Nuanced. - 15. Bill Turnbull: Owner of The Town Butcher & Community Leader

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Bill Turnbull is a husband, entrepreneur, owner of the Town Butcher, and community leader.Bill Turnbull is the owner and operator of the Town Butcher in Chilliwack, BC. Mr. Turnbull was working at IGA, and wondered why they did not offer local meats from farmers. Through asking this question, The Town Butcher was born. Bill Turnbull created the Town Butcher to provide local, hormone free, GMO free, high quality meat to the community. Mr. Turnbull has put a lot of work into turning the Town Butcher into a community landmark. He works hard to support local initiatives and charities through his business.In this conversation we talk about a lot. We discuss chicken, turkey, beef, culture, community, responsibility, leadership, the Canadian Military, Chilliwack, small businesses and personal growth.Find The Town Butcher:https://thetownbutcher.com/Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Bill Turnbull. It is a pleasure to have you here. Could you start with a brief introduction of yourself? Yes, my name is Bill Turnbull. I'm the owner of the town butcher. I started that business 12 years ago, so August of 08, just a month before the economy crash. So perfect timing. Yeah, you learn a lot of life lessons. And yeah, I used to own a sound system company before that. So I've been an entrepreneur since I was about 18 years old. Yeah, I love this community. I've been born and raised here, and I try my best to bring everyone together and support as many companies and families as possible. Wow. Well, that's amazing. And I wanted to start just with the education part because that will be a nice intro into

the entrepreneurship. Yeah. So you started Chilawak Secondary School and then you went into the military and you had a background in there. Can you just start us off? Because remembrance days coming up, I think that that would be a great thing to just start off with. Yeah, for sure.

Um, so I was, uh, I trained for, uh, an engineer, so explosives engineer, uh, building bridges. Um, I was stationed at the end. We were stationed to go to Afghanistan to diffuse landmines. That was our group is, was what we were going to be doing there. Um, I was in for two years. So I started my training, uh, the summer after grade 11. You just go straight into there. It was 77 days. So as soon as you came back, the next day, school started. So, uh, that was the entire summer. Wow. Yeah. Um, um, It was pretty intense. They called it the Superman course because they condensed two courses into one. So, yeah, I think they spent about a million dollars every 30 people for the training there. So it was pretty intense. Yeah, the success rate wasn't the best. But yeah, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the process of it.

I feel that boot camp is a really good place for people to learn kind of respect. perseverance, how to get through challenges. Every day is a challenge in there. And it's just good to, I find nowadays it's so easy for people just to give up when things get rough. Or if they don't like it, just change right away. And sometimes you learn to find stuff you like in it. You know, I was a garbage man. I dug ditches, all those things.

And it's not like, I would go to work and be like, all right, I get to dig for 10 hours today. I'm super excited. But you come at it from a different point of view. So, you know, I get to create irrigation for someone's house. I get to build muscle and strength, you know, I get to get paid for it, which then allows me to have a car and have freedom. Yeah, it's a whole perception issue because you can look at it from like a victim mentality of I have to do all this work today.

Yeah. Or you can try and figure out what the benefits are going to look like and try and implement that because I did that with landscaping. Yeah. It was just like, I don't want to have to do this, but all my friends basically said, you're not the person to go out and do the heavy lifting. Right. It's like, you guys don't get to define me.

I'm going to go out and try and figure this out. And I did it. And it was like 12 hours of manual labor. And you do feel a certain reward when you're done. You're exhausted, but you do feel a certain reward. Yep. What made you go into that? What pulled you into that world?

Into the military world? Yeah. Yeah. I did have a bit of a rougher upbringing. So I was, I basically went into the military to get away from it all, to get away from the family, to move. I had pictured my life as I wanted to serve and protect, and I had pictured that I would eventually die on the battlefield,

but it would be honorable. So that was kind of my purpose. I didn't really have a lot of drive and purpose for much more at that point. I did go through things in the beginning of life, which had suicide attempts and stuff when I first started. So it was a harder upbringing for that. And that's why I'm more compassionate and who I am today. I don't look at any troubles that I had growing up as what was me or that that is bad or anything like that.

I look at it as usually the people that have been through the hardest life are the most compassionate. And that's because they know what people are going through. Yeah. I can't imagine because obviously there's some people who go through hell and then they want the worst for the world. And those, you can name them off to people of the Columbine killings, like those things. You can definitely go in that direction to want to go in an honorable way. Was that just like before you even enrolled, that was kind of your mindset? Yeah, I pictured many days like just dying on the battlefield, you know, dragging someone off.

Like just a normal military movie that you see out there. That's how I thought my life was going to play out. It's hard when you're between the ages of 16 and 20 to feel like you've. have a purpose or a belonging, especially in school. Like, I was never very book smart. So I learned most of my stuff from lessons or taking things apart, putting them back together, a street smarts on that part. But for me, like reading was always very difficult. I would read the same page eight or nine times and it wouldn't register at all because my mind's going all over the place. I'm thinking of businesses, how to build things and stuff. So I did lack the academic part of.

of it. And I didn't have any role models growing up that I could fall to, to kind of direct me in the right direction, stay off the streets and stay off the, you know, out of things. Yeah. What was that like to have that mindset and then start being around people who are also in the military who might have been through something similar or getting away from different things or doing something similar to you? What was that like? The military was amazing for creating a brotherhood. Brotherhood, I would say that's what they called it back then. I would call it a family now because there was also women there.

And when you have that commodity of everyone going through hell at the same time, you learn to either give up, try to, there's three options, just give up, or try to squeak by by allowing everyone else to pull your weight or to be that anchor that just supports people and brings everyone together. The best example I had is we would do this training where we, as a group, there was about 30 of us and we had to carry a telephone pole as we're doing a march. So you're doing this, you know, big training exercise where everyone's just carrying a big telephone pole.

And you would know instantly if the person in front of you or behind you stopped carrying it, that they just had their hands there and they weren't lifting because all of a sudden your weight would increase. So I think that is a big thing when you realize the power that people have as a group compared to just everyone for themselves, right? You know, like, I'm tired. I'm going to give up here. Or, you know, why don't we just all get through this and the rest when we're done? Yeah.

Right? Yeah, that's a crazy thing. I've heard, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it's something like big corporations, 40% of the workforce is doing like all of the work, like 80% of the work because people do start to look around. and when nobody's paying attention or you don't think people are noticing, that's when people stop carrying the weight. That's the interesting thing about small businesses is you're pulling the weight. And you know if some employees aren't and you know you are. Like every morning, it's like you've got.

Because then I have to do it. Exactly. So what was that like because you were in the military and then you move into small businesses and entrepreneurship? What was that transition like? Well, at that same time, I was working at IGA. So I did have five years. years, five and a half years at IGA training there. And that's when I started using a lot of my

military background training for actually managing the staff, because I would do that, I would be the night manager. Um, you have a bunch of staff. And the thing I learned, there's two types of leaders. There's one that is in the trenches with you. And then there's one that is just commanding from the outside. I've always loved and admired people that, you know, if they expect everyone to do 100 pushups, they're doing them with you at that time. They're showing you that you can get through it, that it is possible. And the problem is if you step back too much, you start commanding and asking things of your staff that aren't doable

because you disconnect from that, right? You don't know people will come in and be like, oh, why isn't this and this cleaned or done? But you don't realize that, yes, when you look at the customer clientele, yeah, okay, we had 50 more people than we normally do that day, right? So you really have to be connected when you're expecting things. And I think that is when, if you're just looking at numbers, it's you're, you're going to have a huge disconnect. You're going to have people that aren't going to be inspired.

They're not going to be, there's not going to be a drive. And your customers are going to feel that. Like, I love hearing all the time that people say, you know, your staff is amazing. They're all happy. You know, everyone's moving along. And in when you create an environment, I always say staffing is like a chemistry set. Everyone is their own element. And when you're adding elements, you can.

at four or five people, everyone's getting along, you add a certain element that just blows up the whole thing, right? And you have to constantly be tweaking because each person also has different affirmation. So some people, you know, want a hug, some people want a high five, some people want an encouragement, some people want to raise, right? And it's a very fine balance of how do I connect with that staff member and make them feel loved without also making someone else feel jealous or that there's favoritism, right? So that is such a huge balance because

each thing is way different. Each person sees it different. Same with when you're delegating management roles and stuff as well, right? Like everyone has their attributes and you might have three people that are incredible people that can be managers, but what you need at that one point in time

is these set of skills, that one person has. So how do you keep everyone and how do you have it so that there's not an anger between everyone, right? Yeah, where they could still work together and not resent the other person is by still giving them power, right? People want power, they want leeway, they don't want to be micromanaged, and they want to feel like they're making a difference.

Absolutely. And I think that that often happens with academics because often we get educated and then we don't want to do any of the front line work anymore where like the mindset is I finally made it. I finally hit the opportunity where I don't have to do the grunt work, the paperwork, the small things. And I think that that's so important to keep that mindset of bringing everyone together and showing that you're the first into work and you're the one willing to put in the extra work and carry the weight as well because that is something that starts to divide

people is when they look at the boss and they're in the Bahamas every week and they're grinding at work, basically paying for the trips. You're always involved in the butcher. You are the butcher. Like that is your brand and you put in so much work into that. What was the starting out point like for you when you were leaving high school and you were heading into the entrepreneurial world? What was that like? So when I first did the Northwest Customs when we did sound systems, it was myself and another partner there.

That we did as a hobby. So we started tinkering on our own vehicles. Then we really liked it. Then we started doing favors for people. And then it ended up becoming a business. then we registered it. We did that for a couple years. And that's always hard too because having a partner, especially when it's a 50-50,

it's really hard to measure the work 50-50. You know, so you have some of the salesmen, someone that's going to be doing the financial, but then you have to do the labor where you're both doing labor as well. So you're trying to split up work. We were doing that out of his mom's garage because we were 18 when we first started that. And it was a lot of fun. And then I started noticing that the economy was going to be changing a little bit. You started getting little tells.

I didn't think it was going to crash at that point. So that was right before the 2008 area. And but I wanted to switch into something that was more sustainable, which would be food. And when I was working at IGA, I would always say to the managers or the head office there, which would be H.Y. Louis on that point. and I would say like, why aren't we dealing with local farmers? We have everything around us, we have all these places, and it all came down to subsidy checks. So if they deal with dairy land and dairy lands, they're only big distributor that they get in, if they abide by that at the end of the year, they get a big subsidy check, right?

So bigger corporations are able to offer bonuses if you only carry my product and this and this, which really kills the whole market of being able to support local. farmers. It costs me probably about 40% more to buy a cow that is raised in Chilwack or Agassie that is raised well, that has room to run around outside. It costs me about 40% more than to buy beef that's killed in a kill floor, right, from the states or from Uruguay or from Mexico, right? And that's what a lot of grocery stores end up doing nowadays, too, is they have people that specialize in buying and that's what they do is they their only job is where can I get the best deals where can I get the specials so when you're getting specials of strip loins or this

or that and they're super low in price right well they have to buy skids and skids where are they getting it from right and one of the biggest things that really bugs me about our our country in that is that we don't have to really state the origin of the product right they've they've come they've come like they've been trying to do rules about that and get it in place and they had it for a little bit but nothing was like really enforced on that so you can get product um and i know this because i used to work on a cutting line and i'll get to that when i first started um and it would be the same thing you open a package it goes through a tenderizer and then it goes through acid wash to kill any bacteria and then it gets cut on the line and then it keeps going so you can have product that comes in from

anywhere and you just put a little Canadian sticker on it and people see that Canadian flag and they think instantly Canadian product. And in the fine print on there, it will say something like cut in Canada or packaged in Canada. Same with toys that we get like boatloads of toys from China and then all of the stickers say packaged in Canada. So people just look for that little Canadian flag and they think, okay, now this is a good product. So when you're dealing with that, now you're dealing with a price disadvantage. You know, I can buy pork at half the price, then buying it from a good, wholesome farmer in Abbotsford, I can buy half the price from the States.

And you can get it more often and stuff too, right? So you get like these big pork loins and stuff. It's like, oh, you can get that for 20 bucks, you know? So it all comes down to what are you looking for, quantity or quality, right? And that's for me is a huge thing. Yeah, but you had that idea. So far before, like now, anybody listening to this has probably heard no GMO, no antibiotics. These types of things are so commonplace now.

But you started this before it was popular, before it was something that everybody knew about. So what was that educating people like so early on when everyone's like, well, Walmart's the same as this? Isn't it? Like, that was probably the mindset when you started. Yeah, that is a, that was an incredibly tough time in my life. That was August of 2.8 when we started the business. That was a month before the economy crashed, which now you're introducing a higher-end product where you can't get specials because when you go to your farmer, you're like,

okay, what price do you need for me to buy that beef or that lamb or that chicken, right? So you don't get deals where you can say, okay, now I'm doing a special on this product. And when you get one beef, you only get two full strip lines. You don't get cases where you can, like, do specials and move them. So being at a grocery. store, I found that in the meat department, they would have 50% of their sales would be their lost leader items. So they would put specials to get people in there and they would be losing money on those specials. So they have these prices so low, but then they have everything else to

compensate, you know, for like chips and pop and things like that. When you start off a butcher shop, you don't have all those little things to keep you going. So now that challenge was there. So I did a lot of research and I wanted product that was local natural hormone-free, which at the time people thought it was a car salesman pitch, that it was, you know, a lot of people have the mentality that everything in Canada is local, natural, hormone-free. Well, it's not true. Like, and, and, you know, if people did more research on that, they would understand. Any feedlot that you have, you can have, they can have chips in the ears which release certain things which increase the hormones in an animal, which make them bigger.

You can have growth hormones or antibiotics in the feed, which happens a lot in places, especially when you look at, like, these big chicken farms and stuff where they, you know, some chickens, when you've seen videos on it where chickens are dead for like a couple days, well, why do all the other ones not get sick is because they're jammed with so many antibiotics. And what's happening is that we now are consuming that in fast food restaurants or in big bulk buying right where you can get like a box of you know 20 kilograms of chicken breast for 40 bucks right and stuff like that um and the problem with that is now we are ingesting so many antibiotics so you wonder why like kids are maturing so fast with the growth hormones growth hormones are a huge catalyst of cancer

as well right so when you look at um the cancer rates and stuff that are people are going through those are all attributes to what we are eating and what we are consuming right when you you look at a beef that's raised out just in the field and then, you know, finished off with grain, you're getting something that's like six to eight hundred pounds. It's not going to be the same breed that is going to be 12 to 1,400 pounds, right? So there's a difference on how much product you're getting from it. But it also is the reason why I believe we're getting these super bugs. Like the, I'm not talking about COVID on that. I'm talking about like the flu and the cold, which used to only last like a day.

right and now a sudden someone's out for a week right or these colds that hit people so hard that you feel it in your joints and everything else and it's because these um things have to change right because now they're not being able to attach to you because every body is like so filled with antibiotics from what we're consuming that now they're morphing or mutating right so yeah this has been a common problem amongst like a bunch of different industries including the plastic industry because they've found plastic in our bodies as well in different levels just from putting stuff in a plastic container. Yeah.

And I think we're really waking up to the realities of food is everything you are almost. Like that's what makes you. If you've eaten McDonald's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you are McDonald's, like you are the grease that's in that. You are the meat that's in that and all those questionable things. And the stuff in the bread too. Exactly. Because it's mostly sugar.

Yeah. And I think in another country, they recently just said subway. Subway can no longer advertise and say that it's bread because it's so much sugar. And I think that that's society really waking up to the impact that food can have on us and the role that it plays in our development. So what has that been like for you to watch this change? Because you start in 2008, now it's commonplace. Everybody kind of knows that they need to be a little bit more strategic on where they're getting their meat, asking certain questions. What does that transition look like?

I'm more excited about it because I think people would, and this will touch base on the capitalism that we're going to be talking about later on that, is that I'm more excited to see more and more butcher shops now going on that route, doing the local, doing the hormone free, like caring about where they're coming from, because that sets us all in the same page, right? Now people are all buying product that's in BC, right? There's still going to be different qualities of how is the product finished? Are they using certain grains? is it hang age to where it shrinks down, but it's more tender. There's so many aspects that people don't realize when they're looking at prices. They'll be like, oh, this is a $10 steak versus a $15 steak. And I'm like, yes, that, well, that steak that you're buying for $10 was cry of act,

which means they suck the air out of it in the package, so it doesn't break down. And so it doesn't have time to naturally break down from the oxygen, get more tender, and then to have that blood released. So that one when you cook it may shrink quite a bit because it has, blood weight, whereas the hang age doesn't have that blood weight. It's dry. It's tender. You just salt pepper and cook it. So that's why I find with staff, it's very important to train them with the knowledge and stuff, because knowledge is power. And when you're doing something completely against the grain, you have to be the one that is, you know, using the weed whacker to like build

that trail and define what it is. I know when I first started to have to have. support of family and friends and the community was lacking in that area because the prices were higher. Like it was, people didn't understand that there was a difference in product. So it took a while to get any momentum. You know, you could imagine being at work for 12 to 14 hours and maybe seeing 20 customers, right? You know, and you're just doing whatever you can.

And here is where you're building an environment where people are going to trust you to feed their family properly, right? And when you stop and think about that, when someone comes in my store, they are trusting us as individuals and me as a store owner that what we're selling them is going to be good for their family and that it's going to keep them full and healthy. And how do you do that when you come from a place where your family's not known? you don't have a track record you know you're young right it's not like people looked at me before they would they would come in and be like oh is your dad here and i'm like nope this is me this is my shop you know oh is it family run and i'm like nope i i took about six times of me filling out forms to get the government to give me enough money and a loan to start this business right like it's um it was hard to convince the government for that to get a government loan so here you

have someone that it's yeah i have meat cutting experience at ij but i've never done done a meat cutting course in my life. I don't have a school degree. I did do a couple classes in business consulting and I was working for batches in computer science, but it had nothing to do with cutting meat. So here I'm telling them, I am going to build a store and sell meat out of here. Yeah. So how do you trust, like, how does the government trust someone that isn't, that doesn't have all that backing behind them? You don't have a co-signer. You don't have like all this stuff. And it took me fine-tuning my business plan enough that they were like, okay, like this guy is serious. He is going to get this done. I can tell, right? So we got lucky and

someone believed in us and pushed with that. And then a month later, the economy crashed. And I guarantee you for probably, I'd say four years after that, there was no way I'd be able to get a government loan after the economy crashed in that scenario. So it was the best time. that I can get it, but also the absolute worst to be in business and to start something new. Yeah, I cannot imagine starting and then having a month later that happened. And you started downtown Chilliwack, which is a very different economic environment than where you are now, which is Garrison Crossing, which is a new up-and-coming, a lot of families in that area.

What was it like to start in downtown during an economic collapse and trying to, the work you have to do to educate someone on such a complex issue? And I think that that's really coming to light, and I'm hoping that this will continue, which is you take on as a small business owner, this responsibility to educate your community on something that they don't know about. And that happens with you. That happens with Luna float, like these things that take probably like if you had an ideal customer, you could sit them down and have like an hour consultation. This is all of our meets. This is how it works. This is the details of each one.

So when you're picking, know that keep this in your mind. But you don't get to do that. You get five minutes and they want to get. get out of there. You got to win them over very quickly. Exactly. So what was that like to start out? Yeah. So I've lived in Chilliwack most of my life and I was on that side of Chilliwack. So my first reaction is if I'm going to do a higher end product, I should be starting that in the Sardis area. And the reason being is when you look at like the medical community, you know, paramedics, firefighters, people in the hospital and stuff. A lot of them live on the garrison

side. So they see every day the problem with people if you're eating unhealthy, things like that. So they do a little bit more research in the food that they're partaking in. So that's why that was the area where I was originally thinking. And then my heart really pulled me into the downtown area because I really wanted to make a difference and change that. I put eight and a half years in that section and it was rough like it was rough coming to work and you know people didn't see all that we had to deal with you come to work and you're cleaning up poop you're cleaning up needles you're cleaning up garbage every single morning you're putting gloves on and cleaning up garbage and it deteriorates your soul like that's something that um you know there was a lot of comments

when we were leaving downtown that you know oh it's a rat sinking a or leaving a sinking ship and stuff like that. Like, you know, there was just people that were just keyboard warriors that have no idea. And I just wanted to say to them, like, what did you do in the downtown? Because I put eight and a half years of my life on hold to try to make that area better. And as anyone knows, it was Williams and Yale there. You know, we went through like four restaurant owners in the Clark's restaurant. We went through like three different restaurant or three different produce stores beside us. You know, I had one year where that subway got robbed like 12 times in one year during the day.

You know, and it was just the thing that like, and people are like, why are you leaving? Because we have no walk in traffic. You know, it was something that I thought was going to change when they had that, I think it was Newmark right across from us that went there. And I was very excited for that apartment to be up there. And as soon as the economy crashed, all the people that bought. all those places that wanted to flip them, um, now couldn't. So now they started renting. And then you got a very large gang presence that was in there. And then there was the shooting right

after. So I constantly was getting people like, can you deliver so I don't get shot, you know, at your store and stuff, right? Like people had a fear of being in that area. Um, and so it, it took a long time to educate people. And we have some amazing customers that have been with us since the absolute very beginning of the store. And they came in and they helped mold me to be the business owner I am, to care as much as I do. And the product. We started off with just one local farmer for beef. And now we deal with 36 local farms and families.

So, you know, everything from homemade soaps to any products, like, you know, pickling products. And then, you know, multiple beef farmers, lamb farmers, chicken farmers, turkey farmers. And that in itself has its big hurdle. And I don't know quite what the percentages are, but I would say if you want to be financially successful in a business, you don't really want more than 40% of your product to be local. And I know that might sound weird, but the reason being is your profit margins on local product are like less than half sometimes. You know, people think, okay, you're selling a $22 steak, you know, for a giant rib-eye steak or whatever, you must be making killing on that. You can do the cutting test on that to get high-grade stuff, and you're making anywhere from $1.85 to maybe $3 on a $22 stake. So you think, okay, if my rent is, you know, $6,000 a month, how much steak do I have to sell just to pay the rent, you know?

and then how much do I have to pay to pay the hydro? And then staffing and CPP and EI and WCB, like when you add up the amount of overhead that is there, and then if you take the time to think, okay, yeah, if you're only making a couple bucks here and a couple bucks here, how do you succeed? And of course, it's with volume and numbers, right? So it is just a waiting game.

So you either cut corners and start bringing product in, you know, from Mexico or the States or Uruguay or anything like that. where you can get meat at like dollars like I don't want to say pennies but you know what I mean like like a quarter of the price or a half of the price of what I'm getting now and then you put it on special right and then you just blow it out and then now you're making $12 a stake on on a $20 steak instead of 24 right so now you can make more profit but that is something that I never wanted to do I never wanted to stray from my vision or um have problems with myself, right? So a lot of it is, um, my whole mentality is I, I don't,

I never want to get to the top by stepping on other people, right? And if you live by that motto, it may take you a lot longer to get there. Like, it took 12 years. And you think of how long 12 years is when you're putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks. It took 12 years before I could actually write myself a paycheck and keep that in my bank where I don't have to put it back into the business because I have to buy something or I have to do something, right? So that is an aspect that people just automatically think, oh, you're wealthy when you own it. But the amount of overhead and the amount of problems and stuff breaking down, it takes a long time. And that's the reason why small businesses fail so often. The success rate is tiny on businesses that succeed the

first five years and then the next five years after that. So to get through 10 years of business, you know, I don't even know what the percentage is. I think it's like 8 to 12 percent or something. It's very small. And the reason being is because you have to put both feet in and you have to just sacrifice as much as you can to actually stay afloat. Yeah, that is something that I don't think gets talked about enough and I've had people reach out and say like, well, why are you having small business?

Is this a small business owner podcast or is in a role model? podcast. And it's like, what you don't understand is people are looking at a problem and you looked at it and you said, why aren't we buying local? Why aren't we supporting the community? And you look at that and then you go, okay, I'm going to go pursue this. I'm going to go try and make the difference and trying to address this issue in my community. And then there's no help. Yeah. And everybody now, I think small business culture is kind of coming about. We're kind of sick of the Walmarts. We're sick of the big businesses. You've seen Zellers fall and those bigger businesses but I think that small business owners are leaders because they're looking at whatever

the problem they think is going on and they're trying to address it in whatever the way they can and coupled with that you're also trying to bring people to the downtown and support that and I was as I've mentioned on the Facebook page I was a part of one of those robberies like I went and chased after those people yeah I know how dangerous like downtown was I have had knives pulled on me down there like I know that it isn't a peaceful place and it's getting better now Yeah. But to be in that circumstance, I remember hanging out at subway at the same time you were running the butcher. And that environment was a tough area.

And it was a place where you checked over your shoulder and you monitored those things. And it's so unfortunate because that area is starting to improve, but how long have you not been there? Yeah. And it's just now starting to... Three and a half years after moving from that, right? And the thing is, I can guarantee if I was in that spot for two more years, I would have been bankrupt yeah yeah because before i left there i had two consecutive years of um of a negative right and that means that i'm not pulling a wage but i'm putting money in there so all

i worked my butt off in the beginning so i i dug water i dug water i dug water mains ditches uh garbage man paper roots babysat like i've always had two jobs and when i was um when i was 19 Yeah, when I was 19, I bought my first house. I had money saved up for my down payment. I didn't get any help with that. It was I went to a person selling and I said, here's my down payment. I can buy it. Got in the market and then I used equity from the house to help get the business started.

And, you know, it's not an easy road. And the thing that I can say is if you want to chase a dream and if you want something, you have to learn to budget and sacrifice. That is a huge thing that people forget nowadays. whether it's buying the newest iPhone that's coming out or all the technology or something with that, there will be a time and a place in your life when you can afford that and when you can do that. But you have to remember, do you want to sacrifice the wait time of your dreams then, or

do you want to really give her? I've been, I've owned the town butcher now for 12 years when I started that, and I am 35 years old. So I started when I was 23, right? And that's, that's an age when normally people are back. backpacking. They're traveling. They're living up the batch of life. They're doing that kind of stuff. I basically put my life on hold and I said, I'm going to do whatever it takes to survive. And that meant as I was working, like the first, I remember the first 185 days of my business, my day would be, I would

wake up at three o'clock. I would work at another company from four o'clock till two in the afternoon, then I would come work from 2.30 till 8 or 9 at my shop. And that was my life for 185 days straight. Not a day off. It was just work, sleep, work, sleep, energy drinks, everything else. I literally worked myself into a heart attack, and that was about five years ago. And so the stress is that that was put me in a heart attack that was serious enough that I had to be in the hospital for, I think it was seven days for that. And it was one of the things that we don't realize how much stress and how much we put ourselves through just piles up, right?

It's like you're a ticking time bomb. For people that think that small businesses have it easy, I don't think they have any idea what business owners go through. and when you try to figure out who are the main sources that donate and that help functions and programs, when you have something you need, you go to a small business and say, hey, can you donate to this? It's like, okay, my paycheck might be $1,500, it might be $1,000 for that two weeks, but I will give you $300 of that to do this.

Like it doesn't magically come out of nowhere. whatever money is left at the end of paying all your overhead, that is what you have as a business owner. So now if you're going to give $300 or $200 to a function, that is directly out of your paycheck, right? And I think people forget about that. They forget, they think, well, you have all this product here. And I'm like, yes, I have to pay interest on all that product until it sells. You know, I have to accumulate stuff, right? People would have more, I think more success going door to door asking people that are working a 40 hour week that have a steady paycheck that comes in where they're able to do that where they don't have coolers breaking down and things happening

you know that's where you would get more money and it that is that is a program that I'm looking to start um coming up here so I don't know if I want to touch on that yet I might touch on it a little later we'll see but yeah no worries but that just leads us into like one of the major problems that we're facing is that it doesn't seem like anybody has any money right now. Like, not just because of COVID, but overall, like, if you look at any statistics, it indicates that most people, like, 80% of people are $200 away from, like, losing everything. Yep.

And walking these lines is just so incomprehensible because it wasn't really how most people were raised in other generations. Like, our generation is one of the first to never think about what are they leaving for their children. I never hear anybody at my age talk about what they're leaving for their kids. And maybe you can say, well, I'm in my 20s and that's not what people are thinking about. But it doesn't even feel like as a culture, I hear about people talking about how we need to focus on investing in the next generation. And when we're talking about climate change, it's all here and today, not over a longer span of time.

And it's so interesting to see this disconnect we have in comparison to other families and other cultures that look at seven generations down. and what is our long-term plan. Yeah. And so you're building this business up and trying to make that difference in the community because it wasn't, you were sacrificing not just for your business and your success, but so people could live healthier lives. And now we're all coming around to that and getting on to that page. And it's almost, it's, no, maybe disrespectful is too strong a word,

but it's almost irresponsible that we don't try and figure out who are the thought leaders in our community on this issue. If you talk to people now and you're like, well, do you want, GMOs in your food, they're like, no. And they make it sound like it was so obvious the whole time. But there are these thought leaders that we do have to pay tribute to who we're leading our community. And that's why I like this as a platform is because you can hear from the person who started it in Chilliwack, not the person who started it on social media, the person here who put in the work, who sacrificed everything, his life, his comfort, his relaxation for the

community. We're all benefiting. I eat the town butcher. meet. I love it. Like, those tender loins are incomprehensibly good. And that's all through the hard work, the choosing not to quit. Can you tell us more about what that heart attack experience was like? Because that must have been a point in time where you were like, okay, like, if I'm going to keep going, like, we have to be a little bit smarter about how I treat myself through these. What was that like? So, yeah, I think being in an upbringing, I think this is what a lot of people are facing as well is when you are raised in a certain way where maybe you don't feel important or that you're never enough. And you end up having

this complex where you need to sacrifice yourself to please everybody. Right? I always looked at myself as a stepping stone in life. My goal is to be a stepping stone in life for people to help them get to the next spot that they want to get to. And when you think of yourself as that, you don't really have pride of who you are, what you're doing. And when you don't have any pride in yourself, that is when you just will give up absolutely everything. So anytime I had any money, I would give it away.

I would do charity events. I would do functions. I would do, you know, oh, there's a family of need. Here's a box of meat, you know, things like that, where I was constantly on the verge of bankruptcy for years, right? And that's because I myself didn't feel like I was worth anything to be allowed to have a paycheck, right? And I've done, I've been doing counseling every week for the last two years. And people think that's a, that's a shameful word, you know, to do counseling.

And the thing is, is like, counseling allows you to really find out what are your issues inside. What are things that are passed down? What are things that happen to you as a kid that you are. that you are still holding on to, right? Why do you feel you are not worth a paycheck? You give all your staff a paycheck. You pay them well. You, you know, you care about everyone else,

but you will not write yourself a paycheck that you yourself can keep, right? And that took a long, that took me 12 years to figure out, you know, why, why am I not there, right? And that's, that is why I would say, a lot of us do things to the point where we do put our body into a state where you might have a heart attack, you might have stress, you might have more cancer from it. I'm not sure, like I'm sure living in a more acidic environment where you are always stressed and you're always having issues, your body is going to stem a lot more problems, right? Indigestable morsels is like why people have IBS because they're, they have problems that they're not talking

about, they're not dealing with it. Most of our illnesses start in our gut, is because we can't digest what we're going through, right? There's a lot of stuff with German new medicine that if, you know, some people believe in it, some people don't, that is when you start looking at the illnesses that are linked to emotion and energy, it's incredible. You know, like I used to have acne super bad on my face and nowhere else in my body. Like it was just on my face and I would use every cream. I would use everything like that.

And then when you look at German new medicine, it is, When you have confrontation or yelling directed at you, your skin is, your skin is like a live organism that it lets you know where you're being attacked, right? Like if you have people talking about you behind your back that you know about it, chances are you going to have an outbreak on your back, right? And that's like what kind of tells you where you're going. And I'm not saying like, you know, acne is like the point that is going to tell you everything. But just like everyone reacts completely differently.

It could be eczema. It could be rashes. It could be your wrist feels sprained, and maybe that's because you are having troubles letting go of something that's very important to you, you know? And it's amazing, like, when you think of how everything is energy, like this table is molecules moving at a very slow rate, which, you know, has energy in it, right? Like, everything itself has that. So why do we not take care of ourselves? We take care of everything else. We take care of our car.

We do maintenance on our car, right? Why do you not go for a massage every once in a while or do maintenance on yourself, right? Exactly. I think that that is incredibly true. And it's just, it's interesting that you bring that up because I was just listening to a lecture and they were talking about the blind people still perceive facial reactions. I guess they don't perceive, but they experience the facial reactions of other people because they can feel it.

They can feel it through their eyes. They still have neurons working in their eyes. even though they can't perceive it, if you give someone a disgust look to a blind person, not obviously all blind people, but it only takes like five neurons to have that pattern recognition software of a facial reaction respond.

It doesn't have to be you seeing it in order for you to experience that. And often we just assume if I can sense it, it's what I'm experiencing, but your body's going through so much more than I think anybody ever realizes. And that's so true because most people treat their pets way better

than they treat themselves and make sure, and I think there's some crazy statistic that it's like you're 80% more likely to make sure your pets stay on their medicine and renew the medicine at that point than you are for yourself. And it's because it's always easy to forget about our own intrinsic value, but we want other people to value us. And so it's this complex dichotomy that we have where we look to other people to recognize the hard work. Like we all want to hear like, hey, you did a really good job on that. But we never give that to ourselves. And And just waking up to the fact that you can do so much for yourself. You can say, okay, I'm not going to go to Walmart this week and grab my meat.

I'm going to treat myself. I'm going to go try the high-quality tenderloin from the butcher. Or I'm going to go try Luna float. And they have this cool neuro spa that Rebecca and I are looking forward to trying. And you can go and take probiotics. You can add these things in. And I always look at it like I can just get a little bit more done if my body's operating at max capacity.

100%. Rather than trying to like do the bare. minimum, not go for runs, not exercise, not eat properly, and then hope for the best. It's like, somebody might need me. And if I'm not taking care of myself, what use am I to them? If somebody calls and says, I'm stuck on the side of the road, it's two in the morning, I need your help. If I haven't treated myself to a good sleep, eating the right foods, I'm not going to be in the right mindset to be of use to somebody else. And so it's about making sure that you're ready for whatever comes your way. And then you can do better for other people.

you can help the customer at 6.610 when you're closed and you're like, I'm ready to go home. You can put in that little bit of extra work because you have control over that. What other things have you added in? Because I know you've done keto in the past. What have been some things you've tried to help your body after going through something? So I can't imagine going through what you went through. Yeah, it's, yeah, there's, and I always get the analogy of when you're on a plane, put your own mask on and then help everyone else.

If you're out of oxygen, you're not going to help people put mass on. You know, so you yourself, you're right. You have to be healthy. You have to be okay. There's certain things in life that are your wake-up calls. So my dad died from a heart attack about seven years ago. And then I had the heart attack right after. It's been in my family chain.

So that was a wake-up call for me to realize that I need to start living. life to be happy, not for everyone else, right? When you look at how much you feel you need to portray for other people to feel you're a good person or to think you're a good person and stuff, right? Like, what do you yourself need to do so you feel like a good person? And that is a huge thing that we disconnect from is, is, you know, my counselor for a year would ask the same question, you know, why do you not feel successful? Who is Bill? Right? And that's the thing that I had the hardest time, even when we ended up winning awards with the chamber commerce and stuff, that, you know, people would see, okay, you're winning award, you're successful, you know, you have a new business and you've, you know, you built a new shop, and it's running, it's doing really well, it's successful. And I never felt successful. And it didn't matter what I accomplished. You can be a part of all these fundraising events, committees, you can start programs. and until you yourself feel that you're worthy,

you'll never hit that goal of feeling successful that you are somebody. And it's when you let that sink in, it's something that it takes a lot for someone to feel that they are worth something, right? Especially in the society that lets us know that you are not worth something. You're not worth something or you don't look good unless you have this makeup on or you're wearing these clothes or you're doing these things. Like, I started getting, like, nice shirts because I feel very comfortable and nice when I put them on, right?

Like, I don't know anything about the brand names and stuff, like, but that. But I know that, you know, how you dress in the morning, are you, like, are you shaving? Are you doing your hair? Like, putting yourself together is a really good way to start your day, right? and whether that means taking time to meditate or ground, like meditation has been a huge thing that I struggle with because my mind is firing on all cylinders all over the place. So it's so hard to quiet my mind.

But even just taking the time to just sit there in a park or, you know, take your shoes off and your socks off and have your bare feet in the ground and just ground yourself. And when you do that, you can kind of, of start figuring out what is your why, you know? And that's the big question is, is who am I without the town butcher? That was a hard question I had for a long time. And my response was always, I'm nothing. Like, I'm nothing without the town butcher. No one will know who I am. No one will know what I do if I'm not affiliated with the town butcher. That is now who I am.

But when you start having that self-pride, you start realizing that, yeah, I'm, you know, a good person. I'm compassionate. I'm helpful. Like, these are all things that you now start having abilities. And I would say, like, that is something that if we are able to reprogram ourselves from what society kind of tells us what is, like, what defines a good person, you know, a successful person? Is it like the cars? Is it like money? Is it like you have to hit a certain threshold of finances before you become successful? Or can it just be that, you know, someone that is able to pay their bills and put food before them, but also help people at the same time? Is that more successful than someone that now is making a million dollars a year or two million dollars a year? Right. So the practices that I've been working on is just taking care of myself, whether that means a massage, once in a while, um, going for walks or runs, meditation, um, soaking in Eps and salts is a huge one because when you're working in a cooler, uh, arthritis was getting

incredibly bad for me after 14 years. I would try to brush my teeth and my fingers would just start, they would start seizing up, right? And it, it just takes a lot to break up the calcification and get your joints moving again. Um, I could see myself being in quite a crippled area if I just kept going the same way I was going in 10 years. Yeah. Wow. I completely agree. And I think that that's one thing I've always tried to be careful on with doing these

podcasts is that we can often connect the person with the job. And they are what they do. And that's not the case. And that's what I'm trying to make sure that I have each part of the podcast broken up is so we know that you're not just the town butcher. That you could cut that whole segment out. And there's still a section on family, on community, on your personal experiences, on where you want to go in your own personal life

because it's, I think career is an interesting topic to go through because it is something that hopefully the person is passionate about and they're chasing something they care about. Obviously with the town butcher, you're chasing something and you're putting in passion into something. So that's an interesting topic, but it's not the only thing that you are. And I think in this society, we've gotten really connected with, I do the same job for 35. years, then I retire, then I go to the beach in Cancun and hang out there. And it's like, it's not that. It's what are you doing each day to set an example for your employees, for your

customers, for your community? How are you helping the people who need help with food and resources? And are you making the connections in the community to help people get the resources they need? And I think that you're an excellent example of that. And so you're not, just because it has the town butcher logo on it, that doesn't mean that that's the town. That's, still you and your passion and what makes you different than the big behemoth Walmarts is that you can put in that passion and you can help the person down the road in comparison. So now you're at Garrison. What is that transition been like for you because you left?

And so now you're here. What is that like? So the biggest thing that I notice is my ability and my staff's ability to connect with the customers. So that being said, when I was the last two years, so the first. So the first, I would say, six years of downtown, I noticed it was growing. It was getting better. It was going.

As soon as the housing market crashed, that is when we noticed, like, an increase of, like, homeless people in that area and drug addicts. When the 7-Eleven moved across the street and then they put the bus stop, that was what really killed our business. Because now you had people walking back and forth constantly for prostitution pickups or whatever it was. but it just brought like a really seedy environment in there for that time. I always noticed when I was talking with a customer, I'd always be looking past them because I was constantly looking in the parking lot. Anyone that pulls up, I wanted to make sure that they weren't going to get harassed,

that they weren't going to have to worry about that. And sometimes I would have to leave a customer for a second to escort someone into the store because of the people that were out there. I felt like a bouncer. And that's one reason why, when I designed the new store, like we did like the liquid film on the windows for protection instead of bars, but I didn't want it to feel like that prison. So now the rod iron that we made at Ironside, they've done a lot of work for us, which they've been amazing

there. We now use that as decor. So that's what's hanging up on the walls is our old window protectors that we used in our old location. So the reason behind that is I wanted people when they come in to now see that your protection is now decoration, I feel safer, right? And that was a thing that I really wanted to convey in the store is that, you know, you can walk around in the parking lot. You can sit on the sidewalk there and have a Starbucks or do whatever and still feel comfortable. And I really hope that we can continue to grow that in Chilliwack.

And I think that's why there's a lot of projects that I'm looking at taking, like building that will help that in the lower in the in the downtown area as well with that um i feel that just moving homeless camps isn't going to do anything um you know it's it's something that we need to figure out a way to how do we create jobs how do we create housing how do we um you know the safe injection sites yes i think that's necessary because we don't want people to be getting sick but how do we we we you know build a counseling groups right there i know there's a lot of things in place already. But that's one thing that I really want to work on moving forward. And that's constantly in my mind of how do we continue to build our community to be a better place?

And that's the thing as a small business owner. Like there's selfish, selfish tendencies in that in itself. One, the more I do for the community volunteer work programs, I feel better inside. I feel like I'm doing something good with my time. That's my selfish thing is I feel good helping someone. I think everyone does. The second one is the more successful and happy and stuff that your community is, the better it is off, the more chance of all the businesses thriving, right? So why not put all this time and effort into building a better community where people can walk around with a bag or something or like go for a bike ride? I love how they have all the bike trails now all around Chilliwack so people can bike more, right?

Like, how do we create a better environment for everyone, business owners and non-business owners, right? Yeah, and build that cohesion of everybody kind of knows everybody. And, like, it's such a different experience. And I think sometimes people take advantage of it, but it's so amazing to go into a small business and know the owner. And I'm sure you get that all the time where people will be like, is Bill here? Yeah, totally.

They have that mindset of, I only want to deal with Bill because I only want to deal with the owner because he's the guy with the true passion behind it. Yeah. But that's what we're all looking for is that idea that we are a part of something greater than ourselves and that we can play some... Bigger than me. Exactly. You can play some small role and build other things up and make sure that every...

Because nobody wants to see poverty. Nobody wants to see somebody not being able to make ends meet. And I think we made a lot of strides in terms of like making sure everybody has the bare minimum. Like even people living on the street still get soup and sandwich. and it might not be the highest quality. I've gotten that as a native court workers. Food's not that good, but it's like, at least there's food,

at least we're starting to hit the issues. And that is something that's always interesting is because small businesses are always trying to be involved in those things. And that is one of the main differences is that they are trying to be involved, not just financially, but sending employees, sending staff, and trying to be involved in those things. You've done a lot of that work. Can you just give us a little bit of an idea?

I know you've done food hampers. You've done so many different things. Let's talk a bit about that. Yeah. And, you know, even doing that, it's amazing the flack you get when you try to put yourself out there. It doesn't matter what you're going to do. You have to learn that someone is not going to be happy with it. So we were doing a thing where we were doing about $1,000 a month is what we are donating

to single parent families in need for doing food hampers. So we were doing 10 food hamper. hampers a month. And at Christmas time, we'd get lots of donations from different companies and customers as well, where we were doing like 35 to 50 hampers where we were doing turkeys and a full meal, toys, people were donating toys. And it was amazing. I had a picture where our entire back room with all the tables and everything was just filled with toys and food and turkeys and stuff. And it was, it was such a great feeling bringing everyone together. And the thing is, is that just comes from one idea. You know, one idea. And one of my

goals moving forward, I will talk about it a little bit, something I'm still working on. But I want to start, you know, I'm part of the Children's Foundation and the Rotary and a bunch of different organizations that have the same idea where you do fundraising, you pool money together, and then you have a committee now that chooses, okay, this person, this kid needs braces, this kid needs to go to camp, you know, you have more power as a group to be able to make a difference. And one thing I really want to focus on, and it's just baby steps right now, is I want to give an outlet for all business owners and non-business owners to be part of a group that we can vote in a committee that chooses what we do with the donation money.

And as a business owner, I get probably asked about five to six times a day for donations. Like it is, there's people don't realize how many stuff, whether it's, you know, kids camp or, you know, a family member's sick and they need money. It could be anything, right? And it is really hard to turn some of them down, right? And people get offended if you say no, but they don't realize, well, I just gave $1,000 to this church because they needed, you know, these things and blah, blah, blah, right? It's a thing that is constantly bombarded with, right? And there's such a need out there. So how cool would it be to have business cards made that have a website that now any business

that participates in that donation, whether you donate 50 bucks, 500 bucks, 5,000 bucks, whatever you can do for the year, that would be your budget, you donate. And then this program now, someone comes to your house, you say, yeah, here's a card. This is where we put our money for the donations for children. All you have to do is fill out an application and then it will be be brought before the board. And now you have a community that is voting in things that need to be fixed. And it might be different seasons. So like one example that I'm thinking is, you know, we pool money together and then we say,

okay, now it's becoming wintertime. Let's put some of that money towards jackets and blankets for the homeless. let's look at getting, you know, some sort of an empty hall renting it out where we can have people volunteer to take care of it, but now have a place where we can keep them warm, you know, through the winter. Like there's some cold snaps that are absolutely brutal. You know, people are dying in tents because they light on fire because they had a candle going in there or something, right? So those are things like that all comes from a vision. and we all have those visions, it's just like putting yourself out there. Like what are you going to do if people think you're stupid, you know, or that you're greedy

or that your ideas don't make sense? One example is when we did the food hampers for the single parent families in need. The amount of emails I got that were hateful because I was not supporting dual parent families that were struggling or seniors that were struggling or anything in that area, I was focusing on that. And I just say, you know, like, that is my thousand dollars that I'm taking out of my personal paycheck to make that function. That's why I'm building this program because there's so many single parents that are

working two jobs that can't afford extra food or can't afford this, you know? and they might not be applying for food hampers from all these different functions that are in place for them, right? It's, there's, there's so many programs out there, but there's still a lot of people that aren't being touched by them because they feel, I don't quite deserve that. You know, I'm not quite in that boat. Yet they still can use hope and happiness. So I think it's really important when people take on projects to just know in your heart that, If you have your vision and you have your why set up and you're strong with that, it won't shake you that much when people are trying to, you know, push you off or

try to redirect your why. You know, like if we started saying instead of single parent families, now it's everyone's eligible in Chilliwack, how many actual people are going to take advantage of that? How many people are going to, how many families is it actually going to help? You know, if you're, if you have two people in a family and you're, you're still, able to have a turkey dinner versus someone that hasn't had a turkey dinner for their family for four years. Do you think that you should get that basket? Right? And it comes down to people checking in on themselves and saying, do I need this? You know, what can I do to help? And I would say

one of the most touching things with that program is not only the joy that comes from people that are crying when they see it like they're just so happy to have someone care for them that knows nothing about them but also seeing these families when they get back on their feet again and then they start sponsoring some of those families like that was amazing to see some that had gotten maybe one or two baskets and now they bought two baskets for someone else you know that kind of stuff like really just chipped away at my heart you know when you in business, I find your heart ends up becoming hard in certain areas because there's so much online critique and so much bashing and like keyboard warriors like you wouldn't believe, right?

You know, it's, uh, yeah, I hope I touched on that. I know it's like a long way around it and stuff, but I do think that that's so true though because I think it's so important. I think with the movement towards larger governments and I think that you've seen that with the NDP, and I'm not insulting social programs. I think that they're important. But with social programs comes this idea that anything

can be fixed if we just throw money at the problem. And that's where I don't want to give more tax money to the provincial government to invest in social programs. I want to support the town butcher and Bill's idea and push those because that's

you understand the community better than John Horgan would understand Chilliwack. And that's not insulting John Hogan. and he's not living in Chilliwack. And that's not a mean thing to say. And Trudeau, he's not in Chilliwack. He doesn't know what we're dealing with here. So when you start a community program to help someone, it's because somehow that landed on your

radar as an important issue we need to address in Chilawak. And that can happen across the board. And those are the ideas to support. It's not let's do a $100 million deal to support single families across Canada. Those might help. But there's so much bureaucracy required in order to make that. social program work because people are going to try and take advantage of it. People who are on the out the edges are going to try and take advantage of that. And then the program is going to cost more

money and it's less effective. But when you're right there and you see 10 different families coming in and you're like, well, I see that single families or single mothers need help. And that's what I see in my store every day. That's that's not a bad thing that you chose that issue. And if somebody thinks that the elderly need more support, then we can start that. But that doesn't have to be on you and to discredit you or say, like, well, why aren't you doing it for everyone? It's like, well, you're not a superhero. You're just one person trying to run a business and trying to do the best in the community. And I think that we ask too much of small businesses sometimes because we do look at them as, well, Bill does so much and his store looks so nice.

So he must be capable of anything. And we disconnect with the fact that we can all play a role. You can go and volunteer at elderly homes. you can there's so much that an individual can do but we put it on other people and I think that that's one of the problems with social programs is that we start to put it on other people and start to think we think that that's enough yeah that that's a huge thing right like and you you nailed that one like it's it's one of those things where um you know people people could instantly think like oh you know town butcher's doing a program for single parent family so we

don't need to do anything for that there is so many like I remember one time I had like over over 300 nominated names in a draw. And I would just take 10 names. So out of that 300, I can only help 10 of those families at that time. Right. And so there's like, you know, and then by the time you get around to that person again, it could be two years from now, right? Like there's so much help that can be everywhere.

And the biggest question is like, who are you when no one's watching? That's a huge thing is like, are you only going to make a difference in people's live when people know about it, right? And a big thing is like how you treat homeless people. When I look at my upbringing, I could have easily been on the streets. I could have easily have gone that direction, hands down. But I just chose a different route. I had a lot of guidance, a lot of help, I think from God. That was, I was grown in a Christian church. And I feel like I did have angels over me that prevented me from actually going through. through with the suicide attempts.

I feel like we all have help through there, whatever you believe in. And it's one of those things where, you know, if I, yeah, like, if I see someone struggling, I just want to help them. It doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing. Just do it. Just treat people like humans. It doesn't matter. They might have made the wrong choices or hard choices.

It doesn't make them evil that they can never change. they can never be a better person, right? Or they might be exactly who they need to be at that point in their life as their soul searching, right? We don't know what people are going through, what their battles have been. So why not just treat people like humans? And if you have the ability to give or to help or to start a function or it doesn't take much to start a group, you know, all you say is Facebook, this is what I'm doing,

right we got social media this is what i'm going to do if you know anyone that falls into this category let me know and i'm going to help them yeah that's all it takes right and we all have that ability you know whether it means cutting back on four Starbucks every month or something or whatever it is right um don't want to bash Starbucks because i love hot chocolates and stuff but um but yeah like i i agree is is you know we think that if we can as taxpayers have programs going that now we have no responsibility. We don't need to, you know, oh, well, we voted this person in and we pay taxes so people are taken care of, you know, there's always more that can be done.

Exactly. And I think that we do struggle with that. And that's such an interesting thing about living in the so-called Bible Belt is that we have so many people in our communities who have that community spirit, that belief that they could make a small difference. there's so many church programs that support so many different issues and try and address them that me and my mom benefited from. We needed those social programs, but they weren't being offered by a provincial government. Obviously, we received help from that at some points, but the main part that we received support from were churches.

And people don't realize that there are so many different ways of going about an issue. If you work like a nine to five job, you still have either an hour before or an hour after to try and dedicate some. something to helping other people and lifting them up because, and we get too locked into how much am I making, am I living the luxurious life, and not about what are people even getting the bare minimum around me? Yeah. And I think that that's such an important thing that we, we had the opportunity to talk about. And so can we get more into the meat side of things?

Because I know nothing about me other than where Rebecca directs me to purchase. Yeah. So can you tell us, just give us an idea of how complex this industry is. is because I think one important part that people don't get to realize is the world is so, so complex. And if you choose, we're going to talk about meat right now

and that is something that people probably think about maybe like just at the grocery store just as they're about to pick up the food. And it is a world in which we're going to probably have a really good conversation on. And I just want people to understand that that is what goes into the behind the scenes of so many different worlds

that we don't interact with. And we like to think of the world as a simple place. And then we're about, to talk about meat, and I'm guessing that that's going to be incredibly complex in comparison to thinking tenderloin or sirloin state. Totally. Yeah. So I find it very interesting with society, and we get that a lot, is that people think all

meat is the same. And that's very, very interesting. When you think, okay, shoes, clothes, cars, houses, wines, everything, there's so many multi-levels of a beginner wine, a high-end wine. wine, you know, where are the grapes being produced? Well, you could say all wines are the same. They're all grapes. Well, some do apple wines or blueberry wines or stuff like that. So why is it that when it comes down to food that we think all food is the same, right? We have three different types of beef that we carry in our store from three different places. We have a farmer that's in

up in Williams Lake there who they do grass fed, grass finished. It's all grays. It's all out there. Then we have one farmer that's in Agassi, and they do grass, it's grass-fed free range, and then we finish it off, which means the last two to four months we use local barley and alfalfa hay. A reason behind that is it puts more fat on the, on the outside of the beef, and then it gives more marbling. So that marbling is the fat on the inside, which gives it that juice and that flavor. So when you use barley, it kind of flushes out the gaminess from the grass. So you know how when you have hunting meat and stuff, if it's only grass fed, it has a like a little bit of a hay taste. That is that what they call the gaminess, which some people don't

like. If you were to hang age two beef and you have a grass fed grass finished versus a grain finished, you can only hang the grass fed one for maybe 14, 21 days because there's no fat cover on the outside to protect it from the oxygen and moisture that's breaking down the meat. So, but if you have a nice fat cover on the outside. That is when you can hang age for, we do 21 to 35 days, but I've aged up to 60, 60 to 70 days on it because it is more protected. That fat helps keep it insulated. And that creates the tenderness. And then you have your AAA, we do a AAA certified Angus. So there are so many different types of AAA meat. And people also think AAA meat, should all be the same price.

So you have AAA meat. You have AAA like a silver rating meat that you can get, which I've never kind of dabbled into that. And then you can also have, we have like a AAA certified Angus program. So they take one out of every four Angus beef that qualify for the perfect amount of marbling and tenderness and texture and stuff out of that.

So only one out of every four, AAA Angus beef, make it to the program that we bring in. So you're looking at maybe three percent of the beef in Canada would fall into this category. And that's why you were saying with the steak, yes, it's more expensive, but all you do is salt and pepper. There's nothing in our store that is marinated. You don't need flavor in that. You can have a dipping sauce or something, but if you have product that is fed well, is treated well, that is wholesome in itself, you don't need a marinated product, right? We get that question all the time. Do you have a marinated product? I'm like, well, we have sauces that you can add to your product, but everything here,

pork chops, chicken breasts, anything we have in the case, salt pepper, a little bit of olive oil, you could do rosemary and garlic. That's all you need to make an amazing meal. So when you're looking at the AAA brands, there's multiple brands that you can have as well, like Cargo, Excel, Harmony, I've had different working in the grocery stores and on the plants. Like I've inspected different qualities and each one of those are different ratings as well because it just comes down to the company and their rating system on what it is. I can lift up a meet and just touch it and know, okay, this is actually more on the double A side versus the triple A because this one's firmer, has more marbling, more fat content.

This one is just, you know, doesn't have much. to it right so that is um yeah that is when you want to just know that who you're buying for knows their product because that is a big thing and if you're ever dissatisfied with something bring it up right but um we've had so many times our people will come in and they'll go oh that was an expensive steak you know and that was whatever and then they'll come back and be like that was the best steak i've ever had in my life and because you can can't get that in restaurants. I don't know any restaurant in the lower mainland that would have that certified Angus program product because the price is so high to get it in, right? So if a restaurant

has to get in the steak for $12 or $14, and now they have to cook it and then have all the sides to it and then make their profit on top of it, you know, where are you going to start getting that, right? I've seen so many restaurants slip in quality because the beef price have gone up so much. You know, they have doubled in the last two or three years. And, you know, we were, we used to spend, you know, maybe 1,200 bucks, 800 to 1,200 bucks on a beef, like on a full beef there. And now, now you're looking at anywhere from $28 to $3,200. So it just depends on where you're getting your product, what is, what is happening in the economy. You'll notice prime ribs always go up before Christmas because it's not, it's not the person selling the shop

that is making more money on that. It is the companies that you're buying them from that keep increasing. Stakes always go up in the summer and then they always go up again at Christmas time. And that's just our cost goes up. They know they make more money. It's just like the oil industry. What is that like to have to explain to people because I've had the tenderloins and they are I've been to the kegs, I've been to those places, and every time I can distinctively remember people saying like, oh, we're going to go here, you should try their steak, they have the best steak,

and then I'd go and I'd try and bite into it. It would take work and it would take chewing. And I honestly thought I was just not a steak person because I was like, I don't like doing all this chewing. Like this is weird and my mouth is exhausted. And like I sincerely thought that was all steak. Or it comes out with the sauce. Yeah.

So many places now, because the meat doesn't have marbling, it doesn't have its own unique flavor in it. So now they have au jues or sauces that they pour on your steak. I always tell, like, I went to Vegas and I had like a five, it was like a $50 steak with no sides. And I'm like expected to be blown out of the water with this thing. And I tried this thing and they come with the sauce and I said, no sauce. Like I'm just salt pepper is all I need.

I'm going to try it as is, right? It was cooked to perfection, but it was not near the quality that I've been used to. And I'm like, how can you pay? pay $50 for a steak, and you're not serving your customer the highest quality of meat when you're in this type of a restaurant. I can't imagine. Especially because that's what people expect when they go to us, like when they're buying it for themselves, they're hoping that the quality is going to be better because that's

in your mind what you expect. But if you go to Walmart and stuff, it's going to be worse than the restaurants in a lot of cases. And so you obviously offer this higher quality. What is that? Can you, we walk into the. the butcher and you start describing things, can you just walk us through some of the different things that we would expect to see? Yeah. So we don't. I wanted to create an environment,

which now some people label the meat spa, which is funny. So when I built the meat room, I love it so that the windows are completely down to the table. You go to so many places and all you see is the heads of the people cutting, but you're not allowed to see what they're cutting on the tables. I love to have it. So like it's a wrap around. You can see the entire shop. Everything that's being made in the deli. The only thing that we don't have visible is the dish pit because no one wants to see people washing dishes or whatever. But the meat room, like how cool is it when a customer comes in and they're like, oh, can I get a T-bone? And you go to cut it for them and they're like, oh, no, I want it bigger. And then I can adjust this all or whatever and

cut it and then trim it up right in front of them. And they're looking at that steak. Like that was prepared just for me. You know, like you can't get that most places. A lot of the grocery stores now don't even cut their meat. They don't cut their meat at all. They don't have insurance for like people to be using the bandsaws. They don't actually have butchers on hand.

They have people that label product and put it on their shelf. And I know because one of my jobs, I used to be the one that just cuts on this conveyor belt. and we cut all the product that then gets shipped out to all the grocery stores, right? And then so you can't just always say, oh, do you have something that you can cut me in the back that has like, you know, a nice fat cap on it or something or something unique? You know, we get people all the time that come in with Brazilian cuts or Turduckins or, you know, something unique and they think they're going to stump me or something. And some of them I have no idea.

I've never heard of it because every country calls a meat a different thing. Right? So I just have to look and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's this cut or, you know. But to be able to perform that for someone and that service is what brings me joy. Like I love being able to prep something or watch people just be like so enthralled when you're like just, when you see someone cutting with a knife that's been doing it for so long, it's like you're painting with a brush, you know, like it's just, it's so fluid, you know, when you're doing it. So it becomes an artwork. And I love taking a piece of meat that someone's like, oh, that doesn't look good because it has like the really black outside to it because it's been dry aged.

And they're like, oh, that doesn't look good. And then you cut them like just, you take an eighth of an inch of that black off that's been aging. And then they see the color and the richness of the meat on the inside. And it's just like, that is what I'm talking about. Yeah. You know, you can't get that anywhere else because the reason why people don't hang age is because you are not. making money on the blood weight, right? If I just put something on the shelf and cry back it in a bag, it's not going to lose

its weight. So when I sell it, whatever. But when you hang age, you're losing like 12 to 18 percent of your weight. That has to be made up in the price, right? That's why there's a price difference, that tenderness. We don't use any needles or gas or any form of tenderizing for a product. It's just naturally done. Yeah.

that is so cool. What else about the store? Because I completely agree that that is something that is starting to fade away. And just expertise in the area is something that I think is also fading away where if you do go and ask those butchers at certain places questions, they don't have the answers on where it was, how it was, what it ate. And I think that's starting to come about with what it ate. But these other questions and whether or not certain things have GMOs in them and whether or not they have ear pieces on them. These things are things that only you know about. Right. And most like save on foods might not have that expertise in. Yeah. So what else do you offer? Because we've tried the barbecue sauce.

There's so much. We just have to get all into it. Yeah. So, um, there's like our, our, our, our,

our, our twice baked potatoes and our ribs. So the twice baked potatoes, uh, it's always funny because people like, you know, it's three bucks for a potato or something. And that,

that technically is only half a potato. And, you know, and I'm like, you know what? You go home and you make this. And then you come back and tell me how much it costs you to make it. I'm like, when we're making these batch of potatoes, we make 90 twice baked potatoes a day. And that's like one staff members spends three or four hours doing that. You bake them, you scoop them out. We add Philadelphia cream cheese.

We add kilograms of real bacon that we cook and we dice up. You've got green onions, Himalayan salt, crack pepper. Like, it all comes down to using the right ingredients. You know, it bugs me so much when people think all salt is the same. Table salt is different than sea salt that is different than Himalayan salt. They're harvested different. You harvest table salt using dynamite. I did not know that.

Yeah. So if you go online, you can research, like, there's a page that explains all the difference. And all you have to type in is like difference between table salt and Himalayan salt. and it will show you all the different things, the potassium levels, the nutrients, how they're harvested, the flavor that it brings out. I strongly am a strong believer of salting the meat and getting at room temperature before I cook it. You want to cook the best steak. All you have to do is salt both sides. So some people disagree with peppering your steak before you grill it because they say that, you

you can burn the pepper and it has a different taste to it. I like to do salt and pepper on both sides. Let it sit for a half an hour or two an hour on the counter and then just cook it at five or six hundred degrees. So the salt gives it flavor, but it also helps break down the meat a little bit. And then getting at room temperature allows it to not be shocked when you have something super cold going on a super hot grill, right? That's why it kind of changes the cooking temperature of it.

I lost my train of thought there. Okay. So that's so cool, though, that you have all this expertise. And, like, the understanding the difference between salt is something where, like, that's where the difference comes in is that everything is done with a purpose. And I think Chanel's podcast showed that as well, where when you build it from the ground up, when you build the potato from the ground up and you make sure that the salt is the, the salt that you think would be good, when you make sure that...

Good cream cheese, like real bacon. You didn't go grab the cheapest, lowest quality cheese that you could get. Yeah, you can buy bacon bits like in a big tub and sprinkle those on if you want and cut your cost down by, you know, 20 cents of potato. Yeah, but you're trying to offer this full package experience where when somebody tries that potato because we did bring that out to my family out in White Rock and they loved them. Yeah. Because every step of the way you put in this focus, you put in this detail that gives the experience where you're tasting and you're like, this is amazing. Yeah. What else have you done that with?

The slow roasted ribs. So we do 18 full racks every single day as well. And that takes up a whole oven for the whole day. And the way we do it is we take the membrane off. We submerge them in water. Some people disagree with that concept as well because then you're losing some of the juices and flavors from the fats. But I love it when you just warm it up and the bones,

you could just pull the bones right out. they're so tender. So we slow cook those for five to six hours and then we put our own sauce on top, caramelize it. And so when you're taking anything home, everything's already been cooked as you would do it at home. That's our biggest thing is not what is the quickest, what is the most profitable way, what is, you know, the easiest way for us to produce.

It's how do we make stuff so that you would have done it at home? We do the same with our lasagna, shepherds pies, meatloafs. We make our own soups. um our soups are made from our stocks that we make from scratch we roast the bones we boil them you know for 10 hours i go into work at like 5 a.m to put the stocks on and then we strain them at like six at night and then we put in the cooler so it's it's constantly building this difference and our stocks they don't have any salt there's no salt no msg no preservatives no chemicals it's all 100% natural right and so you want you want you want

want to warm up a turkey stock, like if I'm not feeling well or something, I put a turkey stock in a pot, I add a little bit of salt and I just drink it out of a cup. It's as healthy as it can be, you know, so. That's amazing. And like putting in all that time, 5 a.m. to wake up, to put in that work, having an oven just dedicated to ribs where you don't get to use that oven for anything else. And putting that right into the business and making that a requirement puts you so far from any of your competition. Right. What is that like to have somebody come in and go, well, like, what's the difference

between this and Safeway, meat? Like that, there's such a difference in every step. What is that like to try and talk about? Yeah. It's one of those things that's, it's a very touchy subject because I've strongly felt and believe that the way you build yourself up is build yourself up on your positives, not other people's negatives. And that's huge. So when people say, like, why is this better than this company? And I'm like, I'm not saying it's better. I'm saying that this is what

we offer. And this is why it is amazing. And this is why it's so good. It is a hard question because people want a definition of why am I paying $3 more for your rack of ribs from then this company's rack of ribs? And it's like, well, that company, all their ribs come in a cry of act bag and they throw it in the oven for 10 minutes to warm up, and then they put it in their case. Our ribs, you have now slow-cooked that morning for five to six hours and caramelized your own sauce on it, and you put that much time in. You know, even the salads, I used to work at a grocery store. We get all of our salads in a Cri-Vac bag.

You cut the top of the bag, and you roll the bag into a bowl, and you put it out to sell. That's it. You know, whereas when we're making a potato salad, you're doing everything from boiling the eggs, boiling the potatoes, you know, making it all from scratch. You know, you're adding the pickle juice. You're dicing all the pickles up. Like, that is why it tastes so fresh is there's no preservatives. This stuff isn't going to last on the shelf for 30 or 40 days without going bad.

You're going to get three or four days, you know? And that's a big difference of when you choose what you're eating makes a difference. You can get a salad for 99 cents 100 grams. Easy. That person paid 40 cents or 50 cents 100 grams to get something that's in a bag, right? But is that what are you ingesting? What's the sodium level? How much table salt is in there?

How much MSG is in there, right? To make it addicting so that you're always coming back. So many stocks that are made, people use MSG. So it's something that is like this addicting flavor that you just need more of, right? Yeah. You see it a lot in, um, in like Fah that is being made and stuff like that, right? You know, like ask how they make it, you know, are you making it in house, right? Those are all questions you should ask when you're going places.

Yeah, you also cater though. And that's got to be so much work on like it takes you a whole day just to do like a rack of ribs. Like what is, what is that like to try and offer this on a larger scale where it's, it's got to be tough on margins because anyone who's buying at a higher scale is expecting some sort of discount. But that's got to be tough on the side of, like, somebody's still putting in the same amount of work as if they were selling it just one to each customer that comes in versus doing a giant catering party. What has that been like? Yeah. So with the catering, like, we used to deal with a lot of local restaurants and stuff as well. And we had to drop that because when they need the best quality product that you can offer at the lowest price, you don't have any wiggle room to really, okay,

I make 18% on beef, so you want 15%. So now I make 3% and I don't have that steak that now I can sell out of my store, right? Because when you're dealing with a full beef, you only get two strip lines, two prime ribs, right? Like all these kind of things. And now if all of those are going to the grocery store, I have nothing left to offer my staff in that, or my customers in that high quality environment, right? So catering is one of those things where most of the people that cater with us now, understand what the level they're getting. We get so many repeat customers because they've tasted those ribs, those twice-baked

potatoes, cooked chicken pieces. We don't have a lot of people needing deals on that because they know that they, people that know me and know who I am, I'm very transparent with my prices with my customers. I have sometimes when people question me on stuff, I'll bring out the invoice from the back, And I'm like, this is what I paid for it. You know, this is the labor. This is the cutting test that shows you, okay, this was my cost. This was the fat that I had to trim off.

This was the waste. This was the product. This is my end result. I'm like, if me making a $1.20 on that stake is too much for you, I'm sorry. I'm not going to lose that $1.20 because I still have $70,000 a month of overhead that I have to somehow produce. Yeah. Right?

So I think over time, people that now shop at our store know what to, expect and they trust me, they trust who I am, why we're pricing things they are, and they just they want to support us. So, um, that being said, like on the catering, people don't ask for deals really on that. They, I, I, they know that I'm already giving them the best value that I can for those ribs. And then they just say, I need 30 ribs. I need, you know, 10 twice bake and stuff like that. Sometimes I'll do maybe a 5% if it's like I'll definitely do 10% if it's for like a charitable event where they're raising money or it's like a nonprofit organization. So we do help nonprofits, charities and churches with those kind of things. And I will do events where we

break even where we don't make any profit on it but we just produce and then it pays for the staff. We just did that for the Rotary Lobster function. which was a lot of work. So it was our first year doing it where we were able to do it, well, we had to do it online because of COVID. And so we still had 200 tickets sold where we were doing the steak and lobster. So we had live lobsters flown in from out east there. And then we had steaks, potatoes, mushroom caps, salads, like everything.

So the staff had to make 150 meals for each person. And that was so much work. And we basically, we got all the cost down. And then I had all the hours logged for what the staff put into it. And then that is what we charged the function. So we don't make a single penny on it. Everyone had a phenomenal dinner. And I feel like that is our business contributing to the community.

So you don't always have to sacrifice where you lose money. But sometimes it's your time and your. effort and what profit you could have made. Yeah, that's got to be such a rewarding experience, but also so tough because you can see everybody working so hard. Yeah. And then it's like, you've done something good, but it's, it's not like that big payout where you go, oh, and now I don't have to.

That was worth it. There you go. Yeah. So I want to talk about Christmas and Thanksgiving are coming up really shortly. And I just want to talk about that because I really hope that people listening come in support during these times because it's Thanksgiving and Christmas, they're celebrations. And I think too often we look at the price tag on it. And we're too focused on that part of it because I want my mom and Rebecca and people we have

over to have this amazing experience where they walk away and they go, I remember that. And it's not about going to Safeway and getting the $13 turkey and the cheapest potatoes and the dollar store gravies. Like, it's about putting in that work. So when they're eating, they're going, wow, like I... You want to sit down after and feel like you have an internal hug. Exactly. And feel good about your body and not feel gross and weighed down.

And, like, if you buy those really cheap meals, that might be something people have to do from, to survive and to cope. They might have to go to Safeway or Walmart or wherever it is. But on these days, we need to take care of ourselves and we need to pamper ourselves a little bit and treat the people. around us well. And I think that that's something where we should talk about the food, because I know people who have been like, oh, like, I'm just going to do it cheap, like, whatever, it's no big deal. I'll do everything from Safeway. And it'll all be put together super easy. It's like, but it's about the story. It's not just about. The effort. Exactly. What did you go and put into it? When you're inviting people over to your home, it's like, are you proud of the work you put

into it? Or do you feel like you were a slave and you're, oh, like, I have to make food for these people. and I don't want to have to do that and you complain about it. But when you're putting in this work and you're like, because Rebecca, when she first showed me the stakes, she was like just looking at me waiting to see exactly how I reacted. And I reacted with like, it was just salt and pepper and it was just perfect. And those experiences, I've had people come over. I've given them the twice baked potatoes and the reaction is just like, this is amazing. And it's like, I like giving, why would you not want to give that to people? Why would you not want to provide that if you're doing a Thanksgiving dinner?

So please tell us about how the turkeys are raised. Tell us how all of it comes about so people can really be excited about giving this to their families on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Anyone that knows me knows I love to cook. And that is how I show my love and bless people is just when I have people over. I just love to just give them a good meal. I want them to feel absolutely full when they're done.

And I agree with you on that. Like when you put that passion, that time behind it, like instead of doing sidekick potatoes, why not just buy a bag of potatoes, peel them, boil them, add some butter, garlic, salt, and pepper, and make your own mashed potatoes. I know it's more work and I know that, but man, it feels great. The stuff going in you, like, it's not a powdered thing now with all the preservatives and extra salt and everything to it, right? So, yeah, the turkeys we have from Rostown Farms in Abbotsford.

It's a third generation farm. they do everything from laying the eggs to hatching them to raising them to doing the butchering to sending them out. So it's a really cool family. And it's all free range outdoor. So you can get a lot of turkeys that are, I have no idea how places can sell turkeys for 69 cents to 99 cents a pound. I really have no idea. Because if you look at the animal itself, should be around maybe $1.89 to $2 per pound just for the animal.

And then you have to pay for the person that has to do the butchering. Then you have to pay for the distribution of it, the feed, everything else for that. How do you get it that cheap? What is that animal being fed? How much room does it have to run around? Like, what do you have to do to cut corners? And why are they so big? You know, someone talking to me, like, why don't you have 30 pound turkeys?

I'm sorry, but that is not a realistic weight unless you have growth hormones in your feed and in that turkey. A lot of times you can tell by the stretch marks. So when you start seeing turkeys and you start seeing stretch marks on them, it means they're growing at a rate that their body cannot naturally process. So, yeah, I don't know. it's it's a crazy question man when when when you see turkeys that are free range are running around they have muscle mass they actually can run they're not like where their breasts are so big that they just fall over they have to like stay like lying on the ground um when you actually see that we are hard pressed to get anything above 22 pounds really hard press like out of a flock of maybe

a thousand birds we might have maybe eight to 20 of them are going to be above the 20 pound mark right And it just depends on how much they're eating and what their genetics are. When you look at humans, the difference, people forget that with all animals, is that everything is completely different. Every beef that I cut up is completely different than the other one, because they all have a little bit different genetics. Some of them might be longer. Some of them might be heavier.

Some of them, you know, they could all be raised the exact same way, but they'll come out different. Yeah. so we do that with the turkeys with rostown on that and we only do fresh so we don't do frozen we don't do butterballs or anything like that but we offer a lot of different stuff for people so I have one person that usually does turduckins and what that means is you do a one cut on the backbone of the turkey and you debone the entire bird from the inside and then so you have a complete boneless turkey, duck, and chicken, and then we make our own different stuffings from

scratch, and we put our own rubs on them, and then you tie them all together. So it's like a big ball of 18 pounds of boneless meat. And it'll normally feed like 25 to 35 people, so people will split it in half and have it for, you know, you can cry back and freeze it for a year and have it for another meal. But now with COVID, it's just now one family. like smaller. So now I'm like, well, I know you're used to that. So why don't I just de bone the turkey breast, butterfly them, stuff them and roll them for you. And then that way you can have, you know, still a unique dinner. Or people that are like, you know, one turkey is too much for me. And I'm like, well, let's cut it in half or let's do pieces, right? And that's the thing when you have a relationship

with your butcher, you can you can get custom things done, right? Yeah. That is so amazing. And that's that part of this conversation I want to I want to tie it in with is culture yeah because I think that that is something you also give to people that food has been something we've been consuming since like the very beginning of time yes and we've had a relationship but it's only in the past hundred years that we've started to know fast food easy cooking like I just watched a history 101 on Netflix about how it went from like microwavable foods into fast food into super fast food and we've developed these weird relationships with food, where we used to sit down, have a conversation, and having a phenomenal meal together. And that's something when you go into the town butcher, it has that culture. You put in work into getting an amazing Christmas tree, bought locally, and you put in work into giving people the unique experience. Like, the stuffing was phenomenal.

And those are the stories. Those are those things two weeks after Thanksgiving. It's like, well, why do we do Thanksgiving? It's like, well, two weeks later, you can tell a story of like, oh, like Thanksgiving was amazing when you get back to work and you get together exactly had a good time with my family and that's something that a lot of people lack like rebecca's shared her experience of kind of lacking that overall arching culture of having belonging to something and having that recipe passed down from three like she doesn't have that same relationship with food and neither do

why and so when we go to the butcher and we get to hear these things about how the meat was treated and these interesting experiences and knowing that the person who's making the decisions cares, and they're not going to put something into their store that they don't believe in. It's not even about whether or not I believe it. It's about, like, I can trust that you would never let that happen on your watch because you care about your customers. Yeah. And so can you tell us more about the culture of the town butcher? And where that's come from? Because that is something that's so unique that you don't get when you go into certain stores. Like I'd say Starbucks has a culture. Yeah. The Yellow Deli has a culture. But a lot

of places. It's just come in, buy our stuff and leave. And we don't want to bother you and you don't want to bother us. So just leave. And you don't do that. You have a connection with your customers. You have, you put in work into the Christmas tree and making sure people feel heard and understood. What is that development been like? Yeah. I find, um, I find sometimes I can be a bit strong, um, with, you know, my excitement on stuff. Like with the Christmas tree, we always got a, we always, uh, take the staff down. We go find the biggest Christmas we can put in our store right and design it and um you know some sometimes that offends people that we have that and and i just tell them like i'm sorry if it offends you this is this is just

what are we're doing for our culture and this isn't to bash any other religion that is celebrating christmas or anything else on it but i feel it's very strong for us to still be able to hold on to our own beliefs our own culture um and still respect people at the same time so there's got to be a balance with all of that. The question, like, I've had a couple times or the response I've had is where customers are like, why should I pay extra for the animals to be treated well? And when I get that question, I instantly feel like saying, this is just not the place for you.

But I use that as an experience to kind of teach people. Um, when I, whenever I make a connection with a farmer, I ask them, what price do you need that you can guarantee that the animals are treated well, that they're fed well, and that your family can survive. And that's a lot of stuff that is missing in this world nowadays. Normally you would go there and say, what's your best price? How much can you offer me? And when can I get it? Those would be your three questions if you want to make profit. Um, and, and, and that's, and that's, is something that if you can make it so that now that farmer does not have to cut corners, you know, when times get rough or something like that and that they can actually survive, then you're building a relationship. I have the same relationship with farmers for 12 years now because of that, because I've cared about them individually. And I think when when people start seeing that, that you can build a relationship with anything, with your staff members. I never want my staff members to feel like a number. I don't do take a number.

at the store because I want people to feel like an individual, not a number at a, at a, at a hospital or something when you're just waiting in line, right? And it's so, it adds a complete different element. You know, we have times when even like before COVID, but you'd have times when you have like 18 or 20 people in the store at one time. And then you're like, who's next? And then everyone looks at each other and like, oh, no, you're next. Go ahead. You know, and you give this ability to have people be kind and respectful. You give them the chance to do that. And I think culture is something that that's why we started the town butchers.

I wanted to bring that old school butcher culture back where you can, you know, talk about your meat, you can see it be cut, you know everything about it. If you go to like any kind of grocery store and you ask the person working there, where's your meat from? they have no idea because it always changes it's where is the best price that is that what that one person's job is to do is get this product at the best price that can be from anywhere so do you want to know where your products from how it's raised how it's treated or do you just want the best deal and I'm not saying that the best deal like people could be having hard

times or need to save up for other stuff or they have big families like I totally understand that but what we sponsor in, and then that's what people need to understand when they come in. I don't, I don't care what everyone else is pricing at. I don't care what specials are here, what people are doing, people ask, can you price match? I'm not here to bargain with you. I have given you the absolute best price that I can, that my staff can be taken care of, that all the farmers can be taken care of, and that our business can stay afloat. my wage has been under 30,000 since the, since the 12 years that I've been here.

Most times I'm making negative money or I'm making anywhere from $2 to $4 an hour as an employee or as a manager working those times. It's not about profit. It's about a legacy. And if you can have that, then everything else will start coming over time. But that time will come when, okay, four more years, my, My government loans paid off. Now that gives me a chunk of money. Now I can increase my wage that way or something, right?

Like you have to put in the time if you want to do something naturally and you have to put in the effort and stick to your plan. And that is when you build the success. The culture nowadays is like, how can I make the most money the quickest? And I'm like, well, by cutting corners. Like it's going to be very hard to come up with something where you can instantly be rich and not have to cut corners because everything takes effort. Everything takes time unless you like develop software that you can sell for millions of dollars,

you know, like those kind of things. Yeah, I'll be in it for the long run. Yeah, but that's that's something that you see with companies like Tentree, where they're doing something really good and I completely support it. But it's all about that little one social cause. And it's a good social cause, but it's just the one where if you, you're shopping at the butcher. You're not just supporting one social cause.

Yeah. Like what we've talked about here is you're supporting the farmer. You're supporting the owner. You're supporting the community within the area. You're supporting single mothers. You're supporting animal being treated better. You're supporting so much that it's never going to be like a 10 tree worth. And for every purchase, we donate this little bit to trees.

Like it's so much that it's hard to put it into one small little, like, ad piece that says, well, we just do this and we help you out. And like, I think that that's so important to be able to go a long form and talk about all the things you're putting work into. Yeah. Because it isn't just one thing. You're supporting the Rotary Club, which supports small businesses. You're supporting so many different areas.

You're making sure animals are treated better so that we don't have to have that social guilt of watching documentaries and being like, hi, I should stop eating meat now. It's like, maybe you shouldn't stop eating meat, but maybe we can do something better. And that's where you had that idea. in 2008 before it was popular and at the worst possible time to have such a forward thinking idea, it would be the financially worst time to have that good idea. And you still followed through and you're still pioneering. Is there other things in the butcher that you're still trying to pioneer with and still be a thought leader? Because obviously you've led the way and now it's all

social standard that we care about where our meets from. What else is going on? Yeah. So that's where I feel like almost like going through midlife crisis at this point, right? Because now that the butcher shop is finally on its feet, I feel like it's, it's finally stable like a kid walking, you know, and now you don't have to watch it as much and maybe dropping it off at school for the first time, right? It's one of those things where, yeah, figuring out where we're going to go next with that. So that's why I wanted to start doing that project that I want to work towards about just having a committee that is able to fundraise and collect funds to to really make a difference in all of the functions needing in Chilwack with that right like I feel that so many people want to make

a difference but they have no idea how right and it doesn't always have to be money it can be volunteer work it can be helping out right like um when you think volunteer you think okay food kitchen and what delivering groceries to a senior or something right like what more can I do. There's so much. And that's what I love about the rotary is like sometimes it's like, okay, we need people to volunteer for building a park or, you know, we're going to increase the outside of the hospice and stuff. Like we, it gives you the ability to reach out with a group of people to make a difference. That's one of the reasons why I did the, uh, um, the shelf up on the top of Mount Tom. And, uh, let's talk about it. Yeah, that kind of backfired, but.

But it was still, it was still an example of you trying to do something within the community that shows that, like, you weren't getting paid for, nobody was making any money. You were just trying to do something nice for the community. It wasn't anything based on advertisement. I didn't even put my name out there. I just put a phone number in case the city needed to contact me or when we were out supplies, someone can just text me and say, you know, oh, you're out of water or toilet trees and stuff.

Can you give a more, a bigger understanding some people might don't know what happened? So, uh, I did Mount Tom for the first time of a while. ago and I just went the front way and I'm just like I just had a little water bottle with me. And I didn't realize how long it was. It's like three and a half kilometers uphill. It's not like super crazy, but it's still a good little workout. And I went in the middle of the day, which was horrible for heat. And I get to the top and I was just, you know, you enjoy the view, but I was just so thirsty and out of water. And then I just kind of ran back down the hill and and didn't get to enjoy it. So I found that there was a back way when I was talking to Sam

Waddington, there's a back way to go up to the top. And so it's still, you know, maybe 20, 30 minutes. And I figured, you know what, why not build a shelf up here? You know, so I went and bought everything for the shelf. I wanted it to look really nice and I kind of tucked it away at the top. And at first, I had like granola bars and different things for people to have a treat, but then people were worried about bears and stuff. So I make sure I stopped doing that. But I had a garbage can and a recycle bin up there and then I had toilet trees. So I had toilet paper in little Ziploc bags and then I had hand sanitizer and gloves and a shovel in case like, you know what? Sometimes you have to go to the bathroom and this way it's not on the trail. It's taken care of. It's clean. You know, put it back in

the garbage, things like that. And then water. I thought it was going to be like once a week I was going to be filling that up because I was bringing up 12 liters of water every time I would do the hike. So 24 water balls. And, uh, well, that's a quite the workout. It is a good workout. Yeah. So, um, so I thought it was going to be once a week. And then it ended up being once every two days. So every two days, all 24 water bottles were gone. Um, and then people were amazing. They were using the, the garbage can. So every time I went up, I would bring water and I would take it down all the garbage, all the recycling. Uh, there was more garbage and recycling than what I would bring up. So it was making a difference in the trail. People were happy. I was getting so many

random texts. Like, I don't know who you are, but thanks for bringing this up. And I really, I really did enjoy it being anonymous. And then the progress heard about it and found out who I was and wanted to do an ad or a little thing on that. And I kind of knew in my heart, I shouldn't have done it like i told them to like could you keep it anonymous and like oh we have to put a name in there and and stuff so as soon as it got there um i i got attacked left right and center like i got attacked from avid hunk avid hikers that uh that told me you know going the back route isn't really even being a hiker and stuff and i'm like well i'm doing it every two days before work and i got 12 liters of water on my back like i'm not doing it you know to say that i

hiked Mount Tom, the frontway with it or anything, right? That's such a weird one to pull on you is because, like, that's a weird area to focus on. Yeah. And so, and then people were mad saying that, you know, you're using plastic and stuff, right? So I totally understand that. But we were recycling the bottles from it. The odd person would, you know, throw the bottle in the, in the... Trash.

Well, just like, yeah, in the woods and something in general. But they would be doing that with their own garbage. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, I feel like for how much we are taking down every time, it was making a better environment. And then the city, the city was really good when they first talked about it. I think I definitely ruffled feathers not asking permission to put that up there. And I totally understand that because, you know, someone goes and puts all that things together,

but then doesn't maintain it. Now it becomes an eyesore, you know, they don't know how. often I'm going to be doing that. So is it garbage piling up or whatever? And and then CBC news contacted me and they wanted to do an article on that as well. So, so I went up there and I used it as an outlet to bring up mental illness through COVID. And that is my goal is I wanted to make people feel cared for through these rough times when it feels like nobody cares and everyone's for themselves. right and so I used it as much of an outlet as I could just to kind of get the thing out to address people like it doesn't matter if you're just giving someone a smile or um you know a hello or

whatever it is or help them take their groceries out like just care about people because mental illness is something that was not discussed very much through COVID and the amount of people having troubles and the amount of suicide that increased uh spousal abuse alcohol abuse drug abuse all those things that increased so much through COVID, just felt like it was missed. So I know I can't cure any of those or all of those. So I just wanted to do something where I felt in the morning like, there, I maybe changed the day for maybe three or four people or something, right? And in the end, there was just too many complaints to the city that they felt that it would

bring more harm than good. And a lot of those came from people that just weren't even hikers or that have never been on the trail. It's just they don't like that that was being done. And that that actually really hurt me because it, they didn't, they didn't take the time to question me directly. You know, instead of asking me directly once they knew who I was and said, you know, like, what, what about the increase of garbage and what about the increase of garbage and what about

the increase of this, you know, like I went to a lot of the environmental stores as well, like the eco-friendly stores to see what I can do for water models or different things, but there isn't anything in that avenue that I can use to keep up there for that, right? So, yeah. Yeah, and then you ended up having to take it down? I had to take it down, yeah. Yeah, that's so frustrating just because that is where community is supposed to come in and we're supposed to have the conversation because there's, and saying that something doesn't work perfectly is not to say that we should undo it all because there's lots of government programs. There's lots of things in our world that don't work perfect. Our criminal justice system does not work perfectly, but we're not getting rid of it anytime soon.

And so having the conversation, having a dialogue, because what it could have been is to start to a conversation. Well, how can we do this in the best way possible? And how can we all come together and start to work together to address this? But instead it was just take it down. And I think that that's where all of your efforts of trying to think of these things goes unnoticed and unacknowledged because let's just undo all the work. And it might have been like, well, how do we do it better? How do we can we do? Can we collaborate?

Can we work together? There's people who I think Sam Waddington is the person who's in charge of that whole area. He's the adopt a trail person for that area. So how do we collaborate and trying to address those issues? How do we bring the hiking community in on this? instead of having them just tear everyone down and say, well, I want it to be a quiet trail that nobody ever goes on. And it's like, well, this is already kind of a busy trail. It's kind of a well-known trail in Chilawak.

It's not a secret. And if you're hoping to keep it that way, that's not going to work. And maybe that's not a good goal. Maybe single mothers need to go for hikes and get, like, there's good reasons to do that. So I'm sorry that that happened. Can we move a little bit more into the military side of things and your personal life? Because the military decision was so interesting. And can you just tell us more about it because we are heading towards.

to remember it and stay. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I think we, I know when you, when you're asking questions about like,

what do we do when we have that pause, right, to remember people? Like, what are, what are you as an individual thinking about in that time, right? Because you have people that literally have made the decision that I may not come

back or I, I may come back with less limbs than I went there with, right? These are all things that go through. This is all things that we're trained in. We're trained to know and get desensitized to know that you are going into a battlefield. You don't have time to think of your loved ones or what's going to happen when you're out there. You know, you could be driving along and hit a landmine. Like things happen, right?

It's one of the things that I don't know what's going to be. to happen with Remembrance Day this year, you know, with people so worried about COVID. And I think people are using COVID for a lot of excuses to make that effort, to still remember, to be kind, to sacrifice, to all those kind of things. And I really hope that no matter where people are, they shut off all their electronics, that they really take the time and appreciate those people that gave their lives that have fought. I was very mad that I never got to. to go overseas and serve and protect in that because I felt like that was a huge part of my life that I wanted to do. And I respect everyone that has. I've seen some of my friends that

have come back that are complete different people that had to kill people that changed who they are and changed their spirit. Like the sacrifice is far beyond just physical. You know, It's people that are constantly dealing with emotional side of things as well. When they come back, how do you fit in after you've been in that? It took years to decompress the training that you're in to, you know, you are trained in the military that there's civilians and then there's soldiers. That's the two difference. You know, so how do you assimilate back into reality and become a civilian as you would?

you know, when you are trained to be a soldier, right? Like, how do you change that? Yeah. Well, and that's one thing that terrifies me is because I went to school, 12 years. I guess I did tons of remembrance days. But I never had the real conversation, which was, it isn't just the fact that these people died, which is basically all I was told was people died so you could be free. And it's like, but what does that mean?

What does that actually look like? And why are we more free now? And that's where I feel like the conversation just doesn't exist is why did they go and fight? What were they fighting for? And what was the threat we were dealing with? And is that still a threat today? And that's where I feel like communism is slowly growing. We're really not happy with capitalism right now.

And capitalism has a lot of flaws. But we've seen what communism does to countries and the financial impacts that it has. And that's what we were fighting is ideologies and ideas. that weren't good, that were ruining and causing people to starve to death, that's what we were, like, it doesn't feel like anybody ever said that to me in school. Yeah, that's good point. And as someone who's trying to understand more and understand the sacrifice, because often we go straight to the people who died. But what were they doing over there? How were they trying to improve things?

What was their mentality when they were going into it? Who did they leave? And how was that family impacted after they did pass? And all of these complex things that we, it's still reason. like World War II isn't 250 years ago. It's like 70 years ago. It's not long enough for us to know so little. Because if you ask someone like, what was World War II about?

It's like, well, Nazi Germany. And it's like, that's very basic, basic information. You don't understand all of the different wars and all of the different battles that were fought. So we can be free. And now I think most people take freedom as the baseline. And that's where I have to give a lot of conservatives credit for is because most conservatives understand that we only have this due to the fact that we went to war and we fought and we fought and we fought really hard and we almost lost.

Like, I don't think we ever talk about, we almost lost. Yeah. And that was a reality. We, um, the United States, I think, did lose the Vietnam War. Yeah. And we don't talk about that either. Yeah. And these realities, and we don't think we could ever go to war again.

And we don't think the draft could ever come back. It happened very quickly. And that's where I feel like as a society, we've become adolescent and not mature because the only people who can tell us these stories and shit. what it's been like and what it is like to currently serve. Like, I only know you and my friend Dan Rob, who I'm also hoping to have on, who have actually been involved in the military and know what it's like to be in today. I drive past the military bases.

There's some up in cultists. There's some throughout the community. And when I point to them and say, like, hey, friend, do you know what that is? No idea. No idea that all of this is still fundamental to us protecting our freedom. And that terrifies me because people look at Trump and accuse him of. of becoming a dictator and say what you will about him, but the issue is that all of this is a political landscape

that is constantly moving and we have to be aware of it. And that's where I feel like we took our finger off the pulse and we're not paying attention anymore. So can you just share what that experience is like to go through and mentally prepare, go home at night and think of like, I could have to go out and I could be on a plane to another country and be involved in things that I have no idea what this community is like and what that's like.

Can you just share so we have a better, more mature understanding. Yeah, that's, yeah, I'll expand on that a little bit, too. It's very hard as a soldier to stop caring about what your beliefs are and now you're taking orders because you have to put all your faith in your leaders. And when you look at like the states, like they've been in war, what, 98 of the last 100 years that they've been, you know, the amount of times they've been in war. well war is a business you know when you look at how many times they're selling weapons to the people

that they're attacking so you sell weapons you know to the people you're attacking then you kill them you take your weapons back sell them again like how many times are people profiting from war right and then as a soldier you get paid peanuts you get treated like crap your food is usually like stale rations or like leftover meals from the RC&P camp or whatever it is, right? Like the funding in, I know, at least for the Canadian military, is very low, right? And when you look at like my, what happened for me, like the reason why I ended up getting out, it wasn't my decision at that time. So I was in there for two years.

I was going to be stationed to Afghanistan. and then I had lost my arches in boot camp. So the boots that we had just had wooden soles in them, they didn't really have any support. So when you have a big rucksack march, a big rucksack on your machine gun, everything else, and you're running, you know, a 10-kilometer run, my feet collapsed at some point, which then wrecked my hips and everything else, my back, everything is getting pinched. So I had gone in there and asked for orthotics. And as soon as I asked for orthotics, well, you can't be.

be in the military if you have flat feet right that but that was a thing back then now you can but at that time you weren't allowed um excuses being that well you can be running on rough terrain and trip and then shoot someone it's like well anyone can do that or whatever it's because you you your balance is off and you can't march as straight as everyone else maybe it won't be as uniformed or whatever um in that instance as as a soldier like it's like okay well now you can't be act so you can't go overseas, you know, you don't really have medical and dental now and schooling and stuff, right? So I had to fight for two years in veteran court for that. And I was at the age of 18. So I had to dig up, they gave me a veteran lawyer who didn't do too much. So I had to

write letters to the hospital in New Brunswick. And I had to get the chief of staff there to write me a letter to show like my medical files and everything else. And it's like the thing that you see on TV and movies all the time that all the sudden something happens and then all the knowledge of that person disappears, you know, and in the end of it, I went to court three times and then they're like, well, you had arches when you came in, but you had some kind of arch syndrome that we aggravated it and they collapsed. And then so here's a $2,000 check and then you can get free insoles, you know, once every two years for the rest of your life. That's my lifetime of back pain and knee problems and feet problems is now, here's $2,000.

Even though you were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, and you've had that mindset, and we've chosen to hand $2,000 in color a day. Yeah. So when you look at the people sacrificing and then you look at these vets that are fighting for support and they're fighting for movements and respect and finances in where they need them or what they are promised. and then you get these governments that come in and start cutting everything. And now they're sending millions upon millions of dollars overseas and at different countries

and everything else. Yet you're veterans that are fighting for you and your rights. When you yourself haven't served, you know, as Justin or whatever, you know, you yourself haven't served or done anything to know what people have sacrificed and done. Yet how long have they been fighting? I have a lot of vet friends that are fighting, you know, for their rights and for their paychecks and stuff and and the amount of slashes and cuts that they have to deal with after putting that time in it's disgusting yeah especially because like it's not we like we like to

imagine when somebody talks about going to war in these things is the battlefield we imagine like a like a flat terrain and they're standing out there with a gun like yeah the person prior to that is waking up every morning going in training you're scared every day because you know what could come and you know what responsibility you have and then you talk to people today and if the draft were to come back I know people who would fold and who would have no idea what to do

if like there's so many complexities to this world that we're not ready for. Rebecca and I were looking into solar flares and the next one is like 2025 and that will shut down everything that I'm doing right now and I'm not prepared. I don't have any resources

for that but and that's what frustrates me about remembrance days because we say the words, but it's a mouthpiece to none of us know what it's like to go into the military training centers and what people go through each day, what childhoods people may have faced when having to make those decisions because you have to be a hardened, strong person to say, I'm going to enroll in the military. You cannot be a person who's like, I'm going to risk my life and may die. Yeah.

It's not an immature decision to make. It's the ultimate decision to make. and you have such a responsibility after making that decision because then it isn't just about you because once you when you're signing up maybe it's like if I die I die but then when you're working with people and you're like but if I if I make the wrong call then they die and those are decisions that build a person and that's why we need to remember is because all of that went into the development of an individual who is willing to defend your right to have freedom of speech And I hear that thrown around so much as if somebody's being victimized for having to say thank you or having to say certain kind things.

It's like that's not what people were fighting for when they were fighting for freedom of speech. They weren't fighting for your right to just lip off on Facebook. That's not what their mindset was when they were losing their life for that fight. And that's what scares me is because it doesn't seem like we have any tethering to that reality anymore of like we were fighting for that because in Nazi, Germany, you weren't allowed to have your own opinion. And if you did, you were murdered on the streets and your baby was murdered. Your whole family was thrown into like a fire. And that was what was going on. It doesn't seem like we think of that as like humans couldn't do that. And it's like humans did. You're a human. We have to monitor our behavior. What is that like? Do you ever talk

to people and you go like, I can't believe you don't realize the back end? Yeah. I think the biggest thing that the two biggest things that really bug me coming from my upbringing and then the military training and then just who I am today is the two biggest things is, is the disrespect level is huge. You know, like everything from if you're walking with your partner, make sure you're on the outside of the sidewalk, you know, just things like that. Like be the protector, things like that. Opening doors.

Exactly. Open the doors to the car when you're on a date, things like that. I don't know how many times I'm walking with my wife and we're going down a sidewalk and then there's two kids that are coming by just want to separate us, go in between us, not like move to the side, not do anything. Even as we're moving away, they're like not even making any effort whatsoever to care about anyone else other than themselves. And that disrespect level is why I feel like, you know, some countries have it right where they have boot camp training. It's not like everyone in that boot camp training goes to war or anything, but they learn life lessons,

integrity, discipline, respect, things that are so lacking nowadays because we are a society that just gives, gives, gives what people want. If they don't want, they'll make a big scene and then they'll get it after. If they don't like it, they'll make a big social media expert in the social media thing and then we'll have to cave and stuff, right? like what are we training like who are we teaching these days for kids um you know if you see someone in need are you going to stop and help or are you are you going to make a difference or are you just going to be like ah what a loser you know blah blah blah blah blah I'm going to go play

fortnight right like it's like the empathy level is just so low and you know how many times when you're at um when you're at remembrance day there and you're standing there and yes the parades are There's a lot of people to remember. There's a lot of regiments to acknowledge all that stuff. And you see people constantly looking at their watches or leaving early or this or that. And it's just like, this is one time of the year where you can just live your life in respect of someone else that had died or that now is living a lifetime of pain and suffering emotionally or physically. And you cannot put yourself together for a couple hours. hours. Right? It's hard. And that's how I grew up was having that mindset of like, can we get

out of here? Are we done here? Yeah. But then it's raining. I'm not going in there to respect. Like no one had to live in ditches, like in trenches with rats and mud and snakes and everything else. And you're worried about standing in the rain with an umbrella. Yeah. And a Starbucks in your hand. Yeah. Which is what we fought for. Like none of the things that we enjoy now would exist without those sacrifices, like, I can't name how, like, Volkswagen. It came from, like, it's crazy that that came from Nazi Germany. And we just expect it. And we just expect the next model to come out the next year.

And we have this relationship with laptops, phones, all of these things that we just expect. But that, most of that technology came from the revolutions within World War II. And we have untethered ourselves and we don't want to remember the details. Like, I've heard some horrendous stories of what soldiers went through during the, times of like one of the craziest ones was that they had somebody in like a freezer standing with their arms out and they would stand in there for hours yeah then they would take them out stand them in the cold and then pour hot water and watch their skin burn and like that is incomprehensible to me that that happened and that human beings did that and

then for us to not take the moment to not pause yeah and reflect and realize that there are people within our own communities that have made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can be free so we can have these dialogues. Yeah. But it's not about quickly like saying like, oh, I remember and I'm wearing a poppy so like I'm good. It's like it's actually about going through and learning the lineage of how many people sacrifice themselves in Chilliwack. Yeah.

What was that like for them and how many communities are still impacted by the loss of their grandfather because of that? We don't know. We don't seem to care. And that terrifies me because. Bad things are going to happen. And if we don't have a connection to where we're from, we're not going to be able to get together and work together as a community.

You need to remember the past to move on to the future. So what is your remembrance day experience like typically just for yourself? Yeah. So my wife's dad, he passed away a couple years ago there, but he's a war vet. And we would go down there with him. We'd go down the mass after and we'd sit with the groups, socialize. Like the biggest thing you can do, I would say is, is communicate, talk. You know, some of these people don't have families or families that just have ignored them or something,

right? Bring them flowers, things like that. I love going early, getting a good spot and making sure that you're there to respect and to see and to listen and to hear. But also just open your heart, take out everything in your mind. That's the biggest thing. As soon as ideas start going in your head, especially when you're like me and they're all over the place, is make a mental note to physically get those out of your head so that you are concentrating on the event itself. And I think the biggest thing is just feel it. That's all I ask, that's all most people ask, is just feel what people are doing and then try to, try to better the lives of someone that has sacrificed, right? Like bring someone flowers,

care about someone, you know, um, whatever, have a talk, write a letter. Um, there's a lot of vets in, in Chilliwack. You know, there's a lot of people. I'm sure you can, um, go down to the army base and then just ask, you know, is there, is there any way we can find out, you know, someone that we can mail letters or flowers to, maybe get them to mail them out so you don't know the addresses or something, you know, so it's more private. But just ways that you can really touch an effect, um, just different groups, right? Like the Lions Club and things like, that there's so many different groups