Mid Week Thoughts from Three Things...

This past weekend we were, once again, grateful for the women in our community: the grandmothers, momma bears, aunties, sisters, cousins, nieces, daughters, and granddaughters.

We had the privilege of spending time at the local Strawberry Social hosted by the Katarokwi Grandmothers' Council while listening to women sharing teachings and offering us all a deeper understanding of Ode’imin, the heart berry.

The efforts of the Grandmothers and everyone who helped plan, prepare, welcome, and clean up reminded us that strong communities are built on sweat equity and spirit equity. These gatherings don't simply happen. They are created through love, care, and countless unseen acts of service. They matter. It matters.

Our time with the Grandmothers had us surrounded, simply, by good loving medicine.

Later that day we heard the drums and songs offered by another group of women who, for the past seven years, have brought together the Kingston Water Walkers. We cheered on the women, and the men supporting them, each offering of themselves physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually as they set off with good intention and love for the water and all its relations.

Prior to leaving, some of the women gathered water from Lake Ontario here in Kingston. After walking 64 kilometres to Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, they offered that water back to Mother Earth.

Water Warriors matter, and the songs they sang along the route offered healing and reminders of our connection to all our relations. Whether someone walked every step, volunteered as a driver, carried a sacred Staff, or simply offered encouragement, together they ensured that, like our Ancestors before us and for those yet to come it was known that the water is being cared for, loved, nurtured, prayed over, and protected.

The fact that two women-led healing activities took place this weekend isn't by chance. It reflects something we've witnessed again and again. Many of the Indigenous spaces and places in this area were either visioned, founded, guided, supported, or led by women. For that, we are grateful.

When we think at Three Things about our clients and partners, many are women. Reflecting on the past fifteen years, we've noticed that more often than not, it has been women who have invited us to walk alongside them. Whether it's Nations or communities, organizations, governments, or systems, we have great pride in this.

Men play essential roles in our communities, and their contributions matter deeply. Yet time and again we witness women carrying extraordinary responsibility often quietly, (though with loud laughter), and often without acknowledgment.
We lift our hands to them with gratitude. We acknowledge the role they play and will do our best to always show up in these women-led spaces to stand alongside them, doing as they instruct and valuing their guidance and direction.
Every day our communities heal, celebrate, gather, and move forward because women continue to carry, teach, organize, nurture, and lead. We acknowledge the women who have made it so and recognize the cost to them, even as they continue doing it for all of us.

Today is simply Wednesday. We don't need a designated day to express our gratitude or honour women.

Neither do you. And, you made this far, so why not comment below and share some love by tagging or sharing about a woman, or women, who matter to you.

Saturday Thoughts from Three Things...

Niagara Falls, Ontario welcomes, with wide open arms, between 12 and 14 million visitors each year, with the largest share coming from Canada, particularly Ontario.

Yet those welcoming arms may not feel quite as open if you are one of the more than 2,300 people displaced from Kashechewan First Nation after the failure of your community’s water treatment system in January 2026 and, instead of being relocated to Kingston, Timmins, Cochrane or Kapuskasing, you have been staying in Niagara Falls.

Building on a recent report authored and presented by Ken Todd, the retired Niagara Falls Chief Administrative Officer, and subsequent comments from Mayor Jim Diodati in the Niagara Falls Review, a conversation has begun about where evacuees should be housed, who should pay for it, and what impact they have on host communities. From where we sit in the world, somewhere along the way, the conversation went south.

It became a story about the burden on a city rather than the burden carried by an entire First Nation.

As a First Nations-owned consulting firm that has spent decades working alongside First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities and Indigenous organizations across Canada, we have witnessed the resilience of communities responding to challenges they did not create. That is why this story matters to us.

If the greatest hardship leaders see is the strain on a tourism city, they have missed the real story. The greatest hardship belongs to the children, families and Elders who have spent months living away from home because Canada still has not ensured something most Canadians take for granted: safe and clean water.

There are legitimate questions to ask about emergency planning, municipal resources and government funding. We do not question that Niagara Falls has experienced pressures. Housing more than a thousand people who have been forced from their homes places demands on emergency services, health care, schools, community organizations and municipal budgets. Yet, Niagara Falls is also a city that successfully welcomes approximately 13 million visitors each year. Context matters.

The more important question, however, is one neither Mayor Diodati nor Mr. Todd asks: Why are we not building resilient infrastructure so First Nations like Kashechewan don’t have to evacuate in the first place?

These are the questions strong leaders ask in solidarity with First Nations, rather than simply debating where the next evacuation should occur.

Truthfully, this is not simply a Kashechewan story. It is a Canadian story. An entire Nation has been living away from home for months because, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, safe drinking water infrastructure has once again failed. We should be asking how that became acceptable, not debating which city should carry the “burden” - their word, not ours.

The need for an evacuation itself is the failure. Not the Kashechewan citizens who have been displaced to Niagara Falls. We can’t help but feel that those most effected and at the centre of this challenging story have somehow disappeared in the narrative.

The people of Kashechewan did not choose to leave their homes. They did not choose to spend months raising children in hotel rooms, separated from their land, schools, pets, community and the comfort of knowing when they will return home. They are not visitors on vacation. They are families living through the consequences of an infrastructure failure that should never have happened in the first place.

Words matter. When leaders repeatedly describe people as a “burden,” “a strain,” or something communities must “absorb,” even if the intention is to describe systems rather than individuals, we risk changing how residents see people who have already experienced profound disruption. It becomes easy to view evacuees as the problem instead of recognizing that they are living through one.

This is how misinformation takes root and how long-standing stereotypes about First Nations can become reinforced, even when that was never the speaker’s intention. We presume neither Mayor Diodati nor Mr. Todd intended that outcome.

However, when language consistently frames people through the lens of pressure, burden and strain, many readers may understandably conclude that someone else’s presence means less for them.

There is a conversation to be had about better emergency planning, stronger support for host communities and improved coordination among governments. We agree with that. But if we are looking for what is truly unfair, we should begin with the fact that, in Canada, entire First Nations continue to be displaced because safe water and essential infrastructure remain unreliable.

The burden is not the people from Kashechewan.
The burden is a system that continues to fail them.

We listened to Kashechewan First Nation Executive Director Tyson Wesley respond to the original article by describing the ongoing water crisis as a national tragedy.

He is right, and this is far bigger than Niagara Falls or Kashechewan. It is a Canadian tragedy. More troubling still, it is a tragedy that continues to repeat itself because the underlying problems remain unresolved.

This is where communities like Niagara Falls have an opportunity to lead. Rather than simply asking where evacuees should go or who should bear the costs, municipal leaders can become strong allies to the families they are hosting by joining First Nations in calling for what should never be controversial: safe, reliable, properly funded water and wastewater systems for every First Nation in Canada.

The measure of a community is demonstrated by its strength, resilience, care and kindness. We have experienced those gifts in our visits to Kashechewan First Nation over the years from youth, Elders, helpers, and leaders.

Niagara Falls, you can be remembered not only for opening your doors, but for using your voice to help ensure this doesn't happen again. Your kindness helps ensure Kashechewan residents can return home with dignity, and that will be the measure of your community.

That is the conversation this moment deserves.

And that is how we ensure fewer communities ever have to endure what Kashechewan is living through today.