Hot dogs, forest fires and eyeball-melting temperatures

Author Elisha Dacey

Good morning and happy Monday. I hope you were able to relish your weekend, unlike this slippery nightmare for some folks in Pennsylvania.

As someone who once ran a hot-dog-related story on the front page of her major daily newspaper, I fully endorse this click.

I’m writing today’s newsletter from the heart of Canada’s bureaucracy in Ottawa, where it was an eyeball-melting 34 °C with a humidex of 41 when I landed. (There’s a political/weather comparison joke in there since Ottawa was built on a swamp; feel free to add it in yourself. Heck, send it to me so I can share it with my team.)

This is especially galling considering I left Canada’s heart (yes, I mean Manitoba, and y’all know it’s true, fight me) on what was the nicest day of the summer so far, thanks to the rains of the past few days helping tamper down forest fires and the first day in at least a month without an air quality index warning.

(If you didn’t know, pretty much the entire province is on fire. Just letting you know, Ottawa changemakers.)

However, this is the week Future of Good gathers its remote staffers, and we sit down together to assess where we are and what we want to do next. Call it a wellness and connection check.

This means putting our regular work on the back burner for a few days, but I think we can all agree that checking in with each other deliberately and thoughtfully is necessary for good impact and good growth.

Speaking of eyeballs melting, doing things for yourself and impact, two weeks ago I did all those things by undergoing laser eye surgery. I’ve worn glasses or contacts since I was 11. It is wild sitting here (in a swamp) with nothing on my face or plastered to my retina.

Here’s to more change and even better impact as we move into the last quarter of the year.

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  • Elisha Dacey is a seasoned journalist with more than two decades of experience in the field. She has worked in various newsrooms across Canada, ranging from small-town papers to major outlets like CBC Manitoba and Global News. Dacey began her journalism career in Manitoba and has held roles such as managing editor, senior producer and digital online journalist. Notably, she launched Metro Winnipeg, the city’s only free daily newspaper, which quickly became the second most-read paper in Winnipeg. Recently, Elisha Dacey joined Future of Good and is currently Managing Editor.

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