Shaun Newman Podcast - #248 - Shaun Newman

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Ottawa and back - here’s a story. I’ll be back on air April 4th 2022

Hey folks. So, I'm doing this off of my phone. I've always said in order to do a podcast, you don't need anything but your phone. It's pretty, pretty slick, to be honest. And I know there's a ton of people who've wondered where on earth has Sean Newman gone? Before we get to that, I want to give a couple of thanks to some guys that allowed Ottawa to happen. the first place. Heath McDonald and his family helped pay for fuel to go to Ottawa and back. And I mean, you've all heard the final fives or the final question and everything brought to

you by Crudemaster and without the help of them getting me there. I'm not sure it would have been as easier as doable. Paul Savoy is another man, auto clearing Jeep and RAM center. been able to ride around in a Dodge Citadel, the Jamie Dutton, if you will, if you're into the, if you're into Yellowstone. Anyways, it's a brand new vehicle and I can't speak highly enough of auto clearing and of actually the Dodge Citadel. It's been a fantastic vehicle. It took me safely to Ottawa and back and really served a purpose and it's a gorgeous

vehicle if you're ever looking for for something that is a sharp unit plus has all the bells and whistles i'd highly suggest heading there to my sister jacky for coming along with me on the trip uh you know having a co-pilot so to speak to go there um what can i say i mean to give up 12 days essentially of your life or give or take 12 days uh is pretty you know my hats off to her Jacob Moorebutter for putting us up in the team at L&L for putting us up for three of the days I stayed there. I can't think, I just can't think highly enough once again of that. To my family, my dad and my brother and my wife, they came to Ottawa and helped us drive home after a long and during week of being there. Lots of emotions. It was unbelievable. And then to have them come and do the ride back. I mean, that's something.

I'll never forget either. To all the ladies who, you know, dropped off food to my wife and kids, you know, Tara Anderson, Crystal Monteith, and Corey Hines for that matter, dropping off food to fill the freezer and everything while I was gone, I was saying to Tara just via text before I started this, just that, you know, it's pretty cool to have people look out for your family. One thing to have them look out for you, but another to have them look out for your family while you're gone. I have to talk about the SMP Presents. One of the things that I was really excited about was February 5th.

We're going to have the SMP Presents and bring in a bunch of speakers, and I was extremely excited about that. And I know people were disappointed when I decided to postpone it. And I just wanted to update everybody. I heard there was some people who showed up. And if that is true, whoever you are, please reach out. to me, social media, or I have my podcast phone, it'd been off for several days. That's why you couldn't get, and no one could get a hold of me.

So if you showed up there, if there's anything I can do to, you know, just make right of not getting you a message. I thought we'd gotten a hold of everybody. It sounds like maybe there was a couple people showed up on that night. And I truly hope that isn't the case. But if it is, please reach out. I would love nothing more than have a conversation. and if there's anything I can do to help remedy, you know, having a drive wherever.

Well, we can have a discussion. Now, on the convoy, up until this point, you got to hear every conversation I had. And when I went dark, it was the first day in Ottawa. So I don't know if I really have to share on the ride to Ottawa other than, like, to have people out on the highway until 11 o'clock at night in minus 30, just absolutely loving the convoy going through was something I'll never forget. Like that in itself was a surreal experience to be completely honest. In Ottawa, the thing that was really tough to comprehend for me was, you know,

I was out on Parliament Hill and here's thousands of people. It wasn't 100,000, it wasn't a million. So you had the one side saying one thing. And then on the other side, you had the mainstream media saying there was nobody there. I was getting things sent to me that just showed that, oh, yeah, it shows it's empty. And then you look up and you're like in the middle of 1,000 people or 10,000 people. It doesn't matter the number. There was tons of people there.

So that's a hard thing, you know, to sit in when your government is actively, I mean, the government's, funded the CBC. I mean, let's call a spade a spade. So for your government to actively say that they won't meet with you, that you're, you know, and not me, just the convoy, that you're, you know, I don't know, trying to do the January 6th thing in the United States. And I, people have their thoughts on that. I don't have any thoughts on that. I just know of what I saw in Ottawa. And what I saw in Ottawa was the kindest people all there because their voice was no longer being heard. And in our country and a lot of democratic countries, when you are frustrated, you peacefully protest. Now, this was done with semi, so I can understand that it looked aggressive and everything else.

But I saw firsthand when the cops came and said, you need to open up the roads. You can't just block every road in Ottawa. not that they were even close to doing that but you kind of get the point the first thing the truckers did was they all moved to the side so emergency services could could get in and if there's anyone hurt that they you know they they were working with the cops and none of that you know in my mind and up to this point i have to be honest i haven't paid attention to anything since i've been home so maybe i'm speaking completely sideways and all this has been brought up on all the different news networks but in my eyes they were telling us nobody was there that they were a bunch of Nazis

white supremacists etc well i saw firsthand that this group of wonderful people was there because their voice wasn't heard they were willing to work with the cops and help them that there were multiple ethnicities it wasn't just all white males or all white females for that matter there was families there was brothers and sisters there was cousins there was just concerned citizens. It was very interesting. You know, I got a couple of different stories. One of them that I thought was very interesting, you know, and maybe funny, I don't know, is I need the bathroom.

And on Capitol Hill or on Parliament Hill, they don't have any outhouses. And that's probably something very standard. I don't mean it to be nefarious. It's just, you know, there was no bathrooms. So I need a bathroom. I wasn't going to pee in front of everybody. I wasn't going to pee on our parliament, even though some people were probably like, screw these guys, right?

So I started walking, and I found two cops, and I started talking to the cops, and I just said, I really need a bathroom. And they're like, oh, well, why don't you try McDonald's? So you walked into McDonald's. And McDonald's said, you need a mask. And you might all thought, well, tell them to go fly a kite. But I walked back to the cops and said, do you got a mask? And at this point, you know, every rule under the sun is being broken because nobody's wearing masks anywhere.

Nobody's checking for QR codes in a bunch of the restaurants there. But in this McDonald's, this particular one, they wanted you wear a mask. And I was like, you know what? I got to wear a mask to get in a bathroom. I don't care at this point. I just need to pee. So a cop gave me a mask and he kind of stared at me strange because, you know, he's going like nobody's following the rules here. And so I walked back in and they say, welcome McDonald's.

I'm like, hey, can I have, you know, I've got a mask on. know can i can i use your bathroom and they're like uh actually sir our bathrooms are locked to the entire public and i'm like what like what yeah so their bathrooms are closed off they don't even let anyone in so now i'm not even pissed i'm just kind of like what the heck so i walked back to the cops and they're like oh how's the bathroom and i'm like well they wouldn't let me in because they got closed off to the entire public and i said you're caught Can't you like help me out here? And you know, we can get into somebody sitting there going well.

They can't go in because it's a private residence and whatever else. And I'm sitting there going, I don't give a crap. I'm literally about to urinate on myself, pee in the street. They offered, they just said, why don't you just pee on the street? These are two cops. Just pee on the street. We'll look the other way. Don't worry about it.

And I was like, I'd like to be a human being. I'd like to pee in the toilet. Can I do that? But they won't. I'm like, you're two officers. You're supposed to uphold my rights too. Are we not allowed to, like, get in a bathroom? And, like, why are they?

Anyways, I'm sure there's legal ramifications to all this. This is me randomly telling you a story. Anyways, they pointed me in the way of a subway. And the subway ended up having a bathroom, which was a godsend. It was awesome. They gave away free coffee. And my day continued, and I started speaking the good word about subway. And I ran into one of the ugliest, ugliest, that's a poor choice of words, one of the angriest human beings.

met there. He was wearing a mask and I say that because nobody was wearing a mask. He was living with his wife about four stories up and he probably hadn't slept in four days and honestly a lot of us hadn't slept in a lot of days because the energy, the just the mood, it was hard to go to bed. It was like being at one of the greatest festivals you've ever been to. Anyways, me and him get talking. he's very upset and he said all you effing truckers need to go home and i laughed i said well i'm not even trucker he you know kind of caught him off guard and so we went back and forth back and forth back and forth and finally i just said you know like i get it uh the horns yeah they're keeping everybody up

and i think they're working on that i think they're trying to get it down to a manageable a couple hours throughout the day you know maybe this time to this time and you know for so much every hour so it isn't just constant and you know but there's a lot of people here it's going to take some time plus you got two languages i mean you got english and french there was a ton of quebec there and so i finally just said to him you know like what's something i can do for you and he said there's this car horn that just keeps going off it's it's like an alarm horn we're we're on we're and it's not like a regular air horn for a semi i said so we shake hands i said but you got to do something for me i need a bottle of water i haven't had any water today

And he goes, you need a bottle of water, you know, and kind of gives me that funny look. I said, yeah, that's simple, right? Yeah, sounds good. So I went over there, promised these two young guys the world if they just unplug this thing. And I'm going to come back and a bottle of water sitting there and eventually I bump into this angry human being and he is no longer angry. He's just grateful and shakes my hand and just moves on. And I tell this story because everyone thinks everything the truckers is doing. And I'm certain my audience is like following everyone going, they're doing this.

This is the best thing ever. And I mean, I see all the restrictions coming off. I truly do appreciate everything the truck convoy has done for us. But I do also understand that in that Ottawa City, there's people that are still watching CBC thinking their town has been taken over by neo-Nazis. They haven't slept that well because at the beginning, you have to understand. understand that, you know, the goal was, I think, and this is just my, me looking at it, was to plug every street and make life as difficult as you could. So you had people living up in the tops of the towers, and towers, I mean, like, apartments.

They probably couldn't sleep that well because the horns did not stop. And that first day, they went through the night. Like, it was unbelievable to get to Ottawa. So you got people not sleeping. now they're afraid to come down because if they're watching the news, the news is saying these people are dangerous and I can safely say I've never felt safer anywhere in the world than being around there. The government's doing weird things like saying all these truck drivers are just the worst humanity has to offer when that's not the case. It's a bunch of people that haven't been heard for two years

and have traveled across the country to have their voice heard. And there's something beautiful in that, you know, and was it executed properly? I think they've done a hell of a job. Honestly, I have. But you have to understand there's people on the other side that don't see it your way, never will, and you've entered their town,

and they just want life back, you know? Now, everybody's on a side, You know, that's a couple of the other things I saw before I get into coming home. There's been a lot of things said about Pat King. And once again, I'm going to just give my view on this and not what he's been putting on social media, not what's been said about him. I have no idea. I have unplugged now for it is going on Wednesday.

So it has been six days that I've been unplugged from seeing anything. But what I noticed that Pat King did is he bought. a couple of hotel rooms at a hotel he gave the the keys to some of the truck drivers stationed out front of the one of the hotels and he allowed anyone to use those rooms because he wanted everybody to have a clean shower and to make sure that you know if they needed a bed to sleep in they could go sleep in a in a in a room and i thought you know of all the things i heard and saw about pat king i got to shake his hand he probably has no idea who i am but he was a nicer guy than i thought be. I had an idea of who Pat King was going to be, and it didn't fit the narrative of what they're

saying. And I can't sit here and defend all of Pat King's actions. I don't think he needs anyone to. But he's a guy who went across the country to stand up for a ton of people's rights. The shoveling of the sidewalk, I think this has become a pretty good feel story. The first day we were in Parliament Hill, the one sidewalk closest to Parliament, probably had a foot of like loose powder snow is really tough to walk on me and jack at one point said like man it'd be really good to get a shovel and start shoveling the same well by the time we left there must have been like i don't know 20 shovels pushed up you know leaned up against all the trucks and if you wanted to shovel you could shovel and that entire sidewalk was bare because they'd been shoveled off

it was so cool um the garbage bags there was no garbage nowhere to put garbage so at nights people from the convoy were going out at 10.30 at night, sometimes later than that, to clean garbage up. I talked to one 20-year-old vet of the Ottawa Police Service, and he'd said, like, you know, of all the things I've seen, I've never seen that. And I don't know, what have you heard of a protester or a group of protesters cleaning up all the garbage? Like, and by the end, there was no garbage cleanup because everybody was doing it. Like, it was wild. The food was crazy. Like nobody in Ottawa, if they wanted food, would go hungry.

The amount of food brought to the truckers was so much that they started pushing it away from parliament and pushing it back. So you could walk the streets and almost at every corner was a vendor set up trying to feed as many people as humanly possible. Like this one guy had like, I don't know, a thousand hot dogs. It probably wasn't that much. But you get the idea. Like you wanted a hot dog? He was there, had his truck set up, and he was grilling. And all you had to do is say, yeah, can I have a hot dog?

Absolutely, here's a hot dog. Tell everybody to come here. Like, that was super, super, super cool. People feeding the homeless and things like that. Like, once again, could this all change from six days ago? Yes, I will admit that. It was just the amount of, like, humility and everything else there was wild. There's so much talk about the cops.

And I will say this, the first day we were there, they were a little bit cold, right? But in fairness to them, or a cold standoffish, I mean, in fairness to them, like, you've got all these truckers who've driven, you know, and seven convoys meeting up. Like, you might be thinking these guys are about to burn Parliament down. And every day that went by, and you got to remember, I'm a pretty, everyone who's met me, I smile a lot, I'm willing to, you know, I wanted a high five cops. I wanted to, you know, so I just kept waving at him as a lot of people did. And the first day, I had nothing of it. Second day, you know, you got the odd smile. Third day, maybe you even got a fist bump.

And by the fourth day, I saw cops taking pictures together. Like, they just, you know, all these stories. And once again, I see the fear ratching up again, and I am not the guy to talk to about that. I haven't been there for several days now. I can't speak to it. But every time a fear story got put out by mainstream media or social media saying, all these bad things are going to happen. Like, none of them did.

Now, once again, I haven't been there in six days. I'm sure some things have gone on that I know nothing about. This is just one man's account on what he saw while he was there. And the fact that I didn't see anything that, you know, that was bad. I just didn't, you know, was there, you know, while we were there, was the, was the Terry Fox monument, have some things go on it? Yeah, and by the time I got there, you know, maybe a night later, there was people camp beside it to make sure nothing went on.

Are they still there? I don't know. But they were there when I was, you know, there was multiple little portable fires that got brought in to make sure that nothing happened to Terry. Like, I think that's pretty freaking stand up. Like, that's pretty cool. One of the unpopular opinions I have,

and this is probably going to be unpopular. popular is I really think the F. Trudeau signs, I think a show of good faith to all of Canada is if they got pulled down. Not because you can't keep it. Just because I think in order to truly come together and show unity as a nation, it can't be under the banner of F. Trudeau. And he's just one man. And sure, he's at the helm of this thing. But I like to think we got to hold all of our leaders accountable, not just one man. There's a whole group of them surrounding Trudeau that could take a lot of the blame as well. Trudeau can shoulder a lot.

But I think if we're going to push through this and come together, we should come together under the Canadian flag. But that's just my opinion. It's probably an unpopular one. I just think F. Trudeau is filled with hatred and, you know, let's hang the guy. And from what I got from a ton of the people end up in Ottawa is that's what they went there with the mentality of is I just hate them. And by the time they got there, they just like, you know, I don't, I just, I just want to be heard. I just want this to end.

I want the mandates to end. And we can all see it. COVID is coming to an end very, very quickly. I don't know how it ends for all the truckers out east. And I guess this is how I'll finish my story up. I learned very early on that I was uncomfortable with the idea that I would get a ton of followers. if I showed the trucker convoy side. Because I knew there, I've always known there's two sides to this.

And I put a lot of stress on myself to think about, do I want my podcast to go to the moon and back because I took a side of something and thought of no one else? I mean, 90% of Canadians have been vaccinated. Think about that. Somewhere in the future, they are of part, of moving forward. And I'm not saying that there wasn't

or vaccinated people on the convoy. There certainly was. I interviewed them. I just mean, there's always two sides to a story. And as cool as what they're doing in the convoy there, there's people that are frustrated because it's their home city. And, you know, I mean, Ottawa, I think has, like,

only a million people. It's not like it's this giant capital, you know, like people weren't even working. in parliament, you know, all the government officials are at home doing Zoom calls and acting like this doesn't exist, you know? Like to me, at some point, all of us need to get involved. I don't mean violently. I just mean, you know, peaceful, no more like we're done with this. And we're seeing it happen over and over and over and again, you know. I just saw some headlines about Kenny and Moe taking restrictions off, this and that and everything else.

else. I think it's awesome. For me, I came home. I needed to focus on what was most important me. And I got a young family. I got a wife that I love. And I didn't know if I wanted to become famous off of interviewing everybody there and be stuck that way. To me, that's a large question that I hadn't thought of when I left. I also didn't want to be stuck there for 30 days. I wanted to come home and see my family. And I thought. about that a lot. Like, how do I get home if I start down this road? And so I went silent. I just, I just stopped. I just had to think about some things. Then I had to come home. And while I sit here, I go, I have to think about a lot of things. My last day at work is April 1st. That is no April

fool's joke. That is just under two months away. So what I'm going to do is this is going to be my final episode for essentially two months. This is episode 248. This is Sean's account of Ottawa, maybe one of the most memorable experiences of my life. But I'm going to take my two months, or just under two months, to give work everything I have, to exit with grace, and make sure that I don't mess anything up there. I told them I would stay on for two months. I plan to do just that. In the meantime, I'm going to think about this podcast

and what I want from it. I hope that makes sense to all the listeners. I know you've been wondering if I was kidnapped or, you know, go down the conspiracy rabbit hole. And I don't mean that in bad way, listeners. I mean that. And I disappeared in the biggest moment in Canadian notable history. if not history.

So I'm going to leave it until April 4th. I'm going to take care of some things. I want to come back better than ever, podcasting full time. And I hope you'll all understand and know that I don't do it from a place of being fearful or not wanting to talk about what's going on. I just want to make sure when I come back, going full time,

you're getting all of me. I'm being able to do research, give you the best guests possible. and make sure this experience is healthy for not only the listener, but the host. So I'm going to sign off on a Wednesday where you all have been wondering what on earth happened to Sean Newman. I hope this is a good account. What is happening in Ottawa is unbelievable, unbelievably good. But a man there told me, I think we're all going to need a relief pitcher.

a man or woman to step in and take our place so that we can go home and be with family. And I took that to heart. I'm back home where I need to be. I'm going to take care of some things over the next two months. And April 4th, you can expect, episode 249. I've got it marked down. I'm excited for it. And I know when I start on April 4th, you're going to be getting all of me because everything else will be.

we'll be put aside, we'll be taken care of, and I'll be focusing on podcasting, and I look forward to that day. So thanks for tuning in, guys. You got any questions? I should point out if you got any questions, my phone has been off. The podcast phone has been off. I apologize for scaring everybody to death, because I'm sure there are a lot of people just wanted to know that I was okay.

I have been okay. I am okay. Everybody is okay. And I hope to have you all tuned back in, April 4th. when we start up again and I'm going to have a great plan of where I'm heading this thing moving into the future as we start to do it full time. All right. Thank you.