Possessing a quick wit and incredible energy, Dini Petty is a brilliant conversationalist with a grace and sense of fun that is hard to resist. Known to Canadian viewers for a decade simply as 'Dini', Petty set precedents as the award-winning anchor of Toronto's City-TV and her highly successful national daily talk show on CTV, " The Dini Petty Show", set Canadian broadcast records for size of its viewing audience. She won many awards for her documentary work at City TV as writer and host on Citypulse News at 6:00, where she co-anchored and reported.
In 1980 Petty created television history when the camera followed her thorough the pregnancy and birth of her son Nicholas. This award-winning documentary helped to demystify and break down the stigma of pregnancy and childbirth.
Going the distance was nothing new for Petty who has five thousand hours as pilot-in-command of a "pink" Hughes 300 helicopter – making her the first woman in aviation history to pilot a helicopter while simultaneously reporting on traffic.
In addition to her broadcasting career, Petty is also an author and poet. Her Children's Book – an epic poem entitled The Queen, The Bear and The Bumblebee became an instant best seller and to date has been translated into three languages. There is also a musical version created by The Children's Group. She is the recipient of Six Can Pro Awards for television excellence for either her talk show or documentary work and has been featured in Dare to Dream, a Canadian book of inspirational women.
Petty's contribution to the community, as well as Canada, is evident in her support of many Canadian charities. She became the spokesperson for an International Aid Organization encouraging Canadians to sponsor children in third world countries. She hosted a documentary that was centered around her trip to Romania to meet her sponsored child. The documentary-infomercial quickly became the single most successful fundraiser Christian Children's Fund has ever done. Petty is now spokesperson for Amnesty International, and the Canadian infomercial she hosted to raise funds and increase membership has become one of their most successful ever in Canada and the USA.
There are few women whose life journey takes you where Dini Petty has been. The highly accomplished Canadian Icon draws audiences into her personal universe making them laugh, cry and occasionally gasp with her honest, true from life stories.
- The Success of Failure
For every mountain climber that reaches the top there are thousands who never make it, many who died, and millions of us who can't figure out why any one would even bother? For every Gold Medal Athlete, there are millions who had the dream and never made it to the podium, the NHL, the Oscars or the top of anything. Yet these are the dreams we live on, sell to our children and judge our lives by. Most of us never talk about, or teach the lessons of failure, nor did we learn them. In fact , we never mention the word, were too busy driving ourselves and our children on to achievement, excellence and winning.
If failure is by definition: "The condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends," perhaps failure is just nature's way of telling you, you're on the wrong path, your desired end or ends are not what you think they are. Because failure is an intrinsic part of life, maybe its necessary, and maybe we learn more from it than winning, getting the award, making a one minute speech and getting off the stage.
If we judge our lives only by the number of home runs we hit, few of us will ever win. In baseball, if you are hitting 500, which nobody is, you're automatically in the hall of fame and this means that every other time your at bat you strike out. In our personal lives, if we strike out at every other thing we try, we definitely don't put ourselves in a hall of fame. We believe we are losers. Get discouraged, depressed and often give up. We have grown up in a society that fosters winning, excellence and millionaires. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, except that we seem to miss completely, the reality of life. We all fail, at many things, get our hearts broken, our dreams shattered, lied to, cheated, fired and dumped on. It's just the way life works. If you understand this, and learn how to get up when you're face down in the mud, yet again, you've learned success through failure.
Experience is the name you give your mistakes and with a little luck, (opportunity meeting preparation), the next time the golden ring goes by, you won't be lying there crying and miss it, you'll be standing there cleaning off the mud, waiting for it.
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A Self-Directed Journey
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If I Knew Then What I Know Now
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Looking Back: Moving Forward
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Celebrity Apperances
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