Rural Routes Podcast was a podcasts series on rural issues I published while working at the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland. It asked “What is rural in the 21st century?” The podcast was born out of a conversation with my friend Dr. Ryan Gibson after a Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation conference gathering on PEI. Rebecca Cohoe from Memorial’s Office of Public Engagement who grew up on a rural route named the show and later joined as a co-host and a producer. With the closure of the centre, the university stopped paying the hosting fees and the episodes disappeared from the podcast feed. I was able to salvage all of the episodes with the help of Barry Rooke from the National Community and Campus Radio Association and they are published here as an archive.
What is the future of rural Canada? Ryan Gibson and Sean Markey are researchers and two of many authors who recently produced the State of Rural Canada report. The report is the first comprehensive look at rural Canada capturing 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.