Veteran seeks businesses to sponsor Veterans for annual dinner 

For the third year in a row, Cody Lindsay, the Wellness Soldier, is hosting a dinner for Veterans dealing with Operational Stress Injuries (OSI) and pain injuries. The idea is to create a relaxing night out with other Veterans experiencing the same issues.

“Being a cook in the military, I always treated food as morale, and I knew what better way to get Veterans together than over a delicious, and free, three-course meal,” said Lindsay. “Veterans are allowed to bring one spouse/battle buddy with them if they need support.”

The dinner seats 50 at the quaint Artisan Bistro in Victoria, BC, and Lindsay said last year’s dinner sold out. Through word of mouth of previous year’s dinner, Lindsay noted seats are already filling up quickly for the October 30 date.

“Which feels amazing. To meet new Veterans in such an intimate manner really gives us one on one time with each Veteran to say hi and learn from them,” added Lindsay.

Various companies sponsor a seat, allowing a Veteran to attend the dinner for free. At each spot, place cards are indicating which company purchased the particular spot, and the guest is asked to give a social media shout out or send a quick e-mail to thank the business. 

“The dinner is a three-course dinner with speakers between courses from the Veteran, cannabis, and health and wellness communities,” said Lindsay. “We also have an amazing raffle with tons of great prizes, and at the end of the night we give out bags with all sponsors information and some pretty neat swag.”

The dinner started as a way for Lindsay to bring the Veteran community together and let them know about Wellness Soldier and how they are trying to help Veterans.

“I was meeting a lot of Vets on social media and the internet when I first launched thewellnesssoldier.com, but I wanted a way to meet them face to face,” said Lindsay. “We have met so many amazing people from our dinners, which we still keep in contact with and further work together to help other Veterans.”

Wellness Soldier is a website Lindsay and his wife created to help other Canadian Veterans manage their OSI’s and pain injuries with food and drink recipes, small fitness routines, introduction to meditation videos, and medical cannabis.

“We have our own self-published ‘Cooking with Cannabis’ cookbook, and we also have multiple ‘Cooking with Cannabis’ videos on our YouTube Channel,” added Lindsay. “We work with many of Canada’s top LP’s with cannabis cooking recipes and recipe cards in which they add to all orders.”

The husband and wife duo also perform live cooking demonstrations at Canada’s largest cannabis expo and some intimate classes at some of Canada’s well-known cannabis clinics. Additionally, they volunteer their time with Spartan Wellness to help Veterans with cannabis prescriptions and other services, while also volunteering with other Veteran organizations aimed to help Veterans further.

“The Wellness Soldier was created as a need to help other Veterans. I suffer from OSI’s from tours outside the country, and I use food and drink, medical cannabis, small fitness routines, and meditation to help my symptoms,” said Lindsay.

While treating his symptoms, Lindsay also helped his mother who had 35 plus years in the military, even from serving multiple tours.

“When she went in for help, I noticed that she was only becoming worse from the high amount of prescription medications they were giving her,” he recalls. “Not being able to understand her or communicate with her while she was so heavily sedated or medicated, I decided to try to help her with the tools that I use.”

With Lindsay and his mother with having these issues, he thought there had to be other families in the same boat, in need of help and would benefit from the information Lindsay had to offer about using a more holistic approach when treating OSIs.

“From starting we have helped many, many Veterans with learning how to cook with cannabis, our informative videos, our educational cookbook, volunteering with other Veteran organizations,” he noted. “All the way to helping Vets learn what programs VAC offers and helping with VAC paperwork.”

To learn more about sponsorship or how you can register for the Veterans dinner visit the Wellness Soldier.