This week on Rural Routes, my guest is Bill Reimer. You could think of him as one of the wise on the Grand Rural Council if such a thing existed. Our conversation spanned decades of Dr. Reimer’s quest for finding better and smarter ways of thinking about and working with rural regions. We discussed rural policy in Quebec and Norway as well as intriguing approaches to rural and community development emerging among Canada’s First Nations.

Enjoy the show.

Resources:
Bill Reimer’s faculty profile
Bill Reimer’s website

Rural Routes Partners:
The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, MUN
Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation
Rural Policy Learning Commons Partnership
The National Campus and Community Radio Association

This is program is supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Connection grant.

This week on Rural Routes I spoke with Michelle Porter, doctoral student in the Department of Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s. Michelle’s interested in women’s narratives of home and the reasons behind their decision to make home in rural Newfoundland. What she found out, made her rethink what home is, as well as what kind of rural development we need to support parents and children who call the rural home.

Enjoy the show.

Resources:
Michelle Porter’s official graduate student profile
Rural Resilience profile

Rural Routes Partners:
The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, MUN
Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation
Rural Policy Learning Commons Partnership
The National Campus and Community Radio Association

Dr. Ivan Emke says it’s time to take care of the rural soul of Canada. Ivan is a rural scholar at Memorial University of Newfoundland based at the university’s Corner Brook campus on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland. We talked about agriculture, rural stereotypes, the unsustainable nature of urban environments and the fact that neither of us could tell how long a group of academics could survive on their own.

Enjoy the show.

 

Resources:

Dr. Ivan Emke’s official faculty profile

Is Rural Life Worth Saving

The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, MUN

Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation

Rural Policy Learning Commons Partnership

 

What is the future of rural Canada?

That is the question we are going to start discussing in this very first episode of Rural Routes, a show that asks what is rural in the 21st century.

Ryan Gibson and Sean Markey are researchers at St. Mary’s University in Halifax and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, respectively. They are both members of Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation, a Rural Routes partner. They are also two of the dozens of authors who recently produced the State of Rural Canada report. The report is the first comprehensive look at rural Canada and it outlines the current issues for every province and territory as well as the country as a whole. It’s a base from which to start appreciating a rural Canada that is complex and dynamic, but neglected and misunderstood.

This show is about helping us understand the complexities and changes sweeping through our rural regions.

Resources:

State of Rural Canada Report

Dr. Sean Markey, Simon Fraser University

Dr. Ryan Gibson, St. Mary’s University

Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation

The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Rural Policy Learning Commons Partnership

Meet Dr. Ryan Gibson, a rural geographer at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Ryan is a friend and a colleague who helped with the initial concept behind this podcast. He is also one of the researchers we are going to hear from in much more debt. This episode is a test of some new recording equipment and a preview of a much longer interview. Enjoy.

Today, we are going to test my ability to ask you to support this show. And I am going to tell you right now, I am not a natural fundraiser. This is hard for me to do.

IMPORTANT NOTE: After chatting with a friend and a colleague, I was convinced to give another shot at accessing funding through academic channels. What that means for you as a listener is that if we are successful,  we’ll be able to run six months worth of programming without having to worry about the revenue models. So, just enjoy the show.