I would like to acknowledge and give great appreciation and thanks to the Ojibway of Fort William First Nation, they are signatories of the Robinson Superior Treaty of 1850. I live, write and record this podcast on their land. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the Métis and Inuit people of this land.
ABOUT LORI PARAS
Lori Paras is a writer, entrepreneur and social activist in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In 2019 Paras won the Changemaker: Entrepreneur of the Year Award from her peers at the PARO Centre, a woman’s business support initiative. The only award given in a city where her contributions to community are well documented but ignored because Paras is unruly, she talks back and challenges the narrative of the patriarchy and established elite in her community.
Lori has been clean and sober for over thirty years due to a miraculous healing by a medicine man who visited the treatment program she attended in 1989. She continues to honour the traditional teachings of the Ojibway to this day.
Lori operates The Hub Bazaar, a retail business incubator that helps entrepreneurs proof their business plan and build their networks. She helps to ensure successful start-ups and guide them to opening their own brick and mortar stores. The Hub Bazaar is in downtown Fort William, the southside neighbourhood of Thunder Bay referred to as “the home of the homeless,” where addiction to alcohol and opioids runs rampant and affects the Indigenous community disproportionately.
She uses her business to help the community with food and blanket drives, art auctions, and community events. She was a founding director of Assisting International Students Together (ASSIST), a financial safety net for international students coming to study at Lakehead University and Confederation College in Thunder Bay.
Lori is committed to her next phase of life of writing and developing her podcast “SHE Life,” and finishing her first book, "Stone of the Saviour".
She is married, a mother of two and a grandmother of three.