Something Different This Way Comes

We have been hurt, trapped in psychopathic systems of which we are also agents. To heal we first need to diagnose, then treat these traumas, and better manage the hurtful among us. Seven stories this week! And an honouring of the wisdom of the Anishnaabe's Seven Grandfather Teachings pointing the way to healing and homes worthy of our beautiful hearts. Find more at www. SomethingDifferentThisWayCo...

5.10 Economies of Scale The cost of disappearing neighbourhood bakeries, and the economic innovations that fall outside our current measures of succes and therefore are significantly undervalued in our trade & commerce focused culture. The power of hope and conversation in sowing the seeds of change. With a detour to the difficulties of baking bread in a brick oven, and a tip of the hat to the...

Breaking Bread: Building personal connections from neighbourly neighbours to life-long friends. Restoring the options we lost in the suburban sprawling decades: communal eating and living would mitigate our loneliness, affordability and food security crises. My bright future looks like my Grandpa's fondest memories of his young adulthood! Visit SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca for more Heather Mc...

5.8 Social Balance Sheet Canadian Community Development & Impact Finance organizations across Canada are asking to fill the holes in our current economic system with the funding, legislation, policies and tools we need to finance communities when and how they need financing. An opportunity to make every neighbourhood wealthier and healthier. How these investments compare to the more familiar a...

Investment in our actual land: farm, urban and park - that take years, and cost a lot - but benefit generations with greater resilience to extreme weather, greater security of our food and shelter and health plus effective defence against tariffs and other international market risks... Smart investments - that fall outside our current financial systems. How to fix that and diversify Canada's Finan...

The market correction I foresee and welcome, how to ensure your investment portfolio is ready to ride it out, and what we need to build in Canada in order to have the diversified financial systems that we need to make it through this poly-crisis, and flourish. With a tribute to the value of corner stores and garbage collection! Referencing: Financial Planning Canada's Standards Council projection...

5.5 Farm Gate - why tax $ should go into farming A Canadian raised abroad takes an apparent short-cut to flying here to work, and ends up trapped in a Slaughterhouse compound with no easy way out. Diving into the weeds of why we are losing farmland (!) and farmers (!!) and people able to learn to farm (!!!) - and what further measures are needed to reverse that trend. This one gets political, but...

Canada is behind our peers when it comes to Community Wealth Building. We don't do much of it, because we haven't put the systems in place to do it. So when it happens, it takes a miracle of savvy, collaboration and effort. Yet when it happens, social and economic benefits spring forth! Not fixing this gap is costing us! What the cost can look like, to what the fix might be! The opportunity to do...

Potatoes so precious their gardener took a shotgun to their defence - is one of the stories of our food & money systems in action today in which I root this episode. I touch on many things but keep coming back to food storage infrastructure. The wrap up on what to do zeroes in on fun, community and the power to plant your own food traditions! Referencing: My conversation with Elder Phil McGuir...

How did we get to where Canadians need to be Millionaires in order to be okay? Or so it seems, and not without reason! Tales from the front lines put into context, with tips to manage that symptom of madness in our money systems now - plus ideas about change we could welcome to make being okay easier to get right (instead of too easy to get wrong)? A memoir of an episode shares how I got so mad at...

Kicks off this season's Theme of Food & Money with why Heather believes not only that money grows on trees, but how that is key to getting us from Food and Money systems that are so hard to get right, to systems that are hard to get wrong. A good measure of the health of an economy is the health of its food system. Right now, Canada's is far from healthy! But solutions cascade if you start at...

A new weekly season launches on Tuesday July 28 exploring two themes for people who care & live somewhere: Food & Money. Now that I have my own Advice-Only Firm I am free to tell you what I see as a Certified Financial Planner helping people get right what it should be easy to get right (only it ain't). I dream of fixing our system so my profession goes from essential to optional - startin...

July 28 a new weekly season starts exploring two themes: Food & Money. What does Food have to do with being a Good Ancestor? So much!

Every Monday at 6 pm I broadcast a news show on CILU in Thunder Bay 102.7 FM. Truth be told, I record it on Sunday and send it to the staff to upload into the broadcast system. But this Monday they uploaded the wrong show - so no-one will hear this unless you choose to hear the news from here according to me!   So here it is (I'd be so glad if even one person can hear it!)

Sufficiency: not too much, not too little but just right. A conversation with author, activist and educator Lloyd Alter before his visit to Thunder Bay to be the Keynote Speaker at the third annual Northwest Climate Gathering October 17-18, 2025.

The John St. Extension Community Park and Gardens started guerrilla twenty years ago, one of the successful neighbourhood initiatives that informed Thunder Bay getting pro-active in supporting community gardening. This Spring Scott Pound is leading an initiative to add a community garden to the space, and grow food to be served at the Abbey's free meal program. Building community through gardening...

This was pre-recorded to be broadcast on CILU Radio Victoria Day, Monday May 19 at 6 pm here in Thunder Bay. But I messed up, didn't get the tape in on time to be cued, and they replayed last week episode instead. I hate for no-one to ever hear this! So here you go - all news referenced is detailed in the related blog post at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca - Enjoy!

A conversation with Provincial Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner held on April 23 touches on care and community, expensive current provincial legislature discouraging renewable energy production,  the need & opportunity to build local food systems - and more.   Details at www. SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca

Why I'm in love with 17% - that's all it takes to tip Impactful Climate Action in our community from outlier to mainstream. And why I hope to see  Native Plant Gardening get trendy here this growing season. With a new song - and lots of nerdy facts to back me up.

The Season Finale features development lawyer Richard Wong with his thoughts after talking about engaging successfully with Corporations, and financing the big changes you want to see - at the Northwest Climate Gathering in Thunder Bay last month. The new song that conversation inspired is called: It’s Time To Dance. Lyrics and more at www. SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca   Referencing: www. NWC...

Ken is the worker bee behind Just Bike TBay, the Memorial Link and Thunder Bay’s E.V. shows. And he was right at the heart of the Northwest Climate Gathering. We talk about the power of positivity and persistence, we celebrate being nerds and building community with fellow kind and courageous nerds. Ken explains why his volunteering and problem-solving is totally worth it. Song & podcast by He...

A season wrap before the season’s done - and a teaser for the episodes to come. With many songs, and an insider’s tour of the Northwest Climate Gathering 2023: Hope & Action. Good company as COP28 unfolds.   Referencing: https://www.katharinehayhoe.com/ www. NWClimateGathering.ca Lyrics & more at www. SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca

A rebroadcast of an episode first shared May 17, 2022. What it would take to achieve food security in Thunder Bay, and what blows Brendan’s mind in every teaspoon of soil. Brendan Grant is leading discussion of this topic at https://www.nwclimategathering.ca/ November 25 & 26 2024. Referencing http://www.sleepygfarm.ca/

Talking gardening, city wilderness, the satisfaction of a well-stocked garage & peace with Lucie Lavoie. Lucie is a founding member of both Superior Seed Producers and EcoSuperior, where she was a program coordinator for over twenty years. She and her partner Ken Deacon have been trying to minimize their impact on the planet for decades, including growing and keeping much of the food they eat....

Keira Essex is is an environmental studies student at Lakehead University, an activist, and a novice photographer of mixed settler-Anishinaabe heritage. She is one of the people pulling together the Northwest Climate Gathering this month. Original music by Heather McLeod. Lyrics and more at www. SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca