Get to know Ashley Campbell, Jack Campbell’s wife, in our sixth Better Halves spotlight of the season. Ashley and Jack met during their time in Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic and got married last year. She shares some stories about her trips around the world, the joys and difficulties of Jack being the starting goaltender for the Maple Leafs, what it looks like for family members when their significant other is traded or sent to the minors, a run-in with raccoons in Toronto, and much more.

Give us your backstory. Where you’re from, childhood, hobbies, etc.

I’m from a city called Surrey in British Columbia, Canada. I went to school at Fraiser Heights Secondary School, which is a small little town near Surrey about an hour from Vancouver. I was pretty nerdy. I think I took school probably a little too seriously, which I’m sure my parents loved. I was always part of the school counsel or was the school president and took school very seriously. I also played a lot of different sports. I skied, played tennis, field hockey, cross country and was kind of all over the place. So, I would say that sports and school were very prevalent in my childhood. I come from a big family with five siblings. Everyone played a different sport as well and we are all around a year apart. It was really fun to have your siblings around the same age and to have those friends. We would always go support each other at sporting events and we all really enjoyed those times. 

How did you and Jack meet and what do you remember most about your time together early on? 

We met through Instagram. It was in the middle of COVID, and I was just starting to learn how to golf. I was just learning and posted a photo of my cousin and I golfing. Then, some random golfing account reposted the photo and Jack happened to follow that account and that is how he saw me. Then he started texting me asking me if I could help him with his short game and stuff. I was over there trying my best to keep the banter going. I think he thought he was trying to pick up some golf pro, but I had just learned how to golf. He still chirps me to this day about that one. 

It sounds super corny but the second we met we were instantly in love; it was crazy. I still had my own place in Toronto, but we moved in with one another a week later and said ‘I love you’ within like two weeks. Then within a month of knowing each other he asked me ‘what kind of engagement ring do you want?’. It was one of those weird things where people say, ‘when you know, you know’, and that was very much so the case. We became best friends and are still Velcroed to each other. 

You went to the University of Western Ontario, playing field hockey while majoring in medical sciences and biology. Can you talk about your time during college? Have you used your degrees in any capacity? 

Those were some of the best days of my life. I love that school so much and I am so glad I chose to go there. Playing field hockey and having two majors was definitely a handful and I was also enjoying my time in college. Practices were at like five in the morning and I remember some days we would be out until like two and then try to make it to practice three hours later. It was definitely crazy, and I could not do that type of stuff now. It was super fun, and I learned so much there. Going to Western is comparable to going to the University of Michigan. It has the same sort of vibe. Western is as close to an American-type school you can get in Canada. A lot of schools in Canada don’t have sororities and fraternities but Western does. Western is also big into football with tons of fans. It’s a little smaller-scale school compared to the States but very similar situation. 

In terms of using my degree, I used to work in medical sales. So, I would do software sales for a medical software company. It was really hard during COVID to do my job because I was selling to a lot of the southern states. I would have customers where their whole communities were losing half of their residents to COVID. That was definitely a daunting time, and I unfortunately ended up leaving my job when we moved to Edmonton to pursue hockey. Since then, we have kind of been all over the place. I can’t work in the States quite yet, so I am hoping to return to the workforce soon. Having a degree in medical sciences, I feel like I use my degree every day. Jack would say something, and I will say ‘oh, you have this’. I’m not a doctor but I do some self-diagnosing for sure. 

What do you like to do in your free time?

We have three dogs, so I would say the majority of my free time is taking care of them and walking them, since we have three under three years old. We have two dogs and then one that we are fostering right now from a shelter in Grand Rapids called Saving Souls and she is under a year old. She has definitely been a handful, and I feel like I have been a puppy trainer for the past three years of my life. Aside from dogs, I usually like to volunteer, cook, bake, workout, and play sports in the summer. Luckily, we both love to travel as well. Another thing is that I like to paint shoes on the side as a fun little thing I do for the wives and anyone who wants to buy a pair. 

Looks like you love to travel. What has been your favorite spot to visit? Any unique places you’ve been to? 

I have been very lucky to grow up with parents that traveled a lot and talked to me a lot about diverse cultures. My mom and I have been to China and Thailand, and I am grateful that I got that exposure at a young age. On my own time, I have gone to Australia, which I guess is not super unique, but I was able to skydive and scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. Being someone who loves biology and loves animals, that was super cool to me to see the coral reefs. I went to Peru to work at a dog shelter and help rescue some stray dogs. I’ve also been to Indonesia where I stayed with a local family and experienced their way of living. That was pretty eye opening for me because growing up in North America you don’t really get that type of exposure anywhere. It was crazy to see them take hours out of their day to go collect water as a family. I’ve kind of been all over the map. Jack and I have a trip planned to go to Africa in July and once we do that, I would have hit all the continents expect Antarctica. 

No kids in the picture, but you do have dogs that have their own Instagram accounts. Also noticed your dogs’ photos were printed on glasses at your wedding. Can you talk about the special bond between you guys and your dogs? 

I am very grateful that I was able to convince Jack to be a dog person. When I first met him, he was only pro cats, and he was not interested in dogs. So, super glad I was able to direct him that way. I always grew up with dogs and I have always volunteered with animals from a very young age, and they are a big part of my life. Now, Jack is more attached to them than I am. Jack and our male dog Hewy, they are inseparable. Jack just had a meeting for like 10 minutes and Hewy was just losing his mind being away from him. It’s super cute. Our dogs are definitely a huge part of our lives, and I would love to open up a dog shelter one day.  

With Jack being a former first-round draft pick and having experienced highs and lows throughout his career, how do you guys block out all the noise and continue to push forward through the good and bad? 

I feel like my response to this question would change every year. I did not grow up with the dream of being with a hockey player and this is something you never prepare yourself for. I always wanted to be a doctor my whole life. So, it is really weird to have to shift gears into something that is totally unknown. The lifestyle is very different from anything you can prepare for. I think we try to stay away from the noise, especially early on. We tend to stay off social media and try to protect ourselves from direct messages and things like that. I think one thing that Jack and I have done very well is just communicating with each other if one of us is having an off day and working through those moments together. Another thing I think we have done well throughout the years is separating hockey from our regular lives and remembering that it is just a job. At the end of the day, it is just a paycheck and obviously his love, but we try to not take it home every single day. At the beginning, it was kind of like his entire life. It is really nice now that we can structure it and have our own life when he comes home and do our own things together. 

Obviously, hockey is huge in Toronto and Jack had some great years with the Maple Leafs. Can you talk about your time in Toronto and the craziness that comes with being the starting goaltender for the Maple Leafs from your perspective? 

It was definitely crazy, but I guess it’s easier for me rather than him. I am not the one getting bombarded, or at least not as much, but people still know who you are. To me, it was an absolute dream. Not the craziness but the team, organization and people were so nice. It was honestly so much fun being apart of those teams. It’s not something you could be involved with personally for your entire life but for the snippet we got it, I thought it was great. It definitely would get crazy, though. You could not go out to dinner without being bothered for photos. I remember one day we were walking down in Yorkville, and someone came up behind him and said ‘Jack Campbell’. I was like ‘I don’t even know what he looks like from behind. How do you know what he looks like from behind?’. It definitely was a little invasion of personal space, and I was not at all used to that. 

I wanted to talk about the difficulties of traveling and uprooting your life when you are either traded or sent down to the minors. Can you talk about the behind the scenes of what that looks like for family members when their significant other must move away unexpectedly? 

We want a family, but I am very gracious that we don’t have kids right now. It would make things a lot more challenging if we did have a family at this point. It honestly happens so frequently at this point and time, and it becomes second nature. However, what a lot of people don’t realize is that if guys are traded or sent down, you are leaving that night or the next morning. There is no time to pack, or no time to help your wife pack the entire house. So, with guys with families, that is so hard having to immediately have to turn around and you don’t know when you will see them again. When we were in Edmonton, I stayed there because we just weren’t sure what was going on. So, we were apart for a couple of months before I eventually made the move down to Bakersfield. Luckly during our time together, he has not been traded and has just been sent down. There has not been too much uncertainty, it has just been more the in-between seasons where it gets tough. For a long time, we did not have a house so we would just rent all over the place and it was really complicated. It’s not like you know when playoffs are going to end, so you are trying to find a nonexistent date to start renting in the summer. Life is kind of all over the place and it’s definitely hard to have your own life as the wife in the picture. Trades are tough no doubt about it, it can be a lot. 

What are your thoughts on the ever-changing hairstyles for Jack? Looks like you’ve seen it all from long hair, short hair, buzzcut, man buns, etc. 

Luckly he kind of looks good with all of them. I am the worst when it comes to my hair. I went slightly darker on my hair this year and thought it was the most dramatic thing ever. I am always the same. But for him, I am like ‘you do you’. If you’re going to change your hair, good for you for having the courage to do it. He has had the same hair ever since we’ve been together. It has always been the long mullet hockey vibe and then we got married. The day we got back he cut it all off. It did not even look like my husband anymore. It looks great obviously. I think I used to like it with the long hockey flow but now as we are getting older, I like it shorter. It’s more groomed. The long hockey hair can get a little messy.

What are you most excited about for your future? 

Probably just continue this life. It is crazy, fun, and dynamic. I think we are lucky to be in a situation where we get to live in these fun different places and see where we want to live. I think down the road it will be exciting to be able to have a family together and hopefully starting, when he chooses to retire from hockey, to be able to do our own things as well. I am very excited for myself, for sure, selfishly.  

Any funny or embarrassing stories about Jack you can share? 

He does some funny things. In our beginning days in Toronto, he had unfortunately lost his cat, who ran away. He left the door open, and he slipped out. That part is obviously not funny. Jack went around the neighborhood and all of the neighbors went walking around trying to find his cat. They eventually found the cat a week later and brought it home. But where it gets funny is that in Toronto the raccoons there are crazy. They are like squirrels in Michigan. There are raccoons everywhere. If you leave your garbage out, there are going to be raccoons. Jack was so grateful that the raccoons did not eat his cat that he decided to feed the raccoons a tomahawk steak dinner. I kid you not, he cooked them a whole fat steak with sides and put it out for the raccoons to eat to thank them. Classic Jack, he did not think that ‘hey, these raccoons are never going to leave my house now’. So, the raccoons never left. I would come home and there would just be raccoons jumping over each other at our front door, trying to get another steak. That was definitely really funny and just shows how kind and silly he is.