Shaun Newman Podcast - #1101 - Karli Friesen

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Karli Friesen is co-owner and operator of Prairie Wild, a regenerative orchard and market garden in Kleefeld, Manitoba, that supplies organic-style produce to Churchill Wild’s polar bear ecolodges and local CSA customers. The daughter of Churchill Wild co-founders Mike and Jeanne Reimer, she previously served five years as head chef at Seal River Heritage Lodge, is a fifth-generation small-business owner focused on holistic, no-spray agriculture, and is a homeschooling mom of four who draws on Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy.Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Brett Weinstein. This is Tom Lomago. This is Bruce Party. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is Dr. Pierre Corey. Hi, this is Frank Paredi. This is Danielle Smith.

This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crow and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Happy Wednesday to all you find folks. Happy hump day and hope everybody is doing well. We're sitting still recording this. We're just packing up for Grand Beach. So we decided to spend the morning instead of taking off early.

It was a beautiful day here. It is hot again. I'm sweating profusely. And while we decided to hang out for the morning and let the kids go swimming and play themselves out, we'll get into all that. I've been exploring lots of different conversations with not only people staying here at the campground, but, you know, even walk around. You can imagine my wife's eye rolls as I bump into people and continue to have the conversations with just regular everyday Manitobans about what they're seeing in their province.

And I think, you know, if you're worried about, you know, inflation, money printing, all those wonderful things, maybe not so wonderful, there's this thing called precious metals that can help, you know, against that. And I point you towards silvergold bull, of course, silvergoldbull.ca here in Canada, silvergoldbull.com down in the States, when you're looking to get into precious metals and protect your hard-earned assets, well, they ship Canada wide. All you got to do is hop online and order to rate off their website, ships right to your doorstep.

And if you've got questions, whether it's buying, selling, or storing precious metals, head down in the show notes. You can find Graham. You can text or email them there, and he'll give you answers to all your questions that you could possibly have. When it comes to banking, later this week, you're going to hear Jossam Berziak. She's got her story with banking and building houses and everything else in Manitoba.

And so to my Manitoba friends, there's this bank in Alberta called Bow Valley Credit Union and it's all about lending deposits and real financial advice. You can open accounts, talk through lending options, and get help with banking on a space design for conversations and not transactions. And if you want smarter banking with gold, silver, Bitcoin, sound money, and personal freedom, you've got to think BVCU. And for all your banking needs, head to Bow ValleyCU.com.

These two companies, once again, teaming up to bring the Cornerstone Forum back to Calgary, Alberta. That is May 15, 2027. So mark your calendars. And if you've been wondering who to trust with your savings, integrated wealth management out of Calgary, they're a full-service wealth management firm that actually manages money, watching client portfolios daily, making real-time adjustments when markets change.

And they follow this, you know, guy named Martin Armstrong. And I was actually just texting with Martin. He did his conference with university students. Sounds like it was a huge hit. And if that sounds like, oh, that sounds very interesting. Well, going back to integrated wealth management, they see the same things you and I see. Massive government spending, rising instability, a lot of risking government debt.

So they use tools like precious metals and commodities to help protect your purchasing power. Most importantly, they work with people who share their values, family, community, hard work, living within your means, and personal freedom. If that sounds like you, go check them out at i-dashwealth.ca. That's i-dash-wealth.ca. And see if integrated wealth management is the right fit for you and your family. Back home in Lloydminster, Diamond 7 Meats is a family-run business with over 27 years of service, offering one. More than just retail cuts, they provide livestock processing for farmers and ranchers in Saskatchewan, and Alberta, including custom sausage making for both domestic and wild game.

And if you don't have your own animals, no worries, their retail sales can connect you directly with producers, offering sides or quarters of beef, pork, and lamb, and they can get you just hooked up to fill your freezer. If you're in town, they're on the north end of town, highway 17 and 67th Street North, or you can give them a call at 8-306-8-25-9718. That's Diamond 7 Meats. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, X, Facebook, Substack, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review. If you're enjoying the show, share with a friend.

If you're new to the show, shoot me a text. My phone number is down on the show notes. Love hearing from all of you. And, yeah, it's been fun on the road here, folks. Manitoba has not disappointed. It's been a ton of fun getting to know and run into just people, everyday people from around Manitoba. And I think it's leaving a lasting impression on me,

and I can assume so for the kids. They've been enjoying every beach, and they don't seem to want to leave anywhere we have been stopping. Of course, the SMP Road Trip is powered by Zeebs. That's a family owned and fine-tuned in Chesterner, Alberta. Zebs Performance Restoration delivers expert classic car restorations, custom exhaust, and performance upgrades that keep your ride reliable and roaring. That's Zane Southgate and his dad, Brian.

You can find them at zeebs.ca. That's what I got for you today. All right. If you haven't subscribed to Substack, you really should. Tanner Nadey's Masterclass has been released on there. The first couple episodes are now out. That's for paid subscribers. If you're not a paid subscriber, no worries.

There's tons of freebies there. The week in review kind of gives you a summary of what's going on. And then all the episodes come out there as well. Any notes from the trip have been published there as well. It's free to subscribe to, folks. It's an email once a day, essentially, just keeping you up to date on the podcast. All right. That's what I got for you today.

Let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest co-owns and operates Prairie Wild, a sustainable orchard market garden and produce farm. She's also a homeschooling mom of four. I'm talking about Carly Freezing. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newmpa.

I'm joined by Carly Friesen. So Carly, thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. It's funny because I've been to your place once before, and I'm sure the first time I joke we're the Newman tornado with my kids coming, running in and everything else. But this is the second time I've been here,

which is strange to kind of think about because, you know, I'd never been to Clefeld before. And then Peter had invited me up doing some work on the new studio. And on that journey up here, they were camping here, if memory serves me, correct? And so our kids came out and swam in your swim pond, and we had a nice journey up.

nice little afternoon and then we carried on and I'm sure you're like who the heck was that and then for a year later to be asked to hey would you go on this and talk about um some of not only your life but some of the things you've been doing with your family uh I think it's pretty cool now that all being said um for the audience just tell us a little bit about yourself uh you know so they kind of get a feel for who carly is you want me to start at the beginning yeah I do um well I I was born and raised in Churchill, Manitoba. As far as I know, I am one of four children worldwide raised at a Polar-Eco-Lodge. My parents started Pol-Bair Ecotourism Lodges when I was one years old.

So I grew up with Polar Bears on my doorstep. We knew we weren't allowed to yell bear when we were playing outside. knew to always walk behind the man with the gun. And yeah, it was a very different childhood. There was lots of adventure. It was the Wild West back then, so we had a lot of freedom as long as we stayed in the compound. And stayed behind the man with the gun.

And stayed behind the man with a gun. So, yeah. But we swam with beluga whales, and we saw the northern lights. And we saw things that people. Lots of people never get a chance to see, and those that do pay a lot of money to see it, and we just lived it. So that's pretty amazing. There was fishing and hunting lodges as well, so I grew up fishing and hunting, and it was a pretty idyllic life for me. It was a lot of hard work.

It was a lot like growing up on a family farm. There was just always work. Yeah, I grew up on a family farm with cattle and grain and chickens and different. things like that polar bears out my front door wasn't uh i don't know i would say like obviously now folks a couple interviews ago you heard a bee farmer and he was talking about growing around bees and i was like man this is just like almost surreal it's what i've always wanted to hear and then i didn't know this part about your story of growing up on a a polar bear ranch that's probably the wrong way to say it but i'm like can't imagine you just walk you know like one of my

the things I played when I went to Wisconsin I was playing hockey and we were we had this game in the one class you had to tell two truths and a lie and my lie was that I grew up with polar bears out my front door and I just thought all these kids were just that that's the one they thought that was a truth like these people are nuts right but then I listen to your story and I'm like oh maybe not because in this province you know certainly a little ways how far north from where we sit is where you grew up This is one of those questions that I don't want to get wrong, but I think it's like a thousand kilometers north. Yeah, so it's just north of 58 degrees latitude. So it's like probably a solid 10 hours of driving?

There are no roads. So it's an eight-hour drive to Thompson, and then you can take the train, which is 14 to 24 hours long, depending on how the tracks are doing this year. Or you can fly from Thompson. What do you mean the tracks are doing? The train tracks. If the tracks are bad, the train trip is longer. That's all. So a quick trip from Thompson to Churchill is 14 hours by train.

What I guess I'm confused about is when you say it depends on how the train tracks are doing. I think of snow, but then I go, well, the snow should be all gone, I think. I think the main issue actually, I think, don't quote me on this, I think it's permafrost. I think the tracks heave and so you have to slow down, the train has to slow down to make it over the tracks. where they're not as, oh man, somebody from CN is going to be mad at me for saying this. But I'm sure they keep the tracks very well maintained. But some years, it's a 24-hour trip from Thompson to Churchill. So do you take the train?

Or does everybody fly or try to fly? Or is it expensive to fly? It's incredibly expensive to fly. It's more the year that I went to Johannesburg when I was 17, it was cheaper to fly round trip to Joe Berg than Churchill. from Winnipeg. That is wild. Yeah, it is wild.

But there's one main airline that flies, so that's how it goes. But when I was younger, my family and I would, we would take trips down south here. My dad's family is in this area, and we always took the train. So we would always do the train trip overnight, and then we would drive from Thompson down to the Winnipeg area. it wasn't until we were older and, you know, I guess making more money that we started being able to fly. But when I was a kid, it was always a train. It was great. We love taking the train.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, train is just like lots of different modes of transportation. If you don't have to take it all the time, it can be a lot of fun. At times, we'll see how this road trip goes. My kids are starting to be annoyed by longer drives. the start, they were on this, like, extremely happy to get in the vehicle. Let's go and let's have some fun. And I'm sure that'll drag on and it'll wear off probably sooner than I think. I assume the train's the same way, right? Like on a big excursion, it'd be a lot of fun. We had a great time. I don't even remember if my parents, I'm sure they did pack activities and books and whatever for

us, but people didn't do that when I was a kid growing up the same way they do now. You know, like if I take my kids on a one hour drive, I'm packing a box of like books and snacks and drinks and whatever. My parents didn't do that. They were like stare out the window, enjoy yourself. So that's what we did. We stared out the window a lot and watched the scenery go by, which was gorgeous. And we made a lot of trips to the dining car because we thought that was hilarious. So that was how we entertained ourselves until we got to Thompson. What was hilarious about the dining car? there were always interesting people and the food was so unusual when you say unusual i'm going to just keep asking uh well this is this is one of those like um it's it's not i grew up on all homemade food

my my grandmother is a cookbook author um and she takes a lot of pride in in cooking very good food she uses a lot of wild meat goose and caribou and moose and all kinds of stuff i grew up eating all that so it was a real novelty to be on the train and be able to go get a muffin in a package that was literally it we just thought it was so funny yeah but you you think we didn't get out much no yeah but you just think of where you grew up like that's um to have that childhood and then to be able to walk into like a supermarket today and see i don't know i used to think i probably at still don't fully understand how unhealthy lots of the things in there are. But certainly I do understand how unhealthy a lot of the aisles are.

I'm like, man, don't go down that aisle. That is, that is not good. And where you come from originally, that just doesn't sound like it was part of your childhood, right? Like it just doesn't sound like you could just walk into the superstore and grab, I don't know, pre-made muffins and I don't know, there was a lot of junk there. We had, I mean, we have grocery stores in Churchill just like everyone else, but that wasn't how we were fed growing up. You know, there wasn't a lot of, a lot of candy or anything like that in our lives.

But that being said, like the fresh fruits and vegetable options in Churchill were always limited. Like when I grew up, I mean, this is kind of an aside here, but we grow 17 varieties of apples on this. property when I was growing up in Churchill, I thought there were two varieties of apples in the whole world. There was Red Delicious and there were Granny Smith, and that's all you could ever get at the grocery store. And now looking back, I realized they tasted awful. But at the time, I just, you know, that's just how it is. When my sister was 14, she came down to Winnipeg with my mom and they got like a snack lunch from the airport. And she bit into a piece of celery that was part of her lunch and it snapped and she looked at my mom was like what's wrong with this celery and my mom's

like what are you talking about and my sister was like well celery is like bendy you know like it's supposed to be squishy and mom was like no that's not what celery's like so it was like that growing up in churchill you know like the grocery quality was um was limited in the store but we had like i said we grew up on fresh fish and caribou and we pick blueberries and cloudberries and cranberries and so we didn't really need the grocery store what is a cloud berry um a cloud berry is uh uh it looks like a raspberry but it is sort of an orangey peach color um and the bush like the plant that it grows on only grows about this high and it's really just a berry and a leaf on a stem um and And some people call them bake apples.

And we mainly use them for cloudberry jelly and cloudberry jam at our lodges. And they grow abundantly along the Hudson Bay Coast. Growing up beside polar bears as a guy who grew up in the prairies and knows nothing about polar bears, you talk about, you know, like don't yell bear, stand behind the man with a gun. being around polar bears that much were they I don't know just can you tell me anything about them like I you know I hear people going up there I hear how expensive it is I'm beginning to understand why that is when you know trying to get up there is difficult

but the bears themselves like for people who have never been and watch the odd documentary talking about polar bears and that type of thing I mean you grew up beside them what comes to mind when you're you know You think back to your childhood around polar bears, like, were they an aggressive animal, or were they just pretty peaceful and just kind of roamed around? What comes to mind when you ask me that question is my dad. My dad was our shelter and our captain in all ways when we were out and about on the land. And as long as my dad was around, I didn't really care what was happening. he was so capable and and we just knew we were safe. So he, since my childhood, he has been,

he has been approached by many different groups to facilitate training for polar bear guides and polar bear guards in the Churchill area because he pioneered on the ground walking tours with bears when everybody else was doing tours from buggies, like so that the tourists were. always looking down on the bears. My dad wanted to get people at eye level with them. And lots of people thought that was dangerous and it couldn't be done. But we, but he just was so good at it. He had such an intuition for the bear's behavior. And so we just knew that if we were with him, everything was fine. And we, like in my whole childhood, we never had any, close encounters that I thought were scary or have you asked your dad about that like to be

approached as like hey could you do some training and like you just talk about like when he was around he was very capable didn't have a worry and have you asked him about like what is it you see when you look at a polar bear or they're just behaviors I don't know but you know when you spend like um like i grew up afraid of cows and i'm still kind of afraid of cows i don't like them i heard a story once of somebody getting trampled by a cow and i decided that cows were terrifying so but when i heard stories about people being mauled by polar bears i didn't that didn't make the polar bears scary and i think it's just because of proximity and just being with them so um you know when you spend when you spend any amount of time around an

animal or that amount of time around an animal, you start to know them, to read them a little bit. And so even as a child, I would be out with my dad going for a walk or whatever. And even before my dad said something, I would know if this bear was going to be aggressive or if this bear was just curious because of their body language. You know, if they're just curious, they kind of give you a sidelong glance, then they might sniff the air a little bit. And then they'll just kind of wander off. they're not really interested in you.

But if they're really interested, especially if there's a small person around that they think would be an easy mark or something like that, they'll put their head down and stare you down basically. And those are the kind of bears that we needed to be more cautious around. But, yeah.

It's funny because, like, growing up around cattle all my life, I think I would speak of dad the same way. I always felt safe when dad was around because he could register. or even checking cows in the middle of winter as a kid. I used to love going out, probably because I thought I was staying up past bedtime. Because, I mean, it was miserably cold and you're checking to see if, you know, any new calves are on the ground and different things like that.

And he could always recognize when you're like, don't go around that cow. That cow right there. And the way you're talking about your father around bears, you know, and actually, thinking back to the interview with Tim, talking about bees and how they operate, I mean, obviously different, but when you're around an animal or an insect as much as they are, you start to see the behaviors and start to recognize patterns. And that's really interesting. That's, I don't know, I would love to go to Churchill.

Like, to me, like, it seems like a different world, right? Like, how many people live up there, like, year over year? less than a thousand i think it's uh i think the population might be around 800 right now i'm not sure um it was seven to eight thousand when the army was in town um years and years ago like 60s um but once they left the population plummeted plummeted and hasn't ever you know like i said the the industry there's not a lot of industry up there um right now hopefully with the reopening of the port that will change. Yeah, well, we were talking about before we got here,

because I didn't know this. I'd be curious anyone to do this, that there's actually cruise ships now going into the Hudson. I was like, A, that's probably a very expensive cruise. But two, like, wouldn't that be something to go up there? Like, you know, I'm saying to my wife's families from Minnesota and they talk about doing an Alaskan cruise. And I think that'd be really cool.

But nobody, I've never heard of Canadian, go, oh, yeah, I'm going to do a cruise in the Hudson. Like, really? Like, that is, I didn't even know that existed. It's amazing how many Canadians think of Canada in terms of the West Coast and the East Coast. And my dad says this a lot too, where it's like nobody thinks about the Middle Coast. But Canada has three coastlines. And, I mean, I guess four if you're counting the Arctic Ocean. But the Hudson Bay is like a different world.

you know you hear like everyone has seen dolphins and everyone has seen orcas and they're beautiful animals in their own right um but you know i've touched a beluga whale and i've swam with beluga whales and they're just a different animal and and they're one of those like um you know you should go to churchill just for the beluga whales like polar bears are not just there's there's so it's so unique up there. It's such a unique, unique place. And Manitobans and Canadians just don't really think about Churchill, which is interesting because worldwide Churchill is a phenomenon, but in Canada, people kind of forget about it. Yeah, you think of all the tourist industry push for not only the coasts, but the mountains, right? How much money has been sunk into opening up the tourist

industry there. You think in Churchill, like when you're talking about it, the fact you can't just drive there is, I'm sure there's very good reasons why you can't just drive there. But at the same token, you're like, if they open that up, it could become a huge tourist boom for the area because people do want to experience that stuff. It's just that it's obviously not accessible would be the easiest answer, right? Yeah, accessibility would be a big one. And obviously having the cruises, um, opens that up in a different way, obviously, you know, for a particular set of pocketbooks, but, um, like has, has any, like, provincially, has any leader ever talked about opening it up? Do you know, I, I, I have no idea. Like putting a road through? Yeah, or, or,

or just finding a way to, like, this sounds ignorant, probably, is probably the safest word for all you Manitobans listening, but I think about it, and I'm like, if you were the leader of Manitoba, you go, how do we attract people coming to Manitoba? Because I can safely say from my time out west and playing hockey out in Ontario, nobody thinks of stopping in Manitoba. I was very excited when I was coming back up from Minnesota. I'm like, I'm going to spend some time in Manitoba and get to talk to some people. But I've never gone, you know, when we biked Canada 20 years ago now, we went just south of Winnipeg. We went into Winnipeg, but then we stuck to some of the quieter roads instead of staying on the main highway.

But like I've never been north of Winnipeg. And, you know, here in a couple days, we go north. And I'm pretty excited about that because I've never experienced northern Manitoba. And, you know, I'm thinking of people at West. Oh, I'm sure there are people that have gone. But like, by and large, people don't think of going and exploring northern Manitoba. They just, I've never heard that. And you think if you were the leader of Manate,

Manitoba, you're the premier. You're Wob Cano right now. It's like, well, how do we change the image of what Manitoba is? You open up a huge tourist spot that has something no other place in Canada can offer, I would think. No other place in the world, actually. It is unique in the entire world in the accessibility to polar bears and beluga whales once you are in the town. I don't know if there has ever been a leader who suggested putting a road through. I would guess that there has been, but, you know, we sometimes laugh at what Minnesota's license plate slogan is land of 10,000 lakes, right? 10,000 lakes, yes. We've always laughed at that because Manitoba's land of 100,000 lakes. And once you get past, I guess, say, Thompson area, flying north from Thompson, it's

just lake after lake after lake little ponds everywhere it's um you know the remains of lake agassiz um and it just looks like puddles everywhere so to put a to put a road through that would be no small thing and that i i'm guessing that's why it has never happened is just because of the um the tundra the permafrost the water it would be a hard thing um okay um okay I had no idea I was going to talk so long about this. Not that it's been long. I just, I guess,

you know, when I was talking to Jess about you, she'd brought up homeschooling, right? And I was like, oh, okay, you know, you have four kids.

You're now living in Cleefeld. You guys run a very successful business from the outside looking in. You know, I had a tour of it last time we went around. And I, when I was talking, and sorry for listeners,

there's Jess is Peter's wife. I was like, well, you know her well. What would you ask her about? She's like, oh, full stop, homeschooling. And so I guess, I'm curious then, did you ever get homeschooled as a kid? I know, I already know the answer, but for the audience,

let's maybe start there before we get to where you're at today. Yes, I was homeschooled as a kid. I had a fairly non-typical school, career. I was an early reader and that got me points at that age. I skipped a grade and ended up, so I skipped a grade and then was in school for a year and then ended up homeschooled for a year and then was back in school for a couple years and there was some bullying situations going on that I was getting involved in and I asked my mom to pull me back out of school because even at that young age I didn't like the person I was becoming and I didn't want to take part in that anymore but I didn't

know how to how to deal with that in a school setting so my mom very kindly took me out of school and I spent the next two years I would do school in the morning two to three hours of school I would get it done as fast as I could because I was I started working at the age of I don't know, maybe 10 or so. I started working for two local dog mushers. I was obsessed with dog sledding. I was convinced I was going to run the Adidirot in Alaska someday or the Yukon Quest or something like that.

So I figured I should start my career young. So for those two years of my schooling grade 6 and 7, I was in the dog yard as many afternoons a week as I could be, scooping dog poop mostly at first. But when I was 12, they let me start running my own team. And that was like a dream come true for me. And I never went very far. But anyway, back to school.

That was part of my education. That's the thing. Sticking on dogs for a second. So you wanted to do some of the, I don't know, most adventurous dog races on the planet, I would assume. Did you finally get your team? and it just wasn't what you thought it would be? No, something much, much worse happened to me.

I became a teenager and I discovered boys. Yeah, it wasn't a good trade. So when I was 12, my parents moved us down from Churchill to Kleefeld for various reasons. And I was devastated. because I thought my dog sledding career was going to come to a screeching halt. I went back into public school for grade eight, and my parents let me purchase my first Siberian Husky that year.

So I started putting together, they bought me a dog sled from a local dog musher down here in Cleefeld, or sorry, in this area. And I would run my dogs in town here. There's a church across the street. There's some trails back there. I used to go down all the time. And so I did that, and I kept that dream alive until I was about 15 years old. And then right around 15 years old, it really was like I discovered boys.

And taking care of dogs just seemed like a lot of hard work. And that's it. And that's it. And that's it. I sold all my dogs. I still have my harnesses and my gang lines, and I still have my dog sled. And every farm dog that we've, every farm dog that we've, ever had on this yard has been hooked up to that dog sled and pulled my kids around.

But the dream of the Adidirot and the Yukon quest is over. Sorry. So you homeschool in grade three and grade six and seven, correct? Correct. And then you mentioned like, you know, I was turning into somebody I didn't want to become. It strikes me as like, that's a young age to figure that out. maybe I'm wrong on that. I don't know.

I can't say. It just seems like a really mature thing for a kid to be like, I just don't like who I'm becoming. I think I just knew that it was wrong. I knew that what I was doing was wrong and what we as a class. There were two kids in particular that everyone picked on. And like Churchill Manitoba is not a, is not a healthy town as far as relationships go.

So the kids in my class came from pretty rough backgrounds. They had lots of trouble at home. I'm not surprised that the class atmosphere turned out the way that it did. But I think I just knew that it was wrong. And like I said, I didn't know how to navigate that in that school setting because I was very afraid of being bullied myself. And I had really enjoyed homeschooling. And I knew that if I homeschooled, I had way less work to do

because I could get it all done in two or three hours instead of having to sit in a desk for the whole day. So it just seemed like the best thing to do. So when you fast forward to becoming a mother and having kids of your own, now you have four, did you ever give thought of putting your kids in public school or you were like I'm going to homeschool them? No, when my son was, my oldest is 12 now, when he was going into his kindergarten year, my husband and I, my husband did not grow up with a positive homeschool influence at all.

He had one like distant relation who homeschooled and their family was an absolute mess and the kids were really weird. and so that was his experience with homeschooling. So he wasn't really sure about it, but he was kind of leaving the decision up to me, and I was kind of 50-50. Maybe he would go to public school. Maybe he wouldn't. And then I was looking up the kindergarten curriculum, I guess, for our area,

and somewhere on the website said that the kindergartners each had their own iPad to work with during the day. and my heart just went, nope, that's not going to be my kid. I'm not sending him to school so that he can learn how to use another screen. There's more to life than screen use, and he's five years old, and he doesn't need this to be a part of his everyday life. We don't use screens every day in our home for our kids anyway, so I wasn't about to send him off to do that.

So that was the deciding factor for me was just the iPad. Well, in fairness, you were asking me questions about different parts of the podcast where I started. And my research into social media, screen time, different, you know, it's just crazy to me because I can watch my child change right in front of me by being on a screen. And it doesn't take that long, 10 minutes, maybe less. you know like even their face flushes from watching a screen and it's really unnerving to me you know as our society embraces more screens screen time kids having cell phones at a crazy young age their interaction with social media all the different things I'm just like you know I don't want nope like we're going to be very you know like we're going to be very you know like up until we got to Minnesota, I was chuckling. Because, you know, like back home, I don't want to act like I can stand on a box and talk to the crowd. It's like, no, we certainly had our screen, and we had our one TV that we watched at home,

and we spent a lot of family time with different kids' movies and different things like that. But when we got on the road, we spent the first probably 14 days. And did they go on a screen? I mean, yeah, I'm sure part of their consequences when they were acting out was just no screens. Like, it was just easy. And every time I got to knock 10 minutes off, I was like, oh, 10 more minutes, don't bother me any. You're losing it. And yet we didn't sit down, you know, being on the road, everything's outside.

You've got a 21-foot little space. You're not sitting in there for too long because we all know kids. They get cooped up in that. They're climbing the ceiling anyway. So you're kicking them out. You're hiking, you're going to different lakes, you're finding ways to explore and burn that energy elsewhere. And that's been like really enjoyable. And then we got to Minnesota and there was a TV in the cabin.

And it was almost an enjoyable experience to just, oh yeah, and we could watch a movie. But we don't have to. Whereas back home, it became almost a pattern. And certainly for a mom to be like, yeah, they're just not going to be in kindergarten and have their own screen. That doesn't surprise. I think that makes a lot of sense, to be honest. Well, and growing up in Churchill and particularly at the remote lodges that my parents operate, I didn't have screens and technology as a regular part of my growing up life. Like we for probably the first, probably until I was about 15, my parents ran a generator for power and the generator went off at 10 o'clock every night.

So at 10 o'clock, there was no power anywhere. We didn't have internet until I think I was about 12 years old at the lodge. And I was really disappointed. I was really sad when we got internet at the lodge because I knew that I would be tempted to be on MSN Messenger with my friends and whatever else. And one of the things I loved- Good old MSN messenger, that's a throwback. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Kids today don't know what they're missing.

But one of the things I loved about going up to the lodge was getting away from all that and like having that disconnect and even as a young teenager I knew that that was one of the things I loved about the lodge was just being away from it all and um you know we had we had employees who struggled with different internet addictions and whatever else who counted on those three months away from the internet to just breathe and just for three months not struggle with anything and you can just you know enjoy creation and enjoy relationships and enjoy other things and not be distracted by all that, that was like... Shout out to Drew Weatherhead, who might be listening to this.

He's a guy who's been on the podcast lots. And he's just written his... It's his fourth book now, but his second in his fictional series. And Peter was laughing at me. He was driving because, you know, one of the things, as you're talking, I hadn't really thought about, but majority of my interviews up until we laughed, have been on a screen. There's just no way in my world

there's no way to get away from it. So many of the interviews I do, I book online and then you interact through a screen and I love reading. But I'd really, really, really, really struggled to just sit down and read a book. Don't know why. And then we got on this trip,

and unbeknownst to me, I'm not on the screen because, you know, I've only done one virtual interview since we got going. And I picked up Drew's book because he'd given it to me before I left and I packed it and I started reading it and then I had a hard time putting it down and then I find myself waking up at I was up at 6 a.m. this morning and I was just sitting there and I'm like well maybe I'll just pull open the book

and I'm sitting there reading I'm like this is ridiculous right like normally this is not what I do but I wonder if it's just wondering out loud it's maybe the disconnect of not having to look through a screen all the time because like majority of my days back home that's what I do sitting in an office, you know, it's my office, but I still sit in it and I stare at a screen for like eight hours a day because that's where my business has been built. And I wonder, you know, if I love in-person interviews, but I wonder if an added benefit to that is something like, I don't know if it's a tension span or what, but I've been able to read again. I haven't had the ability to sit down and like just sink into a book for so long. And I watch my kids right now

because they do it all the time. It's super cool to watch. And once again, as a father, to see your kids love something that I remember being just soaked into all the different worlds of Lord of the Rings and, you know, others that I just got, you know, I don't know, let's throwback to the days, the Hardy Boys. And I'm sure there's some others in there. But I wonder if that's actually had an effect on me.

I hadn't really thought about it until you started talking about it. I've heard lots of homeschool moms talk about how when, especially when they get into homeschooling, when their kids are a little bit older and when they have had a family habit of screens. And suddenly they want to start bringing in literature and bringing books back into their family and books into their life. And like, you know, maybe they've read books here and there, but now they want to start reading Lord of the Rings as a family or whatever else. it's not it's not so simple as just bringing books in you have to wean the kids off the screens before they can even begin to pay attention to books like they can't attend to books until they have first detoxed from the screen because and I don't know all the science behind it but of course there's different ways that our brains attend to a screen versus the way that it attends to a book

and whatever and and I find that interesting like it's not just, it's not harmless to have all of that screen time in our life constantly. Like, it affects us in ways that we don't anticipate, I think. Yeah, we certainly don't think about it. Now, going back to homeschooling, so you decide, okay, it's not going to kindergarten. I assume as a mom who did a research on the kindergarten curriculum, you didn't just go, okay, I'm just going to homeschool and willy-nilly. you picked out something that you're like, I really like the way this homeschooling plan or curriculum or however you would put it stood out to you?

No, for his kindergarten year, I was like, meh, all he needs to know is his letters and his numbers, and I can do that on my own. I don't need a curriculum for that. So his home school year or his kindergarten year was homeschool, alma mom. but that was the year when for the first time in his life I started to realize that academics was maybe not going to be his thing. So we spent, there's a pretty good gap between my first two kids. So I had for sure three years with just my oldest son in school before my daughter came along, or was old enough for school. and so those the first four years of homeschooling with my oldest son were awful like like definitely

thinking about quitting this is not going well and and I tried several different curriculums that I hoped would make a difference and different teaching styles and whatever else and and and there were just so many tears there was so many tears there was so many tears and so much fighting and he hated every moment of school. And I was beginning to feel that way too. Like it was, there were a lot of mornings where he was crying before he opened his books because he was so discouraged and he was just so disheartened. And how do I say this?

Well, a neurologist told us many years ago to watch out for dyslexia with him. So it's always on my mind, but I've never had. had him, never had him assessed for it. And I might have gotten him assessed for it if we weren't introduced to Charlotte Mason. But in between years four and five of homeschooling, one of my sisters' friends introduced me to this totally new philosophy, new to me, philosophy. So the thing about homeschooling curriculums is that it's all the same thing in a different package. Some of them are shinier than others. Some of them are more colorful. Some of them are easier. Some of them are, you know, going to get your kids ready for law school or whatever. But they're pretty much

based off of a public school mentality. They're pretty much based off of, you know, if we can just just pump enough worksheets into this kid and get good marks, then they will be ready to be a person and a contributing member of society. But Charlotte Mason was an educator who lived 125 years ago, and I can tell you that the things she wrote in her books are now being released as like standalone books. Like if you've heard of the book, The Anxious Generation or Atomic Habits. My wife is literally reading the anxious generation, and she just turned to me on her drive up here to Clefeld. And she goes, I think you'd like this book. And then she started reading one of the paragraphs.

And I'm like, yeah, I grew up there. And it was just said there. So that's funny. Okay. Yeah. So another one is atomic habits. Another one that I can think of is rewire your brain. All of these books have been.

Yes. I've heard of all these books. Right. So they've all been released. in the last like, I think, 15 years, and they're all supposed to be, like, cutting-edge research in their field. Charlotte Mason wrote about all of those things 125 years ago, and she wrote about them in the context of education.

And many people, so many people have called her philosophy, like, the reason her philosophy of education works is because she approaches it from a human. perspective. So instead of thinking about marks and where you want, like instead of thinking about, how do I say this, I'm losing my words, it's 9.30, way past my bedtime. Instead of thinking of like end goals of like what you want your school to achieve. You have to keep going because you're teaching me. I'm going to be like, I'm going to sit with Melamara and I'm going to be like, have you heard of this lady before? I think you're might like this. I'm just going to talk until I fall asleep. No, I'm fine. I'm just forgetting

what I'm even trying to say right now. So public school, this public school mentality asks how much does a child know? And they want to measure that. They want measurements. They want proof that that child went to school and got, you know, this many facts pumped into their brain and they're stuck there and whatever. They're never stuck there, but they hope that they're stuck there when they graduate. Charlotte Mason wanted to know how much do they care? Do they even care about their education? Do they even care about Napoleon or George Washington or geometry or algebra? Do they even care about those things?

And the answer for the vast majority of kids who go through public school is absolutely not. No, they don't give one flying rip about any of the things they learned. Well, just to, like, I assume three of us sitting here, We all have a moment in public education. We're like, why am I learning this? And mine, I loved math, was imaginary numbers. And I just went, what the heck do I need to know that? And I remember it just turned my brain off.

As soon as I was like, I don't care, I stopped wanting to learn it. And therefore I became a crappy math student. Yeah. And it's funny because I went from being all the way up till high school. And now there would be other things extracurricular that certainly impacted it. But when I think back on it, I was like an honor roll student, had great marks all the way through until high school. And then I was an abysmal student by my own standards until college. And then in college, I met a girl who became my wife who certainly added some structure to me.

But I also fell in love with history. And once I found that again, it was easy to show up to class. It was easy to engage. It was easy to do the, you know, certainly was I the most studious student when it came to, writing in different things. I struggled at certain parts. I'm not going to sit here and say I was an A student all across the board.

But I went from being kind of in and out of it to being all academic for my hockey team for every year I was there. And from where I was in high school, that's, I think there'll probably be a few teachers in high school ago. He did what now? And I wasn't, it wasn't like I was a 50s student,

but certainly I wasn't engaging. And so, sorry, just that really makes sense to me, I guess. Yeah, and lots of people sort of have this idea that if you got good marks in high school, high school must have been good for you, like, as in you must have enjoyed it, and it must have been a positive experience. And I got really good marks in high school. I think I finished most of my classes in the 90s, but I could care less when I graduated. I could care less about every class that I went to except one grade 12 history class, and maybe my grade 12 law class was pretty good too.

But other than that, I went to school for my friends. That's it. I had no love of learning. I had no desire for knowledge. I did not care about any of it. What I cared about was my marks. I wanted my marks to look good on paper and I wanted to compete and I wanted to achieve. But knowledge and learning meant absolutely nothing to me. And it was only, I consider, so I started using Charlotte Mason's philosophy three years ago. and I consider the better portion of my education to have started three years ago when I started homeschooling my kids using Charlotte Mason's philosophy is when my education finally began. That's a wild thing to say. I mean, in a good way, right? Like that's cool. I'm like, you have me intrigued now. So when Charlotte Mason, I'm saying that right? Charlotte.

Charlotte Mason. Charlotte Mason. Charlotte Mason. Who was she? She was an educator from where? From the UK. Okay. So she...

125 years ago, like we're talking 1900. She wrote a book. She died in 1923. Okay. So she was writing books at the turn of the century. She wrote six volumes about her philosophy of education. So there's no elevator pitch for Charlotte Mason, which makes it tricky to explain to people exactly what she cared about and why it matters. But she first started teaching mothers about how to train and educate their children.

And then that spread to opening schools where children were educated. And then that led to opening teachers colleges. And she started actually training teachers to take her philosophy of education into schools and into other areas. and her method of doing things and her philosophy really died out, I guess, with her, or shortly afterwards. And I spoke to a man who works in the independent schools division of the Manitoba government recently. I was talking to him about opening a Charlotte Mason school in this area. and I asked him, you know, what killed Charlotte Mason's philosophy? Why, like, her philosophy is so sound and so human and so good, why haven't, why hasn't

every school across North America and across the Western world and the world? Why haven't we all adopted this? If it's so great, you know, those of us who follow Charlotte Mason's philosophy, she's like our hero, you know, she has revolutionized education and revolutionized our families. family life in so many different ways. So I asked this guy, you know, what do you think killed Charlotte Mason's philosophy? And he said Sputnik. And I'm like, you're going to have to explain that one. And he remembers when Sputnik was launched when he was in grade school. And at that moment, all of the Western world, there was this shift where everyone was like, you know what, we have to

compete. We have to compete on a world scale and we are going to get rid of the arts and we're going to phase out music and history and all of those things that make us human and we're going to focus on math and we're going to focus on science and technology and we're going to win this space race and we're going to win this technology race as like major world powers and whatever else. that's his theory of why Charlotte Mason's philosophy didn't sweep the globe. I think part of it is that her philosophy takes time. And we are as a society forgetting how to take time to do anything. Everything has to be done quickly.

We want it now. We want it fast. It has to be efficient. everything has to be efficient. And she didn't want things to be efficient because unlike the public school mentality where you want you want marks and you want something to show for it at the end in terms of like being able to say they went through their grades and they hit these benchmarks, now you are a contributing member of society. Charlotte Mason said, what about their character?

Like, who cares how great they are at math if they don't know about kindness and nobility and patience and perseverance? All the things we seem to be lacking in society? Right. Or at least out of our leaders. I shouldn't say, because everywhere I go I see all those things. But certainly at our highest levels, you kind of wonder what is going on and why we don't have a better form of leader at the top. Yeah. And so someone like Abraham Lincoln, I think most people would say Abraham Lincoln is a great man. I don't know. I'm sure there's

people who disagree with that. When you learn about him in school, you learn almost nothing. You learn a few dates and you learn a few names of important documents that he may have signed or speeches that he may have given and you get this little like this little blip it's fast it's efficient okay we've told them about Abraham Lincoln but what have they actually learned from Abraham Lincoln the hero the man the leader what have they actually learned from him nothing absolutely nothing and you know you're going across country making all these connections meeting new people and you are you are making a connection you're making a relationship with um with each person that you meet. But when you just skim through a textbook, a few dates, you know, if you had, if you had

just read something about me, like Carly Friesen was born in 1992, she grew up in Churchill, Manitoba, what do you know about me? Almost nothing. Almost nothing. Almost nothing. But Charlotte Mason's part of her philosophy was that you need primary sources, you need what are called living books. You need to get to the source in order to actually know these people. And so rather than reading a textbook about Abraham Lincoln, you're going to read, I don't, this is an example, I don't know if he even has a diary, but for example, you could read a diary. So, you know, there's Shackleton's Diaries and Lewis and Clark and whatever, and you're going to get it from the source. And at the end of that book, you are going to have some relationship with that person. You're going to have some connection.

And that's how you build character. You don't build character through dates. You want to know what did Abraham Lincoln struggle with? What did he believe in? What were his failures and what were his successes? And you don't know that. You're talking about what I try and do on the podcast, find people's origin stories. Yeah. Because I struggle with following a news cycle and watching different people comment on it. And I want to know their motivation. And so I try really hard to go out and find people's origin stories to see what makes them tick in order to get to where they are now talking about the way they are and one of the ones that I'm I've talked briefly on a substack post I think about this but I was asking Rob Anders a guest early on in the road trip after we were done in his opinion

who the most who the best politician or most influential politician in history was and as I talked to longer we got to a guy Cicero in Rome and I walked away and I was sitting there and I was like huh this is a guy with a library that you know I think the number was 8,000 books like it was ridiculous and he he said he hadn't read all 8,000 but you know it was a pretty impressive little storage you know his study was quite impressive and I'm like and if all of his reading has took him to one man and it's Cicero probably pretty smart to go and read about Cicero and see who he is. And so my wife's laughing because I'm listening to an audio book

because obviously we're driving a bunch. And I've started listening about Cicero, but not just a 15-minute YouTube on him, although I'm sure that would help. It's a 25-hour book on Cicero, which should be, so far it's been interesting, but I'm like, if this is the guy that a guy who stared at this for a long time goes back to,

it's trying to understand who he was and why he stood for the things he's at. is everything you just said, and certainly in school you get given the dates. I was going to say on Abraham Lincoln, you think he ended slavery, right? That's roughly, I think, what people think of with a couple of key dates there and probably a Hollywood movie and that's who he is, right? But if you go read about the times, which I have not done, I'm sure you're going to find out a whole bunch of more interesting facts about what life was actually like for him and what he put. ahead of all else and why he was in politics in the first place and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

And, you know, I think that we all have a bad habit of speaking very confidently about things that we've watched in a 15-minute YouTube video. but knowing the name of someone and the dates that they lived and died is not the same as knowing something about them you know and when you are through that book on cicero you will think in you will you will start coming up against life situations or you will say to yourself oh that reminds me of that time that cicero did this thing or that reminds me of something cicero would do or you know you know Cicero did this in this situation. I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to do the same. It worked out well for him, so I'm going to do the same.

And you just can't get that in a textbook. Like when your main goal is getting as much information into children as quickly as possible, you are missing out on knowledge. You are actually skipping over it because you don't know what you don't know what you don't know. I guess. It's kind of one way to say it. I actually started, the first book I noticed this in was this thing they call the Bible. I've heard of it.

Yeah. I didn't actively start reading the Bible until I want to say the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023, roughly in that time frame. And I've not been through the entire Bible. I've read Proverbs a lot. and I've read the New Testament. I mean, I work through it. I always get caught on things,

and then I sit and stew on it for a very long time because I'm like, I don't understand that. But I look at some of the things going on in politics, it just confused me. And then you go back to the times of Jesus, and you watch the Pharisees and Sadducees and a whole bunch of other groups conspired and all the things, and you're like,

oh, they're like, this has been a problem for a long time, right? Like this isn't some new problem. We think all of these problems are new in our time. And as you look through history and you dig into people's biographies or lives, you start to see the pattern, the same human patterns all across them. Exactly. Exactly. We are human.

And when you study history and literature and old languages and all of those things, your place in history starts to make sense. It's like an anchor for you. you know where you stand in history. And all of those, you know, news headlines and, like, journalistic fear tactics and whatever else, they just don't affect you much anymore because you see that this has been going on since the dawn of time. I've been having this thought, and I'm curious because now you've, you're talking about

Charlotte Mason as though she holds the key to schooling. and I was trying to put, I was trying to put, I couldn't, it was like a thought that was just out of my grasp, I couldn't quite figure out what I was trying to get to. And then I interviewed a lady named Catherine Austin Fitz and she was talking about, you know, lots of the corruption in the U.S. government. But where it ended and what I've, you know, started to research a little bit, was they do a conference, or she's part of a conference that's called Wise Traditions. And I was like, that's, that's brilliant.

I don't know if the conference is brilliant, find out, but like just the thought process of wise traditions. Like how do you get out of the predicament you're in when you send a politician off to go battle in the political ring and, you know, the machine is the machine. And it chews us up and spits us out. And you're like, well, you actually have a bigger problem. You need societal change.

Well, how do you get to societal change? And I couldn't, that's the thought I couldn't. Like, that takes time. When you're talking about it takes time. Yeah, it takes time. But I think a lot of us are coming to the same conclusion of like, this isn't as simple as like flicking a switch and everything goes back to being great if there ever was a great time.

Because I'm not quite sure every time has had its problems. But with our problems is like, well, how do we deal with them? How do we set our kids up to live successful lives? And what does success even mean, right? And then I was introduced to wise traditions. I'm like, that sounds. Like those two words just make sense to me. They take time.

But if done, society could adopt that. And then you could actually have change. Because otherwise, you're just running around chasing your tail, it feels like. I could be wrong on that. Yeah, I certainly feel like coming across Charlotte Mason's curriculum and beginning to read her volumes. Um, she was a genius of her time for whatever reason. She had a depth of insight about education and about people that, um, I have never come across in anyone else and I am not the most well read person in the entire world.

Yeah, but still I think of Charlotte Mason. I go, you're the first person. Now somebody is going to text me and be like, I was telling you about Charlotte Mason. And it's, it's possible. Sean at times has his ears open and it can go in one out and out the other, right? But I think like Charlotte Mason, I've never heard, I've heard a lot of great authors. Charlotte Mason doesn't enter into that equation,

but the way you talk about her certainly has my interest and the fact that books have been built off of her. I'm like, and everybody, I think everybody recognizes the books you rattled off. I'm like, that's interesting to me. That's something that a guy should be paying attention to. Well, I think one of the major losses of our time is that, we have gotten pretty puffed up about our technological advancements and about our achievements. And so we can look back at some little old lady 125 years ago and go, what did she know?

There's nothing, nothing she can offer us at all. And so when you start looking at these books that are supposed to be cutting edge in their field, you're like, I think we might need to look at the past. We might need to look at the past so history doesn't repeat itself. I think that's a famous quote that lots of people say. And there's so much value. Like you're saying wise traditions, there's so much value in the past. And that sort of idea has certainly taken root in Cleefeld in my friend groups and church groups around here and that sort of a thing where people are looking at the past and saying like what was good about that?

like what have we lost and what do we need to reclaim? And some of it is like so simple. Like the mother being in the home and keeping the house clean. Is that like an archaic, you know, tradition? Is that just an assault on femininity that a woman should stay home and keep her house clean and tidy? And for a lot of years, I thought of it that way where it was just like, who cares? Like a house is messy, the house is messy because the kids are in it. And, you know, the camera isn't showing the mess that we are sitting in.

This is not a tidy room. So I'm not... I think it's pretty good myself. I'm not... I'm not standing on a soapbox about this, but I'm just introducing the concept, the idea. What if... What if keeping houses... What if a woman staying home, keeping her house clean, was about dignity?

What if it wasn't about pride or, you know, being under her husband's thumb or whatever people, like, label it as? What if it was about her own dignity? Like, think about the way people dress and, you know, like these days there's no sense of, like, style in fashion or whatever. It's like you can go out wearing socks and slippers. That is a normal footwear choice these days. can go out basically in your bathrobe. And I think part of it is like a, oh, well, we don't care. We have so much freedom. We can choose to do whatever we want and whatever. And that's fine. But past generations understood things like dignity. And they understood things like those big ideas,

like honor and dignity and loyalty. And those have kind of been thrown out in a lot of ways. They're being eroded. Yes. Because I think even in hockey, by the time we're Adam, which is I think you, 11, if memory serves me correct, we had to dress up for every game. And I remember being very proud that I could tie my own tie. And I don't remember if that was having older brothers and watching them do it, I assume it was.

But now, you know, like you have junior teams, so, you know, 18 to 20-year-olds, they'll just wear tracksuits everywhere they go. And once again, And is that a big deal? I don't know. Maybe it isn't. But maybe the little things that we think aren't that big a deal actually add up to a lot.

And getting dressed up and putting on a tie and combing your hair and presenting yourself and taking care of yourself. Maybe that is a bigger thing than what we think it is. Yeah, I've heard, you know, there are moms that I have encountered here in North America who consider, a badge of honor just going back to the messy house thing but like a badge of honor to have a messy house like I don't waste my life cleaning that's a waste of time you know my kids are growing up here that's that's a classic you know um please please give us some grace my kids are making memories or something like that you know like as a reason for why the house is a mess all the time and I've heard of um like people living in squalor in like India who take time to sweep

the dirt outside of their little shack because they have dignity, even though they are living in poverty, they have enough dignity to present themselves as their best, at their best, as best they can. And we've sort of, we kind of scoff at that. We're like, well, what is your best? What is excellence? Who even cares about that anymore? Like as long as I'm climbing the corporate ladder or as long as I'm getting the best grades in school, who really cares about the rest of it? But Charlotte Mason and that philosophy kind of steers you back towards that idea of excellence, like personal excellence. Like how do we present ourselves to each other?

And not for the sake of being better than each other, but it's about self-respect. And it's about respect for the other person too. It's just about dignity. And that is just a small example of one of the things that Charlotte Mason, includes in her philosophy that I feel like I never heard about growing up. When you come back to your son, in between his fourth and fifth year of homeschooling, correct, is when you introduce Charlotte Mason. So his fourth year would be grade four, correct?

Grade three. Sorry, yeah, grade three, whoops, yes. And so grade four is when you introduce Charlotte Mason. What changes did you make? that just changed everything because I think if I go back and what you were talking about, you're like, he was upset about it doing it. I was upset about doing it. I was questioning everything I was doing and probably, you know, you're like, oh, do we just give in and he's going to go into public school because I can't handle this anymore and I'm putting words in your mouth that don't

mean to do that. But then you find Charlotte Mason. What changes about your home? Because, you know, I walk in here, and I, you know, when we first started chatting, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, kids are doing homeschooling, you know, like from everything I've heard, you're kind of the homeschooling rep of the area, like you're just believing it so much, from what you were talking about and tell Charlotte Mason, those two things don't align. Obviously, the Charlotte Mason was a giant change. What changed about homeschooling for you once you started introducing Charlotte Mason into the homeschooling curriculum or day-to-day?

I'll let you fill in the blanks. I will answer that as best I can while recognizing that some of the things I might not remember because I am not the same person I was three years ago, and that sounds so, but it's true. A lot of change has happened in my own heart and mind since that time. And so practically, we switched for. from textbook math to story form math. So, you know, Charlotte's thing is she wants her kids to care about what they're learning. She wants them to actually engage with what they're learning,

not just check it off a to-do list and say, fine, I did it. It's over with, thank goodness. So we switched from using a Becca math, which is a very popular homeschool math. and it's an excellent course for people who really engage with text that way, like are very academic and was a massive struggle for my son. We switched to a curriculum called Life of Fred, which is literally, instead of having a double-sided worksheet with 30 questions that he had to complete every day,

it's a story about this little guy named Fred and how he goes throughout his day using math. And so you make a real life connection with the math instead of an abstract what is six times six. Well, you know, so there's more of a connection. And we went from, we literally went from crying during math lessons to giggling during math lessons in one lesson. There was no transition period there.

So that was very obvious to you. It was so obvious. It was just like, oh, okay, well, this is cool. This is better. Yeah. Yeah. And then we stopped, we stopped caring about benchmarks, and we started caring about, about character and about digging into things together,

asking questions, being curious. We started taking time for things. I started believing in art and music for the first time in my life. I used to think that art and music were for artsy musical people. And I have since learned that art and music are human rights and that every human should have them in their life in some way. And so we incorporated hymns and folk songs and poetry. We study classical composers. We study classical artists.

My kids, my six-year-old can tell you which one of Monet's paintings is her favorite. She could. She's eight now. But when she was six, she could tell you how she felt. about George Surratt's paintings versus Claude Monet's, and I probably pronounce their names wrong, I'm sorry. Like they care. They actually care about those things.

How many six- and eight-year-olds care about a painting by some French impressionist? How many 40-year-olds sitting across from you care about Monet? Exactly, exactly. And my kids have copied off of those paintings and, you know, done sketches from some of those great artists. and we're just diving into what it means to be a human. Like, let's take hold of all of this. Like, knowledge is our birthright. So let's really take hold of it.

So if we're going to study a worm, we're not going to read about it in a textbook. We're going to go out and find a worm, and we are going to watch how it makes its tunnel and how it lives and what defense mechanisms it has against a robin and what does it feel like and what does it look like? And it's, there's, because there's no Charlotte Mason pitch, elevator pitch, it's hard to describe exactly what is so different about her philosophy. There's a lot of analogies to describe a Charlotte Mason education. And she herself called it a feast.

And knowledge should be a feast that you spread for your children. And so you're not, you're not pre-programming, you're not pre-deciding what your child is going to ingest. you're going to set a table of math and science and art and music and you're going to let your child, you're going to allow your child to make connections with every single one of those things because it's not right that one child should be in a math box and another child should be in an art box and they can never cross paths because they're in different boxes. you know, each child should be able to take what they want from the feast and enjoy as much or as little as they want.

And so kids who go through a Charlotte Mason education are kind of unusual in that they have such a broad range of interests. Like they just love and care about so many things. Like you will get, you know, like my son, for example, he cares a lot about the Blue Nose. schooner. He really cares about the blue nose schooner. He's building a model of one right now. He has watched a show about it. He knows where the replica is at the mint, and he, like, he cares about the blue nose schooner. He wants to work on it someday. He knows where she went down in the ocean and whatever. And it's not because, it's not even because he obsesses over it. It's not like a kid who loves trains and cares about nothing but trains for five years of their life. And it's not,

and then gives up on it and never looks at it again. He just, because of the curriculum and the philosophy that we use, he just bumps into the blue nose now and again. It just comes up every once in a while in this historical thing or our trip to the mint or whatever. And every time he meets the blue nose, it's like meeting a friend that you haven't seen in a while. And there's another point of connection.

Like you've just spent time with that friend again. and and there's lots of that in our day-to-day school. Like my daughter loves Little House on the Prairie, and she meets Laura Ingalls Wilder in many different ways throughout her reading and her, I don't know, different things like that. So it's just there's so much more emphasis on connection and relationship with the things that you're learning. So if you were talking to people who are homeschooling right now and they've never heard of Charlotte Mason, is there an easy way just to get introduced? Or is it like, hey,

you got six texts to get through? Well, thankfully, Charlotte herself wrote six enormous volumes, but you don't have to start there. There are some incredible websites out there that have put together a curriculum based on Charlotte Mason's philosophy, which one of them we use. It's called Amble Side Online. Another one is simply Charlotte Mason. There's all kinds of podcasts and the new Mason jar is a podcast that I listen to with very seasoned Charlotte Mason educators on there all the time. A book that, the first book that I read about Charlotte Mason. So when I first heard about, so I actually first heard about Charlotte Mason when my son was going into kindergarten. And kind of like you said, in one ear and out the other, I remember going, well, that sounds dumb. I'm not doing that. And the next time

I heard about Charlotte Mason, I was desperate for something new. And I don't think I would have even tried if I hadn't been desperate because I remember my sister's friend, as she's describing it, there were two thoughts in my head. And the first one was, this is the best education. anyone could give a child. And the second thought was, I am totally incapable of doing this. Like I just, I don't personally have enough of an education to be able to do this for my children. But I was desperate and I decided I was going to go for it anyway. And the enormous blessing in that is that I get to be educated alongside my children. So it doesn't matter that I wasn't educated enough. I was right about being incapable for this. I knew nothing about all.

art or music or anything. Anyway, back around. I read a book called For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaefer McCauley, which if you listen to anything, Charlotte Mason, that name will come up all the time because it's a really, really great introductory book. It's this thick. I actually have a spare copy. You can take with you on your road trip if you'd like. It would be a gift to my wife because she is a teacher through and through. And I stress about it. Well, I don't really stress about her. I just, of all the ladies I've talked to homeschooling, they just talk about there's an adjustment period.

And it's, you have something made up in your mind at the start. And because maybe it's your own kids, it doesn't go exactly to plan as how you think it will go. And I know Mel has engulfed a ton of material to get ready for it because that's how she prepares. and I hear this and I'm like, I just think she'll be interested in it. She's reading Anxious Generation right now, right? I sit and watch her read it, and she's just trying to wrap her brain around it,

and she is a very prepared lady. I often say she is the best teacher. You know, in hockey we used to go into, we used to have to volunteer and go into all these different classrooms. I don't know how many classrooms I've been in over probably a seven-year period, but a lot. and there's only one classroom I ever went into and sat down in the corner at a chair

because no kid needed my help. And it was her first year of teaching. She invited me out. She's like, oh, come out and help. Oh, yeah, sure, that'd be great, you know. And I went around asking the kids, but they know, no, I'm good. I'm like, what is it going on?

How does this first year teacher, who I'm dating at the time, have such a handle on like 20 kids in grade one, if memory serves me, correct? Maybe grade two. Regardless. I sat back and I'm like, this is, I have been in school classrooms all over, you know, from where I played my junior to my collegiate hockey.

There was not one classroom other than hers that she just had such a handle on all the kids and keeping everybody on whatever. And so I chuckled because now I've been married to her for its closing in on 12 years and together 19. Now you know. and now I know I mean people wonder how we're doing this road trip and I'm like you gotta understand something Sean is willy-nilly fly by the seat of his pants we're gonna sit down tonight

you know and yep that's great by me Mel is very structured we are booked she has you know people go where he's staying this date I'm like I'll get back to you when I talk to Mel because Mel has it a little book she's already got it all planned out she's already got us booked in everywhere and that is what she is very very good at

and along the road trip, she is taking in the amount of books she packed. I was like, you're taking all these books? She's like, yeah, and when I finish her, I plan on putting them in those little libraries that people have where you can just leave a book and close a door. She's already been doing that. I'm like, man, I love you.

I don't know where you get that from, but it's super cool to watch. She sounds like she'd be a natural Charlotte Mason educator. the level of organization and the number of books that are taking over my house you know it's uh she sounds like she's right there that's well i tell you what i'll gladly take your copy and i'll gladly hand it off to her because i'm sure she'll be very intrigued you know she people often ask me does she listen to the podcast i'm like not out of chance she uh she has listened to a few episodes i know for sure. And I'm like, I think she'll find this very interesting. I could be wrong, but I think

she'll find this very interesting. Any final thoughts on homeschooling before I move on to, I have two questions that I keep asking at the end. But before we get to those, I don't want to cut short this because I found it very, it's one of the things I love about what I do is I have an idea of what the conversation is going to be. And that was me dropping a glass. And now Carly's last laughing at me as I make a mess on her floor. This is why you don't give me glasses. That wasn't my favorite cup. It's okay. Okay.

And then you come in and you sit and it just completely exceeds what I had planned for it, if that makes sense. And what you're talking about with schooling, it kind of reminds me of what I do on the podcast, right? Of exploring and allowing to get to know one another and lead where the guest kind of takes it. So this has been a lovely conversation. I just, I look at the time and I go, okay, I should probably start to wrap up.

But if you have any final thoughts on homeschooling, I would love to hear them. I think that my final thought on homeschooling isn't really, it's not really specific to homeschooling. When it comes to education, I think that parents and educators need. to be willing to think about education differently and while you're thinking of it be strong and courageous because it takes a lot of courage and I'm not tooting my own horn here I am talking about all the women who before the internet and before all the podcasts and before all the books were written and before all the helps they were brave enough to try this and they were brave enough to say, I want something better for my kids.

And even today, there's so much pushback. Like there's just a lot of eyebrows raised when you start talking about homeschooling. And when you start talking about anything outside of public education, our country is just afraid to consider anything other than public education. And we are capable. parents are capable of educating their children and I don't want that to sound like you know an educational degree means nothing you know your wife is a teacher she has put her heart and soul into every single child that she has ever ever taught I am confident of that but I think the system isn't

working and it takes a lot of courage to look outside of that and say and just be curious and say I wonder I wonder if we could do this better I wonder if there's another way to do this that's all so my two final questions one is political I've been going across the country and obviously coming from Alberta Alberta has their referendum October 19th and I'm just curious do you give it any thought. Do you care what Albertans do? Do you have any I'm very curious the further I go east. If anyone

cares, if this, if they're, you know, happy for Albertans to have a decide on this, if they're sad about it, if they're mad about it, it doesn't matter to me. Just curious to hear what other people think across the country as a province voices

its concern about its place in Confederation, its place in Canada. and whether or not it wants to be a part of it anymore. All right, well, first I'm going to be very honest. Well, that's what we're here for. And say, I heard whisperings about this a few years ago, but this is the first time I've heard about it this year,

just out of your mouth right now. I am not good at keeping up with the news, and I should be better at it, but I tend to avoid it because it's the news. and I'm not sure I have a corner of my brain for that right now. But anyway, so I'm assuming you are referring to the fact that Alberta would like to separate from Canada and be their own country. October 19th, they have a referendum. And the question is whether or not to have a question where they would have a binding referendum.

So it's a very safe question, I think. Media won't say that, but I think this is a question on whether or not to have another question, right? So it's a temperature gauge on whether there's enough Albertans to actually push for an actual referendum question that would be binding to start the process on leaving Canada. My personal feelings on that are that the idea of Canada is so majestic. The idea of Canada as a country from sea to sea is such a good and noble idea that I would be sad to see. but the reality of Canada as it stands today I'm not surprised

and I don't discourage what Alberta is trying to do I think that it would be to Canada's loss to lose Alberta but I also think it's kind of exciting let's see where it goes and then my final one for you is as we are embarking, you know, on a year-long journey. Living in Churchill, I'm sure there's some memories from being a child,

but now as a mother, certainly there'd probably be different stories you could tell, but if there was one that stood out about camping, a road trip, that sticks out to you, that's a fond memory, and then if there is one that you can put your finger on, what about that fond memory sticks out to you, if that makes sense? You're asking about travel that I did as a child or with my children. Correct. Either or, whichever one you'd prefer. I have had too many adventures to count.

After growing up in the polar bear business, I traveled around the world quite a bit. I have a pilot's license. I worked as a chef for international clientele. You're essentially one badass mom. And here I am in Cleefeld, homeschooling, and raising fruits and vegetables. And it is a glorious life. So that being said, this memory is just one of those that maybe shouldn't be shared on a podcast. But one of my fondest memories was taking, um, taking.

year road trip with our three kids before our fourth was born. Our youngest was two years old. And then we had a four-year-old and a seven-year-old. And we went up to Drumheller and Stettler, Alberta. And we visited my great grandpa and went to Dinosaur National Park on the way home. We went to the Dinosaur Museum, et cetera. My son's convinced he's going to be a paleontologist. But we were potty-trained. on that trip. But it was the time, it was the time to go. Actually, I was, I was quite ill on that trip and our youngest was potty training. And we stopped on the side of the road at some point for some reason, and we were near a set of train tracks. And we were just kind of stretching our legs and running around and whatever. And my son all of a sudden said he had to poop. And we had a potty

in the vehicle with us and we set it down on the grass beside the road all the vehicles are driving by and whatever and he sits down on the potty and a train started coming around the bend and he was so excited and he sat there and did his business while this train rattled by and he waved at the train and all of these vehicles were driving by and I don't know why that memory stands out so much but it was like such, maybe because it was such a human experience, like life doesn't need to be perfect to be good. And it was so funny. And my kids laughed.

They thought it was hilarious that their brother was pooping while the train went by. And it was just like such a fun, unplanned, ridiculous moment on our road trip. And I don't know. That one stands out to me. Well, as one parent to another, this past Christmas, we went to, uh, No, no, no, not this past Christmas. My apologies. It was last summer we went to Minnesota like we normally do.

And on July 4th, we dropped. Our oldest was staying with his aunt, and the two youngest were staying with the uncle. And so we dropped them off, and we were going to have a little date night and just, you know, whatever. So we went up for supper and we got back to Mel's parents' house. We got a phone call that our youngest was sick. Okay, well, we'll come get them.

So we drive the half an hour to get them. And on the drive there, it's July 4th. And July 4th in the United States is just awesome. There's just fireworks going off all day long. And at nighttime, it's even better. So we're driving a half an hour on a highway, and there's just fireworks going off everywhere. It's beautiful. We get there.

And our youngest, we get them into the vehicle. and then we have to get him out and he's puking all over the lawn and it's just you know a five-year-old puking everywhere it's not exactly fun and then my daughter gets scared she doesn't want to stay with her uncle and aunt by herself so she gets in the vehicle and she's riding in the front seat with me because mel's trying to console our youngest and as we're driving back to her parents house she goes you got to pull over and I'm thinking he's going to both puke And so I like jam on the brakes, get off to a little pullout. And now Mel runs out the vehicle and starts puking everywhere.

And then Casey's out the door puking everywhere. And yet there's this fireworks show going off everywhere. And I look over and I'm not even, I'm just like, you okay, hon? And she's, you know, hog, you know, she's not saying anything. And I lean over to my daughter. And I go, Mila, this is a July 4th. We're never going to forget. You can't get a fire.

work show like this anywhere and we got the best seat in the house as two people are puking their guts out and it's funny those little memories are just that's what life's all about you know like it went from being this like oh man there goes date night okay fair enough we'll go and it turned into one of these moments that's just like so beautiful and i guess when you talk about young as going potty while the train's going by yeah those are great memories you know it's just looking at life differently you know you don't always have to be laying out on a blanket to watch the 4th of July fireworks and you don't always have to be in a bathroom to do what my son was doing you know there's just there's just different ways of looking at life thank you very much for doing this and sitting

down and welcome me into your house um cleefeld is going to have a special place in my heart I think moving forward because there's been some fun interviews here and uh certainly I this is the first time I was ever excited about coming up into Manitoba because I knew Peter had lined up a few interesting people I'm like sweet me and him had talked about it a few times mainly the bee farmer got me really excited and the other ones have been just as fun

and I chuckle because there's have to be fireworks going off right they've been just randomly going off I like that's sweet but regardless thank you for having me in your house and for the conversation this has been a lot of fun It seems every time I talk to a homeschooling mom is just a very different outlook on life. And probably if I talk to a homeschooling mom in their first two months, it would be a very different conversation than when they've been into it for years. Yeah, that would be panic.

Yeah, and so it's been really, I don't know, it's been a very interesting conversation. And certainly Charlotte Mason, I think that name has been rattled off here about 50 times. today. And so there's going to be a lot of people going, who is that? And probably a bunch of people text me going, you finally found Charlotte Mason. Either way. Thanks for doing this. And very nice to see you again. And I don't think this will be the last time I come to Cleefeld. I'm just going to throw that out into the universe for some time in the future. But regardless, thanks again. Thank you, Sean.