Now or Never

CBC STORIES
  • 0.0 (0)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Now or Never

In a world that can feel pretty scary, it’s easy to get stuck. This is a show that celebrates what it takes to try. To take the risk. To have the talk. To rock the speedo. Because making even the tiniest change takes courage, and hosts Ify and Trevor are here to remind you that you’re not alone when you do. New episodes every Thursday.

  1. 21 NOV

    Do you know who I am?

    What happens when you're known for one thing - good or bad - and now you're trying to be something else? Stories of people trying to change the way the world sees them. Recovering addict Shane Sturby-Highfield shares the challenges of trying to make amends and regain the trust of people he's hurt. Writer Rhea Rollman has many articles she's published, but all under a different name. Now that she's come out publicly as a trans woman, she's changing that one email at a time. Yassine Nouah is currently on the adventure of a lifetime, travelling from the Arctic to the Antarctic — and his parents don’t even know about it. He now has aspirations to reinvent himself and morph from Yassine the cubicle-dwelling accountant, into the Yassine he really is today. For the last two months, Stacey Chicoine has been carefully writing her own obituary. But she’s not anywhere close to death. This 41-year-old mom-of-two tells us how writing her own life story, in her own words, has been such a powerful experience - and why she’s sharing parts of herself in her obituary she’s never shared with anyone.

    52 min

  2. 14 NOV

    How are you putting food on the table right now?

    All over the country, the prices we’re paying for food are giving people sticker shock, and changing behaviours. Statistics Canada tells us food prices have gone up 22 per cent in the past four years. Food Banks Canada says 40 per cent of us are feeling financially worse off than we were last year.  So as we enter into a season of celebration and food we want to know: how are you putting food on the table right now? When Julianna Romanyk realized some of her friends were struggling with high grocery costs, she got an idea: invite them into her kitchen for monthly ‘meal prep parties.’ Now everyone shows up to her Toronto home with one ingredient and a stack of Tupperware, and makes a week’s worth of food together - creating community along the way. At a free dinner in Winnipeg’s north end, we sit down with people who reveal their food security is based on dumpster diving, stealing to survive, and a calendar that keeps track of where free food can be found in the neighbourhood. In Nunavut, grocery store prices are sky high and Kyra Kilabuk is sharing the details on TikTok so everyone can know about it. On Now or Never Kyra shares what it takes for her family of five to make ends meet in Iqaluit. At Helen Detwiler Elementary School in Hamilton, 400 students are waiting for breakfast, but the school’s food program can only offer half of what they once did. Find out why milk is now off the table at this school in need. If you lift the lid in Robert Gagnon’s basement, you’ll find hundreds of pounds of elk meat, some salmon fillets, and even a little bit of elk tongue and moose nose. Robert is bagging game on his Lheidli T’enneh First Nation territory, to help feed his family and put meat on elders’ tables.

    51 min

  3. 7 NOV

    Far from home: Afghan refugees finding new life in Canada

    40 000 Afghan refugees have settled in Canada since the Taliban's swift and dramatic return to power in Afghanistan in 2021.Today on Now or Never, five newcomers share the realities of starting over in a new country, and what they're dreaming about next. Afghan teenager Razia Arifi grew up in a family that always encouraged education, and to get out of Afghanistan the first chance she got. So when the Taliban returned in 2021, 16-year-old Razia found herself on a plane to Canada, without her parents and siblings. Today this university student shares how she’s dealing with the weight of expectations, and why her goal is to eventually get back to Afghanistan to open a school for girls.  In Afghanistan, she was an award-winning journalist fearlessly fighting for women’s rights and press freedom. But here, Farida Nekzad says she’s starting from zero, worried about her finances, and wondering how she will pay back the transportation loan most refugees arrive with. Canadian military veteran Dave Lavery was on the ground helping evacuate people from Afghanistan when the Taliban took Kabul. But a few months after fleeing, he returned to take back his house from the Taliban and rebuild his business in a country he still calls his 'home away from home.' For many Afghani kids in Edmonton, soccer games were their first taste of life in Canada. We take you to a game with head coach Hamid Atimadi, who is sharing his love of the game with the next generation. And transgender woman Ozlam Mahshar was severely punished by her family for wearing make-up in Afghanistan. After escaping the Taliban’s rule and arriving in Canada in 2022, she now has dreams of being a make-up artist, and flexes her skills on Ify for an intimate sit-down.

    53 min

  4. 31 OCT

    After a wildfire, how do you rebuild your life? Stories from the heart of Jasper

    Three months after a wildfire burned 32,500 hectares of Jasper National Park, locals in the municipality are finding a way to rebuild their lives next to the charred remains of what they've lost. As this fire season comes to an end and the tourist town prepares for winter, Now or Never meets Jasperites as they navigate grief and new beginnings together.  Joe Urie, a Métis tour guide and longtime local, brings Ify Chiwetelu and Trevor Dineen up to Old Fort Point, for a mountain top view of  what Jasper looks like today.  Lorraine Stanko searches through the debris of her friends' and neighbours' homes, trying to find valuables that weren't destroyed by the wildfire. She hopes to bring them, and herself, closure, after her own home in town burned down.  Blocks away from where the Stanko's house once stood, Sviatoslav Rud and Nina Egorova's rented home is still standing, but it is still uninhabitable due to smoke damage. They're sleeping in a borrowed RV in front of their house even as the temperatures dip.  As volunteer firefighter Kim Stark battled the blaze in town, her own house burned to the ground. Now, as she tries to talk to her three young children about the devastation she's learning as much from them as they are from her. Grab a plate at the town's community dinner, a 20-year-old tradition in Jasper, that has new meaning and urgency right now. And we meet Stephen Nelson in a Hinton Hotel after his seniors lodge burned down. After 16 years in Jasper with no stable home - he moved into the lodge 11 days before the evacuation order. He is preparing to leave Jasper for good -- "the love of his life" that won't seem to let him stay.

    54 min

  5. 24 OCT

    Where do you get the nerve?

    Have you ever seen someone do something so bold, with so much confidence, and think to yourself….where did they get the nerve? On this episode, we find out. You’ve probably seen the viral video of the guy in BC who came face-to-face with a black bear in his garage. Alex Gold tells us how he managed to keep his cool with one angry mama bear. When we last talked to Ben Pobjoy, he was in the middle of trying to break a Guinness World Record for most marathons run in a year. And to make it even harder, he was doing it in 90 different countries. He tells us how he transformed from a self-described ‘hot dumpster fire party animal” into a guy who can run 242 marathons in 365 days. Would you ever sit down with your parents to show them a box of sex toys? Entrepreneur Mathusha Senthil is doing that and more with her company Thaen Pot — a project aimed at starting healthy discussions about sex among the South Asian diaspora. Oh, and she's running the whole thing from her bedroom closet.  Lyle Odjick was a parking lot security guard when he decided to enter a blues harmonica contest on a whim. And that’s how he found himself under the glare of the stage lights, playing the harmonica his grandmother gifted him, fronting a legendary Ottawa blues band…the very first time he ever played in public. Meet a Winnipeg renovation company with a bold mission: to get around only by bicycle. Trevor joins the crew from Velo Renovations to find out how you lug around 30-foot ladders and table saws to construction sites, using only two wheels. In winter. In Winnipeg.  Lynn Burton has been trying to work up the courage to wear leggings in public for more than a month. Enter body-confident powerhouse Michelle Osbourne for an intervention.

    49 min

  6. 10 OCT

    That's mine! Going after what's rightfully yours

    When something's been lost or taken from you, how far would you go to get it back? Mohammed Aljadba’s seven year old daughter lost a year of her childhood in Gaza when the war began last October. They managed to escape to Canada after a grueling journey, and he’s now trying to give her and her cousins — who escaped with them — the childhood they deserve.  After a lifetime of focusing on others and believing she wasn’t quite smart enough, 56-year-old Colleen Sharpe is finally chasing the university degree she dreamed of. Meet a group of women in Opaskwayak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba who are training to become midwives - so babies can be born at home once again, and include the ceremonial birth practices that have been absent for so long. And when Lynn Lau found herself struggling to pay the rent as a newly single parent, she opened her home to guests to help pay the bills. How hosting strangers has helped Lynn glue the pieces of her life back together.

    46 min

  7. 3 OCT

    It's over! How to move on after a breakup

    Breakups can look a lot of different ways: slow dissolves, out-of-nowhere blow-outs, mutual partings-of-ways. The truth is, they all hurt. Today you'll meet people in the thick of it, and the surprising ways they're getting through. When Litia Fleming broke up with Richard Kemick after 10 years together, it came as a shock to Richard. But two weeks later, they got an even bigger jolt: Litia was pregnant. Find out how these exes are juggling new parenthood, dating, and the joys and challenges of living together after breaking up. After a painful divorce, Saba Ahmad vowed to go to law school and become the lawyer she never had. She graduated last spring, and is providing support to other South Asian women facing the end of a marriage, as she pursues her last steps to becoming a lawyer.    Three years ago, exhausted from all the arguing, nagging and fighting, Jessyka and Jordan Hagen called it quits - only to realize their breakup would eventually save their marriage. Ify heads to Next Generation Arts, a youth arts organization in Scarborough, to learn lessons on wading through heartbreak. And we crash a support group helping men talk about their emotions after a breakup - but if you’re late, expect to do push-ups.

    54 min

  8. 26 SEPT

    How far would you go for an animal?

    We know that people love their pets - the pet industry is worth billions of dollars in this country. But on this week's show, Ify and Trevor join Canadians who are truly going beyond for the animals in their lives and asking, "How far is too far?" When she was growing up, Ify's parents disliked pets, but today they've fallen for Kiki the cat. Ify asks her mom Vicky Chiwetelu how this unexpected love story came to be. After Kendal Crawford and Shaun Stephens-Whale, of Squamish BC, adopted two rats, friends refused to come over to their house. But the couple is out to prove that Kuzko and Kronk are not only adorable, they're smart pets who have learned to drive a homemade "rat rod". Ottawa's Duane Taylor puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to stray dogs. For the last two years, he has spent $80K and travelled to conflict zones in Ukraine, bringing food and medicine to four legged friends in need. When will he stop and how will he measure success? When Sahar Bayat broke up with her boyfriend, he took their dog, Stella. But Sahar couldn't live without her golden retriever, so she took him to court to fight for custody, despite the $60K price tag. The emotional story behind this first case in Canada, where a dog was seen as a child instead of a piece of property.  Edmonton's Marla Smith says that it wasn't for her own good that she learned to drive an adapted van as a bipedal amputee. It was so she could take her service dogs to the vet and obedience competitions around the prairies. Find out what makes them best in show and how they've expanded Marla's world.

    51 min
See All (28)

About

In a world that can feel pretty scary, it’s easy to get stuck. This is a show that celebrates what it takes to try. To take the risk. To have the talk. To rock the speedo. Because making even the tiniest change takes courage, and hosts Ify and Trevor are here to remind you that you’re not alone when you do. New episodes every Thursday.

Information

  • Channel
    CBC STORIES
  • Creator
    CBC
  • Years Active
    2006 - 2024
  • Episodes
    28
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © CBC 2024
  • Show Website
    Now or Never

More From CBC STORIES

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada