San­dra L Blood

For­mer banker, film pro­duc­er, de­sign­er, and gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­er Lyn­da McK­oy de­liv­ers a pow­er­ful mes­sage to women: “Look up­on chal­lenges not as road­blocks but step­ping stones to great­ness.”

To­day, McK­oy stands as a tes­ta­ment to the idea that the past does not de­fine the fu­ture. She ex­em­pli­fies how one can rise from ad­ver­si­ty, lever­age ex­pe­ri­ences, and ad­vo­cate for pro­duc­tive change—not just for one­self but for oth­ers as well.

Her re­mark­able jour­ney be­gan in her mid-pre­teen years, singing on ra­dio pro­grammes, as­sist­ing her moth­er at cake stalls, and en­dur­ing a chal­leng­ing pri­ma­ry school ex­pe­ri­ence. Even­tu­al­ly, she mi­grat­ed to Eng­land with her par­ents, Irene and Michael Sookra, sur­vived can­cer, be­came a di­rec­tor at RBC, and to­day thrives as a de­sign­er, gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­er, busi­ness own­er, film pro­duc­er, and, most re­cent­ly, a can­cer sur­vivor fac­ing a sec­ond di­ag­no­sis.

McK­oy at­tend­ed St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School, where she was first so­pra­no in the choir, earned the Duke of Ed­in­burgh’s Award, ex­celled in sci­ence, and trav­elled reg­u­lar­ly across Eu­rope. She stud­ied com­put­er pro­gram­ming and sys­tems de­sign, at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Caribbean, worked at the Min­istry of Fi­nance, and be­gan a bank­ing ca­reer at Sco­tia­Bank in Port-of-Spain.

In 1980, she mar­ried her “soul­mate,” Hud­son McK­oy—the son of a Jew­ish busi­ness­man in Port-of-Spain. McK­oy as­sist­ed in their busi­ness for a time and gave birth to their son, Gi­no, in Cas­cade.

A lover of cul­ture and the arts, McK­oy in­tro­duced Gi­no to mu­sic ear­ly, ex­pos­ing him to steel­pan be­fore they mi­grat­ed to Cana­da when he was two-and-a-half. She even drove across provinces col­lect­ing Star Wars ac­tion fig­ures and space­ships to nur­ture his in­ter­ests.

As a per­former, McK­oy sang as Co­co in the Cana­di­an pop, rock, so­ca, and reg­gae band Co­co and The Nuts—with “The Nuts” as the cho­rus. They per­formed ex­ten­sive­ly across Cana­da, and even at age three, Gi­no en­joyed at­tend­ing their re­hearsals.

McK­oy al­so gave her son his first rock con­cert ex­pe­ri­ence at three-and-a-half in Hal­i­fax: “Tina Turn­er live—and Tina’s beau­ti­ful legs—re­main etched in his mind. Mu­sic and film have re­mained cen­tral to the McK­oy fam­i­ly ever since,” she said.

She en­dured grief af­ter her fa­ther’s un­ex­pect­ed pass­ing but found joy when she brought her moth­er to live with the fam­i­ly af­ter they pur­chased their first home in Bramp­ton. Her moth­er passed away in 2008.

In bank­ing, McK­oy went from ze­ro to hero.

De­clin­ing her first job as a com­put­er pro­gram­mer at Sco­tia­Bank Toron­to be­cause it was too far for her young son, she ac­cept­ed a part-time teller po­si­tion at RBC Bramp­ton. Over the years, she rose to be­come di­rec­tor of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment na­tion­wide.

Some of McK­oy’s suc­cess­es in­clude: be­ing the top sales per­former for 18 of her 23-year tenure, earn­ing the pres­ti­gious Leo Award, be­ing recog­nised as a top banker world­wide, hav­ing her sug­gest­ed MMR ini­tia­tives re­main ac­tive, and rank­ing among the bank’s top char­i­ty fundrais­ers.

In 2003, she led a high­ly suc­cess­ful project dur­ing the ear­ly stages of In­dus­try Spe­cial­iza­tion—Health­care Fi­nanc­ing and In­vest­ments—cov­er­ing all health­care pro­fes­sion­al spe­cial­ties, hos­pi­tals, and the bank’s Na­tion­al of­fice. Her work with the On­tario Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and On­tario Den­tal As­so­ci­a­tion helped po­si­tion RBC as the num­ber one bank among Cana­da’s top five banks.

McK­oy’s bank­ing ca­reer end­ed in 2009 when she moved with her fam­i­ly to Cal­i­for­nia to sup­port her son’s ca­reer and ex­pand their fam­i­ly busi­ness, Goldove En­ter­tain­ment (goldove.com).

As pres­i­dent/CEO of Goldove, McK­oy faced chal­lenges head-on. De­spite “15-plus years of hard­ship and strug­gle in Hol­ly­wood,” she learned mu­sic pro­duc­tion and worked with in­dus­try greats, in­clud­ing Greg Phillinganes, Skip Sailor, and Bob Lud­wig, and with Cana­di­an and US mu­sic stu­dios, in­clud­ing East West Stu­dio Hol­ly­wood.

Un­daunt­ed, she in­spired her son to ex­pand his port­fo­lio in­to screen­writ­ing and di­rect­ing. She ex­ec­u­tive-pro­duced his mu­sic port­fo­lio and co-fi­nanced a sci­ence fic­tion film he wrote and di­rect­ed, Lu­mi­na (Lu­mi­na.film), filmed in Mo­roc­co in 2020 dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“While the in­dus­try was col­laps­ing, Goldove was thriv­ing de­spite count­less, in­de­scrib­able dif­fi­cul­ties,” McK­oy said. “We man­aged to com­plete a stun­ning Hol­ly­wood film on our con­struct­ed, largest in­te­ri­or set in Mo­roc­co and Africa.”

McK­oy and her son spent six months in Trinidad meet­ing with gov­ern­ment min­is­ters to pro­pose projects aimed at build­ing, re­vamp­ing, and ex­pand­ing the lo­cal film and mu­sic in­dus­tries—projects de­signed to bring state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ties and sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to the coun­try.

Un­der her de­sign­er port­fo­lio, McK­oy’s beanie hats de­buted at Com­ic Con­ven­tion and were fea­tured in Forbes mag­a­zine. She is prepar­ing to of­fi­cial­ly launch items from her Ly­d­gio Fash­ion brand in De­cem­ber.

McK­oy at­trib­ut­es her re­silience to faith, courage, and prayer. She has be­come a voice for those bat­tling ad­ver­si­ty, ad­vo­cat­ing for can­cer re­search and aware­ness, and ed­u­cat­ing oth­ers about the pow­er of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the im­por­tance of seek­ing sup­port.

Re­cent­ly, af­ter many years can­cer-free, McK­oy re­ceived a pos­i­tive di­ag­no­sis and on No­vem­ber 20 un­der­went surgery at St Michael’s Hos­pi­tal in Toron­to.

Even amidst life’s tough­est chal­lenges, she em­braces her roles as a moth­er, wife, grand­moth­er to lit­tle Ziri, and film pro­duc­er.

“Bal­anc­ing these re­spon­si­bil­i­ties re­quires a strength few pos­sess,” she said. “I seam­less­ly blend my pas­sions, use sto­ry­telling to high­light vi­tal is­sues fac­ing women and fam­i­lies, and through my films, cap­ture nar­ra­tives not just of strug­gle but of tri­umph. Let my sto­ry in­spire us to face our own hur­dles with un­wa­ver­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion, lift each oth­er up, and cre­ate a lega­cy of progress in our pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al lives.”