The Pulse

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: Season 3 opens with two Vancouver Island stories built on showing up for other people, year after year. Darrell Fox was seventeen when he joined his brother Terry on the road for the 1980 Marathon of Hope, and 46 years on he's still carrying that story forward, now through a documentary built from footage no...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Jess Van Zeil is an Australian author, sportswoman, and adventurer who was diagnosed with Conjunctival Ocular Melanoma, a rare and aggressive eye cancer, at just 21 years old. Given the choice between losing her eye or her life, Jess chose survival, and discovered a mindset that carried her from fear into fierce, sassy resilience. In this episode, Jes...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Peter Kent of Qualicum Beach joined hosts Olen Vanderleeden and Matthew Stockton, along with panelists Sean, Anthony and Nicole, to unpack James Cameron’s 1994 spy-comedy blockbuster True Lies. True Lies stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold and Bill Paxton as a secret agent who has spent years hiding his real job from his wife, on...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: From an RCMP officer pedaling 1,200 kilometres for kids with cancer to a program tackling the gap between what a doctor can treat and what a person actually needs, this episode is about showing up for the people around you. Darren Karn takes us inside this year's Tour de Rock, and Bonnie Brown introduces SOS...

"Send us a text about this episode!" What happens when you bring the firefighters back for round two - this time against a 135-story fire from 1974? Too Old or Movie Gold’s Nanoose Bay firefighter panel returns for a second helping of Hollywood fire. Host Olen Vanderleeden of the Comox Valley welcomes back Gen X panelists David Purcell and Mike Peters, plus third-generation Nanoose Bay F...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode If you have ever wondered what it takes to challenge deep-rooted norms and protect the most vulnerable, this episode is for you. Naomi Mwaura has spent her career doing exactly that - and her story is a masterclass in resilience. In this episode: Naomi Mwaura is the founder of Flone Initiative, working to build a...

"Send us a text about this episode!" In this episode of A Resilience Project, host Cindy Thompson sits down with Kerri Cryderman, an executive leader in Saskatchewan healthcare, to talk about grief, leadership and what she calls a season of winter. In November 2019, Kerri unexpectedly lost her sister - her best friend and roommate - in a sudden, unexplained death in their family home. Le...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Too Old or Movie Gold host Olen Vanderleeden and Gen X co-host Matthew Stockton pull out a can't-miss dad-com: the 1987 Disney comedy Three Men and a Baby, starring Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson as three confirmed bachelors whose peak-'80s freedom gets upended when a baby shows up on their doorstep. Directed by Leonard Nimoy...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: From a 16-day, multi-venue celebration of Vancouver Island art to five decades of helping neighbours find work, this episode is a reminder of how much community gets built behind the scenes. Sheena McCorquodale gives us the inside scoop on the Route 19A Arts Festival, and Cheryl Dill marks 50 years of the Career...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: The Bills' Chris Frye looks back on three decades of Vancouver Island folk music ahead of their Salish Coast Music Festival show, and pharmacist Aki Shaw explains what Canada's new generic semaglutide means for cost and access. This Episode Features: (21:23) Chris Frye is a founding member of The Bills,...

"Send us a text about this episode!" On this episode of Nonpartisan Hacks, Parksville City Councillors Joel Grenz and Sean Wood sit down with John Jack, known in his own language as Sayaač̓atḥ, who holds two elected roles at once: Chief Councillor of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, a modern treaty nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and elected Chair of the Alberni-Clayoquot Regi...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal is widely regarded as the world's leading expert on resilience. Founder of the Resilience Leadership Institute, she draws on more than fifteen years of original research to reveal what separates people who bounce back from those who break down - and speaks candidly about her own experience living with dyslexia and post-tr...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: Corner Gas creator and award-winning comedian Brent Butt opens up about his small-town Saskatchewan roots, seventeen years on the road, and his brand new comedy album, while Nanaimo sommelier Veronica Szick previews the fifth annual Parksville Wine Walk. This Episode Features: (22:28) Award-winning comedian Brent...

"Send us a text about this episode!" What happens when you get four real golfers in a room to break down Hollywood’s most famous golf swing? You get one of the liveliest, most opinionated episodes of Too Old or Movie Gold yet. Host Olen Vanderleeden of the Comox Valley was joined by fellow Gen Xer David Purcell, filling in while regular co-host Matthew Stockton was away at "sports c...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Joe Bakhmoutski is a father, husband, author and testicular cancer survivor from Melbourne, Australia. After years of living with debilitating anxiety, Joe faced a cancer diagnosis that carried him through the lowest depths of misery and pain before forging a closer bond with his family and a new sense of purpose. Author of Simplify Cancer and Finding...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: This week we hit the road for our 'You Said It' segment at a Mid-Island car show, catching up with Vancouver Islanders on what makes this place home. Then Master Gardener Debora Gurrad of Vancouver Island Master Gardens returns to bust some of the most stubborn garden myths out there, from bone meal to...

"Send us a text about this episode!" On this episode of Nonpartisan Hacks, Parksville City Councillors Joel Grenz and Sean Wood take the show “on the rail”, recording aboard a high-rail vehicle rolling along the old E&N corridor from Parksville to Coombs. They are joined by Thomas Bevan, Executive Director and CEO of the Island Corridor Foundation, the non-profit charity that owns th...

"Send us a text about this episode!" In Nairobi, Kenya, Rephar Salamba is mother to her 16-year-old son. After leaving an abusive marriage, she rebuilt her life through determination and quiet strength, discovering a passion for handmade jewelry and becoming a community advocate and mentor to women working toward independence in Nairobi's Korogocho slums. In this episode, Cindy Thom...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: Actor Greyston Holt - the werewolf from Bitten, the vampire from Supernatural, and this fall's Detective Hudson Riley on Prime Video's Neagley - is our guest co-host for a BC Day long weekend special. Greyston shares his own musician roots, a lifetime of connections, and talks about his new role as Huds...

"Send us a text about this episode!" A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - or more precisely, in 1980 - a sequel arrived that would change cinema forever. In this special May the Fourth episode of Too Old or Movie Gold, host Olen Vanderleeden of the Comox Valley brings together his Gen X co-host Matthew Stockton and millennial comedians Josh Fleming (host of the Absolutely Obscure...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Lisa Strogal is a Master Certified Coach, CEO and founding principal of Shadow Light Consulting Inc. With a long list of accomplishments, certifications and corporate experience behind her, Lisa has developed programs for leadership development and coaching curriculums leveraged in community, organizational, team and individual transformations. In thi...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: Roy Henry Vickers spent his 80th birthday thinking about the schoolhouse he was born in, and this year he's released a fifty-year retrospective built from more than 400 works of his art. Meanwhile, Kyle Gilson has spent nine fire seasons leading a BC Wildfire Service crew right here on Vancouver Island, and...

"Send us a text about this episode!" On this episode of Nonpartisan Hacks, Parksville City Councillors Sean Wood and Joel Grenz sit down with Shayla Day, founder and CEO of DayHomes Society, a nonprofit serving the Oceanside region with outreach, food support, housing navigation, and community coordination. Shayla also chairs the Oceanside Homeless Task Force and co-chairs the Oceanside...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Kim Wilkinson is a mother and Grief Recovery Specialist who lost her 22-year-old son, Tristan, to a drug overdose in November 2019. Through that loss, Kim discovered healing, recovery and transformation, and now works with others facing mental health challenges, PTSD, addiction and trauma as they move from suffering to empowerment. In this conversatio...

"Send us a text about this episode!" Why You Should Listen to This Episode: Harry Manx opens up about a life that took him from the Isle of Man to busking in Europe and Japan, and into the studio for his new album Falling Upwards , out this August as he tours Vancouver Island. Jen Bate of the McMillan Arts Centre shares what's coming to Parksville this summer, from the Wine Walk to...