Weekend Warrior: Woods Spirit Co.’s new owner Celia Chiang spends her days scaling heights

“It was just so cold. So cold the whole time.”

That’s how Celia Chiang, the new owner of North Vancouver’s Woods Spirit Co., remembers her hike to Mt. Everest base camp in 2020. The trip was a bucket list item Chiang was ticking off with her sister, Stephanie Shieh, and from the moment they arrived in Lukla—“the most dangerous airport in the world,” according to Chiang—there was only one thought on her mind: keep moving forward.

“The hardest thing was enduring the cold… and you need to have that endurance because it’s a 12-day hike,” Chiang says. The sisters arrived to sunny skies before the weather turned. Then, a lack of food and running water started to become an issue.

“The guide we were with carried a small box. On day five or six, as we were getting lower on fruits and vegetables, he would bring out an orange, or a piece of fruit, and he’d cut it up for us. It was just something we would savour and enjoy so much.”

Locals use yaks and donkeys to haul essentials up the mountain. They also use yak dung to heat stoves along the way. “It tells you how resourceful the Nepalese people are,” Chiang says. “That was a big learning as well—the resilience of people and the lack of resources. It gave me so much gratitude as I was going through the actual climb.”

Growing up in Squamish, Chiang fell in love with the outdoors. She remembers hiking up the Stawamus Chief at six years old, and after her family moved to Chemainus, she took up rock climbing in university. What she didn’t love was being one of the only Chinese families in the community.

“There was that part of it, you know, the racism, but there was also the part where even my family, like my grandmother and my father, were not supportive in any of the things I wanted to achieve,” Chiang says. “I don’t know, I guess they didn’t think I would amount to much.”

She was shamed for being a woman; told that she was “useless” if she couldn’t carry on the family name. And she spent a lifetime trying to unlearn that.

“Even now, as a 49-year-old, being able to challenge those norms makes me feel that much more accomplished. I’m always up for a challenge because I’m going to prove you wrong.”

After graduating from UVic with a bachelor’s degree in applied sciences, Chiang ran two successful flower businesses: Blooming Buds in Coquitlam and Port Moody Flowers. She also co-founded two nonprofits: Shop Local Port Moody, which supports independent businesses, and Asian Impact Society, which spreads awareness about racial injustice.

By the time the opportunity to take over Woods arose in 2023, she had sold her flower businesses and graduated from SFU with an executive MBA.

“It’s serendipitous because when I [first] walked into that space… something happened. I just fell in love,” she remembers with a smile. “And then, all of a sudden, it’s for sale a few months later. I felt like I needed to leap at that chance.”

The company’s vacuum-distilling process keeps temperatures low and extracts “fresh and clean” flavours from botanicals like grapefruit, orange and warm wood, says Chiang. Everything about the business appealed to her: the space, the drinks, even the name. “I live in Anmore—[people call it] ‘village in the forest.’ And I very, very much resonate with that,” she notes.

Combine that love with her readiness to prove people wrong, and it’s no surprise that Everest was on Chiang’s bucket list. Hard as it was, she’s glad she did it, and she feels especially proud to have surpassed her own expectations on the trek.

“On that last day, we had already hiked to the base camp, but for some crazy reason, our guide was like, ‘Tomorrow, at five o’clock in the morning, we’re going to go to the highest peak and you’re going to overlook base camp.’”

“So we got up at five. We get outside, and I want to just run back inside my sleeping bag… it was so cold,” she recalls. “Halfway up, one of the young women that we had met was hobbling back down with her guide in tears.”

At the top, Chiang was elated—and exhausted. “I was so excited and happy, but I had no energy to show it. I couldn’t even breathe,” she says. “The joy was something that I couldn’t explain and the view was phenomenal. And the peak of Everest, it felt like it was right there.”

Now, when she thinks about the hike, Chiang realizes how much of it is applicable to business. To get through something difficult, “you need a lot of grit,” she says. “A lot of the time you need to just shut your mind off and keep chugging along. Even though it’s those tiny little shuffles, those tiny little baby steps, if you’re moving forward, you will get to where you want to be—especially when you know your end goal.”

Warrior Spotlight

The Woods Spirit Co. is a distillery in North Vancouver that crafts Italian-inspired spirits using a vacuum-distillation method that helps preserve natural flavours. Woods is known for its amari and gin, and since Celia Chiang stepped in as the new owner in 2023, the distillery has also released a new arancello blood orange liqueur.

“We’re [also] wanting to start a whisky program,” Chiang adds. “We’re putting liquid into barrels… and I think we’ve got the drive to be able to create a really awesome program.”