Michelle Brennan & Chris Germain | Maverick Gardner Pathways North Inc.
The Land
SE 15-28-8W is a 71-acre property in Grahamdale, Manitoba — a quiet corner of the Interlake region, surrounded by boreal landscape, with a farmhouse sitting at its centre.
That farmhouse was built by Michelle’s grandparents in the 1960s. This is not a piece of land we found — it’s land we came back to. Returning it to family hands, and now building something lasting on it, makes everything we’re doing here personal in a way that shapes every decision.
We acquired this property because we saw more than land. We saw a place where something meaningful could take root — something that serves the communities around it in a lasting, practical way.
Why We Came to Grahamdale
We didn’t come to Grahamdale with a finished blueprint. We came with a clear conviction: that rural and Indigenous communities in Manitoba deserve access to real economic opportunity, without being asked to leave home to find it.
Canada is rapidly expanding its digital infrastructure. High-speed internet is reaching more rural and remote communities than ever before. But connectivity alone doesn’t create careers. Someone has to be trained to use it, to build on it, and to deliver services through it — and that workforce needs to come from the communities themselves.
Grahamdale is our starting point.
Maverick Gardner Pathways North: A Training and Careers Hub
The centrepiece of what we’re building is Maverick Gardner Pathways North Inc., an Indigenous-majority-owned social enterprise with a simple premise: train people where they live, connect that training to real paid work, and do it again.
The Grahamdale property will become a physical training and delivery hub — a place where cohorts of community members move through a structured program, gain credentials, and transition directly into paid digital careers. No relocation required.
While the physical build-out of the hub is underway, we will operate 100% remotely. Training, mentorship, and service delivery will run online from day one. This means we don’t wait to start — participants can begin building skills and earning income before a single wall goes up.
What training looks like:
Participants work through practical, career-track streams covering digital literacy, IT operations, cybersecurity fundamentals, software quality assurance, and professional readiness. Training isn’t standalone programming — it’s the front end of a working delivery operation. Learners progress from foundational skills to supervised client work, building a real portfolio and earning income as they go.
What delivery looks like:
From Grahamdale, teams provide IT support, data operations, documentation, and other digital services to Canadian businesses and public-sector clients. These are onshore contracts, with Canadian data residency — a growing priority for clients in government and regulated industries.
Who it’s for:
The program is designed for Indigenous community members in the surrounding area who are ready to build a career in IT and digital services. Participating First Nations and communities have a direct role in shaping intake, cultural protocols, and success measures. This is not a program delivered at communities — it’s built with them.
Governance:
Indigenous shareholders hold majority ownership and voting control. The Maverick Gardner Corporation holds a minority, non-controlling stake to contribute operational and compliance capacity. Accountability is built in: cohort completions, certifications, job placements, wages, and retention are all tracked and reported.
The Sacred Space
The land also carries a cultural purpose.
In the southwestern portion of the property, near the tree line, we are establishing an Indigenous sacred and ceremonial space. This is not an add-on — it is central to the integrity of the place we’re building.
The sacred space will include:
- A sweat lodge and ceremonial lodge for purification and prayer
- A sacred fire circle for pipe, sunrise, and seasonal ceremonies
- A teaching circle for storytelling and youth gatherings
- A medicine garden cultivating sage, cedar, sweetgrass, and tobacco
- A Pathway of the Four Directions connecting the ceremonial grounds to the main property
- A reflection and ancestor acknowledgment space
The design follows the guidance of Indigenous Elders, with the lodge entrance facing east to greet the sunrise. All elements are built from natural materials, with low environmental impact.
This space is for the people who come here — to arrive as whole people, not just workers. It is also open to community gatherings, seasonal ceremonies, and the kind of teaching that doesn’t happen in a classroom.
Our Vision
The Bigger Picture
Grahamdale is a pilot. That’s intentional.
Before we expand anywhere, we need to prove the model works — that the training produces job-ready people, that the service delivery generates real revenue, that the community partnership approach holds up in practice. Grahamdale is where we do that work. If it works here, we repeat it. If something needs to change, we learn it here, not at scale.
Once the pilot is proven, the intention is to replicate it across rural Manitoba and eventually across Canada. Each new hub would follow the same playbook: local training, real client work, community ownership, measurable outcomes.
The goal is a national network of community-rooted digital work centres, each one anchored in a local hub, each one owned and governed by the communities it serves.
The federal government has set a 5% mandatory minimum for Indigenous procurement. Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action ask the corporate sector to create equitable access to employment for Indigenous peoples. Canada’s own economic modelling shows that closing Indigenous employment gaps would add tens of billions of dollars to the national economy.
We’re not waiting for those numbers to improve on their own. We’re building the infrastructure that makes them move.
An Invitation
If you are from a First Nation or Indigenous community in the Grahamdale area and want to know more about participating in the first cohort, partnering with us, or bringing this model to your community — we want to hear from you.
If you are a business or organization looking for reliable, onshore digital delivery capacity aligned with Indigenous procurement commitments — we want to talk.
This property is a beginning. What gets built here belongs to the people it’s meant to serve.
Maverick Gardner Pathways North Inc. | Grahamdale, Manitoba Contact: [email protected]