Clearing a New Path: Recent Episodes
Radar Media
Clearing a New Path podcast is an invitation to listen to, and learn from the stories of underrepresented women entrepreneurs in rural Canada and the organizations and services that support them. Each episode, guests speak authentic truth, because it's the truth that connects us. And each one inspires us to take up space, within our own communities, and within the business world and they remind us that each path can be messy and unique.Produced by Radar Media. Art and music branding by ImaginaDev Studios. Contact us at: info@clearinganewpathpodcast.com
I was fortunate enough to have a tour of the Fusion Youth Centre in Ingersoll, Ontario last month. Craig Boddy has been with the organization for over a decade and seen many transitions. The building is a former school, purchased by the municipality, when youth crime was a burgeoning issue.
The centre was established in 2006 to provide a safe space for kids after school. It offers a wide range of programs and facilities, including a gymnasium, lounge, kitchen, recording studio, and tech centre. The centre has seen changes in its age group, membership fees, and programming to adapt to the evolving needs of youth. Craig shares success stories of youth who have benefited from the centre and emphasizes the importance of community support and partnerships. He also discusses the challenges of keeping up with youth trends and the positive impact of the centre in preventing youth from engaging in negative behaviors.
Takeaways
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The Fusion Youth Center in Ingersoll, Ontario, provides a safe space for kids after school and offers a wide range of programs and facilities.
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The center has evolved over the years, including changes in its age group, membership fees, and programming to meet the changing needs of youth.
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Community support and partnerships have played a crucial role in the success of the center, with organizations like United Way Oxford providing funding.
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The center has had a positive impact in preventing youth from engaging in negative behaviors and has seen success stories of youth who have benefited from its programs.
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Challenges include keeping up with youth trends, such as technology and cyberbullying, and the limitations of being part of a municipality in terms of funding and decision-making.
During our conversation, Craig mentions a study and paper that was authored and produced through the University of Guelph. The two authors were Heather Cross and Al C. Lauzon. You can find it online here: Fostering Rural Youth Wellbeing through Afterschool Programs:
The Case of Fusion Youth and Technology Centre, Ingersoll, Ontario (2015)
Fusion Facebook page
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Summary
I met Helen Tremethick, a rurally-based Regenerative Business Designer and Holistic Business Coach, through her workshop for the Canadian Women's Chamber of Commerce and it was her workshop's title, "Sustainability is B**t" that caught my and so many others' interest.
In this episode, Helen discusses her approach to disrupting business coaching and the importance of redefining success. She emphasizes the need to consider how our businesses are running for us and the impact they have on our ecosystem. Helen also highlights the challenges and benefits of being a rural resident and business owner. She shares her insights on somatic therapy and its role in decision-making and self-care. Helen concludes with advice for entrepreneurs, encouraging them to connect with their bodies, define their own version of success, and focus on their own journey rather than comparing themselves to others.
How to connect with Helen:
Website: helentremethick.com
Motorcycle Club: helentremethick.com/club
IG: instagram.com/helentremethick
Free Gift: bit.ly/beyondsustainable
Book A Chat: tidycal.com/helentremethick/cuppa
Takeaways
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Consider how your business is running for you and the impact it has on your ecosystem.
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Connect with your body to make better decisions and prioritize self-care.
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Redefine success based on your own values and priorities.
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Focus on your own journey and avoid comparing yourself to others.
Sound Bites
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"How is our business having an impact? And ideally, what we want to do is create an impact that is net positive, has a net gain for everyone involved."
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"We need to factor in future care, present care, and the fact that your mortgage broker doesn't take fresh baked bread."
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"If you have a community where you can exchange time or energy or attention, then great, then you don't need to have money as part of that equation."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and the Concept of Regenerative Business
02:59 Redefining Success: Beyond Traditional Measures
06:24 The Impact of Our Businesses on the Ecosystem
09:22 Somatic Therapy: A Tool for Better Decision-Making
25:36 Finding Joy in the Outdoors and Parenting
27:25 The Love and Badassery Motorcycle Club
32:34 Advice for Entrepreneurs: Redefine Success and Focus on Your Journey
Get full access to Clearing a New Path at clearinganewpath.substack.com/subscribe
April Lindgren, a former journalist and current professor, discusses the state of local journalism in Canada and the challenges it faces. She shares insights from her research on the decline of local news outlets and the emergence of new models. Lindgren emphasizes the importance of local journalism in building communities, holding power accountable, and combating misinformation. She explores the role of digital mapping in understanding the landscape of local media and highlights the need for multiple revenue streams to sustain local news organizations. Lindgren also discusses the potential role of philanthropy in supporting local journalism and the importance of collaboration among newsrooms.
Takeaways
Local journalism plays a crucial role in building communities, holding power accountable, and combating misinformation.
The decline of local news outlets in Canada has led to a lack of verified, timely, and independent local journalism.
Digital mapping can provide insights into the state of local media and track the opening and closing of news outlets.
Sustaining local news organizations requires multiple revenue streams, including advertising, membership models, philanthropic support, and events.
Collaboration among newsrooms can lead to more impactful journalism and a diversity of voices in local communities.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:14 The Decline of Local News Outlets
05:51 Understanding the Local Media Landscape
09:01 Sustaining Local News Organizations
14:05 The Role of Philanthropy in Supporting Local Journalism
28:59 The Future of Journalism
32:55 Conclusion
Get full access to Clearing a New Path at clearinganewpath.substack.com/subscribe
Janan McNaughton had a PhD in social work, worked in that industry, was a researcher, freelance writer and travelled the world. So how did she end up opening Proof Line Farm Creamery and Farm Market in rural Ontario?
Janan talks about her experience moving from the city to a rural community and the culture shock she experienced. She shares the journey she and her family have had starting a farm creamery and farm market and the challenges she/they faced in navigating the food system and government regulations.
She talks about the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion and how these conversations were common in her social work world, but more challenging in a rural context.
She emphasizes the need for urban and rural communities to connect and work together in the local food system and how partnership building and finding the right resources aligned with the farm's values are crucial for success.
Janan also highlights the need for clarity and intentionality in pursuing a business that provides personal satisfaction and has a positive impact. You have to start with a mission, values and then any relationships you enter into, any choices you make, will align.
Janan gives a shout out to her business coach, Chelsey Hart at Your Initiative Co.
Summary
Kerri Neil, co-chair of Social Justice Cooperative Newfoundland and Labrador, discusses the formation and work of the cooperative. The organization operates as a member-run, non-profit cooperative focused on social and environmental justice. They advocate for feminism, decolonization, and care for individuals, the land, and all living beings. The cooperative primarily consists of individual members, with a few organizations also involved. They prioritize financial independence and rely on monthly donations from members and community supporters. The cooperative engages in a wide range of activism, including disability justice, women's equality, Indigenous activism, and more. They emphasize the importance of mutual aid and building relationships within the community.
Takeaways
- Social Justice Cooperative Newfoundland and Labrador is a member-run, non-profit cooperative focused on social and environmental justice.
- The cooperative advocates for feminism, decolonization, and care for individuals, the land, and all living beings.
- Financial independence is prioritized, with monthly donations from members and community supporters funding the organization.
- The cooperative engages in a wide range of activism, including disability justice, women's equality, Indigenous activism, and more.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:12 Formation of Social Justice Cooperative
03:36 Membership and Organizational Structure
04:59 Transition to Virtual Organization
05:22 Importance of Cooperative Model
06:45 Funding and Financial Independence
08:09 Understanding Social Justice
09:12 Diverse Range of Activism
10:40 Challenges and Critiques
11:18 Vision for a Post-Capitalist, Post-Colonial World
12:31 Long-Term Planning and Growth
15:17 Navigating Resistance and Ensuring Safety
18:57 Importance of Mutual Aid
20:41 Gaining Supporters and Building Relationships
22:21 Getting Started in Activism
24:35 Taking Care of Yourself and Others
28:31 Lessons Learned and Financial Oversight
Summary
Mani Chakrabarty grew up in Yellowknife, NWT, where she found her desire to make a social impact through looking at world problems with a community-oriented lens.
She has a business degree and a master's degree in Economics from the University of Alberta and a master's in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Mani's work experience spans both the public and private sectors. She was an economist with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and, most recently, a Senior Consultant with Deloitte.
Mani is pleased to call Yarmouth, NS her current home.
In this conversation, Mani Chakrabarty from ASBB Economics and Research discusses the importance of humanizing economics and the work her organization does to provide evidence-based research to clients.
She shares her personal journey and motivation for focusing on rural communities, highlighting the potential for growth and the strengths of rural areas.
Mani also addresses the challenges and weaknesses faced by rural communities, such as the need for affordable housing and improved infrastructure.
She emphasizes the importance of employment in rural areas and the role it plays in providing purpose and dignity.
Mani discusses the need to address systemic issues and social stigma in rural communities and encourages curiosity and understanding as a way to combat ignorance and build trust.
She concludes by expressing her hope for the future of rural communities, emphasizing the importance of contentment and community-oriented values.
Takeaways
- Humanizing economics is essential for understanding the socioeconomic factors that shape individuals' lives and for collaboratively solving systematic issues.
- Rural communities have the potential for growth and offer unique strengths, such as strong community support and a conducive environment for creativity and innovation.
- Challenges faced by rural communities include the need for affordable housing, improved infrastructure, and diverse employment opportunities.
- Addressing systemic issues and social stigma in rural communities requires curiosity, understanding, and building trust.
- Contentment and community-oriented values are important for the well-being and sustainability of rural communities.
Andrew Button - MashUp Lab
I first metAndrew Button fromMashUp Lab over the phone. He was inquiring about the national conference the organization I was working with, Community Futures Ontario, was hosting and how he could become a speaker. That was in the throes of the pandemic.
Andrew and I caught up again recently to chat about how he’s supporting entrepreneurs in rural Canada (and the US), what is missing for many rural communities and some of the opportunities they have at the start of a New Year.
After a 15-year career working in rural communities with various innovation, businesses, and economic development organizations, Andrew founded Mashup Lab in 2014.
Mashup Vision: A world where EVERY person in a rural place has the opportunity to unleash their full potential.
Identifying a gap in resources and a need for support in his community, Andrew has since launched a community of 3 co-working spaces for freelancers, entrepreneurs and independents in the south shore under the brand WorkEvolved.
Andrew is from a small rural community in Newfoundland and married a girl from a small rural community in Nova Scotia that they now call home with their two boys
Summary
Andrew Button from Mashup Lab discusses the challenges faced by rural and remote communities in Canada and the US. He highlights the importance of addressing equity and systemic barriers and shares his personal growth journey in understanding and addressing these issues. Andrew also talks about the role of co-working spaces in rural communities and the potential of social innovation and social business models. He emphasizes the need for open-mindedness, collaboration, and taking small steps to create positive change in rural communities. The conversation explores the importance of taking the first step and the potential for surprising ourselves with what we can achieve.
Takeaways
- Addressing equity and systemic barriers is crucial for supporting entrepreneurship in rural and remote communities.
- Personal growth and learning are essential for understanding and addressing these challenges.
- Co-working spaces can play a significant role in fostering entrepreneurship and collaboration in rural communities.
- Social innovation and social business models offer opportunities for solving social challenges in a sustainable and profitable way.
- Open-mindedness, collaboration, and taking small steps can lead to positive change in rural communities. Success stories often start with one person taking the first step.
- Opportunities arise when we take action without expectations.
- We can achieve more than we think in a short period of time.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Mashup Lab
03:01 Challenges Faced by Rural and Remote Communities
06:33 Equity and Systemic Barriers
10:53 Personal Growth and Learning
13:41 Healing Communities through Personal Growth
16:25 Barriers and Opportunities in Rural Communities
20:21 Co-Working Spaces in Rural Communities
27:22 Understanding Social Innovation and Social Business Models
33:17 Bartering and Mutual Aid in Entrepreneurship
40:18 Progress in Rural and Remote Communities
44:25 Goals for 2024
46:06 Finding Opportunities in Your Community
48:28 Taking the First Step
49:03 Surprising Ourselves
Elder Cindy Crowe - Sacred Circles
This is the third time I have had the pleasure of speaking with Elder Cindy Crowe for a podcast episode, however, I speak with her often as she is my mentor, a dear friend and my chosen family.
Cindy is an Anishinaabe Grandmother Elder, a Knowledge Keeper, a Lodgekeeper, a Pipe Carrier and a Drum Keeper.
Cindy is from Opwaaganisiniing close to Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. She is called to connect Indigenous & non-Indigenous folks, as well as support the relationship between Spirit & our human experience. Through her Anishnaabe lens, Cindy holds space for belonging & interconnectedness through vulnerable storytelling & unconditional acceptance.
I have had the benefit of participating in one of Cindy’s Sacred Circles for almost a year. It is a weekly date I rarely miss. And it has literally healed me and changed my life.
Cindy is now hosting virtual circles twice a week and we talked about what circles are, what makes them sacred, who can host them and how they can heal communities.
Summary
In this conversation, Cindy Crowe, an Identity and Purpose Coach, discusses the concept of sacred circles and their significance in creating a sense of belonging and connection. She explains that sacred circles provide a space where individuals can feel loved, accepted, and free from judgment. Cindy emphasizes that anyone can host a sacred circle as long as they approach it with an open heart and the belief that everyone is equal. She also explores the roles of knowledge keepers and lodge keepers in facilitating circles and highlights the importance of inclusivity in community healing. Cindy encourages individuals to focus on self-healing and love, as well as to foster a sense of unity and collaboration within their communities.
Takeaways
- Sacred circles provide a space where individuals can feel loved, accepted, and free from judgment.
- Anyone can host a sacred circle as long as they approach it with an open heart and the belief that everyone is equal.
- Knowledge keepers and lodge keepers play important roles in facilitating circles and passing down wisdom.
- Inclusivity is crucial in community healing, and circles should be open to people of all backgrounds.
- Focusing on self-healing, love, and fostering unity within communities can lead to positive change and a brighter future.
The Coxes: Rural Ontario in Colour
This episode, I again handed the microphone to folks who share a lens I do not have.
This is an intergenerational conversation, from a mom and son, whose experience and perspective is, as people of colour, who once lived in urban settings and now have moved to the country.
Mojdeh and her son Darius talk about safety, access to cultural food, infrastructure, climate and agriculture among a number of other topics. The two have recently gone into business together with their consulting agency, Cox & Co, a full scale values-driven firm providing strategic advisory services, training and skills building, and specializing in ethical governance and deep anti-oppression.
Mojdeh Cox is an award-winning consultant, convener and facilitator who is nationally recognized for her expertise in anti-oppression and human rights.
For over a decade, Mojdeh has coached organizational and community leaders, businesses and not-for-profit organizations across all sectors on re-imagining their work through a heightened equity lens rooted in social justice, from organizing and convening the largest equity-based lobby on Parliament Hill on Indigenous rights and justice for the Canadian Labour Congress, to facilitating consultations leading to the co-creation of the Community Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (CDIS) for the City of London.
Most recently, Mojdeh’s thought leadership on Radical Accountability has been nationally recognized in her tenure as President and CEO of Pillar Nonprofit Network.
Mojdeh currently lives in the county with her partner, their four children (including Darius) and their not-so-mini Mini Goldendoodle, Leo.
Darius Cox was born and mostly raised in London and is currently a King’s University College, Western University student majoring in Political Science and minoring in Sociology.
With a passion for learning and leadership, Darius has been a leading delegate in the North Meets South Exchange where youth create a policy framework to draw attention to issues facing Indigenous peoples in Northern Ontario after learning first-hand of the culture and experiences.
Darius has also been a delegate at the Smart Start Youth Summit centred around developing leadership and ethics competencies to work on building your future.
During highschool he had a leading role in a program called “MANUP”, addressing toxic masculinity and emphasizing respect towards others, especially women. He also sits on the board for the Gender Equality Coalition of Ontario as the youth chair.
Organizing and Activism in Rural Canada
As a response to injustices that happen around the globe, protests and demonstrations have always been a way for people to express their views in a public way.
We’ve all seen big protests and demonstrations depicted on television news and increasingly on social media. But many of those displays of solidarity happen in big cities.
I believe that there are progressive folks, looking to get involved in social movements in smaller rural and remote communities across Canada too but many don’t know where to start.
David Alton is a queer organizer and community facilitator. They co-founded GroundUp Waterloo Region (GroundUPWR) in 2020 to help fill gaps and build bridges in the grassroots world of Waterloo Region. What started as a twitter account has now grown into a network of 100 local organizers.
David is an urban planner and community facilitator, who is passionate about humanizing public discourse, overcoming stakeholder conflicts and advancing societal values.
Roy Mitchell grew up in Northern Ontario and escaped to be gay, make films and videos and… trouble in Toronto.
He is now back in Northern Ontario where he is a community organizer and runs the Hybla Artist Residency. After 10 years, he still can’t believe he is living rurally and loving it!
I met Roy through our mutual involvement in the Drag Storytime Guardians and that group’s counter protests at drag storytimes in rural Ontario this summer, but Roy has become a great friend and mentor to me and I am grateful to have benefited from his wisdom.
Both he and David share insights into what folks across rural Canada can do to form their own grassroots movements and organizations.
Special mention to the Blueprints of Disruption podcast with Jessa McLean, as that’s where I heard about David and GroundUp. It was a suggestion from Roy!
You can reach David and the folks at GroundUpWR at groundupwr@gmail.com
You can reach Roy Mitchell at roybruno100@gmail.com.
Roy mentions a video that illustrates the creation of a movement. You can watch that here.*
Racism: Rural vs Urban - A Gen Z Perspective
Racial inequities exist in Canada, and particularly in rural, remote and northern Canada.
I have heard the stories. Just one example is a Black woman entrepreneur in rural Alberta, who told me of the racism she experienced at her local Chamber of Commerce.
She’s the reason I enlisted the help of post secondary students (from the Venture for Canada Intrapreneurship program) from racialized and marginalized communities to create the report: How Inclusive are Canada’s Chambers of Commerce? A Report Card and the Words 2 Action: DEI Mobilization Map that followed.
As a white settler, am I the right person to facilitate a conversation about race?
I again enlisted the help of students from the Venture for Canada program.
This time, I asked the students to help me rethink the podcast. What more could I be doing to bring attention to contentious and uncomfortable topics in rural Canada, like racism?
Yvonne Wang and Uttej Mannava, both Western University students, took on the challenge of planning a podcast episode about racism from a rural vs urban perspective. Yvonne’s studies are currently around health and Uttej is studying data science.
They hosted Kirsten Schmidt from the rural perspective. Kirsten is a research assistant with the Rural Development Network and a student at the University of Alberta. She grew up in rural Alberta.
From the urban perspective, Cedric Richards, a local travel influencer from London, Ontario added his lens to the conversation.(You can follow his awesome newsletter/blog here!)
I listened ‘backstage’ and it was really evident to me, because Yvonne, Uttej and Cedric are all people of colour, there was so much more context, richness and fullness to the conversation.
I am so grateful to all of them for taking this on.
This Rural Canadian History Moment was created by Christian Doran as part of the University of Guelph Diarist course project in 2023. The course was taught by Catharine A. Wilson, PhD, F.R.S.C. / Redelmeier Professor in Rural History / Department of History / College of Arts at the University of Guelph.
From the Diary of Thomas Alexander Loghrin (1878-1936), Downie Township, Perth County. Courtesy of his descendants.
You can also access the full diary on the University of Guelph Rural Diary Archive.
Dispelling Period Stigma with Free Periods Canada - Zeba Kahn and Niki Oveisi
As our rural Canadian communities grapple with conflicting views about gender identity and the right to live freely as authentic people and simply exist, if we take a step back, often conversations around periods and menstruation along gender lines (and generations) can be strained and awkward at best.
Why is this? Why does the very mention of the word period make people uncomfortable? Including those of us who menstruate? Why has the onus fallen on typically woman-identifying members of families to educate, and often gate keep, those conversations?
And if we can’t even have the conversation, how can we ensure rural menstruators get the products they need?
When I was in Whitehorse, Yukon recently, attending the Equal Futures Conference, I met two incredible women doing work around menstrual and healthcare equity.
Zeba Khan founded Free Periods Canada in 2016, a grassroots non-profit based in Western Canada. But the organization started out as a university club. Zeba grew up in Bangladesh and relocated to Canada in 2015 as an international student. She is a staunch believer in equal access to healthcare for all and she advocates for free access to menstruation care supplies.
Her dedication to advocating for menstrual and healthcare equity has earned her the 2021 BC Community Achievement Award, 2019 Diana Award, as well as the International Community Achievement Award by University of British Columbia four times in a row.
Niki Oveisi is the Associate Director of Free Periods Canada Foundation, and has worked tirelessly to promote menstrual equity and address period poverty in the country. Niki’s participation in the menstrual equity movement gave her the power to celebrate menstruation, and disrupt barriers surrounding cultural stigma and menstruation in her community.
She is also a Pharmaceutical Sciences PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia using both qualitative and quantitative data to explore the impact of cancer treatments on the psychosocial, sexual, and reproductive outcomes of adolescent and young adult cancer patients.
I spoke to these two women about their work.
This Rural Canadian History Moment was created by Emma Rutledge as part of the University of Guelph Diarist course project in 2023.
The course was taught by Catharine A. Wilson, PhD, F.R.S.C. / Redelmeier Professor in Rural History / Department of History / College of Arts at the University of Guelph.
Many rural women, and the work they did, was often overlooked, many even eliminated from being counted as a person, in the Canadian Census.
Diary of Jemima Ripley (1850-1919), South Crosby Township, Leeds & Grenville County. Rideau Lakes History Center Archive.
You can also find the full diary at the University of Guelph Rural Diary Archive.
Lisa Gallant-McRobb - Leading Indigenous Healing Through Trauma and Triumph
June is traditionally Pride Month but June is also Indigenous History month. It’s an opportunity to learn about the unique cultures, traditions and experiences of First Nations, Inuit and Métis. It's a time to honour the stories, achievements and resilience of Indigenous Peoples, who have lived on this land since time immemorial.
While in Whitehorse last month, I had the opportunity to speak with folks doing amazing work in rural and remote Canada.
One of those incredible people was Lisa Gallant-McRobb. And she told me her story.
Lisa is a Cree/Metis woman who has found her home on the traditional territory of The Kwanlin Dunn First Nation and The Ta'an Kwach'an Council.
A proud mother of 3 Tlingit children, Lisa has broken through the generational traumas that have plagued her family and she has bravely blazed her own path.
Coming from a life of addiction, abuse, neglect and violence, Lisa has risen up to become a voice for change, an advocate for our most vulnerable, and a powerful force pushing back against the systems that were designed to keep her down.
Working with victims of abuse and sexual violence, cooking with her catering company, the many many hours of volunteer work and contributing to the various boards and committees she sits on, Lisa has become a powerful force determined to give back to the community she loves, to change her world around her and to set an example for her children and her childrens children to follow.
CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNING:
A content trigger warning that Lisa speaks about her experience with domestic violence, addiction, alcoholism, homelessness and generational trauma. This may trigger some of you, you may want to take breaks or you may not want to listen at all. Please take care.
National Indian Residential School Crisis Line for former Residential School Students:
1-866-925-4419
Sista Patricia and the Drag Storytime Guardians
Earlier this month, a Drag Storytime was scheduled in the rural town of Parkhill, Ontario. Protestors were expected but what wasn’t expected was a group of woman-identifying motorbike enthusiasts, some of which belonged to the group, Wind Sisters.
One of those women was 70 year old Patricia Ginn, or Sista Patricia as she likes to be called.
Sista Patricia and her friends showed up to support the folks trying to enter the Parkhill library with their children. OPP officers were there too. Things got loud. Nasty and derogatory things were said and a bullhorn was activated to intimidate. But the group locked arms and later escorted families inside.
Since then, Drag Storytime scheduled in another town in the same county, was canceled, for a number of reasons but police could not guarantee the safety of the patrons so the event was put on hold.
Sista Patricia is passionate about supporting members of the 2SLGBTQAI+ community and she has a very special personal story about why she says, the time is NOW for allies to show up. Her group is now called Drag Storytime Guardians.
*I want to add that during our conversation, I said I have been an ally for a long time. That is true, but I wasn’t always as aware, in fact, I was ignorant. My allyship has grown over the years. ALL of us have things to learn, including me.
You can connect with Sista Patricia at the email: sistapatricia@gmail.com.
She's expecting you.
Who Fuels Division in Rural Canada and Why? - Kurt Phillips - Canadian Anti-Hate Network
I’ve spoken with Kurt Phillips from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network in an episode previously, called Bias, Hate and Extremism in Rural Canada - Part 2 about the organizations at play spreading hate and disinformation in the news deserts of rural Canada.
This time, we’re talking about the campaigns to overturn proclamations, Pride events and flags, and the protests around Drag Storytime.
Who are these groups and what is their end game?
Kurt Phillips started doing anonymous online research into hate groups in Canada, but was doxxed in recent years, losing his anonymity. He’s a board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network and also a high school teacher in rural Alberta.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network's Educational Toolkit, which is a Government of Canada-funded resource, aims to give teachers and students the tools to address displays of hate on campus.
Pride and Prejudice in Rural Ontario
In April of 2023, in the town of Norwich, Ontario the municipal council voted to ban all flags except for Canadian flags and provincial flags. At the same meeting, the council refused to recognize a Pride celebration and voted down the creation of a DEI committee.
This isn’t a new fight in this town, and it’s not a new fight in rural Canada. Protests at Drag Storytime are growing and a veil of intolerance is not only lifted but being shouted proudly.
This episode, I speak with two community representatives that refuse to give up.
Tami Murray is the President of the Oxford County Pride Committee coordinating Pride events throughout the County of Oxford. Her day job is being the proud owner and operator of Diversity Counseling with a clinical approach that supports best practice perspectives in the area of mental health wellness. Tami is also a workplace wellness facilitator for Homewood Health Care, providing psychoeducational wellness workshops throughout southwestern Ontario.
Patricia Marshal is a neuro-divergent, demi sexual woman of mixed Anishnaabe, Celtic and German decent and resident of Oxford County. She is mother to four children, two of whom openly identify under the 2slgbtqia+ umbrella and the soon to be wife of a proud Houdenesaunee descendent; She is the founder and director of IISAN- Ingersoll & Area's Indigenous Solidarity and Awareness Network as well as a member of the Ingersoll Accessibility committee and Ingersoll's Diversity & Inclusion Committee,
IISAN is a collaborative friendship network of Indigneous and non-Indigenous members. It is a grassroots not-for-profit organization that was formed in the wake of the discovery of the 215 children at a residential school in Kamloops BC in 2021. The intention of the group is to help the community of Oxford County take meaningful steps towards Truth and Reconciliation. IISAN is responsible for hosting the annual march for T&R in Ingersoll on September 30th, a youth program titled IndigiKNOW, MMIWG2S+ Awareness initiatives, creative art displays, community activism and community speaking and education.
Andrea Palframan and RAVEN - Supporting Indigenous Land Back Legal Claims
Many of us have colonial roots and understand that our ancestors were responsible for attempting to erase Indigenous people and culture in Canada. But with that understanding, what can we do?
Here is one thing you can do.
RAVEN is a registered charity with a mission to raise funds for Indigenous People's access to justice.
RAVEN is guided by some of the most brilliant legal advisors in the country, and they work to enshrine environmental justice for all. The law is clearly on the side of Indigenous peoples and the group believes that Indigenous victories protect all of us.
RAVEN also has an educational arm, with a series of 10 videos about Indigenous law and history. You can watch those for free.
Andrea Palframan is the Director of Communication with RAVEN. She is dedicated to making media that brings the strength of data together with the power of storytelling.
She holds a Masters in Intercultural & International Communication. Her research focus— how Indigenous communities are responding to, resisting, and adapting to climate change—forms the underpinning of her understanding of environmental justice and human rights issues. She spent 10 years working in sub Saharan Africa as Programs Manager for Glasswaters Foundation, working with grassroots community leaders to bridge the digital divide.
Andrea is also a filmmaker: her documentary "Raven People Rising" screened at VIFF and won People's Choice award at the Vox Popular Film Festival; she is producer of "The Story of a Girl" with the Visual Epidemiology Project, and most recently directed “The Sky and the Land will Turn” with youth from Capilano University’s Indigenous Film Program.
RAVEN invites support from foundations, organizations, businesses and individuals. RAVEN supporters can donate, organize events, and fundraise online to support our campaigns.
Kendra Fry - Rural and Remote Churches - What's Next?
This episode came about when I was looking up how many churches are for sale or even abandoned in rural and remote Canada. I couldn’t find a current number but I did find a story about the selling off of Catholic churches in Newfoundland. In 1999, 39 men — former residents of Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s — filed statements of claim at Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court claiming they were abused during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s by members of the Irish Christian Brothers, who ran the orphanage. They won and since the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s appeal in 2021, over 100 men have come forward. Their claims exceed 50 million dollars. Hence selling off churches to pay.
I was then looking for people who had an expertise in repurposing or re-imagining churches no longer in use, or even abandoned. That’s when I found Kendra Fry.
Kendra has a long career in the arts mostly as a General Manager in theatre before beginning her work creating multi sectoral community hubs for the common good. Working with partners from across Canada, Kendra unlocks the hidden value in historic building sites, creating broad cross-sectoral community centres that involve the arts, housing, food security, education and many other not for profit organizations. Some of her better- known sites include Carlton University at Dominion Chalmers, Crescent Fort Rouge Centre in Winnipeg, Copperlight in Stratford and Trinity St. Paul’s Centre and Eastminster United in Toronto. She is currently working on eighteen sites across Canada.
Kendra is the author along with Milton Friesen of “No Space for Community; An in depth look into the loss of infrastructure due to faith building closures in Ontario '' which can be read at www.communityspacefaithplace.org.
This study of not for profit and community usage of faith buildings was created in partnership with the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Nonprofit Network, Cardus, the City of Toronto and Faith & the Common Good.
Kendra is an Associate with the National Trust for Canada where she works on enhancing the community value of, and engagement with historic places including museums, faith buildings, cultural sites and historic landscapes.
Kendra is also the General Manager of Stratford Summer Music , a summer festival that produces 40 concerts and one collaborative cross sectoral arts weekend each summer.
You can see some of her projects at www.creativecollisions.org
Trinity Centres Foundation’s: STRATEGY COURSE FOR CHURCH BOARD MEMBERS
Dr. Jacquie Newman - How Some Rural Municipalities Use Power to Exclude
Through a chain of events, I found myself watching a previous recording of a municipal council meeting, a municipality in rural Alberta. It’s called Olds, Alberta. The CAO was briefing council (and a delegation that was there about another matter) on why the administration was recommending the municipality get out of the ‘proclamation business’. He facetiously said he advised council against proclamations because they might deny a proclamation to a cause dear to someone like 'Save the Rainbows Day' or 'Save the Pandas Day'.
This prompted me to inquire around my own area in rural Ontario. Was this something municipalities were using to avoid supporting specifically Pride events? (Baring some closeness to Save the Rainbows Day, referenced in the clip)
In rural Ontario, in the small town of Norwich, “Coun. John Scholten is proposing a policy that only federal, provincial and municipal flags be flown on any Norwich Township property and that only banners related to the "promotion of downtown businesses or for downtown beautification" be installed on township streetlight poles.” (Source: CBC London)
Let's be honest, this is simply exclusion. An attempt to side step an uncomfortable and perhaps contentious issue.
I decided to ask Dr. Jacquie Newman from Western University in London, Ontario her thoughts about what this means.
Dr. Newman is a Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at King’s University College at the Western University in London Ontario. She writes and researches on topics of gender and politics. Currently, she is undertaking a research program, “This is Where I Do My Work” which examines the motivations and commitments of women municipal councillors.
We also talk about how women councillors approach equity deserving topics and that adding women of colour to councils brings a positive outcome for all equity deserving groups.
Kim English - Addressing a Rural Canadian Nursing Crisis
Professor Kim English first sent me an email, suggesting the topic of rural and remote nursing.
Kim is a Doctoral candidate who has been teaching nurses at the undergraduate and post-graduate level since 2002.
Kim draws from her clinical experiences in acute care and professional practice, and her lived experiences in rural health and working with Indigenous communities.
Kim’s narrative-informed research explores the work of rural and remote nurses, celebrating their innovation and leadership. Kim’s work draws from the social sciences and humanities. She is privileged as a settler to be able to learn with and from many Indigenous nurses, elders, and colleagues to inform an anti-colonial lens to her understanding of context and health.
This is important as she addresses issues in the provision of nursing education using virtual simulations, the impact of inclusive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive approaches to education.
Kim has a particular interest in addressing racism in healthcare to serve as an ally to Indigenous populations.
Internationally, Kim is working with a collective of Fellows from Switzerland, New Zealand, and Australia to explore the enhancement of scope of practice in rural areas to address primary healthcare needs. It is expected this fellowship will grow to include 5 additional countries.
Kim has been the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Trent University Excellence in Online Education Award in 2020.
Isaac Murdoch - Revolution of the Heart
I first saw Isaac Murdoch telling his stories on Facebook, during the pandemic. A prolific and legendary Indigenous storyteller, he was so entertaining he left an indelible impression on me.
Later, during my own training and healing about the real beginnings of Canada, Isaac’s stories turned up again, during a training session as someone all of us should listen to.
Isaac is also a singer/songwriter, artist and maker.
I had the honour and privilege of having a conversation with Isaac recently, just before he attended a special event deemed Revolution of the Heart. He designed the logo.
Bomgiizhik (Isaac Murdoch) is from Serpent River First Nation. He is of the Fish Clan and is Ojibwe and has 4 beautiful children. He currently lives in the forest at Nimkii Ajj-bi kong, a indigenous community that focuses on indigenous language, art, and land based activities. Being blessed with the opportunity, Bomgiizhik grew up in the traditional setting of hunting and gathering on the land. Having spent many years learning from Elders, he spends a lot of his time as a Storyteller. Many of these stories become his visual art pieces which have become recognized world wide. Bomgiizhik is also an author and singer/songwriter who loves to make music and make books whenever he gets a chance. You will often find him on the land looking at his favorite plants or gazing into the beautiful night sky.
Isaac’s website
Isaac’s YouTube channel
Isaac’s Facebook page
Isaac’s Instagram
Emily McIntosh - Bill 5 - Women of Ontario Say No
I first heard about the Women of Ontario Say No campaign on Instagram. One of the campaign’s posts was shared by a number of female municipal council members that I follow.
It’s a growing grassroots advocacy effort to address the gap in a provincial accountability structure for municipally elected officials. Multiple Ontario municipalities have learned the hard way about the lack of tools in the Municipal Act for holding councillors accountable for workplace harassment. Currently the most severe penalty that can be imposed on a municipal councillor is suspension of pay for 90 days- even in the worst cases. There is no process for removing councillors from office and they can even seek re-election. (Some of them have)
Bill 5 addresses this by amending the Municipal Act & City of Toronto Act. The legislation would ensure elected officials are 1) held to their municipality's violence and harassment in the workplace policies 2) permit the Integrity Commissioner to apply to the court to vacate the councillor’s seat for failing to comply with the municipality's workplace violence or harassment policies and 3) restrict subsequent re-election.
Emily McIntosh is at the heard of this campaign
Born and raised in Simcoe County, Emily has a longstanding interest in politics, human rights, and immigration and refugee policy. With international development experience in East Africa and Central Asia, Emily knows first-hand that the rights of women in Canada are never something to be taken for granted. Emily spearheaded this advocacy when her own hometown, Barrie, ON was directly affected. A municipal councillor ran for Mayor in the most recent election while in civil ligation for sexual harassment of a city employee.
Emily is passionate about advocating, protecting and strengthening the rights of all people, but particularly women- recognizing that the barriers to dismantling the longstanding patriarchal foundations of our current political environment make it challenging to speak out. That’s why she is using her voice and privilege to bring this Bill to the Ontario legislature.
The Women of Ontario Say No website
The Women of Ontario Say No Instagram
Rural Women Councillors in Ontario - 100 Days in Office
This episode is a conversation with four first-time rural women councilors, all serving in small communities across Ontario. They talk about what their experience has been both before the election, while they were campaigning and now 100 days into their term.
They talk about challenging stereotypes that rural folks may have about women in governance, the importance of clear communication, they talk about the privilege they have and what a privilege it still is to be able to run a campaign and that ALL of them would give up their seats to see more intersectional representation.
Kelsie Van Bellighem is a councilor in Kenora, Ontario
Born and raised in Kimberley BC, and a life-long seasonal resident of Lake of the Woods, Kelsie has been a permanent resident in Kenora, ON since 2017 when she met her now husband. They have two young children and while at the tail end of her maternity leave with her second, she decided to run for council. As a person of privilege and ability she is aware of the need for diverse voices when it comes to governance and leadership. Similar to financial assets, “you don’t want all your eggs in one basket” and she ran on that platform during my candidacy. She is returning to work shortly, as a Member Advisor at the Credit Union in Kenora, and in her last term as Treasurer for the Women’s Shelter, Saakate House.
Lindsay Wilson is Deputy Mayor in Ingersoll, Ontario
Lindsay Wilson has spent the last decade working in rural community economic development. She often focuses on advocating for the full representation and participation of women in their communities. In 2021, she volunteered to launch Municipal Campaign School Oxford- a grassroots effort to support women running and winning their campaign. In 2022, she was elected as the Deputy Mayor of Ingersoll, the first woman to serve in the position.
Alysson Storey is a councilor in Chatham-Kent, Ontario
Born and raised in Chatham, Alysson returned to her hometown after working in the private and public sectors across Canada and Europe. A communications and strategic planning consultant, Alysson found herself thrust into an advocacy role almost overnight. Outraged by the deaths of a close friend and her young daughter in a preventable crossover collision on Highway 401, she founded Build the Barrier, a grassroots group of volunteers lobbying for improved safety standards on Highway 401 west of London, Ontario. This experience of public advocacy was an unexpectedly transformative one, and led to her running for Mayor of Chatham-Kent in 2018, where she placed second, and was successfully elected as Councillor in 2022.
Kate Leatherbarrow is a councilor in Woodstock, Ontario
Kate Leatherbarrow, small business owner and first time sitting councillor in the City of Woodstock brings a punch to the table! Herr passions for community engagement and women in politics led her to where she is today! If she's not slinging coffee at one of her two coffee shops, or chatting with a neighbour about an upcoming council meeting, you’ll most definitely find her with her family of 6! She is so honoured to be elected in a time where more and more women are entering politics, and it is critical that we hold the door open for others!
Leatherbarrow, along with Lindsay Wilson, founded the Municipal Campaign School of Oxford County, which encourages women and other diverse voices to become involved in local politics. Communication is number one on Kate’s agenda.
Gitanjali Aggarwal - Meeting Rural Women Where They Are
The PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise is an organization that supports women entrepreneurs across Ontario. The organization’s approach to supporting women is unique in that it meets women where they are. Whether it’s your geographic area, or where you are on your business journey, PARO’s programs and services are designed to support women wherever they are
This episode focuses on some of the unique programs PARO offers, like Lending Circles but it’s also about one of the organization’s business counsellors, Gitanjali Aggarwal, and her own personal entrepreneurial journey in rural Ontario.
Gitanjali [git-tan-ja-lee] is a name that comes from the Sanskrit language and means collection of lyrics. As the famous line goes, what's in a name? For Gitanjali, her journey has reflected her name. The self proclaimed Dream Chaser has collected various experiences from the financial industry, to restaurant prenuer, to mother of 2, and now business counselor, she continues her journey as she collects experiences, and shares a few words along the way.
You won't want to miss her exceptional journey and her inspiring outlook!
Jean Bota - ‘Building Capacity in Rural Crime Prevention Project
In our last episode, we talked about just one element of crime in rural Canada, intimate partner violence, with Pamela Cross of Luke’s Place.
She mentioned that in Ontario we have what’s called a Community Safety and Well-being plan. This is a framework for municipalities to utilize for their own communities. Four areas are highlighted as critical to success: social development, prevention, risk intervention, and incident response.
Jean Bota is the board chair for the Alberta Community Crime Prevention Association, a position she has held since 2016. She understood from first hand experience, as a rural Alberta resident and also as a former rural Alberta county councilor, that rural communities require a unique framework when it comes to crime prevention.
In this episode, Jean explains how the “Building Capacity in Rural Crime Prevention Project” came to pass, the pilot programs they ran in rural Alberta communities, the template that has been developed from those pilots and how you can access them for your own rural Canadian community.
Jean was raised in rural Alberta and is a third generation Albertan. She is a mom, a grandmother, and makes her home in Red Deer County, Alberta where she has lived for the past twenty-two years.
Jean has always been very involved in her community, entering municipal politics in 2013. She campaigned on “Safe communities and awareness through collaboration with law enforcement, community groups and citizens”. Jean was re-elected in 2017 but lost in 2021 by two votes.
Jean has been involved with her local Rural Crime Watch Group for many years. She also chairs the Police Advisory Committee which initiated the Rural Red Deer Restorative Justice program.
You can connect with Jean here: canyon28@hotmail.com
Pamela Cross - Luke’s Place - A Rural Inquest
Pamela Cross is a feminist lawyer; a well respected expert on violence against women and the law. She is revered for her work as a researcher, writer, educator and trainer. She works with women’s equality and violence against women organizations across Ontario.
Luke’s Place is an award-winning non-profit organization devoted to improving the safety and experience of women and their children as they proceed through the family law process after fleeing an abusive relationship.
After leading the creation and expansion of legal programming and services at Luke’s Place in her role as Legal Director, Pamela has moved her focus to advocacy, and is now the Luke’s Place Advocacy Director, developing and leading law and policy reform efforts and media work at the provincial and national levels.
In 2022, Pamela participated in the Inquest into 2015 triple femicide of Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam in Renfrew County, Ontario both as an expert witness in her role as Luke’s Place Legal Director and as an external consultant on behalf of the community. 86 recommendations came out of that inquest and Pamela has created a toolkit for rural communities to enact change on the ground - now. We talk about these resources and you can find them below.
Pamela also participated in the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Inquiry as an expert witness on intimate partner violence. That report is due out soon.
A content warning for the episode:
Today's podcast episode contains material that might be difficult to hear for some. It talks about intimate partner violence and domestic violence against children and while no details are discussed, it may be distressing to some.
Some staggering statistics:
A woman is killed approximately every six days by her partner or former partner. This is eight times the rate at which men are killed by their partner or former partner.
Intimate partner abuse is the most commonly reported violent crime against women: 42% compared to 12% for men.
In 2018, 44% of women reported having been subjected to psychological, physical or sexual violence by their intimate partner
Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to be murdered or go missing than other women.
Police-reported intimate partner violence is 75% higher in rural communities than in urban areas.
Two-thirds of us know a woman who has been subjected to physical, emotional or sexual abuse.
The aftermath of intimate partner violence costs Canadians $7.4 billion a year.
Resources:
Luke's Place inquest recommendation implementation toolkit: https://lukesplace.ca/culleton-kuzyk-warmerdam-ckw-inquest-advocacy-toolkit/
Luke's Place resource on VAW in rural communities: https://lukesplace.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Going-the-Distance-March-2022.pdf
Pam’s inquest report and toolkit: https://lukesplace.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/WeRemember-2022_finalDec7.pdf
Pam’s community consultation report to the inquest: https://lukesplace.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Inquest-report-community-consultations-final.pdf
Pam’s expert witness report on IPV to the inquest: https://lukesplace.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/family-violence-presentation-for-inquest-june-2022.pdf
Councillor Michelle Friesen - Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
Michelle Friesen caught my eye, initially, with a post on Instagram. She was addressing her city’s council, as a sitting councillor herself, about the discovery of children’s remains at residential schools. She posted a video of her address and then also posted the comments she received from the public afterwards. I also noticed in the video that Michelle was holding her infant son, Theo at the council meeting, which is unusual.
I connected with her and she agreed to have a conversation with me.
Michelle is proudly serving as the first Indigenous woman EVER on Whitehorse City Council. The city rests on the Traditional territories of the Kwnalin Dun First Nation and her family's First Nation, the Ta'an Kwacch'an Council. Her passion for community and the importance of representation are what inspired her to step into leadership and she looks forward to continuing to learn and connect with folks who call Whitehorse home!
Michelle serves as the Youth Representative for the Whitehorse Aboriginal Women’s Circle and is the founder of ShredHERs, a mountain biking group which empowers women through sport and connects them to mental health and wellness resources. She was also a candidate in the 2021 territorial election and continues to share her experience and empower others to seek leadership through her work with 'Lead As You Are' which aims to encourage diversity and representation in leadership and political roles.
Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action
Duane Kumala-Thomas: Highlander Studios - History and Truth
Duane Kumala-Thomas recently invited me to his art studio called Highlander Studios in Woodstock, Ontario for a tour and a conversation about his studio, his work, his philosophy and his awe-inspiring art installation in downtown Ingersoll.
Duane Kumala-Thomas explores the relationship between multiculturalism and perspective. With influences as diverse as Fela Kuti and Salvador Dali, compositions of both audio and visual nature are generated from both mundane and transcendent discourse. Deconstructing the familiar (i.e. stereotypes, myths, iconic images, etc…) and examining it from unusual angles is the technique that allows him to explore and present “new” ideas.
Born and raised in Woodstock Ontario, Duane spent the majority of his adolescence between his hometown and Ingersoll; the majority of his friends having been from the neighbouring town. Though he grew up with the same external influences as those around him, him upbringing inside the home, as a young black man, stood him in a different position than most. This cultural perspective gave him a different outlook on the pop culture programming he was privy to via television, radio, and eventually internet.
Ever since becoming a “self-aware minority” Duane has been fascinated by the
understanding that the truth simply is; and everything else is merely a perspective of it. What’s right today, this year, or century, may not be right tomorrow, next decade, or next millennia; however, what’s true now is true eternally.
The art installation Duane created and was describing is in downtown Ingersoll, Ontario. Duane’s poem “This Town of Ours” will soon accompany the installation in both, written and audio format, accessible via a plaque and QR code on site. You can hear it midway through the episode, in Duane’s own voice. And here it is below:
THIS TOWN OF OURS
Whether bird's eye views from steeples,
Or people's ties to railroads underground
Look and listen. You too must be smitten
By sights and sounds all around
This historical town,
Of ours.
Acknowledging land where tree strands rooted and water ran through it.
Tracking life through this town of ours.
With cabin erected Thomas affected a future forever in flower.
Tracking fate through this town of ours.
What was done to the land once Ingersoll found it was what eventually had Ingersoll founded.
Tracking persistence through this town of ours.
Inquisitive and riveted when John Brown visited
Tracking recruits through this town of ours.
From the steps of its BME church to the 168 Battalion's birth,
Tracking Oxford's Own through this town of ours.
A question rhetorical, but what more historical
Then this town of ours asking how?
History, her story, mystery, your story, our story's
happening
Now!
Always,
Duane Kumala-Thomas
The art installation was done in collaboration with:
FedDev Ontario (funding)
SWOTC (funding)
Ingersoll BIA
CB Mills
OSR Inc
Highlander Studios
How Freebruary Helps Canadian Producers
Last week, my good friend Stella Sehn, a family farm honey producer in the Prairies told me about Freebruary. She started to explain and then she said she’d just send me this one minute video and it would explain everything.
Basically, it’s a low investment campaign for producers who may want to expand their reach and grow their customer base, without spending a fortune on a digital advertising campaign or hiring staff to do those campaigns for them.
Stella was thrilled to be participating in this annual campaign and immediately saw the value in it for her as a producer, extending her reach through a Canadian national campaign collaborating with other Canadian producers to grow each others’ brands.
So I reached out to Andrew Kinnear the mastermind behind Freebruary to find out about it.
Andrew’s family business Yellofruit is a vegan ice cream manufacturing company launched in 2019 and he also consults with many brands and agencies in the field of marketing, digital, technology and other areas. His career spans startups and big brands in numerous industries.
Freebruary website
Freebruary YouTube
Freebruary Instagram
Stella Sehn is the co-founder and innovator behind Sweet Pure Honey. Stella and her husband run their bee hives out of Porcupine Plain, SK all while managing her online small business out of Medicine Hat, AB.
She is passionate and dedicated to ensuring all farmers are paid fair value for their crops.
After years of pandemic instability and a spring season described as one of the worst on record, Stella remains focused on recovery for their family, hives and honey business.
No stranger to adversity, the mother of 3 has shifted focus on working to support and amplify Indigenous entrepreneurs through experience and resource sharing. Stella believes that It is important to not only rebuild her own business but also to honour the TRC Business Calls To Action in the process.
Community and collaboration come naturally to the honey lady, and help keep her focused on connection and providing pure products for consumers.
Sweet Pure Honey website
Sweet Pure Honey Instagram
Filling the Gaps - Dee Ann Benard & Daniela Seiferling - Rural Development Network
I first came across the Rural Development Network or RDN when I started the podcast in 2021 and I signed up for its newsletter, following its expansion from a mainly western Canadian focus to now serving all corners of rural and remote Canada.
It was in one of those newsletters late last year that I heard about RDN’s Work Integrated Learning program for rural organizations and businesses. The program matches you with students looking for work experience, and this is at no cost to you or the organization.
But RDN has a host of programs tackling numerous issues facing rural Canadian communities.
I spoke with the CEO Dee Ann Benard and the Project Manager for the Work Integrated Learning program Daniela Seiferling.
Dee Ann has been a driving force in rural Alberta for nearly three decades. She has worked with the Government of Alberta’s Ministry of Agriculture, the Alberta operation of Integrated Crop Management Services (ICMS), Inc. and Alberta Innovates.
In 2004, Dee Ann joined the Agricultural Research and Extension Council of Alberta as Executive Director, a position she held until she joined the (Alberta) Rural Development Network in 2009.
Daniela Seiferling holds a Bachelor of Arts (Distinction) in Anthropology and Classical Studies from the University of Alberta. She has over a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector. Prior to joining RDN, Daniela worked as Senior Coordinator with Volunteer Alberta. As the lead of the provincial volunteer centre network and membership, she championed volunteerism and life-long learning as an essential component of resilient communities.
RDN Website
Work Integrated Learning program
Canadian Rural and Remote Housing and Homelessness Symposium 2023
Ame-Lia Tamburrini: Circles for Change in Rural Canada
Recently, I’ve been thinking deeply about the value of circles when it comes to community building and community engagement. It seems to me that the division we see in Canada’s rural communities often comes down to always hearing from the same voices and not hearing from voices who have something new to say; new or different ideas. When we live under systems that certainly benefit only some of us, few have agency to make change.
Circles can also be sources of support for new ways of thinking, for folks who don’t feel valued in a traditional system of hierarchy. That’s the beauty of a circle; everyone is on the same footing; no one is above or below another.
I have never met Ame-Lia Tamburrini in person. We share space in a virtual women’s wisdom circle but I have been a big fan of her work from afar for some time. This past summer she did a bit of a ‘road show’, which we talk about in this episode.
Ame-Lia is an international speaker, podcast host and master facilitator who has the gift of elevating the voices and issues that need to be heard so solutions to real problems can emerge. She does this by restoring the ecosystem of wisdom that communities and organizations use to make decisions in brave, generative conversations.
She has honed her skills of bringing people together with over 20 years engaging with rural, remote and Indigenous communities around the world in resource extraction, housing, public health, criminal justice and education.
Her podcast, Circle of Change, was created for change-makers who want to be inspired and also challenged to do the work required to be the change the world is looking for. She resides on the WASANC and Lekwungen territories and loves soaking up the healing energy of nature.
Her most recent creation - a 5 day retreat - brings together leaders to restore their purpose and joy, and build community and momentum toward unimaginable change.
Where to find Ame-Lia:
Website - https://www.humconsulting.ca/
Podcast - https://www.humconsulting.ca/podcast
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ame-lia-tamburrini/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ame_liatamburrini/
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@ame-liatamburrini
Belinda Clemmensen - Women, Leadership and Saving the World
Over the holidays this year, I took a connection break. That meant trying my best to unhinge from social media and work. I felt like I needed to rethink the podcast strategy and actually take a look at myself and what was holding me back, my own personal journey.
I watched the documentary “Deconstructing Karen” with Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, two women of colour who host dinners with white women that they call Race2Dinners. To say watching this documentary changed me would be a huge understatement. It really made me look at my own complicity, playing nice as a liberal white woman, in my case, living in rural Canada. I had to sit in my still racist beliefs, my long-held, ingrained belief system of white supremacy that I was upholding by not naming it, upholding white supremacist, capitalist ideals like beauty, weight, hustle, wealth, success, accomplishments, sacrifice. I spent most of my life trying to chase those things. And worse, I looked around my own rural community and thought, I’m the one who ‘gets’ it, I’m anti-racist. Oh but I’m not. I’ve still got lots of work to do to dismantle the thinking and actively uplift and give power to, black and brown women and people.
And in walks Belinda Clemmensen. She answered my call out for rural authors and rural books, and while we did talk about Belinda’s book, Women, Leadership and Saving the World, Why Everything Gets Better When Women Lead we also talked about white supremacy, equity, intersectionality and where we go from here.
Belinda is the Founder of the Women's Leadership Intensive. A changemaker myself, she believes that women are not only capable of changing the world, we will be a driving force in making it happen. After more than 20 years in leadership development she had a crisis of consciousness that her work was upholding systems that she didn't think were working for many people, and values that did not align with her own. From that realization she set out to create the Women's Leadership Intensive or WLI, their mission to inspire, empower, support and equip women to lead the change the world needs. WLI offers leadership development by women, for women and a powerful community of women leading for positive change.
Website
Book page
Will 2023 Bring Clean and Resilient Growth for Rural Canada? - John McNally - PLACE Centre
What is clean and resilient growth and how does it fit into a rural perspective in Canada and will 2023 be the year we realize those in rural Canada?
This week's episode is the first of what I hope will be many conversations with the folks at PLACE Centre, which is a new initiative of the Smart Prosperity Institute (SPI).
My guest is John McNally the Program Director for the Growth program at PLACE where he leads a team of researchers and communicators focused on clean growth policy. John has previously worked as an advisor, researcher, and policymaker on a number of issues including: federal climate policies, corporate sustainability initiatives, and advancing clean growth in Canadian resource sectors.
We talk specifically about rural Canada, its growth challenges, opportunities and solutions and John gives what we’re calling some predictions/suggestions for rural Canada in 2023 and beyond.
PLACE Centre identifies and advances regionally-focused policy solutions that contribute to Smart Prosperity Institute’svision and mission.
The Smart Prosperity Institute is a national research network and policy think tank based at the University of Ottawa. It delivers world-class research and works with public and private partners – all to advance practical policies and market solutions for a stronger, cleaner economy.
Autumn Ongaro - FEAD: A Taste of Home in Norfolk County
This is the third in a series of rural-based authors. I love this book because it’s a combination of a recipe book and a storybook.
Autumn Ongaro is the author of FEAD, a delightful reference on seasonal cooking that celebrates the bounty of fresh foods in Norfolk County. It will carry you through the four seasons as Autumn shares the stories and histories of many farms, and crafts their treasured ingredients into seasonal and approachable recipes. Each page is adorned with Ongaro's atmospheric photography showcasing the abundance of quality, vibrant foods through the hands of the farmers and through her creative recipes.
Inside FEAD, you'll find sensational seasonal recipes including:
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Roasted Asparagus Soup with Crispy Bacon
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Green Onion and Cheddar Dinner Rolls
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Blueberry Pop Tarts
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Grass-Fed Meatballs with Feta
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Red Wine Brownies
And lots more
Autumn Ongaro is a photographer, recipe developer, educator, gardener and gal behind Evolving Autumn food blog. What began as a creative outlet is now a business focused on atmospheric photography, seasonal recipes and food education. She lives in Norfolk County and uses the local bounty of seasonal, quality ingredients as her inspiration. Her freshly published book FEAD carries you through the four seasons as she shares the histories of local farms and transforms their beautiful crops into approachable dishes. Follow along with her farm-to-table adventures @evolvingautumn
*If you live locally within Norfolk County and would like to avoid shipping costs, please email me at evolvingautumn@gmail.com or message me on Instagram @evolvingautumn to arrange a pick-up.
Grandview HealthCare Solutions is a grassroots, community driven organization that grew out of the need to better serve patients in Grandview, Manitoba and the immediate surrounding area. This is another case of a community coming together to create solutions for rural health care. You’ll hear clearly how the Regional Health Authority in the area is making decisions that don’t work for this rural community (and many others) and the frustration from the health care professionals and members of the community, that the two can’t work together to come up with innovative solutions.
In this episode, you’ll hear from Sue Stirling, from Grandview Healthcare Solutions and from Dr. Jacobi Elliott, currently the only physician serving the area.
Sue was born in England and came to Canada in 1982. She worked primarily with domestic violence and child sexual assault victims. Her family traveled around Manitoba with work and they lived in Grandview, Thompson, Gilliam, Lac du Bonnet, and Winnipeg. When she retired, she returned to Grandview. She has been involved with Grandview Healthcare Solutions, since 2017.
Dr. Jacobi Elliott grew up in South-Africa. Her mom was a nurse and her dad a wine farmer.
She has 2 sisters - and they are both also physicians. All she ever wanted was to work in the hospital - she says she loves the smell of the place. She has a diploma in anesthesia, and a special certification in emergency medicine.
Dr. Elliott is the current President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba and she wrote a compelling message to college members about her experience this year and I’ll leave a link to it here.
Dr. Elliott is 52 - midway through her career, she says, and she says she still has lots of life left in her! She’s a mom to a lovely 19 year old and all her daughter wants is to work in the hospital.
Catharine Wilson - Being Neighbours: Cooperative Work and Rural Culture, 1830–1960
I have a fascination with Canadian history and more specifically, rural Canadian history. I have a keen interest in what life was like in rural Canada many years ago but I have a passion for discovering the voices that we are missing.
Consulting the oracle or Google, to dig up some rural Canadian history, I came across the Rural Diary Archive and its Founder and Director, Catharine Wilson.
Catharine Wilson is the author of Being Neighbours: Cooperative Work and Rural Culture, 1830–1960
Throughout history, farm families have shared work and equipment with their neighbours to complete labour-intensive, time-sensitive, and time-consuming tasks. They benefitted materially and socially from these voluntary, flexible, loosely structured networks of reciprocal assistance, making neighbourliness a vital but overlooked aspect of agricultural change.
Being Neighbours takes us into the heart of the neighbourhood - the set of people near and surrounding the family - through an examination of work bees in southern Ontario from 1830 to 1960. The bee was a special event where people gathered to work on a neighbour’s farm like bees in a hive for a wide variety of purposes, including barn raising, logging, threshing, quilting, turkey plucking, and apple paring. Drawing on the diaries of over one hundred men and women, Catharine Wilson takes readers into families’ daily lives, the intricacies of their labour exchange, and their workways, feasts, and hospitality.
Catharine's interest in history began while growing up in Grenville County in a rural area. To celebrate 1967, her parents built a log cabin in their basement. Inspired by the family heirlooms displayed there, she's been fascinated with the history of daily life ever since. She teaches Canadian History, Social History, and Rural History to undergraduates and graduates at the University of Guelph. She is the Redelmeier Professor in Rural History, Coordinator of the speakers’ series The Rural History Roundtable, Founder and Director of the Rural Diary Archive website, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Being Neighbours is Catharine's third book.
The first was A New Lease on Life: Landlords, tenants and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada and her second was Tenants in Time: Family Strategies, Land, and Liberalism in Upper Canada, 1799-1871
Physicians Assistants: Can Physicians Side-Step Ego to Health Rural Health Care? Eric Demers and Dr. Alex Nataros
Physicians Assistants or PAs are, in essence physician extenders, they extend the care of a primary physician. They are not nurses, nurses assistants nor are they practical nurses.
PAs got their start in the US in the 60s to respond to a shortage and uneven geographical distribution of doctors (sound familiar)? The PA profession alleviated doctors from performing routine technical tasks in hospitals allowing more patients to be served and physicians to focus where their skills would be better utilized. This rapidly evolved to include utilizing PAs in primary care settings. PAs continue to be a part of the U.S. health system with almost 130,000 practicing PAs and 225 accredited programs.
In Canada, in 1999, the government of Manitoba passed the clinical assistant (CA) registration amendment under the Medical Act. This allowed for the licensing of registered clinical assistants which later became the registration of Physician Assistants.
There is currently legislation on the books in Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta and Manitoba. In Nova Scotia, the government has launched a pilot project at the Nova Scotia Health Authority for three PAs to work in orthopedic surgery to help tackle hip and knee surgery wait times. British Columbia has had interest but currently has no legislation. Getting PAs accredited or recognized legally is often tied to a relationship with the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the province.
In Canada, the Physician Assistants program has deep roots in the Canadian Military, the first to establish a school and a program.
McMaster University and the University of Manitoba currently have PA programs . A PA Consortium, which includes the University of Toronto, Northern Ontario School of Medicine and The Michener Institute for Education at UHN has a Bachelor of Sciences Physician Assistant Degree.
Currently though, there are only 70 seats for folks to become a Physician Assistant and the admission, as you can imagine, is highly competitive.
Why aren’t more rural Canadian communities utilizing the services of PAs? Why are physicians resistant to adding them to their care team? And how can you be proactive in bringing physicians to your rural and/or remote communities that are open to working shoulder to shoulder with PAs?
This episode, we talk to Eric Demers, a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, a past president of the Canadian Association of Physician Assistants, who currently lives in British Columbia but works in the Northwest Territories as a Physician Assistant. And we speak to Dr. Alex Nataros, a primary care physician who just put down roots in Port Hardy, British Columbia and is advocating to have PAs recognized in British Columbia. He has also just started a column in the local digital publication called the North Island Gazette.
Ann Douglas - Navigating the Messy Middle
A Fiercely Honest and Wildly Encouraging Guide for Midlife Women
This is the first in our series of Rural Authors and Rural Books.
Ann is an award-winning writer and bestselling author. She is the creator of The Mother of All Books® series, which has sold over half a million copies in North America to date. For decades, Ann was Canada’s most trusted writer on all things parenting, and often heard across Canada speaking about just that, on CBC Radio.
She is the author of 26 non-fiction books and a passionate and inspiring speaker who delivers keynote addresses and leads small-group workshops at conferences and online events. I actually had the good fortune of attending one of Ann’s workshops at a conference several years ago.
Ann and her husband Neil live in rural Ontario, where she is hard at work on her first novel.
For this book, Ann interviewed over 100 midlife women for this book, from diverse backgrounds and identities, including me! Some of the topics include career pivots, health concerns, building community, child-rearing, marriage and divorce. She also interviewed several subject matter experts and reviewed over 1000 articles about women in mid-life.
Millions of women grapple with midlife challenges faced with a popular culture that tells us our best before date has long expired. Ann brings us together in this book, in hope and encouragement.
Learn more about Ann and get the book.
This is the second in a series of interviews about rural Canadian health care. Last episode we talked about the BC Rural Health Network, a collective of citizen-led collaborators that have organized to put pressure on the government and basically get folks to pay attention to the unique needs in rural health care, specifically in rural British Columbia.
Another part of putting pressure on the government comes from the physicians themselves. They are fully aware of the wait times, the lack of access to a family doctor and the travel times some rural and remote Canadians need to drive in order to see a specialist or maybe even get basic care.
This is not what they signed up for.
The Society of Rural Physicians of Canada along with the College of Family Physicians of Canada released the Rural Road Map: Report Card on Access to Health Care in Rural Canada in April 2021.
The implementation committee was made up of representatives from fifteen different organizations, all with the interest in driving change, including the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada and the Canadian Association for Rural and Remote Nursing.
Two representatives from that implementation committee spoke with me about why the report card was done, what the results have been and what the path forward is for rural Canadian health care.
Dr. Ruth Wilson is a practicing family physician in Yellowknife, and a Professor Emerita of family medicine at Queen’s University, where she was chair of the department. Before her twenty-nine years at Queen’s she spent twelve years in rural and remote family practice, including anesthesia and obstetrics, in Bella Coola, BC, Sioux Lookout Ontario, and Baie Verte Newfoundland.
She served as Chair of the Ontario Family Health Network. She is a past president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
She co-chaired the Advancing Rural Family Medicine Collaborative Task Force from and co-chaired the Rural Road Map Implementation Committee.
In 2015, Dr. Wilson was named a member of the Order of Canada. In 2010, she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women. In 2021 she was given the Rural Leadership Award by the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada.
Dr. James Rourke was an active rural family physician, including obstetrics and emergency work, in Goderich, Ontario, for 25 years with his wife and medical partner, Dr. Leslie Rourke. Their practice was one of the primary Rural Family Medicine teaching sites at Western University. Their most exciting and long-lasting success has been translating evidence for use in everyday family practice with the Rourke Baby Record (led by Dr. Leslie Rourke and Dr. Denny Leduc), a system that many Canadian doctors and other healthcare professionals use for well visits for infants and children from one week old to five years of age.
Since finishing as the Dean of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2016, Dr. Rourke has been able to step away from a heavy management load and refocus on several major interests. He has been chair of the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools and is currently Chair of the ASPIRE-to-Excellence, a program that awards exemplary medical school programs, and he provides sought-after advice on rural health, healthcare restructuring, medical education, and research.
One of the fundamental challenges in rural Canadian communities is health care. Folks in rural and remote communities are not the same as our urban counterparts and therefore our health care needs to be different.
And there are so many aspects to that. Over the next few episodes, I’ll cover a number of elements relating to rural health.
The first one is how to include residents in solutions-based health care.
The BC Rural Health Network is the healthcare voice of the rural residents of British Columbia and seeks better health outcomes for all people, through solutions-based approaches with governments, and information provision to residents.
Paul Adams leads operations and administration at the BC Rural Health Network. He comes from a background in executive management both in non-profit organizations and in industry. His past work has included working as the Executive Director of the largest conservation group in BC and as a leader both provincially and nationally in the clean renewable energy sector. Paul’s involvement in health and healthcare started many years earlier when he managed his father’s rural medical office. His work as an executive involved commuting from his home in the Upper Similkameen region of BC to large urban centres and after 2 decades he decided to return to work in his home community and started a farm with his wife growing organic food for local residents. An injury in the summer of 2021 prevented Paul from continuing this journey (for now) and the opportunity to return to his roots in rural health emerged simultaneously. Paul has enjoyed representing the interests of all rural residents in BC regarding their health and wellness. Paul is a husband, a father and a grandfather and believes that protecting healthcare resources and enhancing them for future generations is critical to us all.
BC Rural Health Network Website
Email: info@bcruralhealth.org
Kaity and Montana Adams own Adams Family Ink and Boutique on Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, near Brantford, Ontario but it is clear Kaity runs the business. But this is at the root of her Indigenous heritage and family teaching, you will hear in this episode.
Kaity was born and raised on Six Nations, on the Onondaga First Nation. She is Deer Clan and a proud Haudenoshawnee woman. Her husband Montana is from Aamjiwnaang First Nations which is Chipewa/Ojibwe.
Kaity talks about qualifying on reserve for a mortgage to build her own house, that only her income was considered because only she is a band member. She talks about making the decision to turn the main floor of their home into a tattoo studio and boutique and moving their living space downstairs.
Kaity took politics in university and she explains about how it felt as an Indigenous woman to learn in an environment surrounded by people who didn’t know her history. She talks about how Indigenous politics works, the benefits and the drawbacks. And her experience with witnessing mediation talks and full voting in Indigenous community.
And Kaity is very open about her mental health and how important she feels it is to be vulnerable about that, so others can feel less isolated and alone.
I learned a great deal from this conversation. I hope you do too!
*Kaity is preparing to create her own podcast so stay tuned for that in the future!
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Politicization of Wind Energy in Rural Canada
This topic was brought to me by one of our newsletter subscribers named Ruby. She’s concerned that hundreds of wind turbines are moving into an area of Eastern Ontario where she and her husband plan to retire. She shared a noise level assessment with me and I did some research into other areas that fought against the turbines coming to their area, and won. Here's a write up about it from a group called Wind Concerns Ontario.
Admittedly though, this is not my area of expertise. Although I live in rural Ontario and live within driving distance of rows of wind turbines along Lake Huron and along the 402 highway, and I remember much of the opposition to wind turbines back when Ontario was first toying with the idea of bringing them here, I have not been following it lately.
That’s why I brought in Chad Walker. He’s an Assistant Professor in the School of Planning at Dalhousie University. He’s a researcher and teacher, studying the social ramifications of low carbon energy transitions, including things like wind turbines, wind farms and solar farm development, all across Canada and the UK.
Chad has experience working with communities building sustainable energy systems that benefit the communities themselves, both financially and environmentally. He talks about his work with this Indigenous community in the episode.
He's also done research on the politicization of wind energy, specifically comparing Ontario and Nova Scotia.
This isn't the last time I'll tackle this issue, I'm trying to get the Conservation Authority perspective, so stay tuned for a part two on this one.
Bias, Hate and Extremism - Part 2
(This episodes is the second of two-parts)
This is part 2 of a two part series on bias, hate and extremism, specifically in rural Canada. If you haven’t heard it, I hope you listen to part one, but it’s not a prerequisite to listen to this one.
In part one I talked about how most people hold opinions and biases and that in online spaces, particularly social media platforms, with algorithms that help put items in front of you similar to what you’ve already clicked on, that this can make it much easier to spread mis and disinformation.
In the first episode, I spoke with Dr. Barbara Perry, Director at the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at the Ontario Tech University andEtienne Quintal, Manager of the Online Hate Research and Education Project with theToronto Holocaust Education Centre.
In this episode, I speak with Kurt Phillips, who started doing anonymous online research into hate groups in Canada, but he was doxxed in recent years, losing his anonymity. He’s a board member of theCanadian Anti-Hate Network and also a high school teacher in rural Alberta. He names quite a few of the right wing extremist groups to be aware of, we talk about the players in the Freedom Convoy and what he finds most troubling about the future.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network's Educational Toolkit, which is a Government of Canada-funded resource, aims to give teachers and students the tools to address displays of hate on campus.
TheToronto Holocaust Education Centre is developing its owneducational portal. Right now, it contains Canada's Hate Symbols List, which currently has 90 symbols listed and they’re working towards around 250. They will soon be uploading reports, educational resources, and translating the Symbols list into French in the coming months. It's similar to theADL's symbol list.
(This episodes is the first of two-parts)
Almost everyone has a bias, a way of thinking, an opinion, it’s pretty much human nature. Journalists, when I went to journalism school, were only supposed to report on facts and not opinion. That has drastically changed. And in an age where many of us spend lots of time on online social platforms, the bias continues to be confirmed by where we choose to click and view and modern day algorithms. That in turn fills our social feeds with more information that continues to confirm what we already believe to be true. Confirmation bias is not new, but social platforms have certainly made it easier, and faster, and it’s created a broader reach for spreading mis or dis information.
In the next two episodes, we explore how bias, hate and extremism has been spreading in Canada, specifically in rural Canada.
Joining in this fascinating conversation for this episode are Dr. Barbara Perry, Director at the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at the Ontario Tech Universityand Etienne Quintal, Manager of the Online Hate Research and Education Project with the Toronto Holocaust Education Centre.
Etienne provided some resources folks can look into:
The Toronto Holocaust Education Centre is developing its own educational portal. Right now, it contains Canada's Hate Symbols List, which currently has 90 symbols listed and they’re working towards around 250. They will soon be uploading reports, educational resources, and translating the Symbols list into French in the coming months. It's similar to the ADL's symbol list.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network's Educational Toolkit, which is a Government of Canada-funded resource aims to give teachers and students the tools to address displays of hate on campus.
Be sure to tune in to part two of Bias, Hate and Extremism in rural Canada when I speak with Kurt Phillips, who started doing anonymous online research into hate groups in Canada, but he was doxxed in recent years, losing his anonymity. He’s a board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network and also a high school teacher in rural Alberta.
Every Sunday I've been hosting Open Circle Zoom calls, inviting folks from across rural Canada to talk about the issues on their mind that week. This was recorded just ahead of Ontario's municipal elections and leaks to media that suggested the Ontario government might impose changes to the powers of municipalities AFTER the Ontario municipal election.
Erik was calling in from Unity, Saskatchewan and is concerned about the divisiveness and apathy that exists in rural spaces as our democracy gets chipped away. He also started a Facebook group called Seeds for Change and is hosting his own open Zoom calls for folks wanting progressive change across Canada.
Anne runs an online newspaper, the Owen Sound Hub out of Owen Sound, Ontario. She is concerned about municipal and county councils going unchecked because there is a lack of journalists to cover local issues in rural communities across Canada, and that there are right-wing groups dropping newspapers in rural restaurants and cafes.
Hollie lives 'off grid' in rural Ontario, near Drumbo. She's starting a new business, concerned about the land, Indigenous rights and the Indigenous fur trade. She also comes from an American family and fears Canada is becoming more and more like the US in its political divisiveness.
We all talked about echo chambers, confirmation bias and the need to hold space for being uncomfortable and for getting things wrong/being vulnerable. That we need to be able to listen to folks who don't necessarily agree with us. We all agreed that young people are our future and that we need to engage them to help enact positive change.
We talked about the possibility of hosting virtual gatherings across Canada in an effort to bring the left and right together to find some common ground in rural Canada.
Have some ideas? Feel free to email me shauna@radarmedia.co .
Want to talk about the issues you're facing in your rural community?
Open Zoom calls every Sunday:
1:30 p.m. NT
1:00 p.m. AT
12:00 p.m. ET
11:00 a.m. CT
10:00 a.m. MT
9:00 a.m. PT
TO JOIN: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86517066544
Solving a trades shortage - Add more women
Is your small community struggling to find qualified tradespeople? Are you looking for someone to do some work for you or are you a business owner, hunting for certified employees?
Recently Canada’s federal government announced a call for proposals from organizations that train and support folks from underrepresented groups (including women) in the trades and non-traditional professions. According to the latest research, just 5% of registered trades people (which does include hairstyling and esthetics) are women.
Michele Vindum approached me about a call she put out for female roofers and how that grew into a movement and the creation of a group of women roofers called Summit Sisters. This got me thinking about other non-traditional professions that women work in across Canada.
This conversation includes a researcher, based out of Newfoundland and Labrador, a female fish harvester, also based in Newfoundland and Labrador, a woman exterminator that decided to go into business for herself and Michele, an ecological farmer in Eastern Ontario.
They all talk about the experience of women in nontraditional roles and some of the reasons why women hesitate to go into the industries, also how women still struggle to be treated as equals both by their peers and by their employers, leading many women to go into business for themselves.
The researcher is Heather Elliott. Sheis a former heritage worker and current graduate student who resides in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Originally from Ontario, Heather grew up fascinated with ships and shipwrecks, always eager to learn about why people went to sea for a living. She started the blog Original Shipster in 2011 to share her love of Canadian maritime history. Currently, she is completing her Master's degree in sociocultural anthropology on gender and the maritime sector, investigating how someone's gender presentation impacts their life at work. She found a variety of ways that gender shapes not only physical, but the audio spaces that surround individuals, and that these experiences are quite different between men and women.
Website
Jasmine Paul is a fish harvester on Placentia Bay Newfoundland and based out of Come by Chance. She refers to MUN, which is the Memorial University of Newfoundland, a place where she studied her Bachelor of Arts and occasionally teaches.
Follow Jasmine on Twitter
Suzy Rayner is the owner/operator of Valkyrie Pest Solutions in Gimli, Manitoba. She began her career in pest management 8 years ago after experiencing bed bugs and cockroaches in her own residence. Pest control quickly became a passionate career. Suzy found that she seemed to give her customers something that set her apart; was it her lived experience with pests or was there something different in her approach as a woman?
Michele Vindum is the owner of Plainfield Heritage Farm in Eastern Ontario. She talked about the Summit Sisters and Samanntha De Coteau. Michele is an ecological farmer, former Social Worker who specialized in violence against women. Michele sought to use her need for a new roof as a venue to promote women in the non-traditional trades. 13 women came from across canada to do her roof.
Since this interview, I came across something called KickAss Careers which encourages Canadian women to learn about and engage in a long list of trades.
2SLGTBQIA+ is an acronym for Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual***, and the plus reflects the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify.
Canada’s large urban centres have long been supportive and embrace of members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, recognizing they are an integral and important part of any diverse community, however rural communities tend to lag behind.
Many small communities are experiencing intolerance and hatred, sometimes in the form of a protest outside a Drag Storytime at a local library or a more aggressive burning of a pride or trans flag.
Support for queer and trans folks in rural Canada is the work of allies but many step forward from the community itself to make a safe space and community for others.
Dr. Kay Dingwell is an emergency care physician in PEI, and she also happens to have a specialty in gender-affirming care.
The World Health Organization defines gender affirming care as a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions “designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth. Treatments range from laser hair removal, male or female hormone therapy, chest or breast, otherwise known as ‘top’ surgery, “bottom” surgery, which can transform and/or rebuild genitals, and other health care treatments.
Kayla Grant is running in the upcoming Woolwich, Ontario municipal election. She has self-identified as queer. The current council, while reviewing a citizen letter about installing a ‘rainbow crosswalk’ a councilor said he wouldn’t be supporting it because he didn’t support the ‘lifestyle’. Another councilor corrected him but he went ahead and referred to 2SLGBTQ+ folks as living a ‘lifestyle’ and was corrected again.
Both women joined me to talk about supporting queer and trans folks in rural Canadian communities.
I hosted another Sunday open Zoom call, this time it was on Thanksgiving weekend (for those who celebrate).
I was joined by Leslie from Nelson, British Columbia and Carrie from Caledon, Ontario.
Leslie is retired and is running in her local municipal election. She is a longtime climate activist and is concerned about development and the voices that she's not hearing, the people she's not seeing at the all candidates meetings and debates she's been involved in. She thinks things need to change in order to build community. She's offering coffee shop meetings and suggesting council meetings take place in various areas of the community so more people can access.
Carrie runs a co-operative organic farm in Caledon, Ontario and she's alarmed by the lack of input and the corruption at the municipal level and at the provincial level of government. She's concerned about development and where we'll get our food if there's no land to grow it. She sees how women on her local council are treated and it's disgusting.
We're all concerned about the underlying and seemingly more obvious hate that is bubbling up in our communities but we're also seeing systems being pulled apart and dismantled and that's exciting.
All of us are committed to change.
Leslie mentioned the flooding of highways near Nelson, BC.
Carrie mentioned the Canadian Federation of University Women.
Women in rural and remote politics - Is change possible?
WARNING: Cursing and at least one f-bomb - at the latter end of the episode
This episode focuses on some of the abysmal stats when it comes to the representation of women in Canada, particularly rural Canada and what we should be doing about it. Shari Graydon joins me, the creator and head of the organization, Informed Opinions. And I’ll also talk to a current female mayor about her experience and why she’s not running again. Mayor of Peterborough, Ontario, Diane Therrien and I have a chat. Feel free to drop me an email if you have a comment.
Shari Graydon - Informed Opinions
That was the voice of former Nunvut MP, Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, in her speech in parliament before leaving her seat last year.
Many women, and particularly marginalized women, are targeted, not just by parliamentary opponents but often by members of the public, in their own communities.
But some of the worst abuse comes from social media.
Is it any wonder women in rural and remote Canada aren’t running? In both rural Manitoba and rural Ontario, a vast number of mayors and reeves in this year’s municipal elections are being acclaimed, facing no competition.
Across Canada women make up less than a third of elected officials. That means 2 out of 3 current politicians will never experience periods, pay discrimination, or sexual objectification.
2 out of 3 will never be reduced to their gender.
How do we expect those politicians to prioritize issues that don’t affect them?
In 2000 Canada ranked 27th in the world for women’s representation in parliament.
Now we’re 60th.
A new Abacus Data study found that two out of three Canadians are either concerned, disappointed, surprised or angry to learn that Canada ranks so poorly. And the majority think political parties or the government — rather than women themselves — should be responsible for ensuring equal representation of men and women in politics.
The organization, Informed Opinions commissioned the study. Informed Opinions amplifies the voices of women and gender-diverse individuals for a more democratic Canada. Shari Graydon created Informed Opinions with the aim of bridging the gender gap in Canadian public discourse.
She joins me to talk about the study, the state of women in politics here in Canada and about Informed Opinion’s new campaign, Balance of Power.
Diane Therrien - Current Mayor of Peterborough, Ontario
WARNING: Cursing and at least one f-bomb
Someone who has had some of that airtime, as the Mayor of Peterborough, Ontario, is Diane Therrien. Mayor Therrien has not been shy about giving it back to folks that have disrupted her town in the name of Freedom during the throes of the pandemic and even this summer. She’s not afraid to curse, dropping f-bombs and in her words, ‘blocking trolls with abandon’ on Twitter. She’s fielded some of the most public vitriol with a fierceness that inspires.
But she’s not running again in this year’s municipal election.
She talks openly about her experience, the myriad of reasons why she isn’t running again including the misogyny and patriarchy she faced, and occasionally from senior staff and what she hopes for the future.
On Sunday, I invited newsletter subscribers (you can sign up here) to an open Zoom call to talk about issues facing each person, where they are in rural Canada.
I had a great conversation with Elizabeth from Vermilion, Alberta.
We talked about Canadian politics, Alberta politics, women in politics, climate change and socialism vs communism. We also talked about community and if we can ever get to a place where our rural communities aren't so angry and divided, and the hope we can go back to being able to disagree and still be friends.
I'll still have the regular episode on Wednesday!
You might remember Cindy Crowe from season one. She was the last episode of the first season. As luck would have it, I had quite a thought-provoking conversation with Indigenous Elder, Lodgekeeper, Author and rural business woman Cindy Crowe. Cindy is a band member of the Opwaaganisiniing or the Red Rock Indian Band about an hour east of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Cindy talks about upcoming municipal elections. Cindy owns businesses and she’s worked in many different sectors, including working with vulnerable populations. And she is vulnerable and authentic herself as she speaks about her own experience with houselessness.
As we approach Canada’s second National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, her words offer a great deal to think about.
Cindy Crowe, Elder, Lodgekeeper, Author, is a band member of the Opwaaganisiniing (Red Rock Indian Band) located an hour east of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Since 1994, Cindy has been bridging gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and communities. Cindy’s life purpose is to share a message of love and interconnectedness and she creates space for change in many different venues with people from all walks of life. She believes in leading by example. Personally, she is the grateful mom of five adult children and three grandchildren.
Since 2004, Cindy’s business, Cindy Crowe Consulting has represented an award winning Anishnaabe consulting firm with her expertise in community liaison, community engagement and community development.
Since 2005, Cindy has been the Executive Director for the Traditional Teaching Lodge operating as the Blue Sky Community Healing Centre that is an Indigenous, community-led organization based in Neebing, Ontario. Cindy respectfully acknowledges that sacred space as being within the traditional territory of the Fort William First Nation and loves to welcome people to the land of her ancestors next to the shores of Lake Superior.
Cindy’s seasonal tourism business Niibing Tribal Tours (Niibing is in the summer in Ojibwe) provides opportunities for her visitors to reconnect with Mother Earth while participating in the Anishnaabe culture through land based experiential learning.
Cindy’s Identity and Purpose Coaching business is for clients looking to reclaim their roots, understand themselves better and identify their life purpose. Part of this coaching is delivered through Animal Spirit Guide workshops to better understand messaging from their guides.
Cindy is the author of Walking with Grey Wolf which honours her first vision and the Spiritual journey she has been on since then. She is currently writing her second book entitled All My Relations.
Cindy has now started taking bookings for summer 2022 and into 2023 for wedding on her land, near Lake Superior. She can also perform the ceremony!
Website
Clearing a New Path Podcast™
Art design and provided by Katie Wilhelm.
Audio branding provided by The Hankering Studio.
Podcast production by Radar Media.
Podcast supported by Xplore Business.
Welcome to the second season of Clearing a New Path Podcast. I’m your host, Shauna Rae.
I’m in rural Southwestern Ontario, on the traditional territory of the Anish-inaabe, Haudenoshownee and Mississauga or Neutral peoples who once used this land as their traditional beaver hunting grounds.
There are soooo many underrepresented voices across Canada, folks ignored, overlooked and silenced. I feel called to engage in building a united, feminist, anti-racist rural Canada, one that truly embraces diversity and is rooted in Reconciliation.
That starts with, what can be, uncomfortable conversations.
Season one, was focused on rural woman-identiftying, non-binary and queer entrepreneurs,
This season we’ll go deeper on rural-specific topics.
Things like women’s health, gender-affirming care and seniors’ care in rural and remote communities. Broadband: The contentious issue that has folks on one side of the street in town with fiber, and the other without. Women in trades and traditionally male-dominated professions. Agricultural emissions: What is fact and what is fiction? Reconciliation: How do we change focus from what will be lost in our rural communities, to what there is to gain? Freedom: What does that word mean to marginalized folks in rural Canada?
The core of those conversations is truth, in other words, what do we know to be true for us at this moment? AND can we hold space for another’s truth, while still holding space for our own?
This is a space where mutual respect, open dialogue and honest questions are welcome and encouraged, as we find our way together through challenging topics. As a white woman of privilege, I don’t have all the answers but I’m willing to be vulnerable and learn right along with you.
Join me on the journey, Clearing a NEW Path!
Clearing a New Path Podcast™
Art design and provided by Katie Wilhelm.
Audio branding provided by The Hankering Studio.
Podcast production by Radar Media.
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Cindy Crowe, Elder, Lodgekeeper, Author, is a band member of the Opwaaganisiniing (Red Rock Indian Band) located an hour east of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Since 1994, Cindy has been bridging gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and communities. Cindy’s life purpose is to share a message of love and interconnectedness and she creates space for change in many different venues with people from all walks of life. She believes in leading by example. Personally, she is the grateful mom of five adult children and three grandchildren.
Since 2004, Cindy’s business, Cindy Crowe Consulting has represented an award winning Anishnaabe consulting firm with her expertise in community liaison, community engagement and community development.
Since 2005, Cindy has been the Executive Director for the Traditional Teaching Lodge operating as the Blue Sky Community Healing Centre that is an Indigenous, community-led organization based in Neebing, Ontario. Cindy respectfully acknowledges that sacred space as being within the traditional territory of the Fort William First Nation and loves to welcome people to the land of her ancestors next to the shores of Lake Superior.
Cindy’s seasonal tourism business Niibing Tribal Tours (Niibing is in the summer in Ojibwe) provides opportunities for her visitors to reconnect with Mother Earth while participating in the Anishnaabe culture through land based experiential learning.
Cindy’s Identity and Purpose Coaching business is for clients looking to reclaim their roots, understand themselves better and identify their life purpose. Part of this coaching is delivered through Animal Spirit Guide workshops to better understand messaging from their guides.
Cindy is the author of Walking with Grey Wolf which honours her first vision and the Spiritual journey she has been on since then. She is currently writing her second book entitled All My Relations.
This episode is longer than usual but it was difficult to cut any more from our fascinating conversation.
Website
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We are the Walking Trees: Women's SpiritualNature Retreat - Neebing, Ontario
September 16 to 18, 2022
- Bring your own tent/camper for 'Glamping'
- Wash/swim in Lake Superior
- Catered nourishing meals
- First 15 women will be accepted
Send your inquiries or to register at crowe@tbaytel.netClearing a New Path Podcast™
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Lynette Mader was raised in rural Middlesex County. She got her career start with a job as public relations manager for Turkey Farmers of Canada in Mississauga and from there, took a marketing job at what was then, Cold Springs Farm in Thamesford. This brought her back to the London area where she met her husband - one of the owners of Bellamere Country Market and Winery.
She left Cold Springs Farm to work in the family business until the business was sold, and then she accepted a marketing manager position at Ducks Unlimited Canada's (DUC) Barrie Ontario office.
Since that somewhat abrupt right turn into an environmental career in 2002, she has held many positions including overseeing landowner stewardship programs and starting Duck Unlimited Canada’s first consulting initiative in Ontario, to raise funds for conservation.
In 2014 she accepted the position of Manager of Provincial Operations becoming the first woman in Ducks Unlimited Canada to land a provincial manager position.
She has been a member of the Species at Risk Program Advisory Committee, co-chaired a provincial wetland advisory panel, was a member of a wetlands technical advisory group, a member of the Protected Areas Working Group and was vice chair of Ontario's Climate Change Advisory panel.
Currently she is participating on the Rural Ontario Municipal Association's Attainable Housing Task Force.
Lynette is passionate about rural quality of life and ensuring Ontarians can continue to enjoy natural spaces. When she is not advocating for nature and wildlife habitat, she is equally passionate about dementia advocacy and improving the long term care experience for seniors.
Ducks Unlimited Canada website
Media stories:
Ducks Unlimited Canada celebrates record year in land restoration in Ontario
Small Wetlands Are Making A Big Comeback in Southern Ontario
Ontario Appoints Advisory Panel on Climate Change
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Lynette on LinkedIn
Ducks Unlimited Canada (Ontario) on Twitter
Ducks Unlimited Canada (Ontario) Instagram
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Kelly Snowdon is 28 year old competitive athlete turned entrepreneur from Moncton, New Brunswick. Kelly has competed in 5 Canadian Ringette Championships, the Canada Winter Games in Halifax in 2011 and was a part of 3 seasons of the National Ringette League with the Atlantic Attack.
Kelly has 3 sisters Jessica, Jenny, and Britney and ringette has been part of the family for two decades. It has molded them into an extraordinary and unique family, thanks to their incredibly supportive parents, Rupert and Janice.
In Kelly’s last season, her team won the 2018 National Championship in Winnipeg Manitoba.
with all three of her sisters on the same team. It was the first, and last time all four sisters played on the same ringette team.
In Kelly’s professional life, she started out as a server at the age of 19, but she quickly realized this wasn’t going to be her lifelong career.
Her second job was working as a childcare educator working weekdays and weekends.
But with this position, Kelly’s passion and energy diminished as her employer was verbally and mentally abusive. After work, all Kelly could do was sleep because her work drained every ounce of energy from her body, leading her to quit all sports and her social life.
Kelly’s partner suggested she take a sick leave and Kelly went to get help for her mental health, her doctor diagnosing her with severe depression, anxiety and PTSD from the toxic work environment.
After a long fight with compensation, Kelly had to find a way to make an income. Her partner encouraged her to rediscover her true passion, sports. And Dugout Sports Training Facility was born.
What motivates Kelly every day is knowing that not only herself but her coaches make a difference in the lives of athletes that come through Dugout's doors. Sharing their love for the game and knowledge is rewarding.
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Therese Van Es is an enthusiastic, dynamic rural entrepreneur in the worlds of both business and food!
About business…
Therese is the President and Chief People Leader of Ladder HR Solutions, Inc. She is a Human Resources Executive with 25 years of experience on a mission to instill innovative people practices and processes in dynamic, high growth companies before people problems become unwieldly. Passionate about creating change in the HR function, Therese also mentors newly minted HR professionals.
Prior to launching Ladder HR Solutions, Therese held several corporate HR leadership positions in logistics, manufacturing, IT, and professional services organizations as well as teaching and guest lecturing for HR programs at Fanshawe College.
Therese graduated from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business with the Advanced Diploma in Human Resources Management. She also holds an Honours Certification in Management and a diploma in Accounting.
About food…
Therese is a passionate, plant-based foodie with a diploma in holistic nutrition, As a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Therese counsels people who are transitioning to a plant based diet. She also runs a 7-day Plant Powered Cleanse program and teaches dairy free cheese making from her home kitchen. She’s a bit nerdy about being vegan… 😉
From being a former co-owner of a large yoga studio, to making food for sale in her commercial kitchen and teaching people to grow their own food, Therese demonstrates a wide range of interest and capabilities in the field of holistic health!
Therese graduated from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition in 2009 with a diploma in Holistic Nutrition.
Ladder HR Website
Ladder HR Twitter
Ladder HR Facebook
Milcoeur Vegan Micro Homesteading
Milcoeur Facebook
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Selena Strong is the founder of Selena Strong Fitness and she has over 15 years of Exercise & Fascial Stretch Therapy experience, and she has never stopped learning and improving.
This is a mentality that she tries to pass on to every client she meets. Fitness is Life.
Selena is also a sponsored Fitness Competitor and Fitness Model.
She has worked with a wide range of clientele, from folks who survived severe auto collisions, to stroke patients with neurological issues. As an assistant trainer, she has worked with many athletes, including the Windsor Spitfires and the Guelph Storm.
Selena's message to you is:
"The journey is continuous and is oftentimes an uphill battle. Understanding that improvement and growth is a constant process and is not limited to the physical but also includes the mental and emotional process of real, lasting change. To want to be fit, or to want to be healthy, or to simply just be better, is something that, by its very nature, serves as a challenge, a call to battle and is never won alone. So, if you accept this challenge and you want to be better…you want to be stronger. I can’t wait to meet you!”
Selena's Website
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Chelsea Major is a Master's of Science student in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Geography, Environment, and Geomatic and a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Development from the University of Guelph.
During her studies, she has worked on research on future food production pathways, the sociocultural values surrounding berry picking in Newfoundland, and Indigenous food sovereignty. Currently, she is working with Dr. Sheri Longboat and Dr. Silvia Sarapura on the gendered impacts of mining operations on Indigenous communities and the involvement of Indigenous women in mining-related consultations and negotiations.
During our conversation, my precocious 15 year old dog, Lola, decided to make an appearance. Apologies for the distraction but she does eventually settle down.
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Zeleen Virani worked in the banking industry for over 20 years, most recently in Retail Branch Management and Operational Risk roles where she was often part of making the decisions on whether or not rural women entrepreneurs would be getting access to capital.
She assessed return on investment on all budgetary decisions and she was instrumental in collaboration with key partners and a trail blazer on new digital tools.
But she recently left that industry and is looking to make an impact as a leader that inspires acceptance, diversity and inclusion of all, creating a workplace that treats all equally.
Zeleen is mom to 2 boys, instilling in them a sense of leadership and responsibility to become future global citizens. She was their home school teacher during pandemic.
Her parents were South Asian newcomers to Canada.
Zeleen also wrote a moving story about her life and her experiences that you can read on the website here.
Zeleen mentioned the Duca Impact Lab. It's a new way of delivering financial services.
Zeleen and her sons are walking in the World Partnership Walk. Their fundraising page is here.
Follow Zeleen on Instagram
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If you are a person immigrating to Canada wanting to live your best life in one of the most beautiful places in our country then you have to meet Lindsay Rubeniuk.
Lindsay is passionate about developing a skilled workforce, growing Canadian rural & northern towns and spreading her knowledge on the subject of immigration. She loves Canada and her education backs that up. She is an Economic Developer of Canada, a member of the Career Professionals of Canada as well as a licensed Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant.
Lindsay has brought new direction to the immigration scene as she works with businesses & municipalities to train their staff on how they can implement the many immigration pathways available to bring foreign workers into Canada.
Of course, Lindsay continues to work with skilled immigrants to identify pathways to immigrate to the Canadian Prairies. She talks about many topics as the host of the popular podcast “Immigration on the Canadian Prairies”.
Lindsay's company website: 100th Median Immigration
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Members of the Rural Ontario Community of Queer Youth
Mabe Kyle
Maker of poetry, pottery, and photography who loves being creative.
Adventurer who calls many places home across borderlines.
Builder of communities who enjoys being active.
Embracing friends, family, and their neurodivergent mind.
Keener for desserts served at every meal with the sweetest tooth you may find.
Yearning for disability justice and liberation for the collective.
Learning how to express gratitude and be kind.
Embodying a life without binaries who is very introspective.
Blake Wava Quinlan (they/xe/ey), is an agender queer from Muskoka Ontario. As a 16 y/o high school student they are quite familiar with many issues facing rural 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. In zee free time, ey love to cook, paint, and read poetry.
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Emma Hull is a transformational Life Coach, Facilitator, Yoga Teacher, and Reiki Healer.
A natural leader, Emma thrives on seeing others flourish. She is gifted at inspiring people to be their favourite version of themselves – on the mat, at work, home or play.
Emma has over a decade of leadership experience in corporate and government environments from England to Canada. After her own awakening she walked away from her career to devote herself to helping others on their path of transformation.
Weaving her unique blend of spiritual and practical concepts she gently guides her clients to discover their passion and take aligned action.
Emma is proud to call British Columbia home and spends her time between Sun Peaks and Nakusp on the traditional territories of the Secwépemc and Sinixt peoples.
Social Media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LifeUntethered.fb/
IG: @lifeuntethered.ig
Article
CBC marketplace investigation into life coaching https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-life-coach-1.6364745
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Melissa Mackey is an international best-selling author, speaker on the topics of Business Growth, Travel & Transformation. She is an independent mom on a mission. She is the CEO of Travel Chicks & Founder of Ignite Me Now. Melissa brings 17 years of experience in the field, and working one on one with clients to inspire them through the power of travel & transformation. She leads retreats and masterminds worldwide helping entrepreneurs grow and scale their business from a heart centered space. Melissa's been featured on major media outlets including: Financial Post, Huffington Post, CBC, Breakfast Television, and Mind Valley. She is an accomplished millennial mama who is committed to helping others thrive, especially through the power of travel.
Social media links
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Travel Chicks Podcast
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Bruce County, Ontario based artist Heather Lynne Travis is known for her bold use of colour in her large scale, and often whimsical, abstracts. A lifelong artist selling mainly to family and friends, Heather has been exhibiting professionally (and selling art to strangers) since 2018 and in that short time has sold almost 100 works of art, as well as limited edition prints, now living in homes all over North America (and even one in the UK!).
Heather's work has been featured at the TOM Thomson Art Gallery, LOFT Gallery, and others. Heather will be having her first solo exhibition in the Fall of 2023. Her creative energy is chanelled into not only her paintings, but also a fun & vibrant fabric line, and her popular weekly Instagram LIVE called #shARTwithHeather: Shitty Art Class for Adults etc. hosted every Saturday since January 2021 where Heather inspires others to throw some colour around and connect with their inner child through art.
Heather is also a regular guest host of the popular arts podcast, And She Looked Up Creative Hour.
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In town hall style, and from some of our most engaging guests, we created a community space of vulnerability to hear authentic challenges faced by women-identifying and non-binary entrepreneurs in rural Canada.
Our goal is to connect rural women-identifying and non-binary entrepreneurs with rural women politicians, band council chiefs and business leaders in order to learn how we can support each other and to grow an ecosystem built on understanding and allyship.
We are grateful to have partnered on this event with the Canadian Women's Chamber of Commerce (CanWCC).
These are the highlights, without the introductions and land acknowledgement, although one is included in the intro of the podcast.
THE PANELISTS:
Season Kirkwood - Founder - SAYZOONS - Otterburne, Manitoba
Season was the spark for this event. Season is an Indigenous (Metis) Firekeeper and they introduced me to the idea of a 'bonfire' community, all participants on equal footing, each with a voice, discussing issues. Season creates land-based tourism experiences and teaches others how to look at the use of land in new ways.
Stella Sehn - Co-Founder - Sweet Pure Honey - Porcupine Plains, Saskatchewan
Stella has taught me a great deal about allyship and has been open about the challenges she has faced in a small community, as a Black woman and a rural entrepreneur. Stella and her husband were heavily affected by the pandemic but found new ways to promote their honey products. Sweet Pure Honey has received the Integrity Award from its local Chamber of Commerce.
Cheryl Haskett - Co-Founder - Udderly Ridiculous Goat's Milk Ice Cream and Udderly Ridiculous Farm Life - Bright, Ontario
Cheryl has brought a product from an idea to market and their goat's milk ice cream won the prestigous Grand Prix of New Products in Canada and Innovator of the Year from Southwest Ontario Tourism but it has not been an easy time.
Sascha Boulet-Devost - Founder - Capture Therapeutics - Grand Falls, New Brunswick
Sascha had a vision of changing the way health care is offered in rural communities, without competition between practioners and with a preventative approach rather than reactive. She has a chain of clinics in Atlantic Canada, and many of her clients are bilingual.
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- 'Explicit Content' = cursing*
Erica Marchand is the founder of Bear and Fox Apparel based in Embro, Ontario which is in Oxford County. The brand is named after Erica’s children and they are one of the many reasons why she created the business.
Erica grew up immersed in the outdoors: hunting, trapping and fishing. She wanted her brand to exemplify that heritage. Not only would the business be named in honour of her children, but she wanted it to be a nod to the Canadian lifestyle that she holds near and dear to her heart.
Although Erica excelled in school and mastered a few different careers, she is happiest being a rural entrepreneur, building her business and building her brand.
Bear + Fox socials
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Listen to Drinks With Podcast
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Jessie Thomas is the creator and owner of Farm Girl Fitness; a small group training facility with a focus on Fresh Air Fitness. Farm Girl Fitness was established in the summer of 2020 to help provide people a safe place to workout, socialize and support mental health during the pandemic. Multiple studio shutdowns due to Covid-19 created opportunities for Farm Girl Fitness to pivot. Jessie kept people moving by creating unique ways to workout outside, even during the winter. Because of Jessie's creativity and determination to succeed, Farm Girl Fitness not only survived the pandemic, but has also expanded to include 2 indoor studios on Jessie’s family’s farm.
Jessie has been in the fitness industry since 2008 as a Can Fit Pro certified group fitness instructor and coach. She was named one of Impact Magazine’s Canada’s Top Fitness Trainers and Instructors for 2022. She is known among her peers and participants for her core values of caring, respect and positivity. She is passionate about helping others to develop confidence in themselves, a love of fitness, and a positive body image.
Jessie has spoken about her ability to pivot in business on Breakfast Television, the CanFitPro 2021 Women Who Influence panel, and can be heard on other podcasts “Breaking Body Bias” and “The Empowered Hour”.
Farm Girl Fitness social media:
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According to the newest census data, East Gwillimbury, Ontario is Canada’s fastest growing municipality.
But how is that growth being managed as it relates to immigration and diversity?
Meeta Gandhi is an award-winning communications professional with experience in both the federal and municipal sectors. Meeta joined the Town of East Gwillimbury last year where she is the Director of Communications, Customer Service, and Diversity and Inclusion.
Prior to working with East Gwillimbury, Meeta was the Director of Strategy, Innovation and Engagement at the City of Richmond Hill and before moving to municipal government, Meeta worked with the federal government for 20 years in various roles.
At home, Meeta and her husband have a blended family of 4 grown kids and their dog, Leo.
Meeta has a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Toronto, a Public Relations Certificate from Ryerson University and a Diploma in Public Administration from Western University.
East Gwillimbury socials:
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Serena Viola is currently completing her Masters in Capacity Development and Extension at the University of Guelph.
She completed her undergrad at the University of Toronto in Political Science and Diaspora & Transnational Studies.
Her interests lie in food and community, rural expansion, rural immigration and rural immigration retention.
We talk about her recent survey asking rural Ontario immigrants about access to their cultural foods in their rural community.
Follow Serena's work:
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Lourdes Still is the creative behind Masagana Flower Farm & Studio, a small-scale flower farm dye studio near La Broquerie, Manitoba.
In this immigrant, Filipina-lead small business, Lourdes puts a priority on sustainable growing practices. She grows seasonal blooms, dye plants and makes hand made, small batch naturally dyed textile goods.
She grows crops without synthetic fertilizers in garden beds where lawns previously existed.
In summer, she offers experiential tours called “Tinta. A Dye Your Own Wearable Art Experience”. It’s a three-hour engagement at the farm where guests participate in a multi-faceted experience on flower farming, dye plants cultivation, u-pick flowers and natural dyeing.
She advocates for an eco-conscious lifestyle and inspires others to re-imagine their greenspaces.
She believes that growing joy (through flowers) and creating magic (through dye plants) is right at our fingertips and our gardens present opportunities to respond positively to the climate emergency.
Masagana Flower Farm & Studio Social Media
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Sierra Lathlin is the founder and owner of Barkery Dog Treats. She is a 24-year old Indigenous female from Opaskwayak Cree Nation but she currently lives and handcrafts all her pet treats in Gimli, Manitoba, where she also has a storefront.
Late last year, Sierra attended the Young Entrepreneurs Alliance G20 Summit which was hosted in Milan & Rome. She was one of 13 young entrepreneurs from across Canada, selected to attend where she secured deals to export her products to other countries.
She has also been nominated as Canada’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year sponsored by RBC and GoDaddy. She will find out if she is the winner next month.
Sierra talks about how she got started as an entrepreneur, the tragic event that motivates her, how she managed through the pandemic and advice to other young women considering entrepreneurship.
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While a war rages in the Ukraine, a few states in the US have waged war on the lives of trans and gender diverse people. Although President Joe Biden has stepped in, there is still a troubling anti-trans sentiment that fueled orders and legislation in Texas and Florida that would in essence, make it illegal for parents to seek gender-affirming care for their trans children, calling it ‘child abuse’.
Here in Canada, there is more optimism.
Riley Nielson-Baker is a trans policy advocate out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. They hold a Masters of Public Administration from Dalhousie University and are currently studying for their Masters of Arts in Political Science at Dal with a focus on Canadian politics and the legal concept of the trans person in Canada.
Riley is the author of a new policy which would revolutionize gender affirming care for transgender, gender diverse, and intersex people in Nova Scotia. This policy is grounded in the philosophy of community-based policy, placing trans, gender diverse, and intersex people in the centre of their care.
The policy has the support of nearly 40 organizations across Canada, and will make the province the most progressive on transgender, gender diverse, and intersex healthcare in Canada.
Riley has ingrained support for those requiring gender affirming care in rural contexts in the heart of this policy: as half of Nova Scotians live outside of the Halifax core, access to healthcare in general, let alone gender affirming healthcare, is incredibly difficult and often costly.
This policy will help close the healthcare gap not only between the cisgender and 2SLGBTQIA+ community as a whole, but will also address the rural-urban healthcare divide that often leaves the rural queer community behind.
CBC Interview with Riley
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Cheryl Haskett has had a diverse career with a start in tourism, then supporting a family run construction company. After her divorce she diverged completely into a career spanning 14 years in training and development in multiple roles including sales, service, strategy, instructional design & facilitation.
Cheryl facilitates learning in the areas of Emotional Intelligence, Innovation, Conversation, Engagement and Leadership from staff level all the way to the C-Suite in large and small corporations. Although she still does this work part time, Cheryl left her career to bring to life a dream of her farming husband's - bringing a product to market.
In 2019 they launched Udderly Ridiculous Goat's Milk Ice Cream into the market, going on to win awards and accolades for the product including a win at The Grand Prix of New Products in Canada.
The product has been featured in LCBO's Food and Drink magazine and as a featured dessert at the Culinary Showdown requested by Celebrity Chefs. Like many other businesses, COVID had an impact on the business with the inability to sample, do events to promote and educate and without the ability to go-direct to consumer at scale.
So, in 2021 they decided to launch Udderly Ridiculous Farm Life and bring homebound weary Ontarians safe experiences at the Farm that brought them closer to nature, and allowed dialogue about agriculture and food supply. Cheryl drew on her instructional design & facilitation skills, background in tourism and customer service and in a short period of time launched 8 experiences, including an immersive "Taste of Farm Life" that has been awarded Signature Experience designation by Southwest Ontario Tourism.
Cheryl's desire to collaborate locally not only with her ice cream creations, but also supporting other producers hit by the pandemic had her create an on-farm store and a specialty experience highlighting over 50 other producers.
In 2021 Cheryl was awarded entrepreneur of the year by Rural Oxford/Oxford Community Futures and has recently been nominated and as a finalist for Tourism Innovator of the Year through Southwest Ontario Tourism (winner to be announced March 2022).
She says it's been an Udderly Ridiculous adventure so far!
Video from Rural Oxford
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Shawna Perry is the owner of Little Black Dress, a women's high end consignment boutique located in Summerside, Prince Edward Island.
Shawna grew up in a rural community in PEI. In her early twenties she travelled as much as she could, both nationally and internationally, before settling back in PEI to raise her family and open up her own business.
Although she was hesitant to start a business in rural PEI, she knew that it was home for her and she was optimistic she’d have the local support to become successful. Fashion has always been a love and passion of Shawna’s, so deciding to open a clothing store was not a surprise to anyone.
A consignment boutique not only provides great quality products to the community at affordable prices, but it also presents the opportunity for locals to gain some income from their previously loved pieces. Not only that, but of course it reduces the amount of textile waste otherwise going into landfills.
At Little Black Dress, Shawna and her team pride themselves in promoting inclusion and body positivity. No matter what age, race, weight, or gender you are, or regardless of your sexual orientation, the team welcomes you with open doors and can ensure they will have something for you.
Little Black Dress believes in true, authentic style, rather than what is "trendy." and it is because of the local support that Shawna has received from her own community that Little Black Dress continues to grow and thrive, not only as a boutique, but as a community.
She says "Little Black Dress - It's not just a brand, it's a lifestyle."
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I have often found it challenging to find statistics, not just about rural women entrepreneurs but also the intersection of further marginalized groups.
The Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada or WEOC, is spearheading a comprehensive Canadian survey, collecting information specifically about women entrepreneurs.
The survey is looking to collect individual details about access to capital, financial literacy and a host of many other challenges that women specifically face when it comes to entrepreneurship. WEOC is looking to hear from a wide range of women across Canada, especially those in rural or remote spaces.
To find out about WEOC and about the survey, I spoke with Alison Kirkland, the agency’s CEO.
Alison was named the inaugural CEO of WEOC in September 2019. Since then, she has grown the organization from a Board-run initiative to an integral resource for women’s entrepreneurial support organizations across Canada.
With strong and long-lasting connections within government and industry, Alison leads from experience, with 20-plus years in communications management and a decade as a certified small business counsellor.
She has led the creation of comprehensive training programs and the development of innovative funding initiatives and has had the opportunity to share her knowledge and experiences with women entrepreneurs and organizations in Ukraine and Vietnam.
Alison is actively involved with the Canada 51 venture capital initiative, Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce, COVID Communications Roundtable and Manitoba Chambers of Commerce.
TAKE THE SURVEYWEOC website WEOC Social Media
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The 2nd annual StrikeUp Digital Conference for Women Entrepreneurs is coming up next month. I’m joined by two of the many dynamic speakers that will be presenting at the event. Both of these women are in rural or remote Canada.
Joella Hogan is the sole proprietor of the Yukon Soap Company. The Indigenous owned and operated business, creates beautiful, hand-crafted soaps, shampoo bars, essential oil blends, and so much more.
Along with hand-crafting soaps, Joella has worked to make Yukon Soaps a community building, language learning, earth connecting, hub in the heart of the Yukon—the small town of Mayo.
Joella comes from a long line of strong, vibrant, Indigenous women. Her matriarchs are teachers, healers, bush women, social advocates, and cultural leaders. They taught her how to make things happen.
She is also a professional heritage worker, who continues to bring Northern Tutchone culture and heritage to the forefront of life in the central Yukon. As an active advocate for her First Nation and a dedicated community builder, she stays busy with yoga, advocacy work, and kick sledding around beautiful Mayo, Yukon.
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Indira Moudi is the CEO of Viandes Lafrance. She acquired the business in 2002 and today it is the largest meat producer of sheep and cattle in Quebec.
She is an innovative business visionary, having held leadership roles in several multinational corporations, working for 20 years in the energy sector and now 10 years in the food sector.
Indira became a chemical engineer through the Polytechnique of Montreal and she attended the Harvard Business School in both 2008 and 2020, as a certified Global Leader.
Indira has lived through and been challenged by the last three recessions of 2008, 2014 and 2020.
As business leader, her dream is to see “the end of hunger” within her generation. She is working closely with all stakeholders in the food supply chain to study the benefits of Degrowth and Short Food Supply Chain (SFSCs) processes using her own company as a case study and role model.
She also has a unique and diverse background that brings different perspectives and solutions to the table: She is a Black woman, her mother from Guyana (with Indian roots) and her father from the Republic of Niger. She is married to a French national from Vietnamese origin who is also a Canadian resident;
Indira has been raised and educated in five religions, speaks five languages, and worked on 4 continents, with an extensive business network in and outside Canada.
She says being a mother of young children has given her a new urgency and empathy to leave our world a better place.
Register for the StrikeUp Digital Conference
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Sascha Boulet Devost is the CEO of Capture Therapeutics (& PhysioFirst). She started these practices with one purpose: to offer accessible healthcare for all.
Her goal is to provide rural communities with accessibility to an interdisciplinary team, without being added to a waitlist. Transforming healthcare from reactive to proactive.
Sascha has a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from UNB, a Master's degree in Science of Physiotherapy at McMaster University and completed a US doctorate program.
Sascha started a small practice but early on, needed to expand. She now has three locations and is currently opening the fourth in Atlantic Canada. Sascha takes pride in ensuring each and every patient and team member is Seen. Heard. & Understood. That requires focusing on both the client experience and providing stable non-competing positions that allow true interdisciplinary collaboration. It’s healthcare reinvented!
Sascha believes that as clinicians they must find ways to go above and beyond the limits their professions to help better serve the people of their communities. She says, “We must aim higher, and create new outlets and opportunities for everyone involved.”
Sounds pretty inspiring doesn’t it? I certainly was. But it hasn’t been easy. Sascha and her teams have faced some unique and shifting challenges due to the pandemic. She talks about those and other hurdles of being a rural female entrepreneur.
Capture Therapeutics on social media:
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Shayna Jones is a multi-disciplinary professional spoken word artist, specializing in the traditional oral storytelling of African and Afro-Diasporic Folklore. As an award-winning actor and emerging poet and playwright, Shayna has written and performed for theatre companies, schools, and festivals across Canada. As a folklorist, Shayna combines her passion for live, theatrical performance with the study of traditional African and Afro-Diasporic Folklore and Contemporary Black Experience to create dynamically soulful, nuanced, and unforgettable performances.
in this episode, Shayna speaks about her experience as a black woman, living in a small mountain town in British Columbia and the reasons she started her Black and Rural project.
You only have to hear her speak to understand the magnitude of Shayna’s talent!
Black and Rural
We are StoryFolk
Stories about Shayna’s work:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-96-radio-west/clip/15825457-shayna-jones-performance-artist-storyteller-based-kaslo-shares
https://www.cbc.ca/news/black-rural-stories-heritage-saskatchewan-1.6248686
https://globalnews.ca/video/7669364/black-rural-shares-stories-of-black-canadians-in-small-towns
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When I put out a call for folks to suggest someone as a guest on the podcast, Stella Sehn’s name came forward. And as luck would have it, Stella was speaking at an Alberta Women’s Entrepreneur Event the following day so I signed up for the free event.
The group is called WESTEM and the event was called Inspire 2021 - Celebrating Women’s Entrepreneurship in Southern Alberta.
There was a diverse group of women on the panel, and when a question was asked about discrimination faced by women in the group, Stella spoke up about her experience.
Stella Sehn and her husband Sheldon Hill run Sweet Pure Honey. They are beekeepers and they work their 400 hives in Porcupine Plain, Saskatchewan, which is an 8 hour journey from their home. It’s hard work and Sheldon spent off seasons working in the oil patch until he was laid off. Times are sometimes tough but they have persevered with gratitude, attitude and love.
I say love because I asked Stella how she ended up in the beekeeping business and she said she fell in love with a farmer in college.
Before our interview, Stella and I spoke on the phone and we had an instant connection.
I am struck by her courage and vulnerability, and her strength and perseverance to live as her authentic self.
I know you will be too.
A trigger warning: This episode makes reference to racially motivated violence and also reference to the discovery of thousands of children’s remains at some of Canada’s residential schools. This may trigger some of you. If you are a victim of a crime, contact the Canadian Resource Centre for the Victims of Crime at 1-877-232-2610. The National Residential School Crisis Line for former students is 1-866-925-4419.
Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation - University of Manitoba
Articles about Stella and Sweet Pure Honey:
https://chatnewstoday.ca/2020/07/14/mens-wellness-boxes-to-aid-self-care-and-mental-health/
https://christypoirier.com/2018/12/12/honey-money-canadian-farmers-aim-to-sweeten-global-markets-to-support-family-dreams/
http://ag-matters.com/the-beekeeping-life-is-sweet-at-sweet-pure-honey/
Sweet Pure Honey website
Sweet Pure Honey Social Media:
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Instagram
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In 2017, after fifteen years as a geologist and senior leadership professional in the Energy Industry, Kiersten Mohr embarked on the most significant challenge of her life: gender transition. Gender transition was life-changing in many ways. Kiersten's publicly authentic and vulnerable approach to her transition allowed her to see how authenticity in the workplace could build connection and synergy with her colleagues. Kiersten moved from a dominant to a non-dominant group while maintaining a corporate leadership role. This meant she discovered many insights into improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in professional spaces. As she continued her corporate career, Kiersten found new motivation to engage in a more meaningful life through volunteering in the community and educating herself with a Bachelor of Psychology.
Eventually, these experiences ignited a personal passion which led Kiersten to step out of her energy industry role, continue with a master's degree in Psychology, and launch Terra Firma Transition Consulting.
Kiersten is now passionate about using the unique intersection of her education, twenty years of corporate and leadership experience, and lived experience as a transgender professional, to help empower organizations in creating authentic, equitable, accessible, and inclusive workplaces.
In her community, Kiersten is the President of the Airdrie Pride Society, a board member with Distress Centre Calgary, and a board member and publications director for the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geoscientists.
Most recently, Kiersten was honoured to be recognized by her community as Airdrie's 2020 Amazing Women in Advocacy and nominated by the Mayor of Airdrie for a 2020 Star of Alberta Award.
Kiersten's story on the Terra Firma Transition Consulting website
Kiersten on 770CHQR Calgary Next (Spotify link)
Kiersten on the podcast: The Universal Journey of Becoming on 'Sharing Stories with Helen Rose' (Spotify link)
Terra Firma Transition Consulting on Facebook
Kiersten on Instagram
Terra Firma Transition Consulting on Instagram
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THE EQUAL FUTURES NETWORK is a national initiative through the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health or CanWaCH and it connects national, regional, community and grassroots organizations, agencies and projects from across Canada. They are all committed to advancing gender equality and to ensuring equal futures for all!
As CanWaCH and Equal Futures Network CEO, Julia Anderson champions bold, innovative - and even disruptive - approaches to advancing the health and rights of women and girls around the world.
As Julia will tell you, the network started organically and has grown to over 400 organizations across the nation. Personally, this makes me hopeful we will soon move the needle when it comes to not just equality but justice for all, including in rural spaces.
During our conversation, Julia’s passion to be of service and provide a space for organizations that do good work is evident. Her enthusiasm is infectious and her hope for the future is palpable.
She’s a do-er and she brings hope for Canadian women and girls in 2022 and beyond!
News about Equal Futures Network
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Heather Taylor is a fourth-year student at the University of Ottawa with a Major in Honour's English and a Minor in Public Administration.
She is a Co-Founder of Rural and Ready, alongside her two other Co-Founders, Kayla Han and Ava Kucera. Heather is the Chief Marketing Officer.
They started Rural and Ready because of their own struggle as rural high school students, and later as post secondary students, to find work experiences in rural settings, specifically related to their interests. They found that often in rural schools, clubs and even co-op experiences were limited and therefore the opportunities to explore their interests before making a decision about a post secondary focus, were also limited.
The group has received grant funding and gets guidance from their board of directors. They have been giving talks about their mission and the importance of diverse choices in rural schools.
They call it the Rural vs. Urban Educational Achievement Gap and are focused on a Growth Mindset.
And they are working on career testimonials so students can see folks working in the careers they aim to be working in one day.
Website
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Susan Wagner-White lives in rural Eastern Ontario and is a pointillism artist. Pointillism, if you’re not familiar with it, (I wasn’t) is a painting technique using tiny, distinct dots of colour, sometimes in layers, creating images.
Susan is also a thalidomide survivor born with no arms. During our interview, she explains what thalidomide is, how it affected a number of children in Canada and around the world, and how living without arms has affected her life, and her work.
Living in a small town, Susan not only faced scrutiny because of her disability but she’s also married… to a woman.
She and I met through a Facebook page, Jann Arden’s Facebook page actually. I thought I recognized Susna’s name and liked a comment she made. She messaged me and we realized we were almost related and I asked her if she’d join me for a conversation.
Turns out Susan is my cousin’s cousin. Although we aren’t blood relatives, I’d heard about Susan but never met her, until this call.
She will see Jann Arden, barring any unforeseen health restrictions, for the 11th time in the spring.
And Susan is working on a book. She has a truly engaging story to tell. This is just scratching the surface.
See Susan's work:
Stories written by Susan:
Huffington Post
Inside Ottawa Valley
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Heather Hallgrimson is the Business Development Lead for Co-operatives First, a nonprofit organization that supports groups in creating co-operative businesses in rural and First Nations communities in Western Canada.
Her passion is helping groups find what success looks like for themselves as they start co-operative business ventures. Heather's educational background includes a BA in Linguistics and a Masters in Public Administration both of which she pursued because of her love of learning and to understand how things work.
Heather grew up in a number of small communities in Saskatchewan and spent most of her youth riding horses, participating in the 4H club and competing in local fairs. Her favourite place in the world to be at one of the thousands of lakes in Saskatchewan hiking, boating, fishing or kayaking.
I met Heather at a virtual networking event BEFORE the pandemic. She was invited up on to the virtual stage to talk about her experience working with rural communities, educating and assisting folks with starting co-operatives.
After that networking event, I was still a bit confused about what co-operatives ARE and how they actually work. And I wasn’t really clear on the benefits of co-ops, especially how they relate to rural communities and rural entrepreneurs.
Heather’s spunkiness, wicked sense of humour and willingness to be vulnerable and upfront drew me to her, and I can tell you, a conversation with her is unforgettable.
This one doesn’t disappoint.
Co-operatives First and The Common Share podcast
Federal government information about co-ops (regulations in each province and territory)
Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada
Northwest Territories
BC Co-operative Association
Alberta Community and Co-operative Association
Saskatchewan Co-operative Association
Manitoba Co-operative Association
Ontario Co-operative Association
Fédération des coopératives de développement régional du Québec (French only)
Co-operative Enterprise Council of New Brunswick (CECNB)
Coopérative de développement régional-Acadie (CDR-Acadie) (French only)
Nova Scotia Co-operative Council
Newfoundland-Labrador Federation of Co-operatives
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Justine Anderson says she is a folk herbalist, soap maker, artist, writer, flower sniffer, garden and cat care-taker, astrologer and tarot card reader. She owns and operates Wildflower Co. Botanicals in rural Newfoundland in the scenic Codroy Valley, where she sells body care products and hosts workshops and retreats.
The story of how Justine wound up there, though, is fascinating. She left the food industry as a chef after suffering unbearable eczema on her hands. Following the wise advice of a colleague, she tried calendula and that launched her interest in flowers as healing.
Wildflower co. botanicals is a small-batch apothecary specializing in handmade cold-process soaps, hydrosols, 100% natural body care, soy candles, and handpicked organic & wild herbal teas. Justine recently purchased a still, and while speaking with her, I could actually imagine her stirring it and preparing her creations.
When I asked Justine how she knew that her love of working with, and creating products from flowers, would actually sustain her as a business and frankly, make her some money, she said she just had an ‘inner knowing’ that she was to embrace her roll and accept that this was what she was supposed to be doing.
But there were pockets of doubt. As it is for so many of us, some of her hardest won battles were with her biggest critic, herself.
But she persevered!
What struck me about Justine was that she seemed to radiate positive energy and inclusiveness. I also loved that she believes that if our ancestors hadn’t used plants for healing, we couldn’t have survived.
All of Justine’s products are made with sustainability in mind, using plastic-free, re-usable & compostable packaging, where ever possible, and sourcing only high quality organic ingredients and ethically wildcrafted local botanicals.
Justine says her products are made with the intention to soothe body and spirit and help you feel more connected to body, spirit and the earth. She is a huge proponent of land stewardship and in that spirit, her business is currently operating from the whimsical Bert Bark Eco-Inn Headquarters.
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Season Kirkwood calls herself a bit of a nomad. She spent much of her adult life, living in different cities and towns, working in different sectors to develop her entrepreneurial passions.
She worked for the City of Winnipeg before leaving to pursue land-based recreation entrepreneurial development.
Season provides mentorship and leadership to Indigenous communities to create and run recreation programs with increased access to the outdoors. She has also partnered with the local recreation commission, to create offerings for families, children and tourists, visiting local historical sites and experiencing land-based activities.
Season shares knowledge of Métis culture. She also takes the opportunity to talk with families about the language we use around inclusion and gender identity.
What you will hear loud and clear in this conversation, is Season's love of nature and the outdoors and her passion for sharing it with others!
Season is a pioneer. She was trained as part of a committee of folks that will now coach others in discovering experiential tourism opportunities across Canada.
One of the best parts is that she is connecting other small businesses, creating a community centred approach. She told me about how a group of women will show up at council meetings together, to show support for one another and I was struck by her sheer passion for community and inclusiveness. Plus, she’s a captivating storyteller.
Follow Sayzoons:
Sayzoons website
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Andrew Button from MashUp Lab
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Lucy Sloan is the Founder of Lil Steps Wellness Farm, an animal-assisted therapy facility in Manitoba. She and her staff work with children, youth, and adults experiencing mental health difficulties including anxiety, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The farm offers a range of services & programs including play therapy, animal-assisted therapy/counseling, and equine-facilitated wellness, both team and individual therapy.
Lucy holds many designations including:
- Professional Registered Counsellor
- Member of the Counselling and Psychotherapy Association
- Certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor through the Mental Health Commission of Canada
- Certified Animal-Assisted Therapy Professional
Lucy has also received specialized training in the areas of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, anxiety, and various other mental health areas.
Lucy worked for 11 years with the Department of Justice, helping rehabilitate people with criminal backgrounds. She then moved into working in the Community Mental Health field and worked as an Intensive Case Manager and Community Mental Health Worker.
As you can see (and hear!), Lucy has lots of experience in mental wellness. But that didn’t prepare her for her own journey, recovering from a serious head injury. Lucy talks about some of the residual challenges she deals with daily as a result of her invisible disability and also some of the most effective therapy she received, working with animals. It sparked an idea.
Lucy has always identified a need for alternative approaches for children and youth. Lil' Steps Wellness Farm was created to provide a service for children and youth to gain skills, insight, self-confidence, and other tools to foster and promote resiliency and positive mental well-being. Unsurprisingly, she also has a strong passion for animals.
Lucy has become a published author.
Lucy's book and sensory store
News about Lucy
AMI documentary about Lucy and Lil Steps
Facebook page
Intagram
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Ashley O’Neil is a wildland firefighter in British Columbia. She says they had a helluva season in 2021.
But not only was Ashley fighting fires, running into the flames as others were running out, but she has been growing her business, AshFireWear
When Ashley started firefighting several years ago, she was one of only a few females fighting fires in her region. There were no companies that made firefighting clothing, specifically designed for women. Now that more women have entered the field and after coming home from a particularly challenging tour a few years ago, Ashley realized that not only was her clothing ill fitting but it also felt unsafe.
So she started to research. And as a proud indigenous woman, a member of the Ktunaxa First Nation, she thought, I have aunties who can sew…
It took her a few years, and she was sidelined a little bit with the COVID-19 pandemic, but she’s been moving forward with a line of clothing not only for firefighters but also for folks working in the mining industry. AshFireWear isn’t just for women, it’s for everyone. And it’s environmentally friendly.
At one point, I asked Ashely what compelled her to take up such a noble career as firefighting and she was quite open in saying that in the past, she got into an unhealthy lifestyle and got tired of waking up hungover, so she decided to enter the career and she hasn’t looked back.
AshFireWear is soon expanding into a line of undergarments, specifically designed for her target customers.
Vancouver Sun article
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This year Terrena Rizzoli celebrates 10 years as an accomplished Indigenous business owner and denturist at Rizzoli Denture and Implant clinic. Not bad for someone who says she was an ‘okay’ student and that she felt she had to work much harder than most to get the grades needed for the denturist program.
But now it’s a labour of love. After being in business for several years, she realizes now just how many folks needed her services and the confidence that improving someone’s smile can bring.
As a small child, Terrena remembers her mom consistently putting herself last and without insurance, Terrena recalls her mom having painful toothaches and always wished she could help her in some way, that is what sparked her interest in the dental field.
Terrena comes from a line of entrepreneurs, her parents both also owned a business and ran a farm. You could say it was in her blood.
But it certainly hasn’t been easy. As the mom of three children including a set of twins, balancing family and a business has had its pressures and challenges.
Terrena talks about asking for help and that sometimes we, ourselves, can be our biggest obstacle and she outlines some of the unique challenges Indigenous entrepreneurs face.
Terrena hails from Stoney Plain, Alberta.
Rizzoli Denture and Implant Clinic
Futurpreneur video
National Aboriginal Capital Corporation - Indigenous Women's Entrepreneur Program
Instagram: @rizzolidentureclinic
Facebook: @Rizzoli Denture and Implant Clinic
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Shivani Dhamija moved to rural Nova Scotia to be with her partner. Armed with a degree in Public Relations from Fanshawe College, she was shocked when she couldn’t find a job. She was very determined though and took jobs where she could. One of those jobs was at the Canada Games Centre and when a friend of Indian descent visited, and told Shivani a trucker friend was looking for home cooked Indian food for his trips, it sparked her idea to provide an Indian meal delivery service.
At first she called it Home Made Tiffin but couldn’t register the name. Then she realized there likely wouldn’t be anyone with HER name selling Indian food so Shivani’s Kitchen was born!
She offered cooking classes, sold products at Farmers’ Markets, created Indian Spice Blend products, opened a restaurant and now is focusing on a food production plant with Shivani’s Ready to Use Sauces! Her products are in many stores throughout Atlantic Canada and the United States.
Shivani talks about her inspirational family and also her struggles to make friends as a new immigrant in Canada and what we can all do to include new Canadians.
Shivani hails from Windsor, Nova Scotia.
Follow Shivani's Kitchen!
Website: https://shivaniskitchen.ca/
Twitter - @shivaniskitchen
Facebook - @Shivani’s Kitchen
Instagram - @shivaniskitchen
News about Shivani’s Kitchen: https://shivaniskitchen.ca/blogs/in-the-ne
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A trigger warning: This episode makes indirect reference to domestic violence (13:30) and there is a brief reference to the discovery of thousands of children’s remains at some of Canada’s residential schools (15:40). This may trigger some of you and is in the second half of the episode if you’d like to skip that part.
National Indian Residential School Crisis Line for former Residential School students:
1-866-925-4419
As the daughter of a Residential School survivor and a Sixties Scoop survivor herself, Tina Sheridan didn’t want to become another statistic and she wanted to leave a different legacy for her own family.
At the age of 33, she got her high school diploma and turned her side-gig catering jobs into a mining camp services empire called Cree Quest Corporation. She has cited hunger and poverty as the driving force behind her ambition.
But it took a decade and it was by no means easy.
Tina hasn’t spoken about her struggles much in the past, because she was ashamed and feared it would affect her credibility. But she shared some of them with me and with you, in this episode.
Tina hails from Taykwa Tagamou Nation near Cochrane, Ontario.
The first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is happening in Canada on September 30, 2021.
Information about Canada’s Residential Schools: https://bit.ly/2VkKUMn
Information about the Sixties Scoop: https://bit.ly/38JDRjf
Legacy of Hope Foundation
Orange Shirt Society
Recent Northern Ontario Business article
Article about Emily (Tina’s daughter)
Cree Crest Corporation website
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