Our Story
HOW IT ALL STARTED . . .
Our story starts more than fifteen years ago. We met while attending University, became close friends, and fell deeply in love. We quickly realized that it was that kind of soul mate-type connection we had only read about in books or watched in movies. Unfortunately, that did little to prepare us for the reality of how much work a long term committed relationship would take. Nevertheless, our connection to one another continued to grow and enabled us to persevere through some of our toughest and trying times together. After finishing school, we headed into the working world and bought our first property in the city of Toronto. Within a few years, we moved up the ladder in our jobs, traded in our car, and upgraded our condo.
We were perfectly wrapped up in the materialistic and monopolized version of success. Yet, we both felt empty.
In all that we attained, we didn’t feel like we were living a meaningful existence.
By 2012, we realized that we had put travel pretty low on our priority list, so we began investing in experiences. We vacationed in the Caribbean, flew to Europe, and road tripped in North America when our work schedule would allow. That's when all of our "plans" started to crumble. It was then that we were introduced to an alternative. We started researching couples who had "traded it all in" for a nomadic lifestyle. With every story and every success, a new way of living inspired us to make a change.
Then came 2014. I (Martina) walked into the office of my then-employer, hoping (and expecting) that it would time for the career advancement I had been training for the past few months. I walked out with two weeks notice instead. It was the dreaded “company restructuring” that made my current and hopeful new position no longer essential. I was non-essential after all. After a general freak out and good cry, I composed myself and slowly started to realize that this was the opportunity we had been waiting for. This was it. This was our chance to walk the walk. After some long and hard discussions, we agreed. We would focus on planning our life changing move from home owners in Canada to nomad backpackers. 2015 came really quickly. With the real-estate market flourishing in Toronto, we decided to sell our home, sell or store most of our belongings, and embark on a trip to see if we could find what had been missing.
On August 2015, we left for Southeast Asia and spent the next couple of years travelling through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. For the most part, we did it without the guide books and tours. We researched everything on our own or figured it out as we went along. It was the most overwhelming, enriching, and meaningful experience of our lives.
We ended up finding ourselves. Who and what we've always been.
Since then, we've returned to Canada for a few visits with family and friends, returned to our favourite spots in Southeast Asia, as well as dedicated time for discovering European destinations. We’ve road tripped and explored through France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Montenegro. We started to have more serious conversations about our future and talked about how our creative visions could be a success if we just combined our skillsets with our passions. This is how Maple Searup came to be. The name is our creative spin on a Canadian staple, Maple Syrup.
MAPLE
We love Canada. It will always be home and where we grew up.
Canada represents the values we hold, and it's where our story first started.
SEA
… South East Asia: where we rediscovered ourselves and our passions.
…the Sea: where we feel completely nourished and our best selves.
Together, we have built this idea from bullet points on a notepad to what we have today. Our goal has always remained the same. To seek; to explore; to learn; and to be able to capture even a sliver of this world's diverse beauty through our lens.
