Background
Mike Holmes learned his craft from his father, who started teaching him construction work when he was 6 years old. By the time he was 19, Holmes had started his first contracting company, with a crew of 13 employees. At 21, Holmes founded his own renovation company. He has run two companies during his 20-year contracting career. He has three children: Amanda, Sherry, and Mike Jr., who have all appeared and worked on his shows.
In 2006, Holmes started The Holmes Foundation after seeing a renovation that was so poorly done that he felt it was necessary for him to tear the house down and start again rather than try to repair the damage. The purpose of The Holmes Foundation is to encourage young people to enter the building trades as well as to assist those who have been impoverished by bad renovations. Mike is well known for his contribution to the international community through his work with SOS Children's Villages.
In 2006 Mike Holmes was recognized in Canada’s House of Commons for his promotion of skilled trades and for his advocacy for improved building standards. He was acknowledged as an "extraordinary craftsperson" and "an accomplished master builder with a social conscience".
Holmes is the author of two successful books: the national bestseller Home Renovation with Canada’s Most Trusted Contractor and Holmes Inspection — Everything you Need to Know Before You Buy or Sell Your Home, as well as a weekly newspaper column carried in the public.
He is the national spokesperson for Skills Canada and for World Skills 2009 and is often invited to speak by professional organizations, such as the Canadian Safety Association of Ontario, the Ontario Building Inspectors Association and the Canadian Association of Home Inspectors.
In May 2010, Reader's Digest's second annual survey named Mike Holmes as the second most widely trusted person in Canada behind David Suzuki.
Read more about this topic: Mike Holmes
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)