theborderline.ca

Sara Thomsen plays soul-folk. Her spiritual album Song Like A Seed is a gift of 12 songs.

Visit: sarathomsen.com

Sara grew up surrounded by a family and community that loved to sing. From listening to her father sing lullabies and onward, Sara’s life has been infused with music. She is a staunch supporter of struggles for human dignity and ecological sustainability. Slowing down enough to see and hear the vibrant wonder of the commonplace is her work and play. All this can be felt in her music. Whether it is a song welcoming a newborn, protesting a policy, depicting night falling or describing a loved one, her music is alive and pulsing.

Thomsen has released six solo albums: Song Like A Seed, Somewhere to Begin, Everything Changes, By Breath, Fertile Ground, and Arise. In addition to her solo work, Sara is a weaver of song and community singing. At concerts, conferences, classrooms, workshops, retreats, jails, places of prayer, and lines of protest, to be with Sara is to want to sing. Increasing wonder and awareness, deepening spiritual connection, and widening social engagement through song is at the heart of her work. Sara’s ability to get people singing magically transforms gatherings into communities empowered with possibility.

“This album speaks to the social, political, environmental and personal realities of our day with a poetry that disarms the heart and galvanizes the spirit.”

Date:26 February 2026 .

JOHN-ANGUS MacDONALD : The Trews

The Trews have graced a few stages here in the Sault with their full electric sound and also their acoustic trio. Each performance is a demonstration in why they are among the 150 best-selling Canadian artists and the Top 40 selling bands in Canada. Joining me on the show is John-Angus MacDonald, brother to Colin, the lead singer in the band. John-Angus and I discuss the influence of Nova Scotia trad music on their sound and their most recent album, The Wanderer.

The Trews — singer/guitarist Colin MacDonald, guitarist John-Angus MacDonald, bassist Jack Syperek, drummer Chris Gormley, and keyboardist Jeff Heisholt — have shared stages with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Weezer, Bruce Springsteen to Rich Robinson, the latter collaboration culminating in three blazing tracks on the band’s latest, The Wanderer, cut in Nashville with the onetime Black Crowes guitarist. Amid the global pandemic, which halted both the Nashville sessions and tour plans for 2018’s epic Civilianaires album, The Trews completed The Wanderer at home in Canada with producers Derek Hoffman and Eric Ratz, emerging with their fiercest and most accomplished set of songs to date, and a heck of backstory to boot.

Hollis and Morris
The Wanderer
Not Ready to Go
Permission
Tired of Waiting/Hey Jude
Highway of Heroes
Can’t Control Myself
I Wanna Play
The Enemy

Visit: thetrewsmusic.com

“I grew up in Nova Scotia, so there weren’t a whole lot of rules.”

diego klatenhoff

Date:25 February 2026 .

Season 2 E27: PAST LIFE REGRESSION

We live in a world of great mystery with deep feelings of vague familiarity. Maria, with Fidgal, have their friend Christina Coutu along to share knowledge on past life regression, what it is, how it manifests and the therapy it offers. Wisdom says the future is known by truly understanding the past, but are we willing to go there?

THE NEW NORMAL PODCAST – Maria Iuliano with Fidgal

Maria guides a successful business called Fidgal, named after Maria’s guardian angel. They met when Maria was 5 years old.

Maria is a Peace Therapist, graduated with Honours in Peace and Conflict Studies from Sault College of Applied Arts and Technology. With this knowledge, along with her expertise in the afterlife and her ability to see auras, Maria helps others find and create peace in their lives.

Visit: fidgal.com

“Dreams are an illustration of past life events shown to you.”

Date:24 February 2026 .

Hey there — I’m Marcy.

I’m a northern Ontario girl with mud on my boots, stardust in my planner, and a habit of turning “one day” into “how about now?”

Bucket & Go wasn’t born in a boardroom with a coffee in hand. It was born somewhere between palliative care night shifts, roadside pit stops, and kitchen table travel plans that started with, “What if we just said screw it and went?”

After 26 years in health care — most of them spent walking alongside people in their final days — I learned the kind of things no textbook or TED Talk can teach you.
Like how time is both a thief and a gift.
How regrets feel heavier than backpacks.
And how nobody ever says they wish they’d scrolled more.

That’s why Bucket & Go isn’t about chasing more-it’s about choosing what actually matters, while you still can.

My husband and I? We’re those people. We sold everything. Bought a cabin in the woods. Planted trees. Made fires. Laughed a lot. Cried sometimes. Wandered dirt roads with a camera in one hand and a half-baked dream in the other.

People tell us all the time:
“I live through your adventures.”
And while I totally get the sentiment — it always hits me the same way: You don’t have to live through me. You can live like you mean it, too.

So I built Bucket & Go. First for us — to track, dream, and plan a life that felt true. Then I realized… this isn’t just ours.
This is for you.
The road trip rebel. The stargazing soul. The Sunday planner and the Monday dreamer. The person who’s tired of saying “Maybe next year.”

This site is my love letter to the magic of choosing now over never — and the belief that you don’t have to be rich, perfect, or fearless to live a damn good story.

You just have to start.

So here it is: part guide, part gut-check, part hell yes.

Welcome to Bucket & Go.
Let’s trade burnout for bucket lists.
Let’s live the life we swore we’d never settle for.
Let’s pack light, dream big, and cuss a little when the GPS reroutes.

And if you ever need proof that it’s okay to start over in the middle of nowhere with a wild heart and Wi-Fi, well… you’re lookin’ at her.

“Time waits for no one.”

Date:24 February 2026 .

s1.e1. GREAT LAKES EXPERIENCE- SUMMER OF FIRE AND BLOOD

Summer of Fire and Blood transports us to the year 1524—Reformation’s dawn and a feudal Germany fractured by a church entwined with noble power, leaving its peasantry seething against deepening social inequities.

Lyndal Anne Roper is an Australian historian and academic. She works on German history of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and has written a biography of Martin Luther. Her research centres on gender and the Reformation, witchcraft, and visual culture. In 2011, she was appointed to the Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford, the first woman and first Australian to hold this position.

Summer of Fire and Blood is the first English-language study of the German Peasants’ War in a generation. It is the Winner of McGill University’s 2025 Cundill History Prize.

Dr. James Palmitessa is Associate Professor of History, Western Michigan University. He conducts research and regularly presents at conferences in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. He directs graduate students in his main areas of research and also serves on graduate committees of students in medieval and modern European history and medieval studies. He is affiliated with the Global and International Studies Program and a member of the Graduate Faculty of the Medieval Institute.

Tom Leonard is Presenter of the Great Lakes Experience. Great Lakes Odyssey Radio Hour/Odyssey Radio Partners LLC, Executive Producer, Special Educator M.ED, and a reader of history with an eye to the future.

Theme Title – Out To Sea
Artist / Composer – Rusty McCarthy

This program produced by GLOW Radio Partners in venture with The Borderline Events Co.

The Great Lakes Odyssey Radio Hour is broadcast on NPR (National Public Radio)

Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the Great Lakes Odyssey World is a multi-national effort to strengthen and explore our relationship with the natural wonders known as the Great Lakes.

In this part of the project, we have created a multi-part audio series looking at the way the Great Lakes shape our lives, our livelihoods, our health and our culture.

50 years ago, folks in the media and elsewhere were ready to declare the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie “dead.”

The thought so appalled citizens in Canada and the United States, they forced their national governments to act.

Because, of course, the Great Lakes shape the life of both Canada and the United States. And, of course, the Great Lakes are a single system stretching from Duluth to Ottawa and down the St. Lawrence seaway. What happens to any of the Lakes will soon happen to the others.

So, the politicians of 50 years ago negotiated the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, “for the purpose of restoring, protecting and enhancing the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes basin.”

50 years later, we can see the agreement worked. We see more fish, cleaner water, and less pollution. Unlike the early settlers and colonials, who mostly saw the Lakes as a resource to tap, we now recognize, like the First Nations, the Lakes are part of our identity. They shape our relationships, our songs and celebrations of place, the way we eat, how we play, and what we make, or sell, or harvest.

50 years since the wake-up call of a burning river, Great Lakes Odyssey wants to learn how we live and love, hurt and restore the incredible gift which is the Great Lakes.

We will explore Great Lakes art and artistic expression, and meet the artists, writers, musicians who make it. We will also dip into Great Lakes history and lore – and learn from the people who have been here the longest and know it the best: The People of the Three Fires, the Anishinaabek.

On our Odyssey around the Great Lakes, we will also hear from people working to prevent poisonous algal blooms or stop the spread of invasive species. We will meet visionaries undoing decades of development that hardened shorelines, emptied marshes and wetlands, and destroyed critical spawning grounds. We will talk to people working to ensure all beings have access to pure drinking water.

Because none of us can live without pure drinking water.

In this wondrous place we call the Great Lakes, we know we are blessed by these Sweet Water Seas. We claim them as our H.O.M.E.S. as the emotionally accurate mnemonic says. They are Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior, and they are our HOMES.

As long as humans have lived in, and of and through the Lakes, people have told stories about them, sung about them, and gloried in this great gift of the long departed Ice Age. Left by glaciers thousands of years ago, they are the World’s storehouse of fresh water. If they are drained… or ruined… or damaged, they can never be replaced.

So, as we travel around the Great Lakes basin, we want to see how we are doing – what we are doing – how we’re feeling and what we’re learning as we try to live as lovers and restorers – and children and family – of the being whom the Anishinaabek call Nayaano-nibiimaang Gichigamiin, the five freshwater seas.

We hope to galvanize, inspire, and motivate you to strengthen, support and steward the Great Lakes to a beautiful and healthy future.

So please join us on this magical, dare we say “magical mystery tour” of the Great Lakes basin and Great Lakes culture.

Date:18 February 2026 .

(Paul Defazio passed away on Sunday, February 1, 2026) 

Paul Defazio shares deeply personal thoughts that inspired the release of his first album, a type of musical therapy to make some sense of his life.

When it comes to being a stage performer, Paul Defazio is a late bloomer. Music was in him and he took to playing guitar in his teen years, listening to the bands of the 60’s, like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and all the rest. The playing then was in his basement, at campfires maybe with friends, but never in clubs or on stages. He dabbled in writing songs. It would be decades before he developed the confidence to play in front of people, and sing in public.

Life was primarily spent as a real estate agent raising a family in Sault Ste. Marie. He had been dealing with personal issues of mental health for a long stretch of his life and checked into a clinic for treatment in the USA. He spent a few months there, in Texas, where his life made a profound creative change. Defazio was in his fifties when he finally decided to put some of his songs on record. Songwriting for Paul Defazio is a means of coping with personal issues and in his music, there is remedy. “Chasing Rainbows” is Paul’s first CD.

“I’d rather chase a rainbow than catch a dollar bill, follow a butterfly up some misty morning hill, I’d sooner look into your eyes and see the rising dawn, cuz I don’t give a damn for that highway I was riding on.”

From the song “Chasing Rainbows”

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Date:18 February 2026 .

Season 2 E26: PEACE & CONFLICT

Individual personalities run the gamut of peace and conflict and there are signature traits for each type of person. Maria, with Fidgal, help identify what and why those characteristics are in every individual. It’s an area of particular expertise for them that helps answer the age long question, “Can’t we just get along here?”

THE NEW NORMAL PODCAST – Maria Iuliano with Fidgal

Maria guides a successful business called Fidgal, named after Maria’s guardian angel. They met when Maria was 5 years old.

Maria is a Peace Therapist, graduated with Honours in Peace and Conflict Studies from Sault College of Applied Arts and Technology. With this knowledge, along with her expertise in the afterlife and her ability to see auras, Maria helps others find and create peace in their lives.

Visit: fidgal.com

“To balance is to have a piece of the peace.”

Date:17 February 2026 .

Peter Vaudry has a published book, ‘Kindness is Sault Ste. Marie’. Peter found that he often thought about the many kindnesses he has experienced over his lifetime. He realized and appreciated the huge role those acts of kindness played in his life. He chose the title, “Kindness is Sault Ste. Marie” to capture all of that in its totality.

When asked about his reasons for writing ‘Kindness is Sault Ste. Marie’, Peter advised that he was concerned about the growing frequency of public and online displays of angry and resentment-laden behaviour. The book encourages people to be proactive about protecting the community from the corrosive potential of such behaviour. Peter believes that we should all be able to express our opinions but we can do so in a kind and respectful way.

“Kindness is Sault Ste. Marie” is an important read for today’s world.

Peter’s Thoughts:

I write that “Kindness Is Sault Ste. Marie” but it is my experience that the Sault Ste. Marie way is to choose to be kind.

In most of the instances I write about, including in my youth, it was a reflexive choice that the people of the Sault made.

I was reading again a copy of “Our Daily Bread” article from Nov. 2024 by Michael E. Wittmer, PhD. Professor of Systematic Theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, in which he writes, “We are who we’ve chosen to become”.

The people of the Sault have always chosen to be kind.

I have been concerned about the lack of civility in our society for a while. I think the Sault – with its Legacy of KINDNESS – can be the example of civility based on our history of KINDNESS.

I worry in today’s wired world that we may lose the kindness due to today’s current apathy and indifference which is one of the main reasons why I wrote the book.

Let’s reinforce who and what we are and keep it strong.

Date:17 February 2026 .

The ladies are fired up for a discussion about the Super Bowl halftime show history. Hot off Super Bowl LX because, well, the Bad Bunny show triggered some emotions. Several halftime shows have had their own controversy to the point it’s practically an annual occurrence. Still, the ladies have their takes on the entertainment, complete with a little chat about the commercials… and a few thoughts on the Olympics.

Date:13 February 2026 .

Jimmie Chiverelli was a drummer with the Soo metal band, Gates Of Winter, and is a passionate metal fan, lifelong.

Where Black Sabbath of 1970 is largely considered the starting point of this most beloved genre, Jimmie takes the listener through the story of the Sault metal scene as it fits inside the world view of heavy metal.

The narrative checks off homegrown bands like Amethyst, Woods of Ypres, Pillory, Garden Of Bedlam, Gates Of Winter and several more. The conversation is sprinkled with cuts from these bands, and from the best ever to ply the metal trade, with a nod to the classical music that really started everything.

Visit: saultmetalscene.blogspot.com/

 “Heavy metal is always going to be there. At its core, it’s all about a primitive connection we all need to keep in our lives.”

• Jimmie Chiverelli

Date:11 February 2026 .