Canada has long asked its Veterans to serve. This book asks what Canada does next.
Somebody Should Do Something - So I Did: Canada's Veteran Entrepreneurship Movement is a powerful memoir, historical chronicle, and call to action about one family's turbulent transition from military life - and the national movement that grew from it.
When Christina Connelly and her husband, Danyal Beale, were forced to confront medical uncertainty, military release, caregiving, and the collapse of the future they had planned, entrepreneurship became more than a way forward. It became a lifeline. What began as a personal effort to rebuild purpose eventually sparked the Canadian Veteran Marketplace, a grassroots community that connected thousands of Veteran entrepreneurs, military spouses, families, advocates, and supporters across the country.
Yet this story is much larger than one family or one digital community.
With honesty, humour, and hard-earned insight, Christina traces Canada's evolving relationship with Veterans after service - from the Veterans' Land Act and post-war rebuilding, to the Business Development Bank of Canada, the New Veterans Charter, the Veterans Hiring Act, the Special Recruitment Initiative for Veterans, the National Veterans Employment Strategy, and Canada's first parliamentary study examining barriers to entrepreneurship among Veterans. Through that historical lens, she reveals a truth too often overlooked: Veterans have never stopped serving Canada. They have built businesses, strengthened communities, created jobs, mentored others, advanced public policy, and continued contributing long after the uniform came off.
Written for Veterans, military families, civilians, employers, policymakers, educators, entrepreneurs, and every Canadian who believes gratitude must be matched with action, this book challenges readers to see Veteran transition not as an individual issue, but as a national opportunity.
Inspiring, deeply personal, and unmistakably Canadian, Somebody Should Do Something - So I Did is a story of resilience, reinvention, advocacy, and collective responsibility. It is a tribute to those who keep building after loss, those who serve in new ways after service, and those willing to ask what more Canada can do.
Most of all, it is an invitation: To listen, to support, to invest, to hire, to mentor, to buy Veteran-owned, to remove barriers, and to help build a Canada where life after military service is not an afterthought - but a shared national commitment.
