Something Different This Way Comes

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 also historical, and creative. With a meditation on the secret to prompting productive conversations the Listener-prompted bonus.
Referencing:
National Farmers Union
Their report detailing loss of farmland, farmers, farmworkers, declining profitability of 95% of farms in Canada...
I say I suspect Immigrant Farm Workers in Canada remain as insecure now as in the 1990s, but I only popped that question into a search engine after recording, and found a Class Action against our Federal Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program that got certified as a valid claim by the supreme court earlier this year. Yup - not solved.
Dr. Katherine Hayhoe - is the Canadian super star who came to mind in today's chat about building alliance around emotional calls for action. Her newsletter absolutely rocks (sign up for it on her website). Check out her bio while you're there (total super star)! The book I mention is Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World which I first discovered through her TedTalk. Enjoy!
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Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

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 better is knocking with the Federal Government's current call for input into the pending budget.
Refenced:
https://tapestrycapital.ca/
https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/s6/community-wealth-building-scotland-bill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_development_financial_institution
https://socialcapitalpartners.ca/
https://svx.ca/

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 McGuire in October 2022 about local food systems
Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley (Penguin Random House, 2024)
Federal Funding for Food Hubs:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-grocery-competition-carney-food-strategy-funding-food-hubs-food-terminal-9.7282701
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/06/11/prime-minister-carney-launches-national-food-security-strategy
Something Different This Way Comes is an independent one-woman show by Heather McLeod in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Sign up for her weekly newsletter and explore her services at Heather McLeod Wealth,
donate to her Go Fund Me campaign,
email SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me with your stories and ideas,
visit the podcast website for past seasons,
like and subscribe!

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 our monetary system I moved my storytelling, fact-loving and creative soul into the world of Finance - and how this podcast continues that quest!
Referencing:
Muriel Smith: My Memoir - Local to Global. From a mining engineer's daughter, to a Manitoba Deputy Premier, to a Local, National, and International Social Justice Activist (Minuteman Press, Winnipeg MB 2026)
https://slowmoney.org/
https://agroecologymap.org/
Something Different This Way Comes is an independent one-woman show by Heather McLeod in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Sign up for her weekly newsletter and explore her services at Heather McLeod Wealth,
donate to her Go Fund Me campaign,
email her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me with your stories and ideas,
visit the podcast website for past season,
like and subscribe!

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 their roots: what is at the root of this mess, why we are so easily blind to it, and what does Good look like?

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 - starting with these reality checks, context mapping and solution-casting queries.

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, creating welcoming spaces and daring to engage through kind conversations with strangers and neighbours.