‘Resilience’ leads woman to pageant victory

A woman from the Enoch Cree Nation is breaking new ground and inspiring others after being awarded the Mrs. North America Globe Classic title at a pageant in Las Vegas in March.

Lisa Ground is the first First Nations woman to claim the title and has since been busy representing the crown and acting as the national spokeswoman for Mrs. Globe’s partner charity, the W.I.N. Foundation.

“It’s such an honour. It makes my heart happy. They taught me at the pageant how to be my best self, and I count my blessings. That’s what the W.I.N. Foundation is all about,” she said. 

Ground feels a personal connection to W.I.N., a non-profit organization founded by Dr. Tracy Kemble in 1996, that specializes in the “healing and empowerment” of women. W.I.N. is particularly focused on helping women overcome domestic abuse – a situation Ground is well aware of as she was in a violent relationship for over five years.

“I was in a very tragic and horrendous relationship where I had to physically escape and I had police protection. I even gained so much weight. I weighed 270 pounds from depression… I wasn’t recovering well,” she said.

Ground suffered psychological, emotional, sexual and financial abuse in the relationship and it took years to clear. At her heaviest, she had to crawl up stairs and was continually out of breath. And she still has haunting memories of the extreme poverty she faced while in that relationship as she cared for her two daughters Ashley, now 25, and Mariah, now 19.

“We were not well off. We used to do bottle drives and I’d spend $70 on groceries every two weeks. We’d have five perogies for dinner... Sometimes I’d give Ashley three and Mariah two, and I wouldn’t have any,” she said.

But Ground persevered. She attended women’s therapy classes in Stony Plain to help heal her pain. This is where she met her current husband, whom she said was a huge source of support to her during her recovery, and still is. She also managed to lose all of her excess weight, going from a size 26—which was tight at the time—to a size four, sometimes a six, using only the help of Google searches and advice from daughter Ashley Callingbull. Callingbull is an actor featured on APTN’s Catch the Dream series, and a fellow pageant winner, so the two women are currently crowned title holders at the same time.

“Sharing it with my daughter who is Mrs. Universe Canada… it’s incredible,” said Ground. “She’s going to be competing in Belarus in August. It’s exciting and we’re both in our mode of looking for our gowns. And we understand the struggles of getting our speeches together and keeping motivated.”

Ground recently had the joy of visiting her youngest daughter, Amelia, 9, at school. Amelia specifically requested her mother be allowed to come in and “show off her crown,” said Ground.

Ground still finds time to work with another charity of her choice, the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation. She became involved with the foundation after she gave birth to a baby girl in 2004 with a disease called Trisome 18. The baby died six days later.

“It’s the ‘Resilience factor,’” said Ground of the official hashtag she chose to describe her personal struggles and her journey to becoming Mrs. North America Globe Classic. “It’s about overcoming obstacles and just finding that inspiration within yourself to make your life better. For me, it was about not letting your spirit be broken.”

Photo Caption: Lisa Ground: the first First Nations woman to hold the title of Mrs. North America Globe Classic.