Newsletter Columns

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Elisha Dacey

How to sleep on a paywall

I struggle with the fact that society expects two things from me, professionally. First, to give away for free the fruits of my labour, like news stories, music performances and event hosting, while, second, paying out-of-pocket for the fruits of

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Elisha Dacey

Fine, I guess I’m Blue Jays fan

I spent the weekend doing all sorts of sports-watching. My mother flew in from B.C. like she does every fall, ostensibly to do her holiday shopping for Manitoba relatives. However, it always seems to coincide with as many Winnipeg Jets

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Future of Good

A note to Changemakers on National Truth and Reconciliation Day

  ᑖᓂᓯ ᓂᐚᐦᑰᒫᑲᓇᐠ ᐁᑿ ᓂᑑᑌᒼᑎᐠ᙮ tânisi niwâhkômâkanak êkwa nitôtêmtik, Hello my relatives and friends, I am Eden Fineday, a Cree woman from the Sweetgrass First Nation in Saskatchewan, and Publisher of IndigiNews. I was born on Sweetgrass and raised on

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Elisha Dacey

👏 Healing is the worst👏

  I try to be a good example to people in my life. I often fail miserably, but I do try. Last week, I returned to work after major surgery. (I was blown away by the well-wishes; thank you!) You’d

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Elisha Dacey

Hot dogs, forest fires and eyeball-melting temperatures

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

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Elisha Dacey

Are you feeling lucky?

Good morning, and happy Monday! We hope your weekend was lucky, except not in the way this kid said he was lucky after being hit by lightning in New York. (Pro tip: Don’t shelter under trees in a storm.) Some

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Elisha Dacey

My 50-year-old partner, the graduate

  (Before I begin – did you notice there was no newsletter on Monday? That’s because we were all-hands-on-deck at the Social Finance Forum. I met many of you at the registration table where I signed you in. Thank you to

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Tim Nash

Hey Tim: WTF is a Community Bond?

Community bonds are one of my favourite things in sustainable finance, and I get a ton of questions about them, so let’s break it down. First, let’s talk basics. A bond is debt. When you buy a bond, you’re lending

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Elisha Dacey

Grooves, whirlwinds and braggy things

Hi everyone, hope y’all had a nice long weekend. A couple of people asked for photos of my trip to Iceland. While I thought about sharing all 350+ that I whittled down from the thousands I took, you can see

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Elisha Dacey

Sing and cry: Valhalla, I am coming!

Last week was the start of a journey nearly 25 years in the making. In 2001, I met my eventually-would-be husband. I was a poor journalist, and he was a poor retail worker, and we decided to be poor together.

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Elisha Dacey

The pop culture divisions keeping us apart

You’d think, after nearly 25 years together, there was nothing my partner could say to surprise me. But this hypothesis was put to the test last night when my husband revealed his favourite movie of all time is Conan the

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Elisha Dacey

Elections, anxiety and a lack of promises (so far)

We’re only into the second week of the federal election campaign, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of platforms from the three major federal parties, never mind any commitments around health, wellness, or the social good sector.

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Elisha Dacey

Mother Nature wears red lipstick

I’m sitting in the middle of the prairies, watching the Environment Canada weather radar creep across the screen as Mother Nature has one last winter laugh. I’m not the only Canadian who will be subject to 25 cm of snow

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Elisha Dacey

What feels so familiar about our current anxiety

I finally realized what has been odd about my higher state of anxiety for the past few months. Yesterday, the newsroom and I had our regular weekly meeting and discussed the upcoming federal election. Executive Director Anouk Bertner attends the

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Elisha Dacey

Chonky cats and the robot butler

I share a 720 sq. ft. house with three cats, two people, one dog and one robot vacuum, lovingly named Alfred (yes, after Batman’s butler.) As you can imagine, it’s a squishy space sometimes, replete with dust and cat hair

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Elisha Dacey

Canadian pride is like an angry blobfish

My brother and I have a… game? competition? whatever…. every year to see who will be the first person to fall flat on their behind in winter. I usually lose. Living in Winnipeg means the possibility of slipping and falling

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Elisha Dacey

Hard numbers: The toll of U.S.A.I.D. cuts revealed

Good morning. I hate to start your Monday off with difficult news, but it’s news we already knew. Unfortunately, it now has numbers attached. A whistleblower went to the New York Times, and Sunday evening, they shared hard numbers attached

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Anouk Bertner

‘Meating’ the future

OK, so who spent the weekend doomscrolling the on-off U.S. tariffs and the impacts of an immediate and unexpected freeze of USAID? What a ride. This human-induced crisis reminded me of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I first learned that Canada has

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Anouk Bertner

What a week, huh? Wait, it’s Wednesday

Hey, folks – how are you feeling today? This has been a heavy week. We, individually, don’t have much control over the situation, and that feels really hard. It feels hopeless sometimes, and I think as leaders, as changemakers, the

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Elisha Dacey

(Em)brance for impact

I’ve been pondering an eloquent way to articulate how many of us feel this morning. Then I realized there is no nice way to describe fear. As Canada faces social and economic threats from an unpredictable man, I’ve been thinking

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Anouk Bertner

Back to work, back to anxiety

Welcome to 2025. Are you having anxiety dreams yet? I know I am. I had a lovely vacation with my family. It was busy and chaotic but also peaceful and restful. I didn’t check my emails at all—except once to

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Anouk Bertner

Supporting democracy in the face of turmoil

Independent journalism plays a critical role in supporting a well-functioning democracy. At Future of Good, we’re proud to contribute to this essential work by reporting on the most pressing issues and innovations in social impact. In 2024, we explained, covered,

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Elisha Dacey

Freeland leaves cabinet, postal workers back

Well, this was not on my fall economic statement bingo card. Just before I sent out this newsletter, we once again got breaking news. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has resigned from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, just hours before she was to

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Elisha Dacey

Snowy slippery sidewalk side-eye

My favourite aunt is disabled. Now, of course, I love all my aunties, but I have a special bond with my Mother’s sister, to the point where I call her my second Mom. She has this gnarly genetic disease called Osteogenesis

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Elisha Dacey

🎵 Bluesky, smiling at me 🎵

My microblogging heart is full again. Over the past few weeks, users have abandoned Twitter—er, X, whatever—in droves for the “new” microblogging social media site Bluesky. By the millions. It’s been dubbed the Great X-odous and I’ll admit, it makes

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Elisha Dacey

Winnipeg: The Prairies’ current snownut

I’m sorry, Winnipeg; I know this column will jinx us. But as I write this, it’s drizzling outside while a few clicks away in any given direction, there’s snow on the ground. We are a prairie snow donut. A snownut!

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Elisha Dacey

The ray of light behind the grey

The past few weeks have been particularly grey for me. It started in September when my uncle suddenly lost his wife, a lovely woman who, unfortunately, I didn’t know all that well. But in the interactions I did have with

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Jahanzeb Hussain

Dispatch from West Africa

Good morning from Dakar, Senegal, where I’ve spent the past few weeks gathering stories about global aid efforts on the ground. Last week, I spent time with the people of the Casamance region in Senegal to learn about their efforts

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