Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2025

The Current Transcript for January 1, 2025

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

MATT GALLOWAY: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway. This is a special New Year's edition of The Current. Back in November, I had the chance to make my first trip to Saskatoon right in time for a huge snowstorm. We did a show in front of a live and extremely lively audience who filled the room despite the snow and the freezing cold. And they had a great, great time. Here is that program. Enjoy. And happy New Year.

SOUNDCLIP

[Theme music and applause]

MG: We flew into Saskatoon in a blizzard. The roads were impassable. The schools were closed. Snow banks up to your waist. Minus a million. This is a hearty city, but you start to wonder in weather like this, geez, is anybody going to show up tonight? Come on, it's Saskatoon. It's winter. What do you think? People are going to stay home?

[cheers and applause]

MG: We have a packed house here at the Broadway Theatre. You know, we've been crisscrossing this country this year telling the stories of Canadians to each other. We've been in Winnipeg, Haida Gwaii, Charlottetown, Fredericton, Montreal. Tonight, we are in the city they call the Paris of the Prairies, a place that keeps getting bigger, but where people don't forget to say hi to someone on the Meewasin trail or push a stranger's car out of a snowdrift. This is a hub of creativity and culture. It punches above its weight. It's where the ties go beyond the bridges that span the South Saskatchewan River. It's also a city that faces some really tough problems, including a homelessness crisis that feels even more urgent when it's 25 below. So coming up, the brand new mayor of Saskatoon on how she wants to help those who are living on the streets stay safe. We'll also meet some of the people who came here, never left and are working to make this city even better, including the great authors Yann Martel and Alice Kuipers. We'll hear from people who have been here for generations and the explosion of indigenous led tourism in Saskatchewan. And fresh from his tour of grain elevators. Where else can you say a tour of grain elevators? The Saskatchewan singer-songwriter Jeffery Straker is our soundtrack tonight.

[cheers and applause]

MG: Yes, it's freezing out. And I can tell you that because I walked here from my hotel. But you know what? You would never know it inside this theatre. Live from the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, my name's Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[theme music, cheers and applause]

MG: How's everybody doing? Everyone all right?

[cheering continues]

[audience member shouts "We love you, Matt!]

MG: Oh my goodness. We are so happy to be in your town. The kindness that people have shown to us, the welcome that we have had here in the few days that we've been here has been just overwhelming. And it's just wonderful to be here. So thank you very much for welcoming us and thank you very much for coming here tonight. We have an incredible line-up of guests for you, and we’re going to start with our musical guest. He grew up in the small town of Punnichy, Saskatchewan. His new album is called Great Big Sky. It reflects those prairie roots. Please welcome to the stage of the Broadway Theatre, if you would, Jeffery Straker.

[cheers and applause]

MG: A tip of the big hat from Jeffery Straker. How are you, sir?

JEFFERY STRAKER: I'm well.

MG: Thanks for being here.

JEFFERY STRAKER: Thanks for having me. This is really fun.

MG: What do you love about playing in Saskatoon?

JEFFERY STRAKER: There's so many wonderful venues here, including this one. But the audience is here. And everyone says this about their audiences, but my favourite audiences in Saskatchewan are here. They listen. They're loving. They give as much as they get. They're perfect people, Matt. They're wonderful.

[cheers and applause]

MG: That all might be true, but are you just buttering them up because you are from the other city?

JEFFERY STRAKER: I might be from the other city. I came up from down south. It got progressively colder as I made the drive.

MG: From Regina.

JEFFERY STRAKER: From Regina. Exactly. But I'm delighted to be here.

MG: We're not going to hold that against you. Just quickly, tell me about the community that you grew up in.

JEFFERY STRAKER: Punnichy Saskatchewan is a small grain farming town about three hours from here, about 300 people. Wonderful place to grow up. I grew up on a farm beside the community. The school I went to was mostly First Nations people, about 95% First Nations. We studied Cree as a second language in our school growing up. But a lot of these small towns over time like mine, they're really shrinking, and the rural landscape’s really changing.

MG: We're going to talk about that and those grain elevators that you've been playing in. You have fans across this province. You have fans across the country. You have a fan in King Charles. What is this?

JEFFERY STRAKER: This is new, Matt. This is new.

MG: The king.

JEFFERY STRAKER: The king. We're not Elvis here. We're talking about like the king. Exactly. He sent me a memo via the lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan two weeks ago when I was on tour in England. And he really appreciated a song on my last record. And he told me that he was touched by the tune. And he also sent me well-wishes for my tour. Like I was like, this guy's quite busy, but he took the time to do this. So I was pretty happy with that.

MG: The King has a CD player.

JEFFERY STRAKER: I know. I knew he had the CD. I knew the CD made its way into his office because I got an email telling me so. And then I was like, yes, but is there a CD player in Buckingham Palace? So luckily, he heard it, so it's pretty cool.

MG: Apparently so. You're going to play a song for us. What are we going to hear?

JEFFERY STRAKER: I'm going to sing a song called Some Say It's Just a Sky. It's a tune I wrote when I was away from here. I moved to this little town in Ontario that some of you might have heard of. It's called Toronto. And from there, I finally saw Saskatchewan when I got away from it. And this is about me trying to explain what I believe the sky means to prairie people.

MG: Live at the Broadway Theatre, this is Jeffery Straker and Some Say It's Just a Sky.

[Some Say It’s Just a Sky live performance]

[cheers and applause]

JEFFERY STRAKER: Thank you very much.

MG: Thank you very much, Jeffery Straker. One of the many things that this city is known for is its incredible literary scene. We got here on Sunday in the midst of that storm, and we were lucky enough to have Guy Vanderhaeghe as our tour guide. We had to go to him because he couldn't get out of his driveway because there was so much snow, but we managed to get him out and drive him around. Tonight, we are lucky to have with us two best selling authors who make their lives here together. He is the author of novels including Self, Beatrice and Virgil and Life of Pi, winner, of course, of the Booker Prize. She is a bestselling author of five novels, seven for younger readers. Her latest is a guide to writing for young people. It's called Spark. Please welcome to the stage of the Broadway Theatre, Yann Martel and Alice Kuipers.

[cheers and applause]

ALICE KUIPERS: Thank you.

MG: The story goes, Yann, that you came here as a writer in residence at the public library in Saskatoon, and then you never left. Why did you stay?

YANN MARTEL: I thought I'd only stay a year. And finally, what kept me here were the people and the skies. I love the skies here. You know, you look on our license plates, it says Land of Living Skies, which frankly, a lot more poetic than La Belle Province or Beautiful British Columbia, which say the same thing. Land of living skies is absolutely true. The skies here are Extraordinary. The first thing I'd suggest someone visiting Saskatoon is just look up. It’s the sunniest province in Saskatoon. First of all, we own the sun here.

MG: I won’t tell the rest of the country that.

YANN MARTEL: It's cold, who cares? Just dress for it. And then the clouds here are magnificent. Honestly, in the spring, in the summer, these cloud ships, they're just extraordinary. So it's that. It's the weather. It's the people. It's that landscape. I like that flatness. It doesn't bother me. To me, it's like a Rothko painting. It's a subtle beauty of lichen. Yeah, it's a beautiful place and it's a lovely city.

[cheers and applause]

MG: What about for you, Alice? I mean, you grew up in London, England.

ALICE KUIPERS: That's right.

MG: A big change to come here. Did you imagine yourself living out in the prairies?

ALICE KUIPERS: He’s laughing because I don't think I even knew where Saskatoon, Saskatchewan was, and my family certainly didn't. Yann can be quite poetic, as you can hear, and he was very convincing that we wanted to build a life here. He had the residency at the public library for that first nine months, and we met so many people who took time to introduce us to this community. We found ourselves curling in Rowstown [audience laughing] and we skied across the prairies at one point. We did things that we don't do so much now we have children and decided to see what it would be like if we stayed a little longer. And the longer we stayed, the more enmeshed we became with other people, with all the amazing things there are to do here. And we realized this is actually a great place to raise a family and to write books.

MG: What surprised you most about this place?

ALICE KUIPERS: Well, minus 40 is a real thing. [audience laughs] Cowboys are also real. I didn't know that either growing up in London. Like what surprised me is how you can step outside and say hi to someone you know within a couple of minutes. But also, every time you go somewhere, and tonight is a good example, there's lots of people I know here, lots of people I love in this room and lots of people I've never seen before because it's got that big city, small city feeling. So there's always something really fun happening.

MG: I mean, I talked about the literary scene in the city, and what is that about? Guy Vanderhaeghe was speaking about that earlier and that there's a long tradition of that, of this city supporting writers. And it's not just writers, but writers in particular seem to get some sort of injection, some little boost from the town. What is that about, do you think?

YANN MARTEL: Well, I think the fact that it's so isolated means there's lots of time to spend with other people, and that will yield stories. I think I read somewhere about because there are no mountains, the highest thing on the prairie is someone standing. [audience laughing] And so you focus on that. You focus on the thing that's tallest. That's the person next to you maybe if they're taller. And I think a lot of places that are isolated generate stories because, you know, if you don't tell your own stories, no one else will. So I think it's a product of the isolation, the ferocious weather that's quite exhilarating. And it creates community because you're indoors. But you're right, there is a peculiar strong literary tradition in the prairies that's very, very, very strong.

MG: Alice, how has the landscape filtered into your writing?

ALICE KUIPERS: Well, when I first came here, I didn't really think about setting at all. In fact, I discussed with writer David Carpenter how setting just wasn't important. My first book is written with no setting. It's written on a fridge door. And then as I lived here longer and got to know this territory, Treaty 6 Territory, homeland of the Métis, the storytelling, culture, traditions, the people who live here, the way people look at the land. The latest book I've written, the editor who just read it and said nice things, which is exciting, said that it's imbued with a sense of place, a place she's never known. And so I think it slowly shifted and really filtered through to everything I'm doing.

MG: Are you surprised by that?

ALICE KUIPERS: Very. I'm endlessly surprised by stuff, Matt. [laughs] I find lots of things surprising about this place. I've learned to do something that I call micro travelling with four kids. It's not as easy to jump on a plane, although we still do, luckily. But just taking time to pay attention to that changing, shifting landscape like you would have seen as you were running along the trails, which I was very impressed by, that you ran at minus 20 today or whatever.

MG: Perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

[audience laughs and applauds]

ALICE KUIPERS: But yeah, to know that you've done that. Like to see that landscape, to know there was a coyote on the trail just the day before. Like it's really interesting when you pay attention to this.

MG: This is a city, I mean, we said earlier on that there's so much energy here. People are working toward the idea of the city, but it's also a city that faces some big, wicked problems. I mean, the homelessness crisis we talked about in our program at length, it becomes much more acute when it is so cold and you see people who are just struggling to get by when you know that you can go somewhere warm and they can't. How have you engaged with that?

YANN MARTEL: I'll say that's something in a sense, oddly enough, is attractive about Saskatoon, is because it's a town of only 300,000, you see everything. You live everything. It is a real community. So the homeless challenge is not something far away, you know, on the other side of the city. You see it everywhere. You go to the Meewasin where you see coyotes, you’ll see homeless people. And yeah, the ferocious weather means it really matters to us because people die. And it's the result of a racist cleavage here. Also, this is a wonderful place. It's also terribly racist place. And you can't escape that and nor should you want to. We have to live with the ugliness of our societies to get through them. And so it's present there. And yeah, work needs to be done. It's getting worse. And these are fellow citizens who are less lucky than us. And so yeah, it's something that both Alice and I have been involved with through an organization called Sanctum, for example, because it's not something that you can just wish away. You have to find concrete solutions for these fellow citizens who are far less lucky than us.

MG: Part of the reason that we come out to do events like this is to tell people about a place that they might not know about or that they have an idea of that maybe should be interrogated. What do you think the rest of the country should know about this city?

YANN MARTEL: Well, you know, when I first moved here, the number of people who would ask me, why do you live in Saskatoon? And they were obviously from Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. [laughter] And, you know, I'd say, why do you live in your place where you have to endlessly commute? You don't know your neighbours. You know, Saskatoon is like a decathlete. You know, the decathlete is not the best at any single discipline, but overall, it’s good enough to win a gold medal at the Olympics. [laughter and applause]

MG: That's fantastic.

YANN MARTEL: So for example, Little Saskatoon, Middle of Nowhere, has the largest art gallery between Winnipeg and Vancouver. The Remai has a terrific Ukrainian museum. There's a large Ukrainian population here. [applause] There's wonderful theatre here at the university, at the refinery, at the Persephone, the SSO. Middle of nowhere. The Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra pulls way above its weight. So there's a lot here.

[applause]

MG: Alice, you talk about micro travel. Where's the place that you go in the city to feel like you have that connection with this town?

ALICE KUIPERS: I always like to go to d’Lish, the coffee shop just by our house to take a moment to go write. Wanuskewin is a World Heritage site. So it's a little bit more of a drive, but it's worth it. And I think just seeing the energy that continues in this place, in this building right here, we've been to loads of things. So it's just really, there's lots of choices.

MG: There's a lot of energy in the city. Thank you both for being here.

ALICE KUIPERS: Thank you.

YANN MARTEL: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having us.

MG: Thank you. Yann Martel and Alice Kuipers, best selling authors, philanthropists, and as you heard, proud Saskatooners.

[cheers and applause]

MG: Welcome back to our stage, our musical guest, Jeffery Straker.

[cheers and applause]

MG: What are you going to play for us?

JEFFERY STRAKER: Okay, I'm going to play a song of mine. It's called More than Two by Fours and Timber, Matt, and it's a tune I wrote. I'm taking people out of the city now. We're going out to the countryside up in the Prairies. It's a song about sort of the fall of the grain elevators and the disappearance from the prairie topography.

MG: This is Jeffery Straker and More Than Two by Fours and Timber.

[cheers and applause]

[More than Two by Fours and Timber live performance]

[applause]

MG: That’s Jeffery Straker, live at the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon. More Than Two by Fours and Timber. Does that line in the song, if you weren't from here, it wouldn’t mean anything anyway.

JEFFERY STRAKER: Yeah.

MG: For people who aren't from this province, what do and what have those grain elevators meant to Saskatchewan?

JEFFERY STRAKER: I fell in love with them from an early age growing up in a small town. And every small town in Saskatchewan had these things, and they stuck up on the horizon. As we were driving around Saskatchewan, the name of the town was on the side. It was kind of something to see when you went for a drive in a way in Saskatchewan, you know. And one of my first jobs ever was cleaning the boot of one of these old elevators. All the dust would settle to the bottom. And I had this job at 14 years old, and I would go down this deep hole with this bucket and go down a ladder and bring up buckets full of dust. And I'm not Catholic, but I believe I discovered purgatory. [laughter] Like it's there. So you're welcome. I found it. But when these things went up, you know, at the turn of the century, it signalled to the surrounding areas like we're a community. We're doing this together. We’re giving this our college try. We're going to give this a go. And it was the heart of the community, and they were a real going concern for a while. They were the economic hub of those places, and now they're coming down. They peaked in the 50s. There were 3000 of them, these iconic 30,000 bushel grain elevators. And today, there's less than 175.

MG: What is lost when there's only that number left?

JEFFERY STRAKER: To me, they symbolize not just the elevator itself is going, but these small towns are going, and the hearts of these small towns are going. A lot of them are shrinking before our very eyes. And it's a real shift going on in Saskatchewan, you know? And, you know, when they went up, there was all this hope. And as they’re coming down, what I hoped to try to ask in that question was now what.

[applause]

MG: Thank you very much. We are live in Saskatoon. And this is, as you've heard over the course of this evening, a great place. People are plugged into this town. There's a sense of community here. They want to make their city an even better place. There are some big problems that are here in this town as well, and it is the job of my next guest to try to tackle them. Joining us now onstage, the new mayor of Saskatoon, Cynthia Block.

[cheers and applause]

MG: Congratulations.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Thanks for having me, Matt. I actually just really want to welcome you and your crew to Canada's best city. We are charming and you are clearly seeing that in your guests this evening.

MG: It's been wonderful to be here. And people have been so kind and generous and warm in their welcome. It's been great.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: That's who we are.

MG: Tell me a little bit about why you wanted this job.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: I wanted this job to make a difference. I mean, I have been serving in my community in many ways throughout my lifetime, really. I was a journalist for a long time in this city, and I was a small business owner. I've served on many volunteer committees and events. I think that we have an incredible opportunity to show the rest of the Prairies a really bright North star, even as we have come through some very difficult times, not just in our city, but in cities right across Canada who are facing homelessness and community safety issues and affordability.

MG: Can I ask you about public service and what inspired you to get into public service? I mean, part of this is about one of our heroes, somebody I know well, Adrian Clarkson.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: I'm so glad you asked that question. I was in grade eight, and it was about the time when people start to ask you what you're going to do with the rest of your life, which is very daunting and scary. And there was a show called the Fifth Estate on CBC. Yes.

[applause]

CYNTHIA BLOCK: And this beautiful woman was doing this news magazine program telling Canada, this is what's going on in your country. And I thought to myself, that's it. That is exactly what I want to do. And that sort of, I think, launched my sort of efforts to come from a small, I'm a farm girl as well, just like Jeffrey. And we know that it isn't always expected that people that come from small places can do bigger things. And so sometimes, folks weren't really sure that I could do it. And truly, that just made me more determined.

MG: So I heard you on Saskatoon Morning talking to Stephanie, and you said the morning after the election, on very little sleep, that your top priority is homelessness. We arrived in the middle of a snowstorm, and it's been frigidly cold. The shelters are full. Warming spots are full. How do you see the homelessness crisis in this city right now?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Well, right now, I woke up this morning to the record number of people who are staying in the warming shelter. We've never had 260 people that needed shelter. On one frigid cold night. And this is just the start of winter here. That is deeply concerning and that warming centre, it just seems everything that we've tried to do as cities across the country is just it accelerates at a pace where policymakers and service providers just can't keep pace. And I think what gives me energy and optimism is the people of this city who are stepping up and asking how they can help. If it was not for a lot of private donations and the United Way and the Community foundation, we would have potentially had a disaster on our hands.

MG: And it's not just here. It's across the country, but it's exploding. There are encampments coast to coast to coast in big cities and small towns. The population of homeless folks in this city has more than doubled, right? So what are we doing wrong, do you think?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Well, I think we're being incremental. And I think that we have to be like 100% full force ahead.

MG: And that looks like what? What does that mean?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Well, the honest answer, I think probably one of the best answers. I was at a conference on Friday and listened to a man who was homeless from the age of 12. He said this, solving homelessness is not complex. It's just hard. Complex means that we don't actually know what we need to do to help people. And that's not true. What we need is money. We need a lot of investment to make sure that we are adequately helping people, to make sure that they can get off the streets into safe housing and transition out of homelessness.

MG: So where's that money? You were at the throne speech yesterday. Is that money coming from the provincial government?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: I'm working on it.

MG: I'm working on it.

[laughter, cheers and applause]

MG: I mean, one of the things we've heard from advocates who are working on the frontlines is the need for transitional housing. We heard that again and again and again from people. What would that, what would transitional housing mean?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Well, actually, literally the day after the inauguration, I went to actually help, what do you call that thing with the shovel? I didn't have to do that before.

MG: Oh, digging. So like a groundbreaking ceremony.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: A groundbreaking ceremony. That’s what you call it.

MG: All the things, the lingo you have to learn now in this office.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: All the things, the lingo I have to learn. A new transitional home in the Kensington neighbourhood that I think, you know, is going to be the start of how we're moving forward with our housing accelerator dollars that our city has accepted. And we are moving aggressively. I mean, because homelessness… okay, it was a good plan.

[applause]

CYNTHIA BLOCK: And I mean, just foundationally, people need to be housed. I think that, you know, period. That is what we have to do. And in figuring out homelessness, we still also have to figure out those other pieces of the housing continuum, affordable housing, attainable housing, and we're working on it. But we need to work right now to make sure that we are taking care of the front lines of homelessness.

MG: How do you ensure that people, I mean, we've heard resistance from neighbourhoods. We spoke with somebody yesterday who is now on council, who in some ways, led a campaign to have a shelter in his neighbourhood closed down and moved to a different neighbourhood. How do you deal with the pushback?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: I think the critical difference between the way forward and where we've been is that we have relied on governments to solve our problems, and we need our community with us. We have homeless facilities all across the city, but this one shelter is far larger. And what can we learn from that? What kinds of supports can we put in place to ensure that people who are unhoused in and around sheltering spaces are safe, but also their neighbours? And these are the things that residents on every doorstep in every neighbourhood across this city have been asking us.

MG: The estimate is that 90% of people experiencing homelessness in Saskatoon are indigenous. Why is there so much inequality in this city right now?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: You know, I mean, I mean, it's colonialism. It's systemic barriers. I mean, it's the gauntlet of the sad story of a part of the history of Canada that we definitely need to face.

MG: That number is staggering. 90% of the people who are out on the streets are indigenous.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Right. And so another really big piece of figuring this out is ensuring that we have indigenous people and people with lived experience at the table to help us learn what is the best way forward.

MG: What's the message, do you think, to the rest of the country that Saskatoon, what can this place teach other communities, do you think?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: I think we're a resilient people. Saskatoon, like every other city in Canada, is on the frontlines of a crisis that it doesn't have all the tools to solve. But what we do have is a lot of determination. We're a city that looks after each other. We punch above our weight, like you said, And, you know, we never give up. And I'll just continue to believe that if we work together, that there is nothing we can't achieve or overcome.

MG: I'm really glad to have you here. Thank you.

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Thanks for having me.

[applause]

MG: That’s the new mayor of Saskatoon, Cynthia Block. Thank you very much. So we've had some great people here with us on stage. We're going to crank things up. Our next guest is a big star here in Saskatoon and beyond. Please put your hands together, maybe you want to dance as well, for Farideh.

[cheers and applause]

[Female Body live performance]

MG: How are you?

FARIDEH: I’m so good.

MG: People who are listening can't see what you did and what you're wearing.

FARIDEH: It's a sunglasses, but it's like your full face. My husband says it makes me look like a security camera.

[laughter]

MG: It’s a good look.

FARIDEH: Thank you.

MG: That tune, I mean, what is it, three million views on TikTok?

FARIDEH: Yeah, and 17 million on Instagram.

[cheers and applause]

MG: What is it like to be a viral star on the Internet? I don't know anything about these things.

FARIDEH: Well, I would say a little overwhelming, honestly.

MG: Really? Is it?

FARIDEH: You know, like Maria Shriver posted it and was like, this should be a White House song for like the Women's Health Initiative. And I was like, I just put my phone down and I was like, I don't even know how to feel about that.

MG: The tune is called Female Body. Tell me about it.

FARIDEH: The punch line is basically I list many conditions that affect women because they've never really studied the female body. And I don't know if it's funny, it's just true. Researchers, like they didn't really actually have to include women in research studies until 1993. So personally, what happened to me is that I needed to take my husband to the hospital, and he was having a hard time grabbing stuff. He kind of had a hard time going up the stairs, and I was like, we have to go to the hospital. He was like, no, I don't think so. I was like, we will. And personally, I was preparing for him to be treated like a woman. And I thought…

MG: Which is?

FARIDEH: They're not going to believe you. He's going to send them home. But Matt, you know, it's like when he walked through those doors, it's like he had Beyonce's win win machine on him. All those nurses were like, he looks like our son. They like got him an emergency bed. Hundreds of people are waiting, all of them women. And they're like, we know exactly all the tests to run. We're so glad you're here. At that point, I'm like, Leave him alone. He's fine.

MG: Are you surprised that it has become, I mean, that that many people have leaned into this and understood what the message is of the tune?

FARIDEH: Great question. You know, usually with my songs, I have an idea of like, oh this one's going to hit, and then it bombs, and then there's ones that are surprise. But I have also learned that like it seems like comedy is also about like pressing a rage button. And I know that I have lots of friends with endometriosis who have like had to advocate for themselves and not been heard and…

MG: Not believed.

FARIDEH: Yeah, exactly. And so I kind of thought in my heart like, this is something I know women are talking to each other about, that they're angry, so I'll give them a banger.

[laughter and applause]

MG: And you did.

FARIDEH: Yeah.

MG: And you never felt like you had to leave and go somewhere else to do your music? I mean, people, one of the things that we've heard is that people will go and then come back.

FARIDEH: Yeah. You know, I was like, I am never going to live in this place. As soon as I can get out of here, I'm out of here. This winter is not for me. And then I had the chance to tour the world. I toured all over Canada. I toured all over the US, Europe and New Zealand and Australia. And I was like, there isn't a place better. Firstly, everybody's from somewhere. But then I was like, the people, my mum, like I'm just, I'm not going to leave my mum.

[cheers and applause]

MG: What is it like when the phone rings and it's Good Morning America or the Today Show on the other line?

FARIDEH: You know, I'm so grateful. Like one of the things about living in Saskatchewan is that there are new opportunities that are available because of the Internet. So then you're like, what is happening? Why is Good Morning America calling me? Because I just put a video on my phone. And I think that's one of the things that like lets me allow to keep staying, is that my career isn't limited by my location anymore because we have an airport, and we have the Internet.

[laughter]

MG: What else do you need?

FARIDEH: What else do you need? Just my mom. Done.

[laughter]

MG: You write a lot about motherhood as well.

FARIDEH: Mm hmm. Yeah.

MG: What drives you crazy about being a mom?

FARIDEH: Wow. Well, I mean, I think it is a journey through chaos. Yeah, it's limitless. But yeah, the most annoying part is that strangers approach my husband in public when he's just pushing a stroller to tell him how amazing he is.

[laughter]

FARIDEH: Literally, I have a job where I wish for applause. Where are my strangers approaching me?

MG: That sets up this next tune that you're going to play.

FARIDEH: Yeah, it's a song. It was my first viral hit, Matt. It's called Such a Good Dad, and it's really about all the applause my husband gets. And I want to tell you, he is such a good dad.

MG: You're saying that seriously?

FARIDEH: That is serious. But also, like when we first had our baby, he took off two months, and he strapped that baby to him in his little baby Bjorn Carrier and he went out in the neighbourhood. He came home and he was like, I am a god. He's like strangers, women are approaching me being like, oh my God, look at that man. My baby daddy wouldn't do that and like, look at you. And he's like, this is incredible. So we started laughing about this together, about this truth that I'll be like, you realize, if somebody is like in the grocery store being like, you're such an amazing dad. I’m like, you realize ain't no mom being approached in a grocery store to be like, you're out with your child in a grocery store. You are so amazing. What a mom.

[laughter and applause]

MG: Alright, let's hear it. Performing live in the Broadway Theatre, this is from her album, The Mother Lode. It's Farideh and yes, You Are Such a Good Dad.

[laughter, cheers and applause]

[You Are Such a Good Dad live performance]

FARIDEH: Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

MG: Thank you very much. That’s fantastic. It’s Farideh. Yes, indeed, she is on the Internet. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok. Her handle is Ilovefarideh. Joining me now on stage, two people who are inviting the world to Saskatchewan and telling the story of their home through an indigenous lens. Jenni Lessard is Métis from northern Saskatchewan. You could say she's a chef. That would not be nearly enough. You'll hear why in just a moment. Also joining us on stage is Honey Constant-Inglis, who is a Plains Cree artist, archaeologist and heritage educator. Thank you both for being here.

HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

MG: As I say, you're inviting the world to this province and to this area. How big of a deal is in particular, Jenni, indigenous led tourism in Saskatchewan right now?

JENNI LESSARD: Well, I think there's a saying in Indigenous tourism that nothing about us without us. And I as a Métis person, I don't want to tell First Nation stories or go into communities and tell their stories for them. So that's super important. And I think there's a, pun intended, there's a huge appetite for indigenous culinary and indigenous tourism and we have the people here ready to deliver those experiences.

MG: What do you think is driving the interest in that, Honey?

HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: It's a lot of stories. Like words have meaning. And the more that we're sitting together telling these stories, the more that we realize there's these little invisible strings. So in my language, I'm Plains Cree from Sturgeon Lake, so we call it [speaks language]. And it's a natural law teaching, which means all of my relations. It doesn't mean that you have to be blood to be family. It means that everyone is connected some way, shape or form, whether it's biking on the roads, surviving the snow or telling these stories. The more that we are realizing our own voice and reconciling with ourselves and healing ourselves in our communities and sharing that out, we're noticing that resiliency, we're noticing that fire, and we are just welcoming people in. So that way, we are able to have these stories led by us.

[cheers and applause]

MG: Let's talk about what that looks like. Jenni, you lead a trip called From Field to Shield. Tell me about that.

JENNI LESSARD: Well, I lived in Jasper, Alberta, for quite three or four years as a youth, being a ski bum. And I participated in something called the Banff-Jasper Challenge or Jasper-Banff, I can't remember which way we, yeah, Jasper-Banff. And I thought, you know what? Where I'm from, Prince Albert, that's about the same distance. Whoo! Go Prince Albert! Whoo!

[cheers]

MG: There’ll be a shoutout from the audience at the end.

JENNI LESSARD: I should say where I'm from, where I was born. And my parents moved us way further north when I was two months old. That's about the same distance from Prince Albert to La Ronge as Jasper to Banff. So I kept this kind of name in my mind, Field to Shield. So from Prairie Field to Precambrian Shield. And then partnered, well, they came to me actually, Adventure Destinations, who were an amazing company. [applause] Yeah, Adventure Destinations that provide experiences all over the North. And they basically let me create this culinary tour that starts in Saskatoon, and Honey is part of that. So we start out the first day in a good way.

HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: Yes. So I am very fortunate to be on a healing journey with myself. So my grandparents are residential school survivors, and part of my own healing journey is connecting to the medicines and understanding my connection to land. So I grew up on the landscape but not connected to the spirituality, and that was just St. Michael's Residential School. So how I do my entire being, I wrote my master's on it, even though it's archaeology, was stories. And part of it is understanding who we are and how we're connected to the land and how are we responsible to community members. So we start off with smudging. So I teach them about what smudging is, and then I tell them we're putting down the medicine for your travels. That way, you can learn in a good way and hopefully find something that you can connect to as well.

JENNI LESSARD: So after the smudge on the riverbank, we get back on the bus and we drive to Batoche National Historic Site, which is the site of the resistance. I would say it's the Métis heartland in Saskatchewan. And I'm very proud to be part of that community so then I get to share my Métis heritage. It's not that long ago, and I think that watching the guests’ faces as they're like, Wait, that was like yesterday, basically. And then going further north and spending five days in the community of Missinippi, which is adjacent to the community of Grandmother's Bay, which is part of the Lac Ronge Indian band, and learning from those community members, having language dinners, trapline tours. By the end of that experience, and the company that's hosting this is not an Indigenous owned company, but they're right in the community. So obviously, the storytellers are, and the culinary folks up there are. By the end, if you've shared a story and a meal, one or the other or both, it's you can't go back from that unless you're just a very hard, rotten person.

[laughter]

JENNI LESSARD: In that case, don't come to Saskatchewan.

[laughter and applause]

MG: Can I ask you about the meal part? Just because food is this doorway to conversation and understanding. And you have this great knack for making people, when you talk about food, really hungry.

JENNI LESSARD: So I get to harvest from the land with tobacco offerings. And as you know, if it's a really bad year, really drought year for certain plant nations, I won't harvest those. I'll get them from down south where I live now on Treaty 4 Territory in the Capell Valley. But the main course is bison. The bison were reintroduced to the park in December 2019. So we have bison tenderloin with Nettle Sancho puree under it, a little smoked bison broth. And you enjoy that meal right in the tepee village where people actually would have prepared and eaten and feasted together.

HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: I would like to say we're not eating our conservation herd.

JENNI LESSARD: We’re not eating our conservation herd.

[laughter]

MG: Duly noted.

HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: Thank you. We source our bison somewhere else.

JENNI LESSARD: Yes, we do. Locally sourced amazing bison. Yes.

HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: Yeah.

MG: There's, I mean, just finally, there's a lot of generosity in the work that you're doing. I mean, you are, I don’t know, the world is filled with some really hard stories, and it's easy for people to feel like there's not a receiving audience in some ways for good. Do you know what I mean? And what you're doing is putting something out there and trusting that it's going to be received by people who want to receive that and to create something bigger and something better.

HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: It's healing through laughter. It's healing through feeding people. It's healing through being hosts and visiting. All our history for so long, especially targeted in the Prairies, has said, don't talk to each other. So what we're doing is we're saying, we're not going to do that anymore. We're talking to each other and how are we related? So I've adopted all of you sitting here. I expect Christmas gifts.

[laughter and applause]

MG: I'm really glad to hear about the work that you're doing. It's important, but it feels set in this place. Very specific to this place as well. Thank you very much.

JENNI LESSARD & HONEY CONSTANT-INGLIS: Thank you. Thank you so much.

[cheers and applause]

MG: Jenni Lessard is a Métis chef, culinary consultant from northern Saskatchewan. Honey Constant-Inglis is a Plains Cree artist, archaeologist and heritage educator. And they have both been with us here on the stage at the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon. This is a special edition of The Current from the Broadway Theatre. My name's Matt Galloway. It has been such a joy to be here with you in your city. We have one more tune to take us out. Please welcome back to the stage our musical guest, Jeffery Straker.

[cheers and applause]

JEFFERY STRAKER: Thank you.

MG: So you like so many people, you leave and then you come back. You were living in Toronto for a good chunk of time.

JEFFERY STRAKER: Yeah, a good chunk of time.

MG: What brought you home?

JEFFERY STRAKER: It was seeing this place from afar and really coming to really appreciate a lot of things about it that I simply never saw when I was here. And I also hadn't found love in Toronto and I thought I might find it here.

MG: I was going to say there's also a love story to that, right?

[laughter]

MG: Tell us the love story.

JEFFERY STRAKER: You know, I'm an out gay guy. And I would have thought that in Toronto, the pinkest city in the country, I would have found love, right? Not a chance. So I came back to Saskatchewan and I met the one, Matt, my partner, Michael. He's from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. We've been together for four years. [cheers and applause] And the geography and the people brought me back and love’s keeping me here. And I think, I mean, farming is kind of a sort of a macho occupation. I think I met the only gay farmer in Saskatchewan.

MG: I’m not entirely sure about that, but yes, continue.

JEFFERY STRAKER: He's mine.

MG: You're going to play another song for us to close us out. What are we going to hear from you now?

JEFFERY STRAKER: A song I wrote called Sing Your Song. I co-wrote this with Lynn Miles, and it's a song for the dreamers, the hopers, the people who have a vision for making a place better. I think that describes Saskatchewan people to a tea. They have such great dreams and hopes, and I think this tries to sum up part of that encouragement I want to give them to bring all that to life.

MG: Live on stage at the Broadway Theatre, here’s Jeffery Straker and Sing Your Song.

[cheers and applause]

[Sing Your Song live performance]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Wednesday, January 1, 2025 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This