About

Be Oh So Smart

BOSS exists because the advice most women are given about their own safety is either useless or insulting, and usually both.

We don't hand out keychains and tell you to be careful. We teach the things that actually move the odds: noticing earlier, saying no sooner, writing it down while it still feels silly, and knowing what your hands can do if all of that fails.

The order matters. Awareness and avoidance come first and hands-on skills come second, because the best outcome is the confrontation that never happens.

Your presenter

Darlene Kranstz

Sixth-degree black belt. Four-time world champion. Forty years on the mats — and she still teaches the first thing she was ever taught: don't be there when it happens.

Darlene came up in the dojo her father, Harold "Bob" Kranstz, founded in Milton in 1978. She became its head instructor, then its owner, and grew the club past two hundred members by building out the junior and youth ranks.

She competed at the top of the sport for a decade — world champion in 1988, 1992, 1995 and 1996, and North American champion in 1989. She was inducted into the World Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 1992, named Instructor of the Year by the Canadian Jiu-Jitsu Association in 1994, inducted into the Canadian Black Belt Hall of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award from the World Kobudo Federation in 2000.

In 2020 she was inducted into the Milton Sports Hall of Fame as an Athlete, following her father, who was inducted in 2018.

None of which is the reason to book her. The reason is that she has spent four decades teaching people who had never thrown a punch in their lives, and she is very good at it.

6th degree black belt, jiu-jitsu
4× world champion
40 years instructing
3 halls of fame

What we don't do

We don't promise that ninety minutes makes anyone safe. Nobody can promise that, and anyone who does is selling something.
We don't teach weapons or anything that isn't legal to carry in Canada.
We don't tell women what they should have done differently.