About
About Life-Coaches.ca
Who we are, why we built this, and the editorial standards that guide everything you read here.
Life-Coaches.ca was built to fill a gap that anyone who has seriously tried to navigate the coaching world in Canada has felt: the absence of a genuinely independent, editorially honest resource. Most coaching directories are glorified ad listings. Most “what is coaching” content is written by coaches with an interest in convincing you that coaching is for you. Most training program comparisons are shaped, directly or indirectly, by affiliate relationships or enrollment incentives. The people who most need clear, honest information are largely underserved by what currently exists.
This site exists to serve those people.
What this site is
Life-Coaches.ca is a directory of Canadian coaches, organized to help people find practitioners who are genuinely qualified and a real fit for what they’re working on. It is an editorial resource on coaching — what it is, how it works, who it’s for, and where its limits are. It is a guide to the coach training landscape in Canada, assessed honestly rather than enthusiastically. And it is a place that takes the reader’s intelligence and skepticism seriously, rather than assuming they need to be sold.
The editorial promise is simple: to be the resource that tells you what you actually need to know, including the parts the industry would prefer to leave unsaid.
A note on editorial independence
This site lists coaches and earns revenue from featured directory listings. That creates a potential conflict of interest, and we want to name it directly rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.
The editorial content on Life-Coaches.ca is not shaped by commercial relationships. Pieces that are critical of the industry — on the limitations of the credential system, on what coaching cannot do, on how to recognize an underprepared coach — are written and published regardless of whether they make some listed coaches or training programs uncomfortable.
We believe that editorial independence is not in tension with a sustainable business model — it is the foundation of one. Coaches list here because the site is credible. The site is credible because it refuses to be promotional. That is the relationship we intend to maintain.
A directory that only says good things about coaching is a brochure. A directory that tells the truth about the field — including its limitations — is a resource worth trusting.
The Founding Editor
Guy Reichard
I’m Guy Reichard — a coach, a writer, and the person responsible for everything on this site until the day it genuinely outgrows me.
I came to personal development work in 2002, not as a professional pursuit but as a personal necessity. Something in my own life needed examining, and I went looking for the tools to do that honestly. I found them — gradually, imperfectly, over years of sustained inner work that is still ongoing. That work eventually led me to coaching, to the study of emotional intelligence, trauma and nervous system science and the frameworks that help people understand why they do what they do even when they desperately want to do something different.
I completed my honours degree in psychology in 1997, and didn’t begin formal coach training until 2009. The gap between was filled completing an MBA, growing a business, and, to be fully transparent, struggling. Over the years since, I’ve accumulated more than 5,000 hours of paid and pro bono coaching — with leaders, executives, professionals, and individuals navigating the full range of what a human life can bring. I’m a certified HeartMath coach and a trained and certified meditation teacher. I’ve completed significant work in trauma-informed frameworks, parts-based approaches, and nervous system science — not because there were credentials at the end of those paths, but because the work required it.
On credentials — an honest account
I held a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential with the ICF for years. It lapsed — not by accident but by choice. Renewing it stopped feeling like the most important investment I could make in my practice. I am currently in the application process for the Master Certified Coach (MCC) designation, which reflects the depth of hours, training and practice I’ve accumulated. I believe in standards, rigorous training and mentorship. Until the ICF makes more extensive education, and trauma-aware, trauma-responsive practice a genuine requirement — not an elective enrichment — I am more interested in building toward that future than in demonstrating compliance with the current floor.
I’ve written two books and created several frameworks and tools that are part of the HeartRich body of work — including How to Talk Amongst Your Selves, the Who’s On Your Crew? Self Leadership Assessment, a trauma-responsive tool for understanding the protective parts that shape our behavior, and The Heart of Values, a guide to clarifying and living from what genuinely matters. That work lives at HeartRich.ca and represents the more personal, practitioner-focused side of what I do.
Life-Coaches.ca is a different project — more public, more institutional, explicitly designed to serve the Canadian coaching community broadly rather than reflecting my particular approach or practice.
I mention my background not to establish authority, but because you deserve to know whose editorial judgments are shaping what you read here. When this site says the ACC floor is too low, or that trauma-responsive coaching should be a training standard, or that a coach who hasn’t done their own inner work is operating with a significant blind spot — those aren’t anonymous editorial positions. They’re views I hold based on more than fifteen years of practice, thousands of hours in the room, and a sustained engagement with the research and frameworks that inform good coaching. You can agree or disagree. But you should know where they come from.
This site’s voice — and its future
Life-Coaches.ca is currently driven by my editorial voice. That will change over time, and intentionally so.
This site is designed to become a genuine community resource — not a platform for any one practitioner’s perspective, but a place where serious coaches, trainers, researchers, and practitioners from across the Canadian coaching community can contribute their experience and expertise. Guest contributors will write under their own names, with their own credentials and perspectives named clearly. Editorial standards — accuracy, honesty, the refusal to be promotional — will apply regardless of who is writing.
If you are a coach, a trainer, or an adjacent professional with something honest and useful to say about this field, and you’re interested in contributing, I’d welcome the conversation.
Standards
Our editorial standards
Every piece of content on this site is held to the following standards.
Where to go next
Training is the foundation — but building a practice is the next challenge, and it’s a different one. The Coaching Business section covers what comes after certification: income reality, positioning, client acquisition, and what the coaches who build sustainable practices do differently.
The Industry section provides the broader professional context — regulation, research, and what the field looks like from the outside — which is useful grounding for anyone entering it seriously.