Something Different This Way Comes

Heather McLeod

How do you plan when you’re longing for change? In Something Different This Way Comes, Certified Financial Planner and Locavore Heather McLeod explores two systems she wants to help fix: our food systems from fields to bellies, and our financial systems from birth to death. They are the earth and sky of what we need to change. We are Ancestors - and we can do better. Rooted in first-hand experience, nourished with nerdy fact-finding, Something Different This Way Comes shines a light towards values-led food and financial systems.

  1. 6d ago

    5.12 Sowing the Seeds of Change

    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

  2. Aug 25

    5.5 Farm Gate - why tax $ should go into farming

    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

About

How do you plan when you’re longing for change? In Something Different This Way Comes, Certified Financial Planner and Locavore Heather McLeod explores two systems she wants to help fix: our food systems from fields to bellies, and our financial systems from birth to death. They are the earth and sky of what we need to change. We are Ancestors - and we can do better. Rooted in first-hand experience, nourished with nerdy fact-finding, Something Different This Way Comes shines a light towards values-led food and financial systems.

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