The Hidden Coffee House Podcast

What happens when the Vice-President of the United States slips into Prince Edward County looking for refuge? Author Thomas Harrison joins me to talk about his new book Searching for Richard Nixon: Finding Refuge and Making a Home in Prince Edward County.We dig into Nixon’s time in Ontario, the power of memory and oral history, and what it means for small communities to carry the imprint of global politics.This isn’t just an interview with an author — it’s a conversation with a fellow actor and collaborator. Thomas and I have shared the stage in The Crucible and Cabaret, and even sat together at the Regent Theatre with the Kenhtè:ke Paranormal Society. Together we talk about history, haunting, performance, and the search for refuge.

In Ontario today, trustees are being silenced, boards are being taken over, and police are being forced back into schools. Ford and Calandra are dismantling accountability and narrowing education to numbers without knowledge. In this episode, I expose how supervision, surveillance, and standardized testing are being used as weapons of control, and why real education — rooted in truth, land, and community. This isn't content. This is resistance.

This episode is built from direct research, archival records, and what little documentation still exists about Captain John Deserontyon. It centers him where he always should have been. He was the military leader, the land negotiator, and the one who stayed with the people. He was not second to anyone.We follow his actions before, during, and after the American Revolution. He was not part of Brant’s circle. He was not chasing status. He was focused on protecting the people. While Joseph Brant was planning land purchases along the Grand River, Captain John was already securing land at the Bay of Quinte and organizing the relocation of families who refused to abandon their responsibilities.Everything in this episode is sourced from documentation, letters, government records, and surviving oral knowledge. It does not speculate. It restores the record where it has been manipulated, erased, or ignored. Captain John Deserontyon was not a side figure. He was our leader.This episode tells the story of who we followed, where we went, and why it matters that we remember it properly. 

The Ontario College of Teachers thinks they can erase Indigenous credentials. They cannot. This episode lays out my fight with the College, the systemic barriers facing Indigenous educators, and the wampum model I built for the classroom. It is a governance framework rooted in law, land, and language. It is a real solution for teachers who know the current system is broken. Education is not bureaucracy. Education is nationhood.

In this episode of The Hidden Coffee House Podcast, I sit down with Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu to talk about Bill 5, the “Unleashing Ontario’s Economy Act.” We break down what the bill actually does, how it changes the rules that protect Ontarians, and why its impacts will be felt far beyond the political headlines.Ted shares his insight on how the bill was pushed through, the long-term consequences for communities across the province, and the importance of staying engaged in the fight against legislation that erodes our rights. This is not just an inside-politics conversation, it is about what is at stake for everyday people, and how we can respond before the damage is permanent.Whether you have been following Bill 5 closely or are just hearing about it now, this conversation will give you the context you need to understand why it matters, and why action cannot wait.

Colonial systems have spent generations building barriers to keep Indigenous educators out of classrooms, erasing truths from public memory, and tightening their hold on stolen land. These are not abstract policies. They are deliberate acts designed to protect the status quo and undermine Indigenous governance, language, and law.This episode takes you inside the fight as it is happening now in our schools, in our communities, and in political spaces. It exposes the legal frameworks being weaponized against us, the strategies used to silence Indigenous knowledge keepers, and the steps needed to dismantle these systems.

This episode traces the continuity of Indigenous spiritual law in Tyendinaga through documented history and lived experience. Drawing from the 1855 investigation led by Indian Agent T.G. Anderson and the 1931 court trial involving Wm “Horse” Maracle and Sarah Jane Maracle, we examine how colonial systems attempted to label our spiritual practices as witchcraft while failing to understand the law and responsibility behind them. These records do not expose superstition. They confirm what blood memory has always carried. The strength of Clan governance, the presence of medicine, and the refusal of our ancestors to surrender their gifts are not remnants of the past. They remain active truths that continue to shape who we are, despite every effort to erase them.

This episode begins with Again We Rise, a direct poetic and political response to In Flanders Fields that refuses the silence surrounding Indigenous remembrance, resistance, and erasure. From there, we lay out a full decolonial roadmap built on land, food, law, language, and the systems we are actively rebuilding. We close by confronting the genocidal settler state of Israel, and calling out the colonial complicity that ties Canadian policy to global violence.

This episode focuses on land as law, memory, and witness. We speak to the history that was buried, the stories erased from classrooms, and the silence that still protects the colonial narrative. This is not a retelling. It is a correction.

What happens when the system designed to “evaluate” you was never built for you to survive it? In this episode, I rip into the machinery of colonial credentialing, break down how Indigenous educators are silenced through red tape, and expose the political game behind Bills like Ontario’s Unleashing Ontario’s Economy Act (Bill 5) and Canada’s One Canadian Economy Act (Bill C-5). These aren’t just policies, they’re weapons.We walk through how Section 35 rights are being buried under bureaucratic delay, how the Ontario College of Teachers undermines truth, and how OISE did what OCT refused to do: recognize reality. I connect it all to the deeper story of land, law, lived experience, and the deliberate obstruction of Indigenous resistance.From Alberta's separatist dog whistles to Doug Ford’s colonial condescension, this episode dives into the ways reconciliation is turned into spin, and how resurgence cuts through it. We talk about MMIWG2S, ancestral knowledge, and the audacity of still being here.This isn’t content. This is resistance.Turn it up. Share it wide. Then ask yourself: Who benefits from keeping us tied up in red tape?

In this unapologetic and deeply grounded episode of The Hidden Coffee House Podcast, we dig into the structural rot at the heart of Canada’s so-called education system. From the credentialing chokehold of the Ontario College of Teachers to the colonial standards that gatekeep who gets to teach and how, this episode lays bare how policy and institutional power actively work against Indigenous sovereignty, language resurgence, and land-based education.We draw clear lines between provincial and federal legislation, Bill 5 in Ontario and the new federal Bill C-5, revealing how these economic agendas aren’t just poor policy choices; they’re coordinated, rights-violating frameworks designed to erase, absorb, and control.Backed by lived experience, Section 35 case law, and cultural truth, this episode isn’t a complaint, it’s a callout. A refusal. A roadmap for resistance.If you've ever wondered how education became a tool of colonization, or how we’re reclaiming it, this is the episode you can’t afford to skip.

Coffee houses have always been more than caffeine stops. They've been spaces of resistance, revolution, and radical ideas. From underground political debates to movement-building tables, they’ve brewed more than coffee. They’ve brewed change.The Hidden Coffee House Podcast picks up that legacy.In our debut episode, Brewed Awakening, we set the tone for what this space is all about: land, sovereignty, survival, and shaking the table. Whether you’re an educator, an activist, a language keeper, or just tired of surface-level conversations, you’re in the right place.