From Addiction to the Café Counter: Mina's Path Toward Psychology

On the day of filming, Mina starts at 8:00 a.m. instead of her usual 10:00. She works four days a week, 28 hours in total. She describes her opening routine: taking out the cash, setting up the cash station and the tablet, and putting out the signs. She says she knows what to do on her own and that this part of the job is easy.

Talking with customers is harder. Mina says she is still struggling with it and gets "really shy." She considers herself outgoing, but when she notices she has opened up "way too early," she tends to shut down and become more reserved. On camera she takes orders, asking about decaf and milk options such as soy or almond, and later serves a customer an "Indian taco" and water.

During a quiet moment, Mina checks what needs restocking and decides to make more plain bannock. She recites the café's recipe as she works: four cups of flour, five teaspoons of baking powder, one teaspoon of salt, liquid smoke, half a cup of vegetable oil, and two cups of water. She points out that it contains no egg or milk.

She says many English customers comment that "the scone" is too dry or should come with jam or butter. Mina says she understands, but she explains that this is bannock, not a scone, and can be eaten with many different things. She learned to make bannock from her grandmother, who makes it differently from the café: she uses lard instead of canola oil. Mina laughs that her grandmother never trusted her around hot surfaces because she always burned herself.

Mina says it is an honor to work with people who care about others. She singles out her manager, whose compassion and empathy toward other people she finds inspiring and wants to emulate.

Mina and her manager sit down to eat outside together. The manager mentions that there was a stabbing in the park the day before. Mina asks whether both people involved were Indigenous, and the manager confirms it. One of the injured, the manager says, is an Inuk woman they know, someone from the park who visits from time to time. Mina's response is brief: "Scary." The exchange shows that the community the café serves includes people living with the kind of precarity Mina herself left behind.

The two recall how Mina first came into contact with the manager's organization through a program, which the transcript renders as "the face free program." Mina says she was very shy in her first year, when she attended almost every week. She then went back to school, and after leaving school she returned.

The manager says she remembered Mina from the first time and could see a difference when Mina came back. She explains that this change is why she hired Mina at the café. Mina communicates well, the manager says: when she cannot come in, she says so right away, and she plans ahead.

After nine months on the job, Mina says she still has a lot to learn and hopes to keep learning before deciding to continue her education. Her plan is to keep working in a café while going to school.

What she will study is not settled. She says she wanted to do psychology, but her choice keeps changing because she sees so many opportunities: nurse, psychologist, social worker, veterinarian. "Right now it's psychologist," she says. The film ends on her daily self-talk rather than a firm decision. She asks herself why she is scared and why she doesn't just do it, and every day she tells herself to "just go for it."