Something Different This Way Comes

I came back from a two week road trip west across the roads less travelled in our prairie provinces with my Mom and gathered up a stack of notebooks, manuscripts and books to share with you in this episode. It's a bit of a wild ride!
I talk buffalo, the cost of profit-poor ranching, the encroachment of foreign & industrial ownership of farmland, railway from history to current needs, and a true tale documenting the Canadian way of letting the rich skip out on their profit-losses and leave us tax-payers with the bill.
All brought together by a moment of despair darkening the face of a man I'd just met, that called up from my heart the light of hope for change within our lifetimes. The now is showing it's fragility - the next is knocking.
This episode runs long, but it's a rich one!
referencing:
Betty Carpick June 2022: Being Ancestors on season one, episode 9 of Something Different This Way Comes
Old Man on His Back Ranch, Plains Bison and native prairie c/o Nature Conservancy of Canada
National Farmer's Union report on Farm ownership, Farmer demographics & why both are concerning
Young Agrarians of Canada
Old Man On His Back: Portrait of a Prairie Landscape by Sharon Butala & Courtney Milne (Harper Collins 2002)
Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography by Chester Brown (Drawn and Quarterly 1999)
Shoes Were For Sunday: the unforgettable tale of making do with nothing on Glasgow's streets by Molly Weir (Penguin Books, 1970)
Hunting a Paradigm, An Economist's Quest: The autobiography of a would-be reformer by Alex N. McLeod (1997)
Singing Back the Buffalo, directed by Tasha Hubbard, broadcast on the Nature of Things March 2025
 
How-Tos: organize meaty community-building conversation spaces:
World Cafe
Learning For Sustainability resource library

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.SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca
Email Heather@HeatherMcLeodWealth to subscribe to her weekly newsletter.
Heather McLeod is the one-woman behind this podcast. Heather McLeod Wealth is her Advice-Only Financial Firm. HeatherMcLeodWealth.ca
 
Referencing:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/401368611_Psychopathic_Leadership_in_Large_Corporations_and_Its_Measurable_Harm_to_Societies
https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-031-51650-4_149-1
https://www.ontariometisfacts.com/?msclkid=002963439d141c9bb89e09e605bd9be6
https://www.7generations.org/seven-grandfather-teachings/
https://www.knowhistory.ca/news/the-number-of-the-dead-was-so-great-metis-accounts-of-the-1870-smallpox-epidemic-on-the-prairies/
https://mnoc.ca/english/who-we-are/metis-history/

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 cost of fueling a fire.
 
Something Different This Way Comes is produced by Heather McLeod Wealth.Heather McLeod is the one-woman everything behind this podcastContact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me
 
This episode references:
Slow Morocco's article on Ferrans
Tamarack Institute's free webinars on Community Wealth Building
Victoria Forum brought policy-makers, researchers and practitioners together August 2026

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 McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

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 and established bank and public market options. And how they relate to our relationship with the place where we live, our neighbourhoods and local circles.
Both have a part to play in restoring this balance sheet to the black! The wealth and health benefits will be both social and economic!
Referencing:
https://bigthink.com/business/how-6-points-of-connection-can-repair-our-shared-trust/
Social Capital Partners
Tapestry capital
Weave Fund
https://coalitionforcommunitycapital.ca/
https://solarbonds.ca/about-us/
 
Visit SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca for more
Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

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 Financial systems to better reflect our full economy, better serve us through this poly-crisis and set us up to flourish.
It starts with our relationship to this land, our home, and the farming sector.
Colonial-rooted as Canada's food & financial systems are, it will be hard to heal and better manage them, to shift from Colonial Insecurities to Native Stewardship. But it is work we can and need to do - urgently.
Referencing:
Sleepy G Farm in Pass Lake, Ontario
Regenerative Food Systems Investment Canada 2026
The value of Natural Services in Canada today. The slide up at the conference said Trillions - but maybe it was not Canada but North America or in Stock-Market Traded Companies or some other metric. I found this after recording.
 
Visit SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca for more
Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

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 assumption guide for 2025
Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
Purpose Construction in Winnipeg
Social Capital Partner's June 2026 report Strategies & Democratic Practices to Build Community Wealth
Canadian Coalition for Community Capital tool-box to help you add your voice to those telling the Federal Government to invest in this coming budget in National Financial Systems to support local, regional and National economies (not just endeavours meeting Global needs)
Co-Operatives c/o Federal website & c/o Co-Operatives & Mutuals of Canada
Visit SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca for more
Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

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!
Visit SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca for more
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!