The Bottom-Up Revolution
Emma Durand-Wood never planned on public office. But what began as challenging a pawn shop, planting trees, and pushing for safer speeds in her Winnipeg neighborhood grew into coalitions and, eventually, a successful run for local office. She talks about stepping into the role, facing the information fire hose, and keeping family and community at the center.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bottom Up Revolution Podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Owens. Today I'm speaking with someone who has been involved in her community for a long time, finding all kinds of ways to make it a beautiful, safer place. Most recently, she decided to embrace an opportunity to run for city council, and she won — which was a turn of events she didn't really plan for, but that she accepted. We're going to hear all about that experience in today's conversation.
I think her story really demonstrates a kind of civic incrementalism. We start with one thing, then move on to the next opportunity that opens itself, and the next opportunity, and the next opportunity. Someday that might mean someone is suggesting you run for city council. You think about it, and maybe you go for it too — rather than this idea of, "Oh, I'm going to do all these things so that I can be on city council." City council is not necessarily the end goal, but it can be an opportunity that presents itself, and if it's a way to advocate for your town to become a stronger place, maybe it's an adventure worth signing up for.
Emma will tell us all about that today. Emma Durand-Wood was elected city councilor for Elmwood–East Kildonan in October 2025 — that's in Canada, for those of you who don't know. We're going to be talking all about that. Prior to being elected, she was extensively involved in her community, helping to establish the Glen Elm Neighborhood Association, serving as Vice Chair of Chalmers Neighborhood Renewal Corporation, helping to spearhead the Trees Please Winnipeg Coalition, and volunteering with Safe Speeds Winnipeg as well as with the Elmwood Business Coalition. So Emma has been very busy. She's also a mom to three, and wife to Michael, I believe is his name. They're both very connected to the Strong Towns world. I think her husband just came out with a book — he's really on the municipal finance side of things. So people listening to this who've been part of Strong Towns for a long time might recognize these names.
I'm really excited, Emma, to have you here. Welcome to the Bottom Up Revolution Podcast. Tell us a little bit about your background. Let's talk about Winnipeg a little bit. Has Winnipeg always been home for you? What would you say makes it feel like home for you the most these days?
Winnipeg has not always been home. I grew up in a different province, and I moved here sort of by choice in 2008. I have some family connections here, and I was just looking for a new adventure in life and maybe a market where things were a little bit more affordable. I had been living in Vancouver, which I loved, but it wasn't going to be a long-term place I could settle. So I chose Winnipeg, even though it's a place that a lot of people are like, "Why would you choose this?"
I moved here and things just really fell into place. I met my husband, we started a family, and after a couple years of just kind of living a regular life, I started getting involved in my neighborhood. That was really where everything took off and led me to this unexpected place in my life.
I've never been to Winnipeg. Can you describe it for me and our audience? What do you love about it?
I would call it a medium-sized big city — under a million, but still pretty large — and it's smack in the heart of the prairies. We've got a real winter and a real summer. It's a very, very culturally rich place, super multicultural, and just a kind of place that people love to be self-deprecating about. But it's a special place. People have really deep roots here. It's a place that calls people back — lots of people kind of go away and do their young person thing, and then wind up coming back here for their family and for the opportunity to have a good life in an affordable market.
What do I love about it now? It just is home. This is where my family is. I've made so many amazing friendships and really feel very deeply connected to my neighborhood and the physical places around me.
You mentioned earlier that you started getting involved in your neighborhood. Can you talk to me about those early days — what was inspiring you, and what did that early involvement look like?
I did a Strong Towns podcast once before, so this will probably be a repeat story. But basically what happened was we live in a neighborhood that is sort of teetering on the edge sometimes. There is some poverty, and there's lots of good stuff going for it, but it's an area that sometimes feels a little bit on the edge. A pawn shop had been proposed to set up in the neighborhood, and a bunch of neighbors started chatting. They thought, "This is maybe not the right direction for us. We'd like to strive for more conventional banking, rather than some sort of alternative, maybe predatory lending type system." We have a neighborhood high street that used to be very full and diverse, with lots of local businesses, but had really been stripped down. We just thought we want different things for our neighborhood than going down this path of more loss of services, or services that we didn't really want.
So this group of neighbors all sort of banded together. A lot of us didn't know each other — we were meeting for the first time. We went to City Hall, we fought back, and we won. It was a really cool experience, and it was the start of us having a conversation about what we do want, and how can we keep this momentum going. How can we, at the very least, just keep in communication with each other? That was the start of establishing a neighborhood association. That all happened in the spring, and in the fall we held a community meeting. I think maybe 40 or 50 people came out, and people were really interested in just being connected — could we work on things together, could we have some events together?
Slowly, that was the start of what is now a very, very active neighborhood association that does lots of events. The primary thing we've settled into — and I'll include myself in the "we" because I still feel very much a part of it, even though I don't have a formal role in the organization anymore — is really to help neighbors get to know each other. That is just socially rewarding, but it's also really important for neighborhood safety. Know your neighbors, know who lives next door to you, who lives down the street from you, and build up those relationships. It's been really lovely. I think it's a bit of an anomaly these days, and I'm really proud to have been part of that.
What was it like for you personally? I suspect at this time you were in the thick of it — a mom to three kids, just kind of getting through each day. Was getting involved something you had always wanted to do, or was it more like, "Oh, this is interesting, let me go see what happens"? I'm curious how that fit in your personal narrative — getting out there and starting to get involved with the community and then helping build this association.
I am an introvert, so it kind of surprises me that all this happened. But I think it was just a matter of having a few key people in the neighborhood who I trusted, and with whom I clearly had something in common in terms of values for the neighborhood. From there, it was quite natural. The moment I decided to step up and play a bit of a leadership role, someone said, "We should really look at getting a neighborhood association going." I thought, well, I had already been writing newsletters for different organizations previously. I figured I can make an email list. I guess I'm sort of a natural organizer — I didn't really ever see it in myself, but that was just a role that came naturally to me. Being a connector, I guess.
We mentioned some other roles you held in the community in your introduction. I'd love to talk about some of those. Can you talk about the Trees Please Coalition — that is just fun to say — and what was that all about?
When we started the neighborhood association, within a year or two we realized there were a few people in the neighborhood who wanted to work on tree issues. Our neighborhood was started to be established a little over 100 years ago and has a very nice mature tree canopy. Because it's American elm trees that are susceptible to Dutch elm disease, we have had a lot of tree loss. Dutch elm disease spreads quite quickly and there's no cure for it once trees are sick. We've lost a lot of mature trees, and this was really devastating — it's literally in the name of our neighborhood, Glen Elm. People really felt that loss deeply.
So I got involved in a subcommittee, and we worked on a project in our neighborhood to try to replant a bunch of the trees that had been missing from the public boulevard — the street trees. We had really good success. We got a big grant to replant trees. Then we looked around and thought, we know we're not the only neighborhood in the city dealing with this, because there are lots of these so-called "elm neighborhoods." We basically decided we need to think about bigger, long-term solutions for the lack of funding in the city budget for replanting trees. It seemed like the city had just thrown up its hands and said there's nothing we can do to address this.
So we reached out to a whole bunch of other groups in the city — other neighborhood groups, other nature-related groups — and held a big community, all-hands-on-deck meeting to strategize. That was basically the start of the Trees Please Winnipeg Coalition. We formed a coalition of probably between 15 and 20 other groups who had some interest in more robust urban forestry for the city. Over the course of the next couple of years, we had a really, really positive impact. We managed to convince our city council to start investing a lot more in urban trees.
Now I look around the neighborhood and I see the direct result of that increased investment. The trees are getting replaced the same year that they come down, which was not happening before. When we started our advocacy, public trees were getting pruned on average every 31 years — which is just appalling, since best practices call for every seven years. Now, after a couple of years of really strong investment, that rate has been brought down to every 12 years. We're totally on the right track. It feels really, really cool to literally look around my neighborhood and see that we made a difference.
It must be kind of cool to be like, "Hmm, I'm standing in shade right now, and I know why I'm standing in the shade right now."
Totally. Some of the trees that we planted with our neighborhood project in 2019 are getting to be pretty big now. When they were first planted, they're just little. But some of them are starting to produce a little bit of shade, and it's really cool.
Trees are just wonderful and so underrated and underappreciated. Let's talk about Safe Speeds. That also sounds really interesting to me, and I know that street safety is really critical to the whole Strong Towns conversation. It's a big part of it. Maybe you can tell us that story.
I can't remember when I first started hearing about what some cities and municipalities are doing, which is lowering the residential speed limit. But probably around 2019 or so, I remember hearing that there was a local, fledgling group that was interested in exploring this idea. Around this time, Montreal had just announced that they were bringing in a lower residential speed limit, and it was starting to be something you'd hear about a little bit more. There were two moms who just thought, "This is great. What a no-brainer. We want our kids to be safe when they're walking and biking in the neighborhood." So I kind of joined up with this little ragtag grassroots group.
Over the next couple of years, we basically tried to get the idea in front of our politicians and in front of the public service. We had a lawn sign campaign — really lovely bright yellow signs with a heart and then "30 kilometers an hour," which is the metric equivalent of about 20 miles an hour. We just tried to get this idea out there and build up support. We would do media when we could, and we held a town hall at one point just to try to build awareness and gain support.
One of the things we advocated for was for the city to do a formal pilot of reduced residential speed limits in a couple of different areas of the city. They did a pilot at 30 kilometers an hour and at 40 kilometers an hour in some older-style grid neighborhoods and some newer-style, more suburban cul-de-sac neighborhoods. Actually, just this week, we are finally at council going to be looking at the recommendations of the public service for what we should do now that we've done this pilot. It's very surreal — when we started, I was just a person in the community, just a mom wanting a safer neighborhood. Now I'm going to be sitting on city council as we decide what to do next. Pretty crazy, full-circle moment.
Let's talk about city council. From speaking with you a couple months ago, before you were even elected, this is not something that you saw for yourself. Can you tell us that story? How did this opportunity come about, and why did you say yes?
I never, ever would have thought that I would run for office. I'm very much an introvert — a person who doesn't like the spotlight. I'm always a background person. I just never, ever saw this as something I would do. But very tragically, our city councilor in this ward passed away unexpectedly while in office. Naturally, everybody in the community just started asking, "Who's going to run?" They were going to have a by-election. Before long, people started asking me if I would think about it, and the first many, many times, I said, "No, absolutely not. Not interested." There's really strong anti-government sentiment out there — a very strong narrative of "all politicians are corrupt" — and I just thought this didn't really seem like something I was suited for. And why would I sign up for that?
But people kept asking, and there were a couple things that led me to change my mind. First, I had a whole lovely team of people say, "You're not going to do this on your own. We're going to do it with you. We're going to have a community-led campaign." I have some really energetic, really talented friends and neighbors who all just wanted to do it together with me, so I knew I wasn't going to be alone.
Another neat factor was that the women who were currently on city council had started a series of events to try to encourage other women to think about running for office, or even just playing leadership roles in the community. I had gone to a couple of these events and found them really inspiring. I really connected with how candid they were about their experiences and how passionate they were about trying to get more women into office — just to represent the 50% of us who are women in this society.
But ultimately, I just decided that I have really strong concerns about the future of our planet, and I wanted to do something about it. The moment of clarity for me was thinking: I want to be able to look at my kids, whatever the world looks like in 20 or 30 years, and say that I tried — that I did what I could to try to influence the direction that we're going. That was ultimately the reason I decided to muster all my courage and do this really scary thing — at least give it a try.
So you ran, you were elected, and you've been serving now for a little bit. How would you describe what you thought it would be, versus what it is? How are you integrating your experience of being more on the ground as a concerned citizen with now being on council? How has this experience informed your view of how change happens in communities and how those two sides of the coin can work together?
Sorry, I kind of gave you a combo meal question.
A lot of people ask, "Is it like what you thought it was going to be like? Is it harder?" And I'm like, no — it's exactly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I didn't have any illusions. In Winnipeg, being a city councilor is a full-time job — really more than a full-time job. I know in lots of places it's a part-time job and people have other employment, but it's a full-time job here. I knew it was going to have an impact: I am a parent of school-age children, and before I was elected I was basically semi-employed doing freelance work. It's just been a very strong contrast — a change of routine and lifestyle, going out and working outside the home almost every day. Personally, it's been a big shift.
The big adjustment is just this massive, massive learning curve. The City of Winnipeg has 10,000 employees, so it's a huge bureaucracy, and we have a council of a mayor and 15 city councilors — so lots of relationships to form. They call it the "information fire hose," and it's really true. There's so much information, and every day I'm just doing my best to take it in, analyze it as well as I can, and make the best decisions I can with it. It's a very tall order. It's a big responsibility, and I'm just doing my best every day to do the next smallest thing and do what I can.
In terms of how change happens and how my background informs that — I think my background is really helpful, because I've kind of always understood the power of everyday people to get involved. Coming into this and saying everything that we do as a city — little-c city, the city as a project or as a body — is partnerships. Everyday people, nonprofits, the big-C City as an institution, other levels of government. Everything is all about partnerships, and things go best when everyone is contributing in some way. It's helpful to understand that we have big challenges we want to solve, and none of them can be solved by just one institution or group of people. They all take everybody working together toward a goal.
You and I were both writers for Strong Towns for a little bit. In what ways have you been able to bring the Strong Towns perspective to your role on council, or maybe in what ways has being on council helped you better understand certain Strong Towns concepts? How do those two worlds meet for you right now?
Just that idea that incremental isn't a bad thing — the power of doing things small and step by step, and the power of trying things out. I think that's a really useful way of looking at big problems and not getting bogged down by things that seem insurmountable. Just understanding that it's not a failure to take a small step — it's actually the only way we really get stuff done. That's just really helpful psychologically, because it is a big responsibility. There are big, big challenges, and having a way to break things down into more manageable but also optimistic steps is really helpful.
You mentioned earlier that you get to be part of the conversation about Safe Speeds as part of serving on council. Anything else that you're particularly excited to be working on as a council member? And how long is your term — how is it set up there?
The by-election took place a year before the general election, so there's actually another election this fall. My current term is just a year. But in a normal election it'll be four years, so if I run again and I'm successful, I'll have a four-year term.
There's just so much I'm excited about. Trees and biodiversity is something I'm excited to work on. Safe speeds, for sure. Transportation issues in general. One thing that has always been really important to me, and that I found there's a lot of interest in while I was campaigning, is that people are really passionate about having a good public transportation system. The bus system here in Winnipeg underwent a really big network change about a year ago, and it's had ups and downs. It's really highlighted the importance of public transit — that people care about it, rely on it, and value it. Being able to work toward a system that maybe has more investment and works better for people is something else I'm excited to work on.
For anyone listening to this who might be inclined to serve in public office — maybe it's something they're interested in, or maybe they've been asked to serve — what advice would you give them about that opportunity? About how to see it not as the villain in the story — you know, "those corrupt politicians" — but as a role through which you can do some good.
On a really personal note, if I can do this, you can do this. Even someone who's reluctant to take the spotlight or to put themselves forward — a lot of people have said to me, that is exactly the kind of person we need to run. The people who aren't in it for power or fame or glory. I try to take that to heart. So I think that's maybe an encouragement if you're considering it.
Of course, an election where you live probably looks different from everywhere else — the scale of what a campaign would look like varies. But I would say it's so important to have a team of people that you trust, who are there for you, and support people in your own personal life who are going to be there for you, because there will be lots of hard moments. Just have your support system set up.
You mentioned the information overload — how did you not drown in that? For me, that's always the biggest thing: I just get so overwhelmed by how complex everything is and how complicated it all seems. The bureaucracy, the rules, the multiple departments, what the state does, what the city does, how grants work, the names of the grants, when you have to apply for them. I think people may have the right intentions and want to do good, but that middle gap of "but the information and everything I don't know" is daunting. Can you speak to that at all — how you made it through that? And you're still standing, so there's hope.
At the end of the day, we're all just normal people. Some folks aspire to run and they've always wanted to, so they put in the work to set themselves up for that role. But a lot of people are just kind of people like me, who through one turn of events or another wind up there. So I think it's really important to understand that it's hard and it's challenging, but it is doable.
Take people up when they have advice for you on how to manage, and also set boundaries. I figured out pretty quickly there's always more that could be done — I could work 24 hours a day. But I quickly realized that after I put in a full day of work, I literally can't take in any more information, so giving my brain a chance to rest — and obviously spending time with my family — has been really important. I've been trying really hard to set those healthy boundaries, because I see how it's a job where you could spend every waking moment at work, and that's not going to make me effective in my role. On a personal level, I'm also just not going to be a great mom, wife, and daughter if I'm completely consumed.
Especially as we think about getting more women into roles of public office, I'm trying to set boundaries for myself that I can then model for others. That's really, really important.
Thanks for sharing that, Emma. In closing, can you tell us a little bit about your neighborhood? What are some places you like to recommend that people check out if they come to visit?
I have a couple of places that I really love that are special to me. One of them is an independent toy store called Toad Hall Toys. It's a bit of a mouthful, but it's been around for decades. It's in the historic part of our downtown, and it's just a really, really lovely, funky toy store — packed with every type of toy you can imagine, with these really great, squeaky, old wooden floors. It's just a really special place. Actually, my assistant at work had never been, so we walked over on our lunch hour the other day, and within a couple of minutes she said, "I know I'm going to bring my kids back this weekend." That's a really cool shop for a gift or just to spend some time.
In my own neighborhood, I have two places that I really, really love. The first is Elmwood Cemetery, which I realize sounds a little bit strange. But we have a historic cemetery in our neighborhood that is basically like a park. It's got these beautiful, wide, paved paths for walking, and you can use it as a connection to bike through to other places. It's got all these gorgeous, gorgeous mature trees. The cemetery was the first non-denominational cemetery in Winnipeg, so it's a really special place. A lot of us in the neighborhood — our kids learn to bike there. It's just a really tranquil, serene, special place. Lots of time spent going for walks and talks and bike rides. Just an unexpectedly beautiful place that a lot of us really treasure and value.
The last one is one of my favorite restaurants. It's called Jaycee's Tacos, and it's run by a Salvadoran couple. The food is just so good — all sorts of different delicious tacos and burritos and salads and interesting drinks. It's a favorite of mine, and we always like to bring people there when they come to visit. Those are some of my favorites.
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Emma, for coming out to share your story and your insights. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that.
Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun.
To our audience, thank you so much for joining me for another conversation. I'll be back soon with another guest. Don't forget to let us know about someone that we should have on using our suggested guest form in the show notes. Until I'm back with another episode, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.