FINDING THE FIT

Mortgage Broker Ethel Lariviere customizes financing solutions to fit every client, while building solid relationships along the way.

By Lisa Gordon

For Ethel Lariviere, it’s all about relationships. As a residential and commercial mortgage broker with Dominion Lending Centres – A Better Way, she enjoys helping people buy a home or find their place of business.

With a finance career going back 21 years, Lariviere has cemented solid relationships in the B.C. mortgage industry, from her first days as a commercial account trainee at HSBC to her present home office in Mission, B.C., where she works with customers across the country.

“To me, it’s basically the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping someone,” she told Canadian Mortgage Broker. “All my clients are important to me; it doesn’t matter the amount of the mortgage. I try to find the best product and solution that fits their needs.”

While business relationships are the key to her professional success, Lariviere puts a premium on family ties. In February 2010, while living in Red Deer, Alta., her husband, Randy, became extremely ill and required a liver transplant. Their world turned upside down when they discovered he had unknowingly contracted Hepatitis C through a previous tainted blood transfusion.

“My husband was really sick,” said Lariviere. “We were in and out of the hospital. He required blood transfusions and endoscopies all the time to band what are called varices (or enlarged veins) to stop bleeding in his esophagus.”

Randy struggled with poor health for four years, waiting unsuccessfully for a compatible liver donor. Finally, Lariviere volunteered to donate 70 per cent of her own liver, along with one bile duct, to her husband. The transplant, performed on July 7, 2014, was a success.

It’s just one example of how fiercely loyal Lariviere is to her family. She’s a proud and active band member of Alberta’s Bigstone Cree First Nation. Her mother, Rita Alook, was forcibly removed from her home when she was about six years old and sent to live at St. John’s Indian Residential School in Wabasca, Alta.

Ether Lariviere's mother, Rita Alook, outside the St. John's Indian Residential School in Wabasca, Alberta.

“It was an Anglican school that opened in 1894,” explained Lariviere. “They took the children by force. They cut off their hair, threw powder on them to de-louse them, took their clothing and made them wear red uniforms. They were not allowed to speak Cree, or they would be punished. They were only allowed to speak English, even though my mother’s parents only spoke Cree and that was all she knew when they first took her.”

For Alook, it was doubly hard because her parents lived beside the school grounds. She could literally look out the window at her home, wishing to be back there.

Her father, Lariviere’s grandfather, grew food for the school. Looking back, Lariviere said her mother supposes St. John’s students didn’t go as hungry as children at other schools, thanks to her father’s produce.

Lariviere is working with her mother to document some of her residential school stories, along with other traditions passed down orally from her grandmother. She said it is important to record these memories before they are lost to future generations.

“My mother told me that they went house to house, taking the children in horse-drawn carts to the school. My grandmother said that when they took the children the house was so quiet, and it was like someone had died. This is one reason why Orange Shirt Day is in September. It’s the month they took the children – the crying month.”

Lariviere’s grandparents ultimately took a stand and refused to send their children back to the school, although her grandfather kept growing food to feed the students.

“My mom can remember her dad saying, ‘Come on, we have to go to the garden. We need to go pick food and take it to the school.’”

Enrollment at St. John’s Indian Residential School dwindled, and it was closed in 1966. The facility was operated as a community centre until it was torn down in 1997.

GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY

Because Lariviere is so passionate about family, she is a vocal advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women.

“On October 4, we wear red to honour missing and murdered women,” she said. “In 2019, an inquiry was done. We do these inquiries and we know of the Highway of Tears. But what real action has been done and taken to date?”

Lariviere has family members that are missing: her cousin Rose Mary Alook, whose disappearance from Vancouver’s Balmoral Hotel in 1988 is still unsolved; Audrey R. Beaver, missing since August 2020 from Edmonton; and Elaine Frieda Alook, who was last seen in May 2004 outside of Fort McMurray, Alta. Lariviere’s male cousin, Terence Alook, also disappeared from Wabasca, Alta., in 2016.

Relationships are the foundation of Lariviere’s personal and professional creed, so it’s not surprising that she supports a number of community organizations. She is a Mission Regional Chamber of Commerce member and former Government Affairs and Budget Committee Member, as well as a director on the board. She has sponsored the Mission Candlelight Parade and the Business Excellence Awards for the past two years, and is a voting member of the Canadian Mortgage Brokers Association of B.C. and the Bigstone Cree Nation. In September 2020, she was appointed vice-chair of the Economic Development Select Committee and currently sits on the board of directors for the Mission Friendship Society Centre.

Lariviere has been a member of CMBA-BC since 2017, when she became a mortgage agent. Previously, she worked for HSBC and BMO as a commercial account manager and then a mortgage specialist before moving to Dominion Lending Centres – A Better Way. Currently, all her work is done virtually from her home office. Clients apply, provide documentation and sign mortgage paperwork online using secured apps. Through the DLC Access team, she can be compliant to facilitate deals nationwide.

Today, Lariviere writes both residential and commercial deals, but sees more of the former.

“I find that most people in this day and age still don’t think of calling a broker,” she commented. “The biggest question I get asked is what do they have to pay me? I think the industry needs to educate consumers in the industry, to do a better job. People still don’t really know what our place is in the industry.”

When she’s not working or serving a community group, Lariviere is a marathon runner with six medals to her credit. Previously she enjoyed being a competitive dragon boat racer and playing women’s hockey.

Again, she comes back to the importance of relationships, adding that her true desire to help her clients is what sets her apart.

“It’s about the relationships I build. It’s not about the money,” she concluded. “Do I need to make a living? Absolutely. But to be truly successful in this industry, I have learned it has to be about the client. When you make it about the client, then you both win.”