Clearing a New Path™

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 highli...

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 an...

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 vide...

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 influ...

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 spe...

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...

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 liv...

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...

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 I...

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...

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...

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 acr...

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...

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 writ...

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 gov...

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...

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 hu...

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...

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...

(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 c...

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...

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...

*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...

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...

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 al...