Elliot Rose‘s life has wound through different places and jobs, but he’s always found a path to happiness. After his family moved here from Windsor, Ontario, he worked part time with his dad at Auto Canada, parking and gassing cars while completing Grade 12. Through his 20s, he moved to marketing at a different dealership, and eventually ended up a wealth management advisor at Scotiabank.
But whatever pays the bills has always been a means to and end of his real passion: combining business with community. “Even though I’ve always been into auto sales and marketing, community has always been a huge part of my and my family’s life, whether it be charity or special events, or just bringing people together over different things.”
After working with United Way through Scotiabank, he joined their Downtown Collaboration subcommittee, which wanted to promote downtown with something that went viral. Inspired by the Monopoly game board, they came up with #ChalkTheBlockYEG, which brought professional chalk artists to decorate sidewalk squares at the Downtown Farmers’ Market. “From there, we sold chalk packs to raise money and people started decorating their own communities.”
The event has since become a farmers’ market staple, and Rose hopes people will take it — and any idea he helps develop down the line — and makes it their own.
“If there was a message I’d give people, it would be that if you have a great idea, tell everybody. That’s what happened with Chalk the Block. The more I talked about it, the more exciting it became for me, and that excitement cascaded to other people. And that’s how it happened.”
This article appears in the Winter 2022 issue of Edify
