Nuanced. - 1. Jacob Caouette: Indigenous Leader & Law Student

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Jacob and I grew up in Downtown Chilliwack, and faced adversity throughout our childhood. Unfortunately, there were a lack of role models during our adolescence. In this interview it is clear that Jacob took these challenges, and grew because of them. A running theme in this podcast is to search and find community members, and small businesses to be role models for today's youth! Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the show. My name is Aaron Pete, and you are listening to the Bigger Than Me podcast. My guest today is Jacob Coet. I have known him almost my whole life, and in this interview we talk about some of the struggles we faced. Jacob has a real character and a giant heart. It was a real honor to have him as my first guest on the show. Please give it up for Jacob Coet. And we're live.

So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on first was because I really wanted to get into where this all came from and how we both started out. And I think that that's an important way to segue into why people should listen to the podcast. Fair enough. Makes sense to me. So I want to ask you, what do you remember from our childhood? so that's quite the question could bring up a lot of different stories yeah what do you remember about trying to save the paramount yeah that was uh that was quite the project that we took on um i remember city council wanted to tear down the paramount uh and from what i remember

it was an abandoned building no longer playing movies I think at that time we were just starting to get Cineplex Eagle Landing was under development and they're going to bring in Cineplex so there's just no longer a need

but there's a rich history with the Paramount and I think for you and I it brought back memories I know we were still kids at the time but I think it yeah it just it brought back memories to to good times and I think at that point in our life there's just so much going on around us that we wanted to hold on and cherish those good times so when city council wanted to tear it down I think We wanted to save it in order to cherish Lewis memories.

So what I recall is you and I going to Subway, which we did quite often. Yeah, we did. And we started to plot, plot how we were going to save the Paramount. And we brought on some of the subway employees. Yeah. And my memory is a bit shaky on it. don't know how we got to this point, but we were going to do a fundraising concert. Yes, I remember that.

We were trying to figure out venues that we could afford. Yeah, and that was quite the experience, because I had no clue what the hell was going on with that, and how to operate something of that scale. And, I mean, we were so young. But it's so weird that we thought we could do that at, we must have been in grade 11 or 12, and we thought that that was with them much younger than that. was it yeah i think uh that was grade seven no eight or nine okay eight or nine so yeah we were quite young and that's that's a that's a big logistical nightmare for anyone let alone yeah

and uh i think the thing that really uh got us which was kind of to my surprise was uh insurance for the venue right because I think we were going to be able to do it. We were going to use the Prospera Center. I don't think it's called that anymore. And that should have been big enough. And somehow, I can't remember the band. I want to say it was like heavy.

All right. And some, I don't know how we got into contact with them. Or if we did. I don't think we got in contact with them, but I think the publicity we were. starting to build was working us to work. Because remember we did the CBC radio interview. Yeah, I remember that. And then we had one with the progress. And I think one with the Times, when the Times existed, which doesn't anymore. I've found the one from the Times. It's still there, yeah.

I don't remember the papers, but I do remember CBC Radio. Yeah, I had written in as a letter to the editor to The Times. And that was one of the points was that we made. Yeah, I remember that. I think that happened after we were trying to get the concert going. I think that's where people really started to take us serious. Yeah, because we ended up joining forces with that other group, right? Yeah, yeah, at some point that happened. But, yeah, unfortunately, didn't quite pan out, but it was quite the experience.

Yeah. Yeah, and then going back to what was it, Great Eight? when we were in the stupid class for less intellectual people who weren't taking their studies seriously. Yeah, what a joke that was. Yeah, that really turned us around, though, because after that experience, I would say, was it a trajectory in a completely different direction.

Yeah, but I don't know if it was the class that put us on that trajectory. No, it wasn't that class. To me, from my perspective, it was Mr. Schmidt. I do you remember I do you remember learning chess with him I do remember him getting mad at us like infuriated with us once and he would he had had enough

and after that I think you and I just started to respect him yeah I I don't really remember him having any issues with us but I do recall us having a great deal of respect for him yeah um and i think that came from um none of the other teacher he just looked at us differently and uh i think he came to us with respect and in return we showed him respect and there's

this bond that was created and uh and i think that also partially came came because of us playing chess in his class. Weirdly enough, I think he really enjoyed chess, and I think he really enjoyed teaching us. Yeah, I think I remember wanting to learn chess, and I think you and I both saw the chess boards, and we were immediately interested, but then he said, well, not until you get to work on some of the homework you've been neglecting. And from then on, do you remember in grade eight in, what was it, science or math, we would get the work done, same class, same time, and then hang out the rest of the class. Yeah, we would race each other.

It was this friendly competition. Who could finish it first? Exactly. And we would just race through that and we'd be done halfway through the class. I remember thinking, well, what now? Exactly. And they didn't have anything for us. Yeah.

Because, well, they thought we were stupid. But if you think back to grade seven, we were not those people. We were not the people trying to figure it out. I was always the person who was like, oh, we had homework. I didn't know. why didn't you tell me and not kept in the loop and why is it my job to keep track of it and i feel like grade eight we completely turned that around despite the class i would say being surrounded by the people we were surrounded with were not a helpful bunch to getting on track

yeah it's an interesting thought i wonder uh how things would have played out if we were not around those people yeah and if we just had that support in regular class because I in grade 8 and grade 9 we were still kind of being hooligans if you will yeah running around doing all kinds of stupid stuff so I wonder if that would have changed and I don't know if I would have wanted it to change I agree I think I gained a lot from that experience and from our friendship I think a lot of the reasons that we didn't go down different avenues that are common amongst people in our circumstances is because we had each other and we think about the fact that we really didn't

drink until high school and even later in high school and a lot of the people that we knew in middle school were struggling with stuff like that yeah absolutely yeah and uh even in high school i even now don't really drink all that much yeah and so i think it's really important that we communicate that with people and explain and begin to give them the confidence to know that you can turn it around that middle school high school those types of things that are they're useful to a point but they don't define you they nowhere near to find you because if you asked if you polled almost all my teachers they probably would have said i would graduate high school that was just the approach they had and i didn't like them they didn't like me

a lot of them absolutely i think that is also an important lesson the way I see it is it doesn't really matter where you are in your life. You can use that lesson and change who you are at any point. You don't have to be who you are today if you're not happy with it. Yeah, and there's a lot to that. And I think the one thing that we really lacked, it was role models. I really didn't find a good role model for a very long time. And even when I was in a relationship with Rebecca, it was still feeling like there should be more.

When I was working the native court worker position, it just felt like there had to be more, that I could be doing even more than I already was. And when people are telling you day and day out that you're enough, you're already there. It's very frustrating when you feel like you haven't peaked, when you're not there yet. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective for sure. Yeah, because I just, I look up to individuals now who are more open-minded, and that's so important to me to be able to have open dialogues to have those complex conversations and to be able to have people to have those conversations with. And you're obviously one of them. You and I have always been pretty upfront with each other about our thoughts on a lot of different things. And we disagreed politically about families and that approach, but we still talk.

absolutely yeah we were strange children that's for sure i think that uh brings me back to the subway days yeah uh really strange times when you reflect on it when you think about the fact that like our daycare for middle school adolescents of like being 13 14 we were basically hanging out at subway a sandwich shop all of the time reading newspapers talking to the employees about their lives Yeah, that's what I think is kind of, we're strained for our age, who shows up to a sandwich shop and, you know, comes in, first thing you do is grab the newspaper. Yeah. When you're in middle school, you grab the newspaper and rip that thing open. And, oh, this is quite interesting.

Let's have a discussion about this. Yeah, and disagree and have our own perspectives. and I remember discussing different positions we had. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It was very interesting times. It really shaped who we are today. I 100% agree.

And I think that was the character building of when people told us that we, or when we felt maybe more so, that we weren't smart or that we were put into a dumb class, that we knew that that couldn't be true because we're leaving and we're having these great conversations

and they're just not being facilitated in this. school yeah yeah yeah it's um yeah i had i mean i also had that that problem in high school as well and unfortunately you and i went to different high schools yeah um it's a bit of a shame uh because i wonder how much more of a drive we would have today if we were in the same high school. And reflecting back on my high school experience, there was a lot of teachers who doubted that I would have any success whatsoever. And I remember in my grade 12 year, I skipped a lot. I just was so disinterested with school. And I needed to pass physics. And I remember, I don't know, I can't remember his name.

Mr. Holpman. Do you remember Mr. Holmner? I remember Mr. Holman. Yes, I do. Okay. So, oh, you know what? I'm mixing this up.

I want to say this, was this grade 11? I think it was grade 11. Anyways, Mr. Holpman also was working at CSS. And I remember going into my physical class

I can't remember the name of the teacher and he just he did not like me whatsoever he really despised me I think it was just because I was just

all over the place and I remember I'm going to butcher this and I definitely don't remember exactly how we said it but it was something along the lines of you're not going to get to hand in this assignment and you're going to fail and you're not going to graduate and i remember being so pissed off and i left and i was thinking man these people

just like why hold me down why hold me down like it just didn't really make sense to me and uh along with all the other life experiences many of which you and i share i remember thinking you you know what, screw this guy. That just fed the fire under my ass to go do something to have a meaningful life. How can I provide value to other people and in a way transcend the situation that I was in? Yeah. How did you move forward from that? I don't remember exactly.

I think Mr. Holman came through. It's a shame that he's passed on now. But he forced that teacher to accept my assignment. And I ended up graduating. I think that was the one thing that was kind of holding me back from graduating. And I had other teachers like that in high school. I remember our one gym teacher, man, she would just hammer me. I'd never really understood why it didn't make any sense.

It's gym class. Like, come on. You know what I mean? But I remember that with, it was like, it was grade 10. and I had just switched over to Sardis and I was really nervous I felt like I had switched for the right reasons which was

I just with our crew and how things were going I did not see myself becoming something better going to CSS and that was one of my main concerns so I ended up switching but I had this teacher and I won't say her name

because I'm sure she's still practicing but her and I just did not agree she would have these long vocab assignments where you had to fill out vocabulary and it would be like 10 pages a week and you would have to do the full definition and I was like that's way too much it would take some students like six hours to do and it was widely known within our class that it was unreasonable but they were all doing it and so I continued to say like no this this doesn't seem fair and this doesn't seem like a reasonable course load on top of the fact that if I read it and

understand it better why do I need to write it down and so I had I wasn't doing well in her class and she had directly told my mother that I was not going to pass her class and that she thinks I have narcissistic personality disorder. Wow. Yes. So she was in the mood to diagnose me and I went to the counselor and I said

I'm going to fail this class and I don't think that that's fair and she said thank you for coming forward. We've been worried about this for a while and we've been waiting for a parent and a student to want to come forward about this. Wow. So she said, we're going to have some talks, and the principal is going to have to be in charge and kind of control the situation.

And he said, the best you can do in this class, if you do an assignment, is get a C-plus. And he's like, I'd love to give you better. But unfortunately, based on the other information we have, we can't change any of your other grades on, like, your tests and stuff. Yeah. I was like, that's fair. I just don't want to fail this class. And he was completely supportive. he knew that there was an issue with the teacher and not me.

Yeah. Which was so validating. I handed my assignment. I worked really hard on it because I was like, you know what? This person's doing me a favor and I better take it as a lifeline. Yeah. And so I took it and he ended up giving me a B plus on it. Wow.

Which really improved my mark. And it reaffirmed to my mom who's really struggling with the situation. You've got this teacher saying that your student isn't acting properly. And you have my side of the story, which is a little less. The teacher is being unreasonable. Yeah. It was not a popular answer. So when I got that support, it kind of, that was a huge lesson to me in that the structure can have a problem.

And it's not always the individual. Because your instinctive is if a policy goes wrong and you're being held accountable as it must be my fault. To be able to bring it forward and have people say, actually, this is a problem with the policy in how she's educating you, not you. Yeah. It's a problem with the authority. Exactly. And then I got addicted to that, I think, and moving forward, I've always looked at authority with a question mark of what gives you the authority, where is your jurisdiction lie, and why are you allowed to do these things? And not to combat everyone.

I think I did that for a while, but not to combat everyone, but to begin to understand that all of these structures that we look at, they're manmade. They have flaws. Yeah. And if we're not talking about them, they're going unnoticed, and somebody's probably being mistreated. hesitant. Yeah, 100%. And that makes me think about a time when you and I were in elementary school, because we've known each other a long time. Kindergarten, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't recall what grade it was, but I remember you had trouble with this one teacher in elementary school. I want to say it was probably around grade two or three. The Australian teacher.

Yes. Yeah, you know where I'm going with this. Um, and, uh, I remember you telling me that she'd coach you dent. She did. Yeah, I remember that. And it's just so crazy to me, even reflecting on that. Yeah. What kind of teacher tells their student, their grade two, three, whatever, very young student that you're dense. Yeah, definitely not a compliment. No.

So it seems like it's been this reoccurring problem for you. Yeah, I, God, during elementary school, I can't tell you how many times those parent-teacher interviews just brought me and my mom to tears because it was like, nobody's got any hope I'm going to figure this out. And I don't know if you were there, you probably weren't there for grade 6, but yeah, I had this other teacher, and she made my mom cry by saying, it's not looking up for Aaron. I don't know if he's going to do well in middle school. I don't know whether or not he's going to get through that, and I don't know whether or not he's going to get to high school. Wow. And now I'm this law student. Yeah.

People are saying that I should be doing these things and I'm doing great things. But it's like, where are those people now? It's so strange that you can grow up with almost no support. And then on the flip side, part of the reason that I'm starting this podcast is because there's a lot of people you might not have known that had a huge impact on me. So for example, you know decades, local coffee shop. The owner was once a guy named Ron Laser. And so near and around my birthday, almost my whole life, he would get me and make sure that I had something for my birthday, like a piece of cake, a Rice Krispy Square, a hot chocolate, and sit down and ask me how I've been, what's going on? How are you doing?

And thinking back on it now, it's like, it was such a small part yet he was trying to steer me in the right direction, whether he knew it or not. People were trying to say, hey, I see great potential in you and you're doing good things in their own way. but yeah it's weird that you can people can knock you down so easily you don't have to know the person to knock them down yeah but you have to know the person in order to build them up yeah if you just walk up to someone now and say like hey i think you're amazing they're like you don't know a thing about me yeah it's takes a community yeah to uh you know you need your community to bring everybody in that community up exactly what's the point in knocking people down exactly and it just I was listening to a video with Joe Rogan and Kevin Hart and he was talking about how if you don't leave this generation better than it was and improving it and that's

if you're not doing that you're slowing everything down. You're the weak link in the chain and you need to change your mindset. And that's part of the reason I'm doing this is because to me Ron Laser is still out there. He's still doing great in the community. And the fact that I have this story that I can share

that can make him a role model and then other people can look at him as a role model and people within his little community can start to understand this is how far it reaches is i haven't seen him in ages but he still made this impact and that's still real yeah we need to have more of that and make sure that other people who are now 13 14 can have some role models some real people in this community in the fraser valley to look up to, rather than having to look at people in Detroit or New York, not that those people aren't great, but have local people that we can bring up. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And I'm kind of jumping ahead here, but I think that's a really important point. And I think it's the reason why I was, my experience growing up, and then I, the need for having a local role model for, you know, those kids kind of moving into the teens to have. And I think it's what made me so good at my job. Tell everybody about what you're doing. Yeah, so I used to be a youth addictions outreach worker for a local nonprofit. fit. And the focus of that program was to work with youth who were misusing substances and needed harm reduction supplies and some additional support. So essentially, at the beginning,

the purpose of my job was to go out on the streets and find these youth and provide them with the harm reduction supplies and start building a relationship. And through that relationship, you know, obviously no one person has all the answers. I could point them in the right direction and help them along with their journey. Point them to different resources that they can access. And it act as a support. There's many times I had youth that were scared to access certain resources. uh so i would just go with them because i was a support for them somebody that you know

they had a track record with that they could trust um but it's kind of unfortunate this program ended because there just wasn't as big of a need for youth harm reduction supplies which i think is kind of a good thing but um we saw that quite early on. There was definitely some youth that really needed this program. And there was others that they just needed a role model. They needed somebody to help them along. And fortunately, myself and my old partner, we were in a position to be that role model, kind of help them along with their journey, help them discover where it is that they want to go and, you know, just walk alongside with them and be a support for them.

So, yeah, that's very important. That's so important because there's just so many memories that I've, I've been thinking about with starting up this podcast about what did I go through? And how can I make that relatable to people? Because one of the things that, like, most people don't know about me is my childhood. That's something I've pretty much kept under wraps. Yeah. And it's a very unique experience because I'm indigenous.

My mom's indigenous. I didn't grow up with a father. And my mom has a disability. The house was always a mess. And there was no reason to have confidence. Yeah. And my mom struggling with a disability, her and I's relationship was always tough

because we were both trying to figure it out. Yeah. I used a lot of defense mechanisms to cope with with going through that. And now it's time to let those stories go, share them with people, so that people know you can go from that place to law school, to wherever you want to go. You can come from those experiences and still turn it around because it's really tough to think that you can turn that around in that moment.

And I think both of us, some reason knew that we were capable of more even though our home lives could be very very tough yeah absolutely and i think um at least the way that i look at it is a journey to owning your story yeah and uh being able to share that story so you can provide some value some good you know okay looking back this is the shit i had to go through and there's some value in that and you can, you know, take that as fuel to do whatever good you want to do in your life, or you can look at that and go, I don't really want to go down this path, and, you know, these are the changes that I need to make.

Yeah, because in those moments that you're trying to extract the value of the experience. And every experience has a certain amount of value, good or bad, because you're either learning something or you're improving it something. It's very rare that you can get nothing out of it. And it's just, it's finding the ability to share stories. Because one of the ones I was thinking about was how Uber's coming along and how it's such a change in the game. Because when I was a kid, we lived on Cook Street. Yeah. And to go out and to go out to Surrey, we'd have to take the Greyhound.

But to get to the Greyhound, we had to take public transit. So we had to carry three or four full bags for a 20-day trip into public transit. And we'd have to walk three blocks to get there. And then we would have to walk across the street, a very busy, Laka Kukkwe, very busy area. And then wait there and wait in the foyer to get onto a greyhound. bus and that's it's just a completely different world now in terms of the idea of somebody doing that and you seeing somebody do that today that's a 12 year old kid that doesn't really happen as much anymore yeah yeah for sure and well there there's been a lot of changes in in terms of like

transportation and just trying to reflect on some of the kids that I worked with um and thinking about how they get around and kind of trying to relate that to this story. I didn't have any clients that had anything similar to that. But I remember working with some kids that would go out to the city just for fun, just to get out of town because there's so much trouble here that they just wanted to escape from it. and just knowing how hard that was for them it was, yeah, it was very difficult for them to do that because you would have to gather up some money, which very hard to come by, and then hop on what's now the 66,

which will take you to Langley and then you can get on transling bus and then get to the sky training kind of go wherever you want from there but the problem with that is it takes so long to do it and that bus only runs

once an hour and it you know I think it stops service I don't know what it is now but you're pretty much screwed if you did not get to that exchange by like 7 p.m. And then these kids are stuck in Vancouver. And that is a whole other world. And like what are you going to do when you're what, 14?

You've got no money. No cell phone. Well, you have a cell phone, but it only connects to Wi-Fi. And now you're in Vancouver. You're in the big city. You know, you're a rural kid. Now in the big city alone, no money, no really means of communication. You've got to walk around, I guess, find the nearest importance to get some Wi-Fi

just to communicate with anyone. And, yeah, it's hard for them. You know what I mean? Kind of went a bit off topic there. No, no, I think that's really important. And just remembering what we used to do and our experiences with public transit. said we would get those bus passes just for something to do in downtown do you remember we just used to ride the bus the public bus just to see new things and have new experiences and try and

make some memories yeah yeah i do remember that i i think perhaps i'm wrong on this or my memory is a bit shaky on it but i think the first time that we did that was what is now kiss radio but there was a new radio station and they were going to play something like crazy like i want to say like a hundred thousand hours or just straight music or something like that yeah uh and no commercials yeah and i mean i'm sure we could have got our hands on a radio but i feel like we just hopped on the bus just to listen to some music yeah go explore a little i think that was one of the very first times that we did we did that yeah and it was so important because neither of us were going to

going on any big trips anywhere during that period of our life. Mm-hmm. We were pretty stuck in downtown Chilac. Yeah. And we tried to make the best of it a lot of times. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't think the first time I ever went anywhere. Oh, I guess I mean, when I was a kid, I went to Bellingham, but, you know, that's right

across the border, not too far away, but the first time I really, like, went somewhere far from home. was a family trip with my dad's side of the family to a reunion in Winnipeg. That was like grade 11, I think. Maybe 12. It was like in between. It was the summer. Yeah.

Yeah. And then the first like vacation I ever went on was just two years ago. I wouldn't be 25 this year. Wow. And that was that was the first and only. so far yeah so it's so unique because other people it's like a trip a year at least and it's just the opportunity it's just timing for most people where for us most of our lives it's been fighting tooth and nail to try to make something happen something outside of the town and

yeah you and I must have this town mapped out where oh yeah you could send us anywhere down any back alley and we know it um whether it was through walking downtown all the time or now be driving everywhere and looking for new parks and new areas to walk and enjoy. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's so important. And I'm really looking forward to having a lot of people on here to talk about their experiences and make it all more human than it already is because there's a lot going on in the world right now. These are very strange times. Absolutely.

We just need people where we can take a little bit from this person and a little bit from this person. some of the good mindsets in the community. There's this guy, Brian, and he works out in hope for our organization, and he's absolutely phenomenal. He works as a manager at one of the houses of hope. He's trying to help the community. He does that job by choice. He wants to try and make people struggling with homelessness their position better, and he actually implements ways of doing that.

But the other thing he does, which I think is absolutely amazing, is he opened up a laundromat in hope because they didn't have enough and it wasn't affordable. And people who absolutely can't pay couldn't get their clothing washed. So he opens up this absolutely phenomenal laundry shop that is very stylish. It's got a theme and doing all of that trying to support the community. And then in the back, he has a small space that he allows. unsheltered people to use to create wooden artwork similar to the one here and build them up through skills that they already have and then he doesn't charge them anything for it he lets them come in work on their art sell it he doesn't take any of the profits but if they can get themselves

back on their feet with that approach he'll open his doors for that yeah so he's doing not one not two but three different things trying to build up his community and trying to improve people's lives. Yeah. And I just, I want to get people in here who are doing those types of things who are going under-recognized. Yeah, that's super cool.

It's a beautiful piece of artwork, I have to say. I was very grateful to get it. Yeah, with the bears and an eagle and being indigenous, my first nation is Chihuahawatha. And our logo is an eagle, so it seemed fitting. Very, yeah. I don't know about you, but growing up, I wasn't really connected with indigenous culture. Yeah, both of us are indigenous.

You're from Stahelas. Yeah. I'm from Chihuahawthal. Yeah. Neither of us grew up with much culture. No. No, not much whatsoever. And it's kind of this weird struggle for identity.

I don't know if you can relate. But you're just kind of struggling to find who you are and then kind of explore your indigenous heritage. And I've been, at least lately, trying to find out more, be more connected to that community. How can I provide value to that community? How can I learn about that community? How can I be more a part of that community?

Exactly. There's subtle things that make you very clear you're an outsider. The best example I can think of is when you meet most indigenous people, they're all about who's your family and how can we find that connection. Yeah. That makes me uncomfortable. I never succeed in those circumstances because it's so outside of what I'm used to when somebody's like, who's your mom? Who's your aunt? Who's your aunt's sister?

And it's like, all right. Like, I don't know all of these names off the top. of my head and I don't even view things through that lens. So it's a huge, it's a huge thing to adapt to new ways of communicating and what's important in the conversation because most people I talk to are like, what are you doing? What are you going to school for? What are you, where are you working? Those types of questions are the priority. But for a lot of communities, it's about who's your family? It doesn't matter the education or anything like that. It's who are you connected to and how can we build a relationship based on family? Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing how

when you enter room and people ask you that question, who's your family? Oh, okay. And then as soon as they find out, at least in my experience, oh, okay.

And then it's really funny when I head down to Stalo and I go in the building. I remember one of the first times I went there, it was for a school project. And we were supposed to interview the staff of Quijuosome.

And I remember them, we were asking them questions. They were asking us questions. I remember saying that I was indigenous from Staelis. Oh, okay. Well, who's your family? Oh, my grandfather's Eugene Point. Oh, Eugene.

You know what? Hey, cousin. I remember thinking, what the hell? Yeah. You know, and now I can barely walk in that building without finding a relative. Yeah. And they're trying to, oh, come over, let me tell you stories.

Yeah. And I just can't describe the feeling that I get when I listen to some of the stories that they have to tell. It's almost indescribable. It's like I'm just connecting so much. Yeah, there's a lot to both of our histories that is so interesting in terms of, if you both look at the history of the community and the experiences that indigenous people have, I definitely think that there's some sort of disconnect because those stories, they don't seem as appealing to the general public

as other approaches I've seen. For example, to me, I relate a lot with Sean Anderson, who's the maker of I decided the album, and then I named the song Bigger Than Me. Yeah. After his song, Bigger Than Me, because he grew up mainly with his mom, and he...

didn't know his dad very well I don't think and his primary relationship was with his grandmother and I relate with a lot of that but I haven't heard that story told the same way as indigenous communities we don't have those role models popping up the same way and the ones that I do think are those role models I'm going to have on this podcast

yeah uh Dave Jimmy is doing phenomenal things for the community. Derek at the same thing. There are chiefs in the lower mainland I'm going to have on because they do have stories. Yeah.

And I think it's important that we hear them. Absolutely. I agree. There's value to those stories. You can interpret them as you wish and it really comes down to your experiences is how you're going to interpret it and what value you're going to take from that story. Yeah.

And where it's going to lead you. If anywhere. And we can't move on. We can't reconcile until we hear the stories and we get what we need out of them. And I'm hearing a lot of stories, which is great. I'm not hearing them here in Chilliwack, in Abbotsford, in Hope. I'm not hearing them. And I think it's important that we don't just have them at a national level.

We have them in the communities. Yeah. So you want to bring people on local and localize in the Fraser Valley? And continue to grow from there. I'd like to treat this like there's people right here in downtown Chiluac to start with. Those people need to be heard first. Then we need to grow it outwards. And we need to continue to hear from all different communities because it's not just a problem in Chiluac or Abbotsford.

It's a problem in Vancouver. It's a problem up north. It's a problem across Canada where we don't have the same level of role models. Yeah. They do in the United States. Mm-hmm. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah.

So what was it like growing up in your family? Strange. I think it's one word that sums it all up. Really tough times. Really tough times. And you could, you could feel, could feel. So my mom and dad split pretty much right after I was born. So I live with my mom, my whole life, my mom and my sister. My dad was in the picture, but I didn't see him all the time.

But yeah, we moved around a lot and there's a lot of issues. And I could feel that my mom loved me, but there's just a bit of a struggle to express it and even to this day we don't really have conversations uh we just don't really know how to communicate to each other which is too bad but i i know that she loves me um but yeah there's just growing up there's a lot of tough times she's struggling with her own things um a lot of which i think stem from um oh now i can't remember the word um the words escaping me what's what was the experience uh we're we're just you know she had a really tough time growing up with her father my grandfather um and he is a residential school survivor yeah you know he's had his own issues growing up um i've heard

some stories not all of them um and then you know that's just been passed down to her you know she didn't graduate high school picked on quite a bit as a as a kid and uh you know she just left um from what from what i recall and uh she just kind of went and did her own thing um yeah like really really tough times her mom didn't really care a whole lot about they didn't have a very good relationship. And, you know, I think intergenerational trauma. There we go. Here we are.

Wow. You know, and I think that's kind of, I don't know how to phrase it. How to articulate what I'm thinking. That contributed to your relationship. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, yeah, contributed to, she just doesn't know how, how to have these conversations, like, and that's just kind of how my whole childhood has been. Like, it's kind of, you know, this broken family, you know, you love each other, but you don't really know how to communicate. And you're just, you know, just trying to find your own path, your own way, way through it.

Um, yeah, we moved around a lot. And, uh, yeah, I just, I, the early years, you know, kindergarten when you and I were friends, I don't recall where we live, but we stayed kind of, uh, stable, if you will, we weren't really moving around a whole lot at that time. Uh, and then she, uh, I remember, you know what? We were living by what's now the new mark. uh i don't recall the name of the buildings right right right yeah i remember it yeah it used to be like a gas station there a little bit right yeah there's a gas station there but uh i guess depending on

where you're looking at it from the left there's these two white buildings and we were living there and things were okay you know weren't the greatest um and then my mom met this guy and whatever they eventually got married and man this guy was a total nightmare yeah total nightmare and we started moving around a lot with him and uh he just he had some pretty significant mental health concerns now that i think back on it you know significant enough that i don't recall the frequency but he was obligated to go down to the hospital to get these shots so he he would be somewhat stable. Really?

Yeah, and I remember when we were living there, it was just such weird times. And his son was kind of strange, too. I think he was just trying to find his own way. You know, things weren't so great for him either. And I think to compensate for that, his parents just bought him things. I guess they had the resources,

you know, these kind of things were strange. So they just tried to buy his love almost. And I remember this one time that really resonates with me, just how really strange this guy was. And it was almost, I don't want to say, it was predicting his future behavior that was going to become very important in my life trajectory. I remember we were going to watch this movie, and his son was like, no, man, I'm not watching this.

You knew I'd already watch this. And he's just freaking out, whatever. He's like, maybe like 11 or 12. And, you know, he starts to pipe up. He gets pretty angry. And they start fighting. And he, I swear to God, he was going to kill that kid. you grabbed a pillow and was suffocating him and it was like what the hell was going on he ended up

escaping and he called the police and all these police cars descend on our house and i can't remember if he got arrested for it he should have he was such a prick um and uh you know it was it was there's an incident that resonated with me there's more to come unfortunately with him And I think one of the bigger stories, I guess, if you will, I can't really find the right words for it. That also really resonates with me. He would beat my mom quite often. And, you know, I really hated him. And I remember, you know, we had our disagreements.

I would just try and do my own thing at home, you know, read. I was quite the little academic back in the day before things kind of really went to shit and I just was just struggling to do my own thing and kind of struggling in school. Like I said, we'd move around a lot so I wouldn't really have any friends, you know, you'd show up to this new school, no, absolutely nobody. And, you know, lots are already going on at home. You're a bit of a strange kid, so not too many people want to be friends with you. Because you're not like them.

They can't relate to you. Kind of jumping around here. But this one time that really resonates with me and kind of set me on this path that I'm on now was, you know, this one night, they had gotten into a fight. He was beating on her, whatever. And like, it just got totally out of hand. and I remember my mom woke us up out of sleep like but we weren't really asleep obviously we could hear what was going on and it was like we got to go now I remember grabbing whatever I could and we're racing out the door he grabs a bat he's beating our car in and we hop in the car and I guess the neighbors are obviously like what the hell is going on this is madness um and we'd drive around for a while and, you know, just really crazy times and, uh, like, where were we going? There's nowhere to go. Nowhere. And I remember we just, we had to go back. Like,

just cool off. We had nowhere else to go. So we come back and obviously neighbors are freaked out. I'm sure he called the police too. So the police show up. And I remember there, you know, there's quite a few of them, too. And they're like, oh, you know, we just want to have a chat with your mom. And I'm like, I'm trying to tell them my side of what happened. Because to me, this guy's like told the out of control. Like, he is a bad dude.

And, you know, I didn't really understand. a lot of different things at the time but I was like something needs to happen to him like he's a bad guy you know here's the police they're going to help us that's that's their whole job is to help people right he's a bad guy doing bad things he needs to go and they're like oh we need to talk to your mom and I guess because she had left they had thought that she was the instigator she was the bad person and she's kind of like no I don't really want to go I remember they handcuffed her, but it was like really excessive. And just to get a bit of a visual, she's like, I don't know, maybe like five to hundred pounds.

And they shackle her around the waist, around the arms, around the legs, and take her away. And we're left with this guy who I just witnessed beat the shit out of my mom. And we, he's, you know, beating our car. and he's just this fucking crazy guy and we're stuck with him and he knows I don't like him and surely he does not like me and I'm just thinking this is held these people were supposed to help us and now we're left in his care like this is a total nightmare and the more I reflected on that growing up I wanted to become I had other experiences that I'll get into but I thought about that and I thought about how I wanted to become a cop because I didn't want

something like that to happen again. I just did not think that they did their job very well and I wanted to to do that job. I think it's an important position, but you have to do it well. And stuff like that continued on through. Throughout my life, like in middle school, my mom wasn't around too often at night. She would go out, whatever. And that was kind of the way it was for a lot. I remember that because I'd be over at your house and we would all hang out with your mom out.

Yeah, so it's just kind of left to do my own thing. and I think that's why nowadays I like structure. I crave structure because there just wasn't any. I was left to my own, my own devices, if you will. But, yeah, I remember, yeah, middle school was pretty tough too. She'd be out quite often. I was left doing my own thing. You know, you and I were in that special class.

This is quite strange times. and i remember uh she came home one morning uh and i was like okay time to go to school you know some days we'd walk other days she'd drive us i'm thinking okay she's probably going to drive us no uh she had crashed the car that night uh she had crashed into a tree and rolled it over completely total I remember the tree Yeah the tree The tree I don't think is there anymore actually

It was there for so long I remember going past it I would just think about that Every time I'd go past it But it's not there anymore I don't think A local nonprofit Ruth and Naomi Has put up a housing

facility there Along with a few different partners But Yeah Yeah, just like really turbulent times. I remember tough times left, you know, to my own devices. I've got to create structure for myself. I've got to, you know, do all these things for myself because nobody else is going to be there to do it.

You know, I think back like, at home there's no structure. You'd look to authorities, you know, the teachers at school thought it was an idiot, hooligan, no, no structure there. you go to rely on the police i can't rely on the police i've had bad experiences with them you know you start to think these people aren't here to help me yeah uh so there's just nowhere to go there's nowhere to turn to and to be honest i really don't know how i got to this position that i'm in today uh going through all of those things there's like there's just no nobody to turn to It was a really tough relationship with my mom because I just didn't understand what was going on. I always felt like I was getting mistreated and when I'd make coherent points, they were going on deaf ears.

Yeah. And so the more the name calling between my mom went back and forth and no solutions ever came, the less I was motivated to show any emotion. Because if she's showing emotion and I'm showing emotion, we're not solving anything. Yeah. So it was like, well, she's not going to stop showing emotion, but I can. And we can maybe make this more efficient. And so I just wouldn't give in to the emotion side of things. And then I just kind of adopted that.

And I became a person who doesn't have emotions, doesn't show that. And that became like a personality trait for a really long time. Yeah. is your coping mechanism. Yeah, was to just cover that up and you can't hurt me if I'm not showing that I have any feelings. Yeah. But, yeah, I would regularly call you, text, you, reach out to you. It's like, hey, let's do something.

Let's go for a walk. There was nothing at home for me. I didn't have a PS3, an Xbox for a long time, most of my childhood. So there was no escape if I was at home. It was, we had one TV. My mom was always on that TV. She was going through depression with a disability. and she controlled the TV

so I knew I couldn't invite friends over and the only opportunities were to go outside and so you and I we were always out we were always over at somebody's house visiting with other people being at their house

and those houses had problems too we had friends who they were getting abused as well in their own circumstances and we were trying to figure it out because no adults were talking to us about this is what you do if you see abuse if you see your friends being hit by his parent like we saw there was a lot of different circumstances i saw that and we never discussed them or tried to fix

them or ever try and stop them from happening yeah yeah no it's definitely some some tough times and to my bottom's credit like like i said before uh i could tell that she loved me but they're just there wasn't a way to to really show it to communicate it per se like there's definitely times where you know things were really tough you really didn't have at least in my experience that didn't really have stuff around and then there's also times where you know we didn't go without and we had some pretty nice stuff yeah um you know it's just very turbulent um and uh yeah stuff like this continued on pretty much all the way till grade 12 yeah all the way to grade 12 i remember grade 12 year was pretty disinterested in school skipped all the time you know i had

law class but it was easy to me and i think that's one of one of the other things that kind of reaffirmed the path that i'm on you know go to law class and finish the work before everyone else okay well and the teacher that i had he that you do work ahead so i was a couple weeks ahead of the class yeah you know or like couple lectures or you know whatever we used to call them back then um ahead of everyone else i already had you know future assignments done probably not all that good quality but you know it was done and in my mind at least it was it was pretty easy so i just i didn't really like being at school um some of the stuff was easy some of the stuff i didn't like surely some of the stuff was hard um so i just skipped and uh you know there's lots of tough times with that

and i remember my mom got this other boyfriend kind of a strange guy in his own ways too and I remember the night before grad pictures. You know, they'd gotten into a fight and I'd stepped in. And this kind of reaffirmed my beliefs about the police. So somehow the police get called. I'm, you know, they're fighting. I'm like, what the hell, man? Like, you got to get out of here.

You're no good. And he starts to fight me. So we're fighting. and the police bang on the door and, you know, he hears this. He runs out to the balcony and jumps off the balcony and starts running down the road. And I'm like, what the hell?

The police come in. And by this point, I know I want to become a police officer for a variety of reasons. But I'm so kind of being a bit of a hooligan And I just kind of also have this distrust of the police that they're going to provide me with good service. And I remember the cops come in and, you know, kind of explain to them what's going on fairly briefly. And I'm expecting them to go after this guy. I mean, he's fought my mom.

He's fighting me. I'm a minor. Like, you should probably go take care of this. Um, and they just do absolutely nothing. And I remember going, what the hell? Like, you should really be doing something about this. Um, and, uh, yeah, that again, just reaffirmed the path that I was on, that I want to be a good police officer. I, and I, I didn't know what, what that was at the time.

I still don't think I really know what that, what that is. What does that look like? It's just so fluid. Yeah. What is good, you know, there's, there's so many things you have to take into account. But it would have been nice in that circumstance that they just at least tried to do something. Yeah. And I remember just like pretty much just goes through my whole life timeline as a young person.

And it's just kind of, there's good times, but there's also lots of struggle. Yeah. But thinking, thinking back and reflect. on those times I am grateful for it because I think like I mentioned before just it put this fire under my ass to go out and do something to transcend that life because I don't I don't want that for my future kids that's whatsoever that's exactly how I felt because I have family out in Wayrock. And the thing that woke me up was that

this isn't this way everywhere. There are areas in which people are struggling and that there is a lack of food on the table and that there are problems. But there are other places in BC that that's not as much a problem. So I would go spend

time with my grandmother or my uncle and feel this is different. I don't feel stressed. Food's coming and it'll keep coming and the how are worth so much money and these people are happy and they're calm and they're just working on their garden or they're cleaning their car or doing just small errands and it's a completely different feeling I'm in this giant living room and it's comfortable and I have blankets if

I want them all clean all for like it was just such a different mindset all the blankets at home need to be washed or they're in the wash and I'm just sleeping with half a blanket flipped over like there were real problems and then I go to this other area and it was completely different and that's what lit the spark under me is why can't I have this? Yeah. Why is this? And my uncle would be like, this is probably not going to happen for you. And it's like that lit the fire under me is.

You're saying I can't have this when I know it exists. So I'm going to find a way to get over there. And that's part of the reason that I'm trying to figure out investing and finances is because I don't want to be the person who figured it out too late. and there are things that we know that we know that work and they're not shared with people like if somebody walks up to you and says

do you want to know how to make 8% on your money you're like how is this guy ripping me off like what's going on behind the scenes but it's a real thing to invest your money into ETFs and have it make a 7% return that's a real thing that when you talk about the stock market

most people go don't trust it not reliable and it's like that's fair there's a lot of aspects to it that can be sketchy like anything and but there are opportunities where you can start to build yourself from here sort of figure out what you like and do it is something we always hear now but i'm not seeing enough of the other one that i see a lot of that i i don't know if you remember this but remember when people used to say you do the macdonald's job a customer might want to hire you based on

your good work yeah you remember when that was a thing yeah and jeez i'm not seeing much of that anymore. And I'm not hearing a lot of people admit that the jobs we need are everyday jobs and more complex jobs. And you can do a bunch of different things. And we're still in this mindset of like, what are you going to do for the rest of your life? Yeah. That's not how things are. What are you, what things are you going to do in your life is a way better question because you shouldn't choose between, oh, I want to be an RCMP officer or I want to be a lawyer. It's like, well, how can you get a bit both. Where do they cross sectors where you can start to build and make sure that officers act the way they should? And how can you be part of that policy change? And like when I go into

Caltyre, the one at Eagle Landing, I'm sure you know the guy there too. Phenomenal service. And I just don't think he gets the recognition for it. And there's a lot of people in the community who are doing tough jobs or things that we don't as a society look up on that are so important. And that person is dealing with the community all day long, how many times can people go in there and have a conversation that could change their day for the better? And the one example that I've been trying to use is when he says he's not doing an alignment on your car, so you save 180 bucks or whatever the price is, you don't know whether or not he did it. So he's being honest with you if he says he didn't have to do it. It's very hard to tell. Like how often can you

tell if somebody did an alignment versus not if your car's already straight? Yeah. Because Brayden went in there and he was like, we didn't need to do an alignment so we didn't charge you for it. And I was like, that's awesome. Because neither of us would have ever known had he charged us for it and said we actually did need to. So they have the opportunity to help you financially and to make your day better. He told Brayden something about how the rims that he got for his car looked absolutely phenomenal that he bought off of another website, complimented him on his rims and said, everybody thinks your rims look awesome on this car. have a good day

and now Braden's leaving happy with his purchase not hurt financially but nobody ever gives that recognition to those people and so when I was in there last I was like you know what I think you give

such good customer service that I could see you being the face of Caltyre maybe just for Chilalak maybe just for that one place but you are the person who I trust I don't trust Caltyre in Ontario

the same way I trust this Caltyre so how can we build this person up how can we get them heard on a platform like this where he has some leverage now and he can say to people hey I was on this I have my social media

is doing really well and I'm showing that I'm capable of doing this task and fighting for the position that probably doesn't exist right now yeah yeah that's an interesting perspective and I think a lot of people

are opening up their eyes to the work that people are doing that you know they might not have recognized before especially because of the pandemic. Exactly. You see a lot of these people, you know, working at grocery stores, fast food restaurants, you know, people just didn't, they didn't really care.

And now it's like, okay, but now this is your lifeline. These people have always mattered, but your eyes are being open to it now. Yeah. Because you are relying on them more than you have before. Yeah. And here's a weird one is it looks like with the position I'm at, with Hope and Area Transition Society, I'm going to get frontline workers pay. How, what I don't know what they're actually calling it. But they're, the grocery store workers are having to fight and petition for their right to get that pay. Yeah. Seems crazy to me because I deal with a marginalized population, but they deal with all the people, marginalized regular, everyone is going through Save On Foods right now. That is a primary point of contact. I absolutely think those people deserve an increased pay, especially because they're the ones who obviously need it the most. They're working during a pandemic where a lot of our staff can work from home. The people who really deserve it are the ones stuck out there trying to make

a living and trying to survive during this. I'm surprised that it's even a conversation on whether or not they can get it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a shame. And I think it really highlights. I watch this video, very short video, from the world economic form. They just released it like two days ago. And the title is The Great Reset. And, uh, you know, I'm not sure if it's just, uh, like, I guess kind of like a promotional video for a project that they're working on. But the way I took it was like, you know, we're doing a lot of things wrong and they need to be fixed. And this, this, this, The current times that we're in just kind of shown a light on all these problems that we have. And, you know, the structures that we built are just not working.

And we need to reinvent them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I see that with a lot of things. One thing that's really come out of this pandemic is seeing how our officials talk to us. Because one thing I have not heard enough of on any news site is vitamin D. vitamin C and taking things that will boost your immune system and help support you during this time and health getting exercise from my understanding obesity is one of the leading causes

of death mixed with COVID during this pandemic is the two one of the predictors is obesity so why aren't we talking about that why aren't we telling people how important it is to get exercise to take your vitamins and to focus on those things and figure out places to get those things done that are local um because i contacted rustic soap co because i want to use things that are local especially during this time but that should have always been a thing and that's something we kind of moved away from during the pandemic was buying local yeah trying to figure out a way to make those but a lot of those businesses figured out a way to make it work they rustic soap co just gave me a bag and they left it at their porch and said you can pick it up at exactly this time and i wouldn't pick it up and it was

fine. But small businesses were particularly impacted during the pandemic because it's harder to switch them over because part of the product is the person to person. And so I'm hoping through this pandemic once we're starting to come out of it that we can start to rebuild the person to person because there's a lot of good experiences you can have in small businesses that are just not going to happen in the big retailers. And I don't know if it's the case for Canada, but I can't remember where I came across this, but 30% of the small businesses in America will not reopen their doors.

Ever. Ever. Yeah. Again, yeah. So it's, and a majority of the businesses in America are small businesses. So that says volumes of, you know, what's going on and how we should be refocusing,

or spending power towards local businesses. Well, and why wouldn't you? That person is your neighbor. The person you're dealing with in a small business is somebody living right down the block from you, trying to make ends meet, trying to feed their family, focused on those type of things, and they found a passion.

Because, again, with Rustic Sopco, they have this story of their child facing eczema or eczema, however you say it, and them wanting to address this pre-Google, pre-Syrie, pre-just being able to type it in really quickly. They were trying to figure this out. Yeah. And that's awesome.

We need people like that in our community trying to make our lives better. Alkaline Planet is another one I love because they came out of, in 2013, we put chlorine in our water. And there was no plan to get it out for people to drink. So they created a business. They charge $100 for a pitcher and $20 for the filters, replacement filters, that last two to three months. And they're Chilliwack based. and they were trying to fix a Chilliwack problem. And that's awesome.

They have different products for your shower, for going out into the wilderness. And we need to support that because it was a Chilliwack problem, and they addressed it. And why can't they be a role model for other businesses or for other people? Yeah.

Yeah, interesting perspective, for sure. Yeah, I can't wait to have some of those people on to talk about the details of that because I really think it's important that we start to figure out what our stories are what is the valley story can we build that up into something interesting yeah i mean that's i think that'd be a hard story to tell there's so many so many people so many unique stories exactly i don't i don't know if you could make it into one story

no not one story but be able to have a culture of a story be able to have our community known for something we used to be known for corn and in 1990 we won an award for being like best water. And we've started to fall away from that belief that we are all one good thing, that we are a team working together to try and make Chilliwack great and to build connections and to build great people up. Yeah. But I wonder if that just reflects on kind of where we are as a society right now.

Everything's so divisive. I agree. I think we've... It's just trickling down. Yeah, we have a lot of disagreement. in our community because I don't know if you remember this but when I was a kid you didn't talk about politics that much like our parents weren't talking to us about politics yeah it wasn't being discussed in class it was more from the newspaper reading it and trying to

figure out our views now everybody has a political opinion I don't know about that you don't think so no no no I guess with a bias view of social media feels like everybody has a political stance on things yeah Yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't think that everybody has, uh, I think people are starting to, or at least you're starting to see people's opinions more because of social media. Um, I'm not convinced that everybody has a political opinion though. That's fair. Maybe it's just on specific issues where people are coming down. Yeah, because I think there, there's going to be certain issues that resonate with people and they're just passionate about so you're going to hear their opinions. but you know what maybe i'm not passionate about that so i'm kind of indifferent i'm just i'm willing to listen to the facts and uh you know based my decision on that and it doesn't really matter which way the outcome is for me yeah you know so yeah i think we need to start encouraging people to you're right you're right when i think about it in terms of people getting out to

vote and people actually holding a position that they're willing to discuss that is becoming rare where people actually want to sit down and have a conversation about it and go through like where where your stances are in specific issues in specific times at specific moments yeah people don't seem to be as interested in that it's more as a whole i have this view yeah and i wonder if it's because we have this cancel culture yeah we're uh and social media like once you put something out there it's out there yeah and it can come back to bite you in the ass at any time yeah And there's no context 10 years later of being like, oh, well, this was everything surrounding why that person said that. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, you know, maybe it's just that people are afraid to voice their opinion because they don't want to get canceled. And then, you know, it has such profound impacts on every sector of their life, if you will. Yeah, I look forward to having those conversations and educating myself prior to having those types of conversations, but actually having them with people. And I'm not always going to be right. Not every podcast is going to be perfect, but it's about improving. Like, who knows how much I could improve if I focus on improving each time I do this. Every single week of improvement and focusing on making sure that we have the correct memory cards

and making sure that all of these things are properly done, it can get better. And the goal is to make it better and to make sure that I'm not part of the problem. And that's all I can do is try and make the conversation better and make sure that we hear from all perspectives. Because there's a lot of divisiveness just in Chilliwack. Yeah, absolutely. Barry Newfeld is absolutely one of the most divisive people in Chilac. Absolutely. I mean, he just recently made, I want to say, like, for sure, national, perhaps international news for some of his comments.

And again, he made a social media post. And it's come back to bite him in the ass. Yeah. And so here's my concern. with Barry Newfeld is it's it's fine to say that his opinions are wrong you can disagree with them I don't have an issue with that and I disagree with him on a lot of what he says but he's a school trustee and he's been voted in there are people who agree with him and we have to take those people seriously because they're part of our community we can't I've seen journalists

write him off as a wing nut and that's that's easy to do but one of the things I want to do on this podcast is steel man positions do you know what steel man means no i'm not too familiar so straw man is to take the weakest part of your argument yeah and bulldoze it steel man is to take what is he saying and what can we get from it what is he trying to say that voters are supporting because he's been voted in somebody agrees with something he has to say whether they'll admit it to us or not they voted for him yeah so we need to hear what is the best sides of his argument and figure out what those are and then decide for ourselves. Is there anything left there? Just like from our childhoods. We both have experiences that we tried to get the best from the worst sides of our past. Yeah. How do we get that from his

opinions? And is there anything there? And if there's not, that's fine. But maybe there is. And maybe we need to hear the people who are voting for him and stop acting like we're better than them. It's a very interesting perspective. Yeah, because I see people just writing him off and that's like I get, I can see why. I can see the same thing with Trump. I can see the argument why, but it doesn't seem like it's furthering anything to just ignore it and just plug our ears and say, well, I'm smarter than him because there's a lot of things I don't know. And he might know one thing that I don't know that I could really use. He's another person I'd like to have on the podcast. Yeah, that's a very interesting perspective. And I think I almost use that in my day-to-day life in the sense that when I'm with other people, I tend to just listen because I want to, you know, they're going to have some crazy things to say stuff that's wrong. But, you know, they might just come out and say something that is like absolutely brilliant.

Yeah. And I want to be there to listen. Yeah. I just want to absorb information and kind of just reflect on it on my own time. Yeah. No, I completely see that. I sit quiet a lot and listen. because people will tell you what they're up to

if you just sit and wait and if you just give them a few minutes but most of the time I don't say anything because hopefully it takes me longer to come up with a position on some of these social topics and responding right when somebody says their first opinion and I

to a lot of people's credit people who you wouldn't think have that genius thought are incredibly reflective people and trying to figure out their own life and I've seen it And you have to stop yourself. When you have that kind of lens of this person, you have to stop and kind of go,

okay, this is my normal lens, but this person's showing me a different side. Am I going to pay attention or am I going to ignore it? And I think that that's incredibly important because one of the experiences I have was it the University of the Fraser Valley. I was taking a course and it was easy for like the first month and a half. It was a piece of cake. And I started to notice a change. in the what was being asked and the expectations and the marking rubric and those changes and I knew I needed to adapt myself because I was treating it like an easy class and now it needed to change and there were a few peers of mine who did not think it needed to change who thought the professor was just being dramatic and everything was going to be fine they failed that course and they're retaking it now which is fine but you need to be willing to adapt and that's also what I want to do on this is I want to admit I'm not always going to have the perfect opinion.

And if somebody leaves a comment that pops into my head is, yeah, you are absolutely right. And I miss that. I want to be able to own that. Yeah. The product needs to be authentic. And if I'm going to build other people up and hopefully have role models for the city of Chilawak, then I need to be willing to admit what I'm wrong. Yeah, fair enough. I think that I feel the same way.

You know, your opinion's going to evolve over time. You're going to collect new information or reflect. on it and uh you know i guess at a different angle if you will yeah uh and you know you might see something different or it might change the way you see it yeah and your opinion will change and that's important and that's a good thing and we have to be willing to let people let go of bad ideas and not ridicule them and show them a ha ha you were wrong attitude because then there's no encouragement and i think it's a suspicion of mine that a lot of people don't apologize because what comes after the apologies is negative.

Hey, Jake, I'm really sorry for how I treated you. And it's, yeah, you shouldn't have done that. And it's like, why am I encouraged to change if you're just going to stomp on me when I show any amount of vulnerability? It doesn't work. Yeah. And so you have to be open to admitting that you're wrong. And the other person has to be willing to hear it and to let you move forward in a better way. yeah and that's something i think a lot of people struggle with is saying like i'm going to

apologize but you have to agree to let me try and be better and hold you can't hold me as like a model of what a bad idea is yeah and i don't think enough of that is going on either yeah that's yeah definitely interesting yeah i remember i can't remember who i was having a conversation with I think maybe it was Kristen, and I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't see an image at all. What, like, I thought, I thought people this whole time were, it was like, kind of like this, I don't want to say lie. I don't think that's the right word to describe it, but people were exaggerating it. Like, I did, like, for me, it's completely black. Just like you, I can recall if you're like, okay.

think about uh cms yeah i could i i i don't see an image whatsoever and like i don't see words in my mind or whatever but i can recall aspects about about the building like qualities yeah qualities about the building like i remember the front entrance and you know the steps

and you know the small little parking a lot that they had and off to the side of the building there's this field and to the back there's another bigger parking lot um and you know it's two two floors and i who knows how many classrooms are in there but you know it i recall it kind of being like t-shaped if you will but i don't see any images and i remember having a conversation with christin and uh i'm pretty sure it was christin and yeah no images and she's like what like you don't see images and she's like trying to get me to describe this to her and uh i try to look it up maybe you can look it up on your computer would be way faster than me um but there's uh uh there's a word for it um trying to think

about it off the top of my head affantasia um and i didn't realize that you're correct were were different people see images they can just conjure up images at will yeah and i just thought it was like this exaggeration like i just think of the place i can recall aspects i thought these people were exaggerating they could recall aspects too and they're just like kind of exaggerating that they can see a picture with any clarity in their mind in their mind's eye yeah and i was just totally amazed by that yeah psychology is so complicated and obviously one of the guests I'm going to have on is the psych enthusiast because there's so much complexity to the brain and our experience that we don't understand that we should if we're operating in this world because people will talk about controlling your emotions and it's like that's a psychological game that you have to figure out and you figure out how to control things because what does it mean if you're angry about something but you don't know why you're angry how does that occur and how do you regulate you that and people say like oh that person just flies off the handle and it's like yeah they haven't

learned how to control their emotions yet and we need to figure those things out and teach that to people and at least have it as conversation so that we can start to work towards those things because we don't know what's in each other's minds but we play a game as if we do because i could see you for a few minutes say hey how are you doing jake and you'd say i'm doing good and there would be this assumption that both of us have the same things going on in our brains with no idea on whether or not that's occurring on whether or not you receive information the same way as me so if i wanted you to remember hey we're meeting next week what's the best way that works for you to remember that yeah none of those conversations ever occur yeah and i i really

i stumbled into this a few years ago i can't i can't remember why exactly but then i rediscovered it um if you will maybe like a year ago um i was going to see my occupational therapist for my concussion traumatic brain injury and we were doing all these different tests and evaluations and I think one of the questions

was like imagine this place and I remember thinking like I think I posed a question like do you actually want me to try and imagine this place because I can't like this just isn't gonna work yeah this is not the way that i think and like and i remembered hunger like i used to think that people were exaggerating on this but then i realized that it was a real thing yeah um and it kind

informed the way that we were going to go about my treatment about my therapy uh just being cognizant of the fact of this is the way that i think and then we kind of got to tailor it and when you have a brain injury especially at the beginning um your brain is healing and then you're just you've got all these physical i guess limitations if you will um but then there's also like cognitive and emotional limitations um and just trying to navigate that and uh this is a perfect example one of like i kind of lost my train of thought yeah and that's completely understandable especially if you want to talk at all about what you've been through over the past couple of years because you are a person to me that has faced adversity and then adversity

and then when you are on the right track and you're pointing in the right direction and you're doing everything right you just face a little bit more adversity yeah so can you walk me through a little bit of you graduate high school yeah your bright-eyed bushy tailed and considering going to ufee yeah what goes on in terms of injuries that to me like they can kind of that you have and the direction that that's gone in has impacted you in a way that I can't even understand because I'm doing these things and not even thinking of my brain as something that is facing a limitation. So just good. Yeah, so I guess we'll start with UFC. So to be honest, at the beginning, I didn't even really consider university. Like we previously discussed,

you know in high school I wasn't really a big fan of school so I skipped but I wanted to become a police officer and you kind of needed this edge so I was thinking about the Justice Institute and I remember like I didn't really know the details per se

but I knew that my band would fund members of the band to pursue post-secondary education so I remember going for a meeting and being like, hey, you know, this is what I'd like to do. And I got completely shot down. And the coordinator was like, no, the Justice Institute doesn't qualify for our assistants. You have to go to university.

And that is something that never really crossed my mind. Okay. So go home and start to plot. like, okay, well, how, what does this look like? What does the university look like? How do I get into it? Kind of start organizing myself to pursue it. Well, what do I want to pursue?

And at that time, you were in your first year of criminology, and you kind of pushed me onto this path of criminology. I'm okay, so start to get organized and finally, you know, get all my paperwork in order, get organized, apply, and I'm in. and you know first year i think it's it's a common experience that you know you don't do so well you're just trying to orient yourself yeah because in my opinion it's a lot different than high school uh thankfully yeah in a lot of good ways yeah um but you know i had to really find myself i had taken a year and a half off really didn't pay attention

much in high school because I was skipping. So I hadn't really been to school in years. And here I am, university, trying to navigate my way through it, find what works for me. And, you know, all was going well, second year, and start getting into third year. And then, you know, kind of where this, I guess, story begins is you and I get into a car accident. yeah and it's like okay you know luckily you you weren't really injured in that thank god the first one was the one where we were leaving the gym that wasn't it that was one of the first major ones okay yeah yeah so you were pulling out onto um veta road yeah to garrison shoe

company and keith wilson yes i remember this one now so actually this was first year my my first no perhaps this was right before this was right before I was going to start university yeah um pulling you and I were at the gym

I think perhaps with our friend Steve yeah um I go to pull out of Garrison and uh you know it's prohibited left turn

I'm making a left turn and it does not end very well I pull out, and I get hit. And cars totaled. Surprisingly, the damage wasn't that bad. But it was an old, right? Yeah, so that was kind of a scary experience.

You know, you look over and you see somebody else's headlights coming right for you. And it was an impact with her front bumper to my driver's side door. And this is a two-door car. So it's right there. I can't even get out of the vehicle. vehicle. I had to get out on the passenger side. And, uh, the car's total, there's not too much damage. We push it out of the way. And, uh, in that one, you know, I've got a sore back for a couple days. It's okay. Yeah. And then I think the second accent is you, you not. No, the second

accident I was in I was driving with my sister and we're going to the P&E with my family and we get there early we get into town early so we decided to go to the Richmond Costco because I'm a huge fan of Costco like to go there just to browse around and on our way there we get rear-ended And it was a pretty considerable hit. We're on Oak Street, about to go on to the Oak Street Bridge, going into Richmond. And we get rear-ended. And usually people, I think the speed limit, I want to say, is like 60 kilometers an hour. But people speed quite a bit there. And I want to say we probably got hit around, you know, like 60, 70, whatever, something like that. not much damage because you know we're both going in the same direction um but they take off so

thankfully my sister's not really hurt but i from what i recall i think the reason why i got hurt was i was looking to change lanes so my body was kind of twisted yeah in in uh in this awkward position and then we get hit yeah so i get a back injury out of that and uh you know wasn't it was not a very good experience um just going to go work construction with my grandfather that summer didn't happen because my back screwed um and uh it was just kind of a bit of an ordeal to go through luckily that healed pretty quickly it felt like eternity while it was happening um Um, especially reflecting on it from where I am now, um, you know, it wasn't really that, that long, you know, I want to say like five months, six months, things are all better. Um, and then you and, or, no, for that one, it was a, it was a couple weeks. A couple weeks. And then the one that took, you know, five, six months was the accident with you and I. Which one was the one where the lady came up behind you and you had stopped?

And she had to read her. Was that the one you just described? Yeah. So we were both still in motion. Yeah. But I had slowed down because the vehicle in front of me had slowed down. But we're moving in the same direction relatively quickly. So the next one was the one where we were driving down Young Road.

Yeah. Towards the train tracks. Yeah. And we were in our own lane. And the person had taken the left turn, correct? so yeah the car took a left turn and then hit my driver's side door so yeah they hit your driver's side door but from what i recall he this person was speeding and there was a vehicle in their way and they went to change lanes to avoid a collision with that vehicle but i guess it happened so quickly they

check to see if there is a vehicle in the other lane, which was the vehicle we were traveling in and just absolutely smokes us because he's trying to move lanes quickly to avoid a collision and thankfully

you know there's a fair amount to damage. Nothing catastrophic and it really could have been a nasty accident when I think back on it because he could have pushed our car up onto the sidewalk a bit and there's a pole there yeah there's telephone poles relatively close uh to the roadway so it could have ended pretty bad

didn't end that bad had a back injury from that that's about five six months always good and uh remember you know things are going pretty good at this point i've really gotten a good rhythm with school um got some some money which is nice because pretty much my whole life no money yeah uh so it's nice to have you know some money didn't have to worry about that didn't go and buy crazy things um with that i bought a new car nothing crazy it was like four thousand dollar car three thousand dollar car something like that um life's going good get uh take a practicum position with a place i really didn't want to go to at the beginning um but found that i actually enjoyed it there yeah uh and it was really rewarding work

and it was didn't start out that way did it you had to go fight for it didn't you fight to find good meaningful work yeah so um i start there you know just trying to get grounded in what's going on not too thrilled to be there because it to me i I didn't really see the criminal justice aspect to it. And this was a local nonprofit. You know, they work with people who have issues with substances, housing, work with pretty much people of all ages, kids, all the way up to adults. And I'm like, okay, here I am, practical composition in their housing program as a support worker.

like okay well what what does that what does that mean what does that look like and pretty much it just meant that um i'm supporting the people who live there in you know getting stuff like id and uh going like grocery shopping getting a doctor just that kind of stuff and it over time I found the position to be more rewarding because I developed a relationship with these people. It was a professional relationship, but I had a lot of empathy towards their position, and I genuinely wanted to help. And they could see that. They could see that I was genuine with them.

I wanted to help them. I was, you know, I just, we just have conversations. And I found that to be really rewarding because I would have these conversations and these these individuals would express to me that they appreciated, I guess you could say, the work that I was doing with them. Yeah. The relationship that I had created with them. And I remember the people that I was working with at the time that were supervising me had expressed to me that I should take a position that was upcoming to be a youth addiction's outreach worker. And I thought to myself, that's not really in line with where I'd like to go.

And the qualifications for that position were different than what I had. Because it's a whole different role. You're not looking at it from a criminal justice lens. You're looking at it more social services. And that's pretty much the position I was in already. and some of the residents had encouraged me to take this position because they wanted to throw a party for me at the end of my practicum and bake me a cake and we're going to have a party and it was going to be a farewell and, you know, thanks for being there and supporting me and being an ally. And I told them, well, let's put the brakes on for a minute. I might be staying. I might be taking on this position. I haven't decided if I want to apply and they

encourage me no, apply. We want to still see you around here. Okay, so, you know, I've got some of the other employees and residents encouraging me to apply for this position. So I took a leap of faith, if you will. And I applied and I ended up getting the job, which was absolutely crazy to me. Because, I mean, it's before, before this, every job I'd ever applied to, I'd gotten it. Yeah. If I got, if I was offered an interview, I got the job always. And this was the first job that I was really nervous about getting the interview and then not getting the job.

um it sounds really silly but it was like kind of like almost this game well i just i have to win yeah well and that's fair especially because you this is your chance you walk in there you're sitting down with them that should be the easiest part to get the job and that's always how it's like the resume is the hard part to me the cover letter is the hard part for me because you're trying to condense who you are into two pages of information but when you sit me down and we have a conversation we're going to find something to connect with Yeah. So you can see that in an interview.

So if they said no after meeting you, it's like, well, they were saying no to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I got the job. I was like, okay, well, sweet. So it's this term position, summer job, excellent, excellent pay. You know, I worked with awesome people.

I still think they're awesome. But, you know, I was really excited for this job. and you know we start doing it and i have to say up until now it was the most rewarding job i've ever had in my life um just because of my background i could really relate with some of these kids even though they might not know that i could relate to where they're at i could relate and i felt that I could use where I had brought myself to to help them

kind of navigate where they would like to go and that doesn't necessarily have to be towards education but you know I know where you've been at here's like let me help you get to where you'd like to be

or fix whatever issue you might be having not that I'm going to come in and fix it for you but we can do it together and i want to see you do it and i'm just there to kind of prop you up if you need it yeah if you don't need it fantastic you know you saw this challenge you didn't think you could do it without support and then you managed to do it on your own like just how rewarding is that for them and you could see that sometimes other times they didn't really care but um yeah no it's just incredible to develop these working relationships

relationships with these people and have them be so candid with you. And it was really eye-opening. I think we had, we definitely had some tough times growing up. And it could have been a lot worse. Like, it was pretty bad, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. And, you know, I'm here seeing it firsthand. Like, a lot of the experiences of these kids, went through you know i think you and i have gone through to some degree um but seeing like the

adults too so i worked with adults even though it wasn't uh you know our target demographic per se i'm not going to say no to helping people yeah um like i just not going to turn it down if i can help you in some fashion i'm going to it doesn't mean that you know we were spending all of our time helping the adults instead of the youth but you know we were we were there we were available we were willing to lend a hand and lend the resources that we have um so yeah it was just incredibly rewarding to develop these relationships help these kids along with their journey and just to see how much they appreciated uh having us around It was literally heartbreaking to have to close out that program and say goodbye to all these kids.

And even, you know, moving along to the last, well, not the last accident I had, unfortunately, but the one that kind of really changed the how I, what I think of is like the trajectory of my life. Yeah. I think it had a profound impact on it. and I'm not, I haven't decided if it's good or bad. And, you know, maybe that's just, it doesn't even make sense to see it as good as bad, good or bad. Yeah. But, you know, I was working one night.

It was a really tough day at work, really tough day. I can't really get into any of the details. But we decided to work overtime because we go. a call from a distressed kid so we go and we pick them up and we're going to go have a meal and kind of work through what's going on and just before we get to the restaurant we get into a collision and car spins around and with that forced if you well. My head

whips over and I don't know what it hits exactly. I suspect it's the A-frame so the the pillar

that's like right near your head in the car. Metal. And the force of the accent like I suspect

that this person was distracted in some manner and just didn't see us so it was too late and hit us at speed uh from behind and the car spins around just because of the way we were position hit my head on this metal beam and it was i had a headache unlike i'd ever had in my life i had thought i split my head open like the skull like split open and was bleeding there's no blood or obviously no split in my head but it was it was awful and you know it just little did i know it set me on this trajectory

where it was just unimaginable suffering if you will yeah i remember like you're just at sometimes you were able to articulate yourself and think and there's other times where you were just so slow uh and it was just like i'd i had to drop out of school i had to take a leave from work i saw my relationships with other people start to fall apart and it really just like it put me in this mental state where i was just kind of felt so down and i know a lot of the uh uh medical people I work with, for lack of a better term, or words, I thought, you know, depression. I hated that word, though. I didn't think it was depression because to me, at least at the time, depression was, you know, there's like, maybe I should phrase it this way.

Like, I saw that there was an external issue that it occurred, and this is why I was feeling the way that I was feeling. And should these categories in my life be fixed or brought back to where they were, I would be okay again. So I didn't really like the word depression, but it was awful to watch, at least from my perspective, watch your life crumble before your eyes. And I was kind of at a high. That summer, you know, had an awesome job. It was extremely rewarding. You know, you're helping people feel good about yourself. One of my best friends had gotten married.

I was the best man. And I'd went on the first, I guess, vacation of my life that pretty much at the beginning of that summer had money, got to, and I'm still working with them, work with an incredible organization and be on the board uh you know things we're looking up yeah everything is like in the right direction going to graduate you know coming up on you know the last few semesters that i have things are starting to line up and you just get knocked like right out of that yeah and yeah you just i felt like i was watching my life crumble before my eyes and it was it was so hard to deal with that so hard like i can't even use words to describe especially

i remember going to the going to my doctor i'd go see my doctor every two weeks not really anymore because of the pandemic but uh he wanted to go do um a CT scan oh okay well what's the CT scan for oh we're checking to see if there's brain damage well what do you mean brain damage like permanent brain damage i remember coming home and i just sat on the floor and i cried just bald thinking like there's no coming back from this like i just didn't see a way out everything was crumbling there's no way out might have permanent brain damage there's like permanent there's no fixing that and uh you know that might be the reason i'm experiencing some of the things that i was experiencing and if it's permanent then like this is just going to be my new way of life

and it was awful it still is awful um but i've kind of shifted my perspective and i try not to uh let it win per se and see it as suffering uh and just try and, like, shift my perspective onto the things that I can control. Yeah, no, I can completely understand that. And I think this kind of goes to what we were going to talk about, which was Jordan Peterson, because there are those, there are people who would just tell you to be happy. Yeah. And just try and find happiness in your day.

And it's like, that's not going to work because the scaffolding in which I plan to proceed in the world is completely different than what it was. And I have to reorient myself. reset and figure out where do I go from here what is within my capabilities and what's not now and how often do any of us evaluate that ever and to be put into a circumstance where somebody comes in and says you might have this incomprehensible problem for the rest of your life and we're going to find out if that's the case it's like what are you supposed to do yeah what are you supposed to do after a meeting like that yeah and and that was just I think you you hit it

dead on of like my perspective later on i found out like you know i guess that i could have been the case but i would say that they're very optimistic that you know concussions only last you know x amount of time you're going to get over it things are going to be back to normal and that just hasn't really been the case yeah and that's been it's been a struggle to cope with that To recognize it, accept it, and move on and find different strategies and compensatory ways of doing things. Yeah, trying to make up for. Yeah, so to try and lead a life that you're leading before, but it will never happen because of this profound change.

Yeah. So, like, you're going back, you're trying to get back to where you were before, but it's not going to happen because this happened, but also your perspective on things. It's different now. Yeah, it's shifted. You're never going back.

Yeah. Because now you, your whole world is like, well, now I'm at risk and now I need to protect this head of mine, and you have different relationships with people and how you figure out problems has to adapt. And because your brain isn't working. working this the exact same way it was yeah so like the first i want to say first few weeks was like really rough um the first like week or so i just kind of stayed at home uh could have done

things a lot better uh in terms of like concussion protocol um but i thought i was doing okay i mean I was like student like really active person like on my phone all the time out doing things you know on the computer whatever and you just had to enter this new state where you remember you had to go home and just sit in darkness no phone no computer no TV no books you just sit there and boy do you like you reflect during that time you have nothing else to do and it's it is a dangerous place to be when you're going through all of that and then you're asked to just go home and sit in darkness alone with yourself you can spiral out of control well especially because really quickly what's on your mind is

is this going to get any better is this the thing that's going to fix what i'm going through and what are my relationships with my family and with my friends and what's going on there and there's so much to think about especially just after this accident where it's like who's on my phone who's texting me who wants to be there for me and all of these I can't imagine what that would have been like to sit there and go through all of it because there's nothing else to do you just get to sit there and think of what's my relationship with this person is it what it could be and going through is my life going to be what I wanted it to be what I dreamed it would be and it's all external it's not like a button you can press to bump up the gigawatts in your brain it's like you have to live with live with his brain yeah you you really have to reconcile with it and uh and yeah you just you really reflect like what is life going to look like after this how long is it going to take to get through this and at what cost yeah uh and yeah it was like and then on

top of this your brain isn't functioning properly so you you like i had issues with memory long long term and short term uh like i used to leave things on all the time put things away in the wrong spot uh you know i'd forget i forgot my cousin's name couldn't remember it uh you know you go i remember this one time going to the grocery store and okay i've got to get these things i want to make this tonight and you go there oh okay well shit what did i need okay and i just found myself doing circles around the grocery store and uh don't have the stuff i need can't remember what i need it just seems like i can't i just can't do it yeah and it's just incredibly frustrating i remember just leaving just whatever just go out to eat or something like

it's crazy um who do you talk to who understands like there's not nobody going through you're going through yeah and you don't want to embarrass yourself and you don't want people to lose faith in you yeah oh like i just i can't even shop for groceries and it's like and now i'm going to drive you to this place and it's like you you want to be careful on how you share that and who you tell because you want them to still respect you exactly yeah it was it was really it was really hard to to share what i was going through because well even even to this day i i can't articulate myself the way that i could before and it was really bad uh at the beginning um yeah i just couldn't find the words to say i couldn't put them together in the way i wanted to uh you

you know I'd forget what I was trying to say like my train of thought and yeah so it you can't really articulate it to other people what you're going through kind of what your needs are and and at the same time you know it's hard to think about it because again your brain isn't working properly Yeah. So you're kind of scattered all over the place, slow to think about things. And then, yeah, you don't want, it's an invisible injury. People can't see it. So you're the one experiencing it. But the way people are viewing you and the injury is probably quite different than what it, at least subjectively, what you're going through. Yeah. So, yeah, it was really hard to. articulate and communicate and try and uh share kind of what i'm going through to health professionals but also like the people around me i and part of me didn't want to share because i didn't want them to understand what i was going through because it would just make them

feel uh sad and i guess pity towards me which i really didn't want yeah uh because again i've got this fire under my ass like unbelievable to go out and do do something bring value to the world have lead a meaningful life make a difference make a difference yeah so um you know i the whole time i'm just thinking how do i get back on track uh and you know still to this day kind of thinking about that well because that's not even the end of the story right we still have one more accident yeah so you know make times were were really tough uh i wouldn't say that i i wanted to kill myself but i wasn't opposed to the idea of dying um yeah you know like should you know uh i think the way that i explained it to uh some of the professionals i was

working with was i was you know crossing the road or whatever and there's a truck barreling down the road and like you've got to get the hell out of the way or you're going to get smoked i don't know if i'd get out of the way yeah god so yeah like it wasn't like i'm like going out and like uh actively planning on like how am i going to kill myself and thinking about it all the time it was like okay like i wouldn't be opposed to the suffering ending yeah well especially because You've got this fire under you that has been, you've seen hell, and you know what that's like, and you've known what it's like to suffer. And the tool that's going to get you out of this life has been this brain. And this brain has gotten you to university.

And you continue to climb, and you see law school in the distancing. That's where brains are made. Like, that's where real intellectual thinking goes on, and I want to go there. Yeah. Then you get it taken away. Yeah. And you're starting to feel vulnerable. And it's like, well, I don't, if I tell other people,

maybe they'll just put me in a box and say I'm now this person who isn't intellectual I'm not capable and you're worried about keeping that intellectual respect and leaving that door open because when you start to tell people they'll start to put you in that room and say well like you can't push yourself too hard

Jake and don't try too hard and like understand your limitations and it's like all of those are things you're already figuring out for yourself and you're saying I'm experiencing these limitations and I don't want it and I don't like it you're trying to work through it and people are like just accept like just it's okay like we don't expect much and you don't want that you don't want life yeah and and i think it's important to

highlight that just because you know you at least in my experience every concussion is different um it's not like you just all of a sudden lost all the information that you had before like you're in in many ways still the same same person you have the same uh intellectual elect, if you will. Yeah. Everything's still there. It's not accessible. Yeah, exactly.

You can't, it's, yeah, it's not accessible on your terms. Yeah. The way it was. In the sense of like, yeah, the way it was and like, consciously, I can't access it at will. It's, I'm dictated by my body. Yeah. And how I don't really fully understand. And I mean, doctors don't even really fully understand what goes on.

But, you know, I'm, I'm prisoner to my own body in a sense that, you know, if I do X, Y, or Z, I'm going to get this wicked headache like you've never experienced before where you just want to rip your face off and just, like, go die in a hole, like, make it stop for the love of God. Yeah. uh and uh where you know you're doing something and i guess it triggers this and then all of a sudden you can't articulate yourself or you lose your train of thought or like you start experiencing all these different symptoms and you've got to navigate your way through well what are the triggers what can i do to mitigate uh you know experiencing these things that i don't want to experience yeah um so i'm trying to navigate this new world if if if you will that I'm in, trying to navigate the relationships. I don't, I still don't think they are

where they were before. And, you know, we're social creatures. So I'm like isolating myself. I've got all these other things going on. My world's crumbling in front of me. It's just incredibly difficult to deal with. And I've now got to navigate through this. And, you know, there's people, People are willing to provide support, but you're not going to get support all the time. So you've got to really figure it out for yourself. You know, got to rely on yourself. That's, at least in my opinion, that there's the only thing I could rely on, was myself. Yeah.

Well, and you think about, like, you text someone and you're like, hey, like, I'm struggling with this. Could you help me out? And they say yes. And then you're like, do I wait a day? Like, I need more. Like, I need something else. Or I need to talk to somebody. And, like, I just talk to this person for an hour.

And then we start to try and figure out where that. those boundaries are and so you do just stay in reflection yeah and i i i perhaps you know it was a mistake on my part but i didn't really reach out to people because again i didn't want people to question my abilities uh and i didn't want people to feel pity for me yeah so it was just easier to kind of not reach out to like people immediately around me like I reached out for medical help like okay this is bigger than me yeah I can't solve this uh myself or otherwise I'd be fixed yeah um so I need to get some some help and I need to lean my weight into it and really try because you know it's like there's a lot of

there's yeah there's uh there's a lot at stake here um and I'm sure sure even like if things don't get better from this point onwards, I can still function to, I guess, an acceptable degree. And, you know, I really got, as horrible as this experience has been, I kind of got lucky. Later on, I guess in my journey, I, uh, I, uh, I joined. joined a group on Facebook for traumatic brain injury, post-concussion. So eventually, you know, things weren't getting better. So it changed, I guess, from concussion to post-concussion syndrome.

So I guess when you hit your head or your head rattles around in your skull too hard and you damage it, you start damaging the neural connections, the neural pathways that you you have and when those snap off and die they also release the chemical yeah so then it kills the one surrounding it too so you're in like you're not in good shape yeah uh and you know there's certain chemicals in your body that are pretty low uh immediately after and it takes time you know your brain it like your body is amazing in in the sense that it's going to heal itself so it takes some time for things to get healed and uh i guess six six weeks i think it is is like when you know those chemicals start coming back to normal levels um and your neural pathways start to kind of get

rebuilt like they're snapped off you've got to rebuild them so that's why i guess some people who have it way worse experience uh you know like they can't speak like like at all like they have major trouble speaking and at the beginning you know like I said I had issues with articulating myself finding finding the words that I want to say like I never really had any problems saying them like speech was but there's issues with you know articulating myself putting them together in the way that I would like them to be put together to convey what I'm meaning um and uh yeah so i joined this group on facebook there's all these other people who have concussions some of them multiple and this was my first one and uh you know post concussion

syndrome usually happens to people that have multiple concussions so i'm kind of like uh at this space like also kind of like why me why get into this accident you know why do why does it have to happen in this fashion where I get this injury and it's totally ripping me apart as a person and I'm now faced with all all this adversity if you will um like why me why do I have to go through it but also like in in the sense of like okay um you know I meet in a sense these other people who are going through similar things um and it It's like, okay, why didn't I get it as bad as them? Like, thank God. I did not have to experience some of the suffering that they've had to experience. But, like, I just want to understand why am I in the position that I meant? Like, why am I kind of sitting in this spot?

So, you know, things were going okay, starting to make some progress. The headaches aren't as bad. as you know they were before um and i've had some headaches that were worse than the initial impact uh of me hitting my head into that metal post there's a plastic covering but it's a metal post it's the frame of your car right so um like like i said before like you just want to rip your face off it's like what like you're almost willing to do anything for this to end it's not going to end you can take all the pills you want

like I would like take a few Advil because the way I at least the way I thought of it was like okay your your brain's inflamed Advil is an anti-inflammatory it's going to help with the pain didn't put a dent into it

you take whatever the maximum dose is nothing you know you'd okay like maybe I need to go in a dark room, I need to take this ad bill, I need to maybe do like some self massage to the neck to try and relieve some of that pressure and try and get past, no, nothing. Everything you do, nothing. You just, you just have to sit in this misery and hope to God that is just going to go away

and you can think about something else. So things are getting better and, you know, I've got a team. if you will, of people that are really advocating for me. And it was kind of strange to be in a position where you need to be advocated for when you're also working in a position where you're advocating for others. So I think I was grateful for it. And it also put me in a position where sometimes I advocated for myself and just kind of being grateful that I had all this experience advocating for others.

that I could now use for myself. So, you know, things are getting better. I had to take a few semesters off of school. Took a year off of school. Spent this summer preparing to come back. And it was something like I was so ambifluent about the decision to drop out at the beginning. it was like it was ripping me up so school was a big thing it was very important to come back

so i come back okay i got to i got to pace myself don't want to push it too hard set myself back or kind of get into the state where i don't think i'm capable of it anymore so it's it's really important that i find the right balance where i'm not going to become more symptomatic I know I'm going to be able to handle it, and I'm not going to put myself in a mental state where I just don't think I can do it. So I take two classes. And, you know, things are going pretty good in one of them, okay, in the other. We get towards the end of the semester, and I've got to meet up with my post-secondary coordinator

just to kind of check in and update her on, you know, how things. are going so on my way to this appointment i get into another collision and uh thankfully didn't get that that hurt relative uh that hurt in this one um despite it being a pretty nasty collision is this the one you sent me yeah so this is the one where i'm you know driving down the road driving down Yale Road going to go on to Wellington

and this truck makes an illegal left turn doesn't indicate and just punches it just like he knows he's

doing something wrong at least that's what I gathered when he came and spoke with me after the collision what was that conversation like?

Very brief he's just like he's just kind of beating himself up in a sense like he knew like he had royally fucked up uh you know because i like and and i really reflected on it after that so i'll first share how it happened so crossing the intersection he makes the illegal left turn and uh you know i'm going like probably 40 or 50 it's a green light for me go through and i hit him and i hit him right under the passenger door

his truck goes over the hood of my car drives over it and the force of my car pushes him and it spins his truck at least 180 degrees thankfully there's no one on the sidewalk because it just about came up onto the sidewalk

and like it's not the biggest truck but it's also it's a truck it would do some damage so my car totaled like it's mangled and uh you know i've got a bunch of adrenaline going and i'm thinking holy fuck really yeah again like we're going to do this again like i still remember you sending me the video and i hope i can post it if that's okay i'd have to i'll have to check with my lawyers but sounds good sounds good um i remember seeing that and it was just incomprehensible and to the

last person you want to have it happen to like you never want that to happen to anyone yeah after everything you had been through the first time yeah the last thing you want to hear is that your your closest friend went through that again yeah and luckily luckily luckily luckily I didn't hit my head in this

accent really thankful for that but yeah I mean slid forward slammed my knees into the dashboard uh airbag failed to deploy uh there's some issues with the airbags in the car i don't know if it should have uh yeah would you have wanted that and yeah i was i was actually quite thankful uh reflecting on it i don't i didn't want to be hit in the face by an airbag yeah um and you know kind of i got set back uh a fair amount from that accident uh and uh you know really unsure if i got another concussion yeah um you know some people think i did i think there are others that don't i'm

really not sure myself yeah um but you know here we are again like and you know just like why why like they're like i watched that video at least a hundred times and just like what like there's absolutely nothing i could have done to avoid that accident yeah like nothing but and and just like had to just accept it move on like you know there's now there's more work to be done and set back had to drop uh pretty much almost drop out of that semester right at the end like we're one week to exams we're like week 11 week 12 or week 12 week 12 week 3rd something like that were right at the very end and I was able to have a conversation with one of the instructors and still complete the course on time yeah and the other one is there was some issues and I'm going to have to drop that one there's a bit of a process that I have to go through because I was supposed to be able to complete the last assignment

there was in that course but wasn't able to maintain communication with the instructor so my incomplete grade contract turned to an F so I've got to sort that out but yeah it was just devastating like here we are first semester back you know

things are going pretty good I've got some accommodations to, you know, help me out, but I'm, in my mind, I'm trying not to use them because I don't. I kind of want the challenge in a sense to, like, push myself to get better. But at the same time, I don't want to think back and being like, think back and be like, okay, well, you know, I got, I got the last part of my degree because things were easier for me. I don't want that. Yeah. I want to be, have the same playing field as my peers.

Yeah, and you don't want to look back on it and be like, maybe I could have done something more or, yeah, have any guilt towards that. And I think even just, even if that wasn't the case, you agreeing to go back to school after something like that, two accidents in which your mental capabilities were at least at risk. The second one, it doesn't sound like it was that bad on your head. But just to be put in that circumstance and to say, I'm going to try and figure out a way to finish this semester is already a bigger statement than anything, any of the details of how the classes went.

Because you took on this load and you said, even after all of this, and I could stop. And I would have never, if this podcast was, and I stopped there and I haven't been back to university since, it's like, who can blame you? Yeah. You've been through a lot. So to continue. And now you're still here And you're working through summer classes And how many summer classes are you taking?

Four Yeah, four So I knew I needed to pace myself So I'd take it in the fall semester And despite the accident I wanted to kind of push myself Because I thought, okay, this was okay But the position that I was with

At the nonprofit was coming to an end The program was closing out um so at that time i was taking two classes and working and now i'm not going to be working so i wanted to push myself i didn't want to you know go easier on myself and just okay two classes no work that's it no three so take the three classes again working to not use the um academic concessions they're accommodations right

the accommodations that I have because I want to be on the same level as my peers so that semester actually went pretty good you know at the same time there's all kinds of different things going on

the start of the pandemic being one I'm also kind of in this time period I moved in with my dad never really lived with my dad before and my grandfather never really had that much of a relationship with him but we've moved in all together so we can take care of him because he's got lung cancer and he's got it's metastic so it's spread through his body and he's got brain tumors and you know he was in palliative care thought he was going to pass didn't the guys got incredible

grit yeah um so we needed to come together to take care of him because he didn't really plan for a period of time where he couldn't take care of himself so he in his hometown the uh i guess the long-term care facility that he could get into had something ridiculous, like a two-year wait list. Yeah. So, you know, he couldn't go in there. He can't take care of himself. He's got to come out here.

So end up getting a place together. And, you know, there's a lot of different challenges with that. Still trying to deal with, I guess, the disabilities that I have because of the accident. You know, it leaves you in a pretty vulnerable state financially because, well, you can't, you can't really work. I was working part-time is the maximum amount of hours I could work. And, yeah, just trying to deal with all this, all the physical and mental aspects of the injury, working through school, trying to take care of my grandfather, trying to, I guess, in a sense, forge a new relationship and kind of look at

another relationship in a new manner and then there's the start of the pandemic and I was pretty concerned about that so I started preparing for that ahead of time yeah you started in like January right it was like end of February okay to me it looked like things were starting to get pretty serious and I wanted to get prepared just in case like I really hoped it never

got to this point that we're living in now but I wanted to be prepared to in a sense provide for my family and the people around me and that's that's another thing that I kind of took out in my childhood and kind of um it's a I guess you could say a characteristic about me it's kind of what I'm striving for

yeah um yeah since the very beginning you've always had that attitude towards your friends and family this protective quality of it's going to be me who's going to figure this out and try and protect all of you from

this incoming whatever it is yeah so like I knew I knew something might might come and I wanted to do something, I guess, I mean, and that's another thing with the injury is it kind of controls you. So it kind of takes away from the control that you have. So you're just fighting for, fighting for things that you can control in your life. You're seeking, you're seeking it out. And it was, you know, here we are. There's this infectious disease that might spread.

and you know you don't have control over a lot of things but what is it that you can control and that's kind of i guess a lesson that i took from this injury was like at the beginning here i am facing all this adversity you know there's all kinds of things that are outside of my control chaos yeah yeah but uh what what could i control instead of and that's that that that took uh counseling for me to kind of discover that it's like I need to stop focusing on what I can't control

and focus on what I can control and just strive in that fashion of changing the things that I can control to be optimal. Yeah, and letting go of anything you can't. And just trying, like, acknowledging that it's there,

not really giving it the time of day. Yeah. Because, I mean, you're just, just putting yourself through unnecessary suffering if you focus on that. So, yeah, there's, it was quite, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a quite a lot of weight on my shoulders that January, uh, like, uh, winter semester. So, but, but things went well, surprisingly. Yeah. Um, especially considering the last few weeks of this semester, uh,

so there's, there's, there's no in person classes anymore, but, you know it was kind of chaos to figure out what's going on um and uh i ended i i can't remember it's kind of strange i uh had a conversation about this yesterday but um i can't remember how the semester ended i just like your last class or like well no like just like well how did i do how did i do the final exam like what were some of the things that i needed to do to finish out the the course i can't remember but I finished that's good um so I think I got two A's and a B I think so I was really good I was I was quite impressed with myself and it took a lot of work like it I wasn't just

sitting around like hanging out poor me like putting in the work um so I'm still trying to march towards having my undergraduate getting my BA so I decided to take summer semester for classes and it was it kind of worked out in my favor too um so like I said you know you're kind of you're not doing so hot financially so it's like okay I see myself already as uh someone that isn't very employable like it not to say that I don't have skills but I come with a lot of baggage yeah so why hire me over you know, this other person. Because I would hope that they're hiring based on merit.

Who's going to be the best fit for the position for that position because of their skills and because how they would interact with other employees, how they would work as a team, you know, that kind of stuff. And here I am, you know, got all these issues. Hey, I can only work twice a week. You have to have all these accommodations in place for me. uh can only work these hours and you have to give me a break whenever i want yeah like yeah good luck pretty pretty easy going guy yeah oh yeah you know no issues with me uh yeah uh you know employ on the

uh employment side so i'm like oh no like i can't really get a summer job uh because well who the hell is going to hire me and uh be like do i really want to go out and put myself at risk uh i mean i would most definitely do it, uh, for the position I had in the program that closed out in January. Yeah. 100% worth it to me. Uh, but like I, I don't want to just go out, just to go out so I can make, you know, what, 600 bucks a month? Like, it just, it's not there for me, risk versus reward. So, um, it just made a lot more sense to go, uh, and take summer semester, work towards you know finishing something that I really want to finish and it kind of helps me further along with the goals and the dreams that I have so that's awesome that's that's

such a good story in and of itself that who thinks things through like that that's just an awesome thing to see somebody thought it through and that you said hey like under these circumstances I'm not the best like during COVID and with these limitations that I'm facing right now this isn't a realistic avenue so how can i move in a different direction that still gets me somewhere and i still achieve a goal and so yeah exactly and then and then it comes down to i also thought about the risk for my grandfather is already uh you know stage four lung cancer covid 19 uh infectious disease that affects your lungs you get pneumonia and you die yeah uh if it goes horrible for you yeah um so like i just i don't know how i'd be able to live with myself if

you know i'm going out trying to make a buck just you know to make a buck because it's really not going to put a dent into the things that i need to sustain me yeah um and then come home and get my already like really really sick grandfather an infectious disease that will kill him yeah like i just I couldn't, I couldn't come to do that. So, yeah, it just made way more sense to, to take summer semester, even though there's a lot of unknowns. And one of the, I guess, limitations with my disability is, like, screen time. Screen time is not, not very good.

Like, you can get, you can trigger some pretty bad headaches with that. So online school, not the best, online classes, courses, and lectures on a screen. Yeah, so surprisingly, you know, the headaches haven't gotten worse. I pretty much still have headaches five days a week like I've had for the last, what, almost two years now. but you know I've felt the effects with with other issues that I have like physically so it's it's been okay but yeah definitely definitely not ideal yeah and here we are fall semester is going to be online so pretty much the last courses of my degree will more than likely be online.

So it is what it is and I've just got to adapt and fight through it and I think that's kind of been my mindset this whole time battling through this injury is you just you got to push, you can't let off

the gas. I have so much respect for you and I think you've come so far and I really think you're a role model for a lot of people to hear some of these ideas and hear some of these approaches and really look at implementing them because we need more people like you who are looking out at how does this impact this person how can i move forward where it's best for everyone we need more people like you

yeah yeah no for sure well we just did three hours man almost three hours wow and we didn't even get to jordan peterson we didn't even get to jordan peterson i guess you'll have to have me back one day yes i will awesome well it was great having you on thanks thank you all for listening to the show since we are a brand new podcast. We have no sponsors or advertisers yet. Rather than saying nothing, I thought I would call out some fantastic Fraser Valley businesses. First, I'd like to mention Beyond Nutrition. Beyond Nutrition is a fantastic nutrition store that will keep you healthy throughout this pandemic. Their staff and owner are incredibly knowledgeable and will make sure that the products you purchase really work. That doesn't occur by accident. They put a lot of time into collecting reviews and connecting with their

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Thank you. I'm going to be.