• After a wildfire, how do you rebuild your life? Stories from the heart of Jasper
    Oct 31 2024

    Three months after a wildfire burned 32,500 hectares of Jasper National Park, locals in the municipality are finding a way to rebuild their lives next to the charred remains of what they've lost. As this fire season comes to an end and the tourist town prepares for winter, Now or Never meets Jasperites as they navigate grief and new beginnings together.


    Joe Urie, a Métis tour guide and longtime local, brings Ify Chiwetelu and Trevor Dineen up to Old Fort Point, for a mountain top view of what Jasper looks like today.


    Lorraine Stanko searches through the debris of her friends' and neighbours' homes, trying to find valuables that weren't destroyed by the wildfire. She hopes to bring them, and herself, closure, after her own home in town burned down.


    Blocks away from where the Stanko's house once stood, Sviatoslav Rud and Nina Egorova's rented home is still standing, but it is still uninhabitable due to smoke damage. They're sleeping in a borrowed RV in front of their house even as the temperatures dip.


    As volunteer firefighter Kim Stark battled the blaze in town, her own house burned to the ground. Now, as she tries to talk to her three young children about the devastation she's learning as much from them as they are from her.


    Grab a plate at the town's community dinner, a 20-year-old tradition in Jasper, that has new meaning and urgency right now.


    And we meet Stephen Nelson in a Hinton Hotel after his seniors lodge burned down. After 16 years in Jasper with no stable home - he moved into the lodge 11 days before the evacuation order. He is preparing to leave Jasper for good -- "the love of his life" that won't seem to let him stay.

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    54 mins
  • Where do you get the nerve?
    Oct 24 2024

    Have you ever seen someone do something so bold, with so much confidence, and think to yourself….where did they get the nerve? On this episode, we find out.


    You’ve probably seen the viral video of the guy in BC who came face-to-face with a black bear in his garage. Alex Gold tells us how he managed to keep his cool with one angry mama bear.


    When we last talked to Ben Pobjoy, he was in the middle of trying to break a Guinness World Record for most marathons run in a year. And to make it even harder, he was doing it in 90 different countries. He tells us how he transformed from a self-described ‘hot dumpster fire party animal” into a guy who can run 242 marathons in 365 days.


    Would you ever sit down with your parents to show them a box of sex toys? Entrepreneur Mathusha Senthil is doing that and more with her company Thaen Pot — a project aimed at starting healthy discussions about sex among the South Asian diaspora. Oh, and she's running the whole thing from her bedroom closet.


    Lyle Odjick was a parking lot security guard when he decided to enter a blues harmonica contest on a whim. And that’s how he found himself under the glare of the stage lights, playing the harmonica his grandmother gifted him, fronting a legendary Ottawa blues band…the very first time he ever played in public.


    Meet a Winnipeg renovation company with a bold mission: to get around only by bicycle. Trevor joins the crew from Velo Renovations to find out how you lug around 30-foot ladders and table saws to construction sites, using only two wheels. In winter. In Winnipeg.


    Lynn Burton has been trying to work up the courage to wear leggings in public for more than a month. Enter body-confident powerhouse Michelle Osbourne for an intervention.

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    49 mins
  • That's mine! Going after what's rightfully yours
    Oct 10 2024

    When something's been lost or taken from you, how far would you go to get it back?


    Mohammed Aljadba’s seven year old daughter lost a year of her childhood in Gaza when the war began last October. They managed to escape to Canada after a grueling journey, and he’s now trying to give her and her cousins — who escaped with them — the childhood they deserve.


    After a lifetime of focusing on others and believing she wasn’t quite smart enough, 56-year-old Colleen Sharpe is finally chasing the university degree she dreamed of.


    Meet a group of women in Opaskwayak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba who are training to become midwives - so babies can be born at home once again, and include the ceremonial birth practices that have been absent for so long.


    And when Lynn Lau found herself struggling to pay the rent as a newly single parent, she opened her home to guests to help pay the bills. How hosting strangers has helped Lynn glue the pieces of her life back together.

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    46 mins
  • It's over! How to move on after a breakup
    Oct 3 2024

    Breakups can look a lot of different ways: slow dissolves, out-of-nowhere blow-outs, mutual partings-of-ways. The truth is, they all hurt. Today you'll meet people in the thick of it, and the surprising ways they're getting through.


    When Litia Fleming broke up with Richard Kemick after 10 years together, it came as a shock to Richard. But two weeks later, they got an even bigger jolt: Litia was pregnant. Find out how these exes are juggling new parenthood, dating, and the joys and challenges of living together after breaking up.


    After a painful divorce, Saba Ahmad vowed to go to law school and become the lawyer she never had. She graduated last spring, and is providing support to other South Asian women facing the end of a marriage, as she pursues her last steps to becoming a lawyer.


    Three years ago, exhausted from all the arguing, nagging and fighting, Jessyka and Jordan Hagen called it quits - only to realize their breakup would eventually save their marriage.


    Ify heads to Next Generation Arts, a youth arts organization in Scarborough, to learn lessons on wading through heartbreak.


    And we crash a support group helping men talk about their emotions after a breakup - but if you’re late, expect to do push-ups.

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    54 mins
  • How far would you go for an animal?
    Sep 26 2024

    We know that people love their pets - the pet industry is worth billions of dollars in this country. But on this week's show, Ify and Trevor join Canadians who are truly going beyond for the animals in their lives and asking, "How far is too far?"


    When she was growing up, Ify's parents disliked pets, but today they've fallen for Kiki the cat. Ify asks her mom Vicky Chiwetelu how this unexpected love story came to be.


    After Kendal Crawford and Shaun Stephens-Whale, of Squamish BC, adopted two rats, friends refused to come over to their house. But the couple is out to prove that Kuzko and Kronk are not only adorable, they're smart pets who have learned to drive a homemade "rat rod".


    Ottawa's Duane Taylor puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to stray dogs. For the last two years, he has spent $80K and travelled to conflict zones in Ukraine, bringing food and medicine to four legged friends in need. When will he stop and how will he measure success?


    When Sahar Bayat broke up with her boyfriend, he took their dog, Stella. But Sahar couldn't live without her golden retriever, so she took him to court to fight for custody, despite the $60K price tag. The emotional story behind this first case in Canada, where a dog was seen as a child instead of a piece of property.


    Edmonton's Marla Smith says that it wasn't for her own good that she learned to drive an adapted van as a bipedal amputee. It was so she could take her service dogs to the vet and obedience competitions around the prairies. Find out what makes them best in show and how they've expanded Marla's world.

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    51 mins
  • Life on the night shift: What it's like working when the world is asleep
    Sep 19 2024

    As many as 12 per cent of all workers in Canada are on the clock after midnight. And that can have an impact on your health, your relationships, and your home life. Today we hear from some of the people who work while the rest of the country sleeps, including long-haul truckers, health-care aids and DJs.


    Trucker Leah Gorham regularly goes on long-haul treks with her boyfriend Roland Bereczki, where they trade off shifts so they can be on the move 24 hours a day. They tell us how they maintain a relationship when your bodies are on opposite clocks - while doing one of the most dangerous jobs out there.


    For the last four years, health-care aid Tes has been working the night shift at a personal care home in Aldergrove, BC. And not all those nights are peaceful.


    Sam Stratigeas has always loved the night, and pumping up nightclub crowds as his alter ego DJ Sammm. But it wasn’t until his divorce and coming out that he took it more seriously, and now at 62 he can be found spinning at venues across Toronto’s gay village.


    Some people say nothing good ever happens at 2 am, but don’t tell that to the overnight staff at the WE24 Safe Space For Youth in Winnipeg. Every night, they open up their doors to provide food, laundry and a safe sleeping area for vulnerable youth in the neighborhood. And more importantly, they offer hope.


    When Binita Lamsal needed a second job to make ends meet, she asked Deepak Kumar for work at his overnight cleaning business. They tell us how their friendship bloomed into a romance on the night shift, and what they're dreaming of next.

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    45 mins
  • Stuck: Stories from the thick of it
    Sep 12 2024

    We all feel stuck sometimes - in habits, relationships, or just general middle-age malaise. So how do you get "unstuck?" On this episode, hear from people in the thick of it - and what they're doing to get their lives back on track.


    Emily Baadsvik is stuck between an idealism of what she thinks she should have accomplished by age 41, and the realities of her life today. She tells Ify why she feels like she's slowly unravelling, 10 years after she was on the Canadian Olympic bobsled team, dreaming big.


    Musician Boy Golden is currently stuck in a van while on tour, so we decided to call him up for his best stories from the road.


    Chet Breau was stuck in behaviours that were going to kill him, until a moment that turned everything around. How he overcame addictions to food and alcohol and helped save his own life.


    Dominique Robichaud swears being stuck on an island together with her partner is the best thing for their relationship.


    And after fleeing Gaza on foot, Marilyn Kasken’s brothers Talal and Fahed have been stuck for months in Egypt, waiting to join their sisters in Newfoundland.

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    52 mins
  • From fan to friend: How I became besties with Bif Naked
    Sep 5 2024

    At 15, Bee Bertrand's life was changed when he went to a Bif Naked concert. Finally, he was able to see "weirdos" just like him: queer people living loudly and proudly. And for decades, her music got him through the highs and lows of life. But after a late-night DM, Bee went from Bif's fan to one of her best friends.

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    11 mins