Episodes

Good news: the most valuable ways you can protect your financial future, and health - is free Bad news: it takes courage. And it is still uphill - until we fix Canadian systems Do with not for is a principal of excellent care when capacities change It is also a principal of excellent community-led change How do we do this more? better? In our lives? And in our neighbourhoods? I joined my mother Fay Martin for two weeks of her cross-Canada tour talking about caregiving & her book Dementia Widow. I shared financial planning tips when financial questions came up in the conversations she led. And I was honoured to hear many stories, some of things gone right, more of how things go wrong. Tips, and wishes on Doing With Not For !

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 investment-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.

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. I explore the idea of making change at home - with an acknowledgement of hurt. 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. But our hearts are mighty. Our homes web-weaving warriors of better tomorrows. Lots of hope in this episode! The native plant chosen for this week's thumbnail I found at Writing on Stone Provincial Park in Southern Alberta - silver sage brush. An old one!

One size does not fit all. Not when it comes to clothing - get it wrong and you bruise from tripping over too-long hems, or tear a seam reaching for something that should be well within your grasp. So too does the build-for-big-manufacturing financing assumptions of our banking systems fail to serve the build-to-fit neighbourhood or non-manufacturing sectors. We can't afford to keep paying for this mis-fit. It is time for the skilled fit-to-measure, waste-not era of tailored solutions. This is an emerging Ink Cap mushroom. It will be big once it unfurls, it's gills darkening until a light touch over them will stain your fingertips and let you fingerpaint with mushroom. A common companion of lawns and roadsides.

My Grandpa's homes growing up through early adulthood, into marriage and parenting were rooming houses, rentals, sub-leasing rooms and communal meals. It sounds like poverty - but he remembers it as wealth. The benefits of breaking bread in community - and the way back to that cost-efficient and community-wealth building norm! Co-living beyond the nuclear family too! We shifted away in the suburban-sprawling years. How and why to shift back and include these options in our ideas of security and acceptable middle-class living. The baking in this picture was not done by me - but by my sourdough baking guru, the fabulous Thunder Bay author Jean E. Pendziwol.

Wealth has more to do with relationships than with cash. Social capital is tangible. And the reason why Neighbourhood Wealth Building is so impactful. I give examples of social wealth building and receiving from my own experience. Then dig into what is making building social capital harder of late - and how we can reverse that trend. Because only once we bring our social and cash capital back into balance, can we really thrive. 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. I detail 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. In restoring this balance sheet to the black, the wealth and health benefits will be both soc…

Investments that build our resilience and autonomy and set us up to flourish - are rooted in care for the land. Including farm land. The most needed measures don't fit the frames of Canada's financial systems - they can take years, and cost a lot - but they will benefit us for generations to come. How to fix our food security and diversify Canada's Financial systems to better reflect our full economy, better serve us through this poly-crisis and set us up for a more secure and inclusive future.

5.6 Popping (market) Bubbles 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! Money is never still - how it moves through our lives has a lot to do with policies and law. Which could be substantively updated in this Fall's Federal Budget. What to hope for - and how to amplify those hopes, adding your shoulder to the wheels of change!

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 conversati...

Exploring the cost of what can't get financed, or is hobbled by the cost of accepting a grant or loan, now. Canada is way behind our peers when it comes to financing the small, local, regional or mission-driven. And it is costing us! Exploring the shadowing cost of what we're not doing because we're making it unreasonably hard to do - even though we long to see it done. And solutions worth getting behind that are ripe for promotion right now.

The impact of food storage infrastructure on food prices, food values, and food security. Front line stories of shotgun defense of a potato patch and a bed of lettuce harvested by headlamp then given away, given the context of planting to keep, gardening made easier, and the insidious impact of international corporations owning our food storage infrastructure. With a call to action around the Federal Government's funding of Food Hubs - which needs to be less urban, more field-friendly.

How did we get to where Canadians need to be Millionaires in order to be okay? Or so it seems, and not without reason! Frontline stories of the nightmare of financial insecurity that woke me up and drove me to my career in finance, through a humbling pre-CFP a-little-information-can-be-too-little-help error in my own personal financial planning, and my revelation about how many people actually contributed to my Grandparents making it through the Dirty 30s without losing the homestead. Put into context with the Dominion Lands Act, and the Post WWII to 1973 Federal development of our Economic systems. Calls to action around planning with professionals now, and calling for us to finish the Federal Finance system-building we cut off in 1973.

Food grows on trees. And food is necessary = valuable to us = money. Food production that is resilient, requires minimal care once established, and produces generously over generations is a staple of sustainable economies - but not of Canada's economy. How did we get here? How can we manage now better knowing this? What does Good look like and how might we help make that change happen here? Three stories: -how my neighbour the wild unmanaged bush made me question my savvy as a gardener, -where money trees remain, and why they are survivors of pre-colonial times rather than pillars of our economy, -why farming is a unprofitable industry in Canada Their context, some tips for managing this mess today, and thoughts on how to push towards a more fruitful tomorrow.

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!

Keynote speaker at the third annual https://northwestclimategathering.ca/, author, activist and architect.

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 neigh...

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. Held at Rose N Crantz Coffeeshop in Thunder Bay This picture of Mr. Schreiner was taken at the Earth Day Party thrown by Thunder Bay's Northwest Climate Gathering the night before at the turn-an-old-shirt-into-a-tote-bag table with vol...

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. Th...

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 buildin...

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.katharinehayh...

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.nwclimategath...

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 an...