“The social economy, which places ‘people before profits’ arose from a failure of contemporary political and economic policies to provide minimum acceptable levels of economic and social wellbeing to people.”

These words, from the preamble to the Blueberry Foraging case study (Stolz, Levkoe and Nelson, 2017) help to build a platform from which these new case studies from the social and informal economy of Northwestern Ontario challenge the preeminence of profit and market competition as a motive for social organization. A community collectively selling their surplus to raise funds for youth programs; producers and consumers from across the region cooperating to build more resilient communities; a creative centre using art and gardening to build programs for therapy and rehabilitation—each of these cases identifies threads that, together, comprise the tapestry of Northwestern Ontario’s social economy.