Valerie Creighton is president and CEO of the Canadian Television Fund

1. I love accordion music. I grew up listening to my grandfather play at house parties in the wilds of the Ossa district in Saskatchewan. We got to sleep on the piles of coats while they danced until the morning light. He brought his button accordion with him from Germany, there are no keys just buttons. I still have it. After he died I started playing it. It was hard to find someone who knew the instrument and then we had to create the scale together. My repertoire consists of three songs – so far.

2. I own and operate The Red Horse Ranch, three miles north of Stoughton, SK on 640 acres of the most stunning land. It looks onto the Moose Mountain Hills. There is a medicine wheel in those hills that is on the same axis as the one in New Mexico. It crosses the land and everyone who visits is affected by it. We have a herd of 50 quarter horses and paints, 15 babies this spring. I am a life member of the American Paint Horse Association and am exploring training in equine Reiki, massage, chiropractic and acupuncture.

3. I grew up in politics. My mother’s first husband was a founding member of the CCF (later NDP) party and worked with Tommy Douglas, grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland. My mother remembers Tommy, Irma and their daughter Shirley, Kiefer’s mother, being at the farm. Three degrees of separation. I was dragged to almost every NDP convention as a junior delegate since the age of nine. I have worked for the NDP, the Liberals and the Conservatives and consequently don’t have much of an appetite for politics.