I’ve met people who have given up a corporate job in favour of a travel-based lifestyle. Those are great stories. But it is not mine. I wanted both.

After volunteering in Mexico when I was 13 and backpacking through Europe when I was 18 I knew I wanted to live a travel-oriented life and to pursue meaningful work. So I set about aligning the two.

I moved from my Canadian home in Vancouver to Oxford to complete a masters degree in economics and international development. I worked hard to find a job focused on developing renewable energy and promoting economic equality in the Western Hemisphere. I learned Spanish.

I’ve traveled with both a backpack and a briefcase. My work has given me a unique perspective. It has taken me to places most people don’t go to meet people most people don’t meet. A lot of research goes into my trips. Why keep it to myself?

On to what you really wanted to know.

Represented with feathers where there should be feet and so unable to land, the martlet is a mythical bird representing ceaseless pursuit for learning. Some think the idea for a legless bird came from medieval observations of swallows, a small bird with legs so tiny that they appear not to be there at all.

The symbolism of the bird meant that it was incorporated into the coat of arms of several schools, including University College Oxford (“Univ” for short, founded in 1249) where I studied. The birds also have a connection closer to home, with three of them gracing the coat of arms of the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island.

There is a bit of a debate as to whether the Univ arms originally featured four or five martlets. Paying homage to that debate, there is a single martlet installed under a window overlooking a garden at the  college, as though escaping out of it.

The fifth martlet, the martlet on the move.