Our Team
47 FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES · 14 TRUCKS · 4 DEPARTMENTS
Here are the three people who make the decisions — and why they make them the way they do. Below them, a 44-person operation organized into Operations, Newcomer & Settling Services, Corporate Relocation, and Storage & Warehousing. Every person on this page is a full-time Canadian Life employee. We don't use temp agencies, day-labor apps, or subcontracted crews — the people who show up at your door trained together, move together, and answer to the same standards.
[ The Leadership Team Behind 2,800+ Moves Per Year ]
Three leaders, three different paths into the moving industry — united by the same premise: serve the people most movers ignore, and always tell them the real price.
![[ The Leadership Team Behind 2,800+ Moves Per Year ]](/content-7.jpg)
Mariana Vasquez-Olsen
Founder & CEO ExecutiveB.Com Logistics Management, McMaster University (2007). 4 years at Day & Ross Freight. CAM Certified Mover designation.
Mariana grew up riding in the passenger seat of her father Eduardo's cargo van during Hamilton summers, watching him help Portuguese immigrant families move apartments for next to nothing. She professionalized that instinct — first by studying logistics at McMaster, then by spending four years at Day & Ross watching large carriers treat residential moves as an afterthought. In 2013, she took her father's client book, his 26-foot truck, and three of his crew members, and built Canadian Life from a premise that hasn't changed: serve the people most movers ignore, and tell them the real price before you load a single box.
She runs a 6 AM call every morning with crew leads and still personally handles intake for moves over $15,000. The company now operates 14 trucks, employs 47 people, and completes 2,800+ moves per year — all on binding quotes, every single time. Mariana is the person who made the decision in 2013 that Canadian Life would never issue a non-binding estimate — a policy that has held for every one of the company's 15,000+ completed moves. When a competitor undercuts a quote by 30%, she doesn't match it; she calls the client and explains exactly where the hidden charges will appear on moving day. Most of them book with Canadian Life anyway.
Lives in Leslieville with husband Per and two daughters. Eduardo — 72, officially retired — still shows up on Tuesdays with pastéis de nata and opinions about how Truck 3 was loaded.
Diego Vasquez
Operations Director OperationsAZ licensed. 8 years as long-haul truck driver. Redesigned long-distance protocols in 2019 — 63% reduction in transit damage claims.
Diego is Mariana's older brother, and he drove long-haul for eight years before she convinced him to join Canadian Life in 2015. He oversees 14 trucks, all route planning, crew scheduling, and the logistics that determine whether a load arrives on time and undamaged. His operational discipline is the reason the company maintains a 98.3% on-time delivery rate across all long distance moving Canada routes — Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, and select Manitoba and Alberta destinations.
In 2019, he redesigned the company's long-distance moving protocols from scratch — standardizing load-securement techniques, adding mandatory truck-scale weigh-ins, and requiring photo documentation at origin and destination. Transit damage claims dropped by 63% in the first year, and the 0.4% claim rate has held since. Diego checks weather forecasts along every long-distance route the night before departure and has rerouted trucks around ice storms, highway closures, and one memorable moose sighting near Sudbury. (The moose was fine. The schedule was adjusted by 40 minutes.) He personally reviews every route plan for moves exceeding 500 km, and every truck in the fleet carries a laminated copy of his 22-point load-securement checklist — a document the crew leads call "The Diego" without irony.
Coaches peewee hockey in Scarborough on weekends. Joined Canadian Life in 2015 after Mariana spent two years convincing him to leave long-haul.
Amara Okonkwo
Head of Newcomer & Settling Services Newcomer & Settling ServicesM.A. Migration Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University (2016). 3 years as settlement counselor at COSTI Immigrant Services. Speaks English, French, Igbo, conversational Yoruba.
Amara relocated from Lagos to Toronto in 2012 and spent her first two weeks sleeping on an air mattress in a basement apartment in Scarborough, waiting for a shipping container that was stuck in customs in Montreal. Nobody explained how Canadian utilities work, how to get tenant insurance, or where to find a grocery store that carried the ingredients she needed. The isolation of those first weeks — no furniture, no local contacts, no orientation — shaped everything she's built since.
She used that experience — first as a settlement counselor at COSTI, then at Canadian Life starting in 2018 — to design a newcomer relocation assistance program that answers every question she wished someone had answered for her. The program now includes Landing Kits (loaner mattresses, cookware, linens, and a high chair — delivered within 24 hours of arrival), 8-language support covering English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Igbo, Mandarin, and Hindi, neighborhood orientation guides customized to the client's landing city, and 90-day phone follow-up. Over 400 families have used it since 2018. Amara also authored the Newcomer's First 90 Days in Canada guide — a free 34-page PDF available in three languages that covers everything from SIN applications to buying a winter coat before November.
Personally relocated from Lagos to Toronto in 2012. Volunteers with COSTI quarterly. Her newcomer orientation curriculum is now co-used by COSTI in their own settlement programming.
[ Four Departments, One Standard ]
Beyond leadership, Canadian Life's 47-person team is organized into four specialized departments. Every employee is full-time, every crew member completes Tomás Pereira's 2-week onboarding program, and every department operates under the same binding-quote, no-surprise-charges framework that has defined this moving company since 2013.
Operations
Led by Diego Vasquez · 28 crew members, 3 crew leads
The largest department — 28 crew members, 3 crew leads, and fleet management for 14 trucks. Every route, every load, every delivery window. Operations handles the physical execution of all residential and long-distance moves, including furniture disassembly, appliance disconnection, floor protection, and the certified weigh-ins that make binding quotes possible. Crews of 2–4 movers are assigned based on home size and move complexity, with every long-distance route reviewed the night before departure for weather, road closures, and weigh station schedules.
Crew Highlight: Tomás Pereira, Senior Crew Lead & Training Coordinator. Moving furniture professionally since 1994 — one of Eduardo's original three crew members from the Hamilton garage days. Tomás runs a 2-week onboarding program for every new hire covering furniture wrapping techniques, stairwell navigation, appliance disconnection, customer communication protocols, and Diego's 22-point load-securement checklist. He has personally moved over 300 pianos and can disassemble an IKEA PAX wardrobe in under four minutes without looking at the instructions. When clients request "the crew that moved my neighbour," they're usually asking for Tomás.
Newcomer & Settling Services
Led by Amara Okonkwo · 4 settlement specialists + multilingual support staff
The department that makes Canadian Life different from every other moving company in the country. Four settlement specialists and multilingual support staff provide end-to-end relocation assistance for families arriving in Canada — from customs coordination at the Port of Montreal, Halifax, or Vancouver, to Landing Kit delivery within 24 hours, to neighborhood orientation guides covering groceries, transit, schools, healthcare, and banking in 8 languages. The team also handles 90-day phone follow-up, checking in weekly for the first month and biweekly after that. Every guide and checklist is based on Amara's own experience arriving in Canada with no local support.
Program Impact: The Afolabi family — five members arriving from Lagos on a Provincial Nominee visa — had their container delivered in 18 days vs. the 30–45 day average for unassisted newcomers. Landing Kit was deployed within 24 hours of arrival. Children enrolled in school within one week using Canadian Life's registration guide. The family has since referred four other families to the program.
Corporate Relocation
Led by Jordan Flett · 3 project coordinators
Three project coordinators managing multi-employee moves with consolidated invoicing, coordinated scheduling, and post-move reporting. The department was launched in 2020 specifically to serve startups and mid-size companies — the ones enterprise relocation management companies reject for not meeting 50-move annual minimums. Jordan's team handles everything from initial video surveys to final delivery confirmations, with a single point-of-contact model that means your HR team sends one email and we handle the rest. Temporary storage is available for employees between homes at no holding fee for the first 30 days on group contracts.
Jordan's Background: B.B.A. from Wilfrid Laurier University (2014). 5 years in office management at Shopify's Ottawa campus before joining Canadian Life in 2020. Known internally for building detailed project timelines in spreadsheets that track every box from origin to destination — the same Corporate Relocation Planning Template now available as a free download in our Resource Hub. Competitive trail runner — finished the Bruce Trail end-to-end twice. Manages the Athena Robotics account (14 employees, $2,743 per move, 34% under the next lowest bid) and every other corporate relocation contract personally.
Storage & Warehousing
Led by Priya Sharma · 3 warehouse staff
Three warehouse staff maintaining the climate-controlled storage facility at 500 St. Clair Avenue East — temperature held at 10°C–22°C year-round with active humidity control — and managing barcode-tracked inventory for short-term and long-term storage clients. Every item is cataloged with barcode, photograph, and condition notes on intake. Clients receive an online inventory and can request retrieval of any specific item within 48 hours. Storage is billed monthly per vault (approximately 150 cubic feet), with no long-term contract required. The facility also handles warehouse receiving for the furniture delivery program — inspecting manufacturer shipments for damage before they reach the client, protecting warranty claims before a single piece leaves the loading dock.
Priya's Achievement: Diploma in Supply Chain Management, Humber College (2013). Implemented the barcode-based inventory tracking system in 2017 that reduced retrieval errors to under 0.4% — down from a 3.2% error rate under the previous manual-logging system. The system now tracks over 1,200 active vault items across all storage clients. Priya also coordinates with Diego's operations team on storage-in-transit logistics for long-distance moves where clients haven't secured housing at the destination. Volunteers at the Mississauga Food Bank monthly, where Canadian Life sponsors the annual holiday food drive with free logistics support.
[ How Every Team Member Gets Ready ]
Every new hire at Canadian Life — whether they're a mover, a warehouse associate, or a settlement specialist — goes through a structured onboarding process before they touch a client's belongings or handle a client's case. For operations crew members, that means Tomás Pereira's 2-week program: five days of classroom and warehouse training covering furniture wrapping, stairwell navigation techniques, appliance disconnection protocols, and customer communication standards, followed by five days of supervised ride-alongs on active moves with an experienced crew lead. Only after passing a practical evaluation does a new crew member work unsupervised.
For newcomer specialists, Amara runs a separate onboarding focused on settlement services knowledge — customs processes, port-to-door logistics, tenant insurance requirements by province, and cultural sensitivity training. Corporate relocation coordinators shadow Jordan on at least two full multi-employee projects before managing their own accounts.
The result: a 47-person team where everyone knows their role, everyone follows the same protocols, and every client gets the same standard of care — whether it's a 1-bedroom local move or a 14-employee corporate relocation across the province.
[ What Clients Say About This Team ]
We moved from Calgary to Toronto with two kids under five and a dog. I was terrified. The Canadian Life crew showed up in Scarborough with floor runners already unrolled before they brought a single box inside. They knew which boxes were the kids' room — they'd labeled everything in Calgary with colored tape by room. My son's crib was assembled before I finished walking the dog around the block.Rachel MoreauMarketing Director, Pelican Health · Moved July 2023
I run a 28-person fintech company and we needed to move six engineers from Waterloo to Toronto on a compressed timeline. Jordan Flett handled everything. One phone call per week to me, a group chat for the engineers with live scheduling updates, and consolidated invoicing that my accountant actually praised — which has literally never happened before. The cost came in 30% under what the large relocation services quoted.David OseiCOO, Paystack North · Corporate relocation, February 2024
[ Learn More About How We Work ]
Our Story
From Eduardo's cargo van in Hamilton to 14 trucks and 47 employees. The full founding story, timeline, core values, and community involvement.
Read the About page →Case Studies
Specific moves with specific numbers — the Athena Robotics relocation, the Afolabi family newcomer arrival, and the Chen & Park law firm consolidation.
See case studies →Our Services
Full specs on residential moving, long-distance routes, corporate relocation, newcomer assistance, packing, storage, and furniture delivery.
See all services →[ Want to Work With This Team? ]
Every move starts with a 15-minute video survey and a binding quote. The price we quote is the price you pay — that's been the rule since Mariana signed the incorporation papers in 2013. Whether you need a local crew of two or a six-week corporate relocation for 14 employees, the same team runs your project from first call to final walkthrough.
Get Your Binding Quote →Or call directly: (519) 988-6353. Same-day callbacks, always.