship, financial support, research questions. Co-design the curriculum, help students test in your venues, collaborate on sustainable transitions.

To students, changemakers, dreamers: bring your curiosity and urgency. Don’t just wait to be hired — help design the future. This Centre is for your voice, your values, your experiments.

To regional leaders, funders, policy makers: supporting this Centre is investing in regional resilience, identity, economic renewal, food sovereignty, and climate-adaptive opportunity. This is more than physical infrastructure — it is a seedbed for transformation.

Buildings crumble, brands shift, towers fall. Yet communities, values, stories, and vision can endure — if we nurture them intentionally. My grandfather Frank’s tables and venues may shift in the archive of history, but his audacity, his public gesture of hospitality, taught me that places are stages, and values are the scripts we sustain.

So now, we set a new stage — not just for spectacle, but for stewardship, regeneration, and collective purpose. I invite you to join that stage.