Shaun Newman Podcast - #395 - Byron Christopher 2.0

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

A journalist for more than 30 plus years with experience in the mainstream and independent media. His style of work has been referred to as "Armageddon-like blood-and-guts crime reporting". He's filed stories across North America, Europe, Asia & Australia, with most of his journalistic career focused on Western Canada. During the two decades that he worked for the CBC and for 630 CHED, he won national awards for both his print and radio journalism. He is known for his ability to secure exclusive interviews with convicted criminals, and is sometimes the only media source that high-profile criminals will contact. Finally, he taught journalism at Grant MacEwan College. SNP Presents: Legacy Media featuring: Kid Carson, Wayne Peters, Byron Christopher & Kris Sims March 18th in Edmonton Tickets here: https://www.showpass.com/snp/ Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Francis Whittleson. This is Benjamin Anderson. This is Dallas Alexander. I'm Alex Craneer. This is Forrest Moretti. This is Chris Sims. This is Chris Barber and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Monday. Hope everybody's weekend, you know, got along to get along, you know. I hope it all went well. Here on this side, things are moving along and we got lots to get to. First off, SMP presents Legacy Media featuring Kidd Carson, Wayne Peters, Sims and Mr. Byron, Christopher, today's guest. Tickets in the show notes, that's March 18th in Amiton. So that's just a quick reminder.

I hope to see you there. Now, Canadians for Truth, they're a non-profit organization consisting of Canadians who believe in honesty, integrity, and principal leadership, and government as well as Canadian Bill and Rights, Church of Rights and Freedoms, and the Rule of Just Laws. They also say on their website, we were founded to provide a community for people who believe in the importance of truth, freedom, and justice. We deliver high quality media and engaging events intended to unify Canadians under a common set of values. They got two shows coming up with Theo and Jamie, the first with Brian Denison on March 23rd, the second, March 26th, Dr. Paul Alexander.

So if you're looking to see a live show, go to CanadiensforTruth.ca for more details, Brian Denison and Dr. Paul Alexander. Paul Alexander. Team over at Prophet River, Clay Smiley, and the team over there, they are specialized in importing firearms from the United States of America, pride themselves in making the process as easy as possible for all of you, wonderful people. And they also do all the appropriate paperwork on both sides of the border and legally get that firearm into your hands wherever you're sitting, no matter where you're at in Canada. And we all know the laws and everything else are making it a little more tricky, difficult. What's the word you choose?

I don't know. Just go to profitriver.com. And if, you know, you're not the hunter or sportsman, you could also just do a gift card and do that for the hunter or sportsman in your life. Once again, they ship anywhere in Canada. So just go to profitriver.com. They are the major retailer of firearms, optics, accessories,

and they serve all of Canada. Windsor Plywood, the team over there, Carly Clossin, Builders of the Pod. Cast Studio Table when it comes to Wood, these are the guys, and I tell you what, with spring, we actually said it tonight. Oh, pretty soon we're going to get to, I mean, we're sitting in March, folks. I know we're a little ways away, but we were actually talking about, I want to say it again, deck furniture.

Man, I love this time of year. Spring is so freaking close. I'm like, oh, my God, can you imagine deck furniture with a little bit of a fire? and, you know, the lights on. Wouldn't that be something? Anyways, Sean's getting all excited. Whether we're talking mantles, decks, windows, doors, sheds, or a podcast studio table, Windsor Plywoods, the team.

I'm just saying, spring. Now, we go through a lot of stages on the old podcast. I get close to fall, and I'm like, I don't want to talk about it, because I know what comes after it's winter, blah, blah, blah. But this time of year, I love talking about spring. I love talking about what's coming up next, because we all know the sun's shining more. We're starting to feel it.

We're starting to see it. And the fact is I get to talk about spring a bit more. I'm happy. So go to... And now you hear kids in the background. That's funny. Go to Windsor Flywood for all your wood needs. Anyways, we're having fun on this side.

Tyson and Tracy Mitchell, Michico Environmental, a family-owned business that has been providing professional vegetation management services for both Alberta and Saskatchewan in the oil field and industrial sector since 1998. One of the things comes along with spring is a huge hiring spree.

Hiring spree. Geez. Sound dog coming out of my mouth. I'm not going to lie. Hiring is Michko Environmental. They're coming in that season where pretty soon here, they're going to be going to work. The old snow is going to...

Man, I'm not going to be honest, folks. I'm pretty positive right now. The sun's going to melt. You know, the sun's coming out. And Mitchco is going to be hiring. Anyways, I don't know. I must be having a good... a good week here. I don't know. What's going on with me? You know, I love to be a little more

whatever you need. But anyways, here I am sitting. And I love when, you know, there's no breaks and I don't get to re-record. This is what you get. Sean's in a good mood, I guess. Mitchco Environmental. All you college students looking for summertime opportunities and work, trying to make a, you know, put a coin in your pocket. This is one of the places to land. MitchcoCorp.com.com for all the info or give them a call. $70. 0-214-4, 400, once upon a time I suited up for him. And let me tell you, you know, when it comes to working the summer away, you're going to be outside. You're going to be all over our beautiful province and provinces, I should say, because we're right along the border.

So you're going to be working both sides. They're looking for good people. And that's coming up. They get like right away here. They're going to be huge hiring spree. So if you're looking for summertime work in between semesters, you know, I mean, you're, your little break and you're looking to make some coin. Stop into Michko Environmental to find out more information.

That way you can get hooked up. That's MichkoCorp.C.a. Gardner Management, their Lloydminster-based company specializing all types of rental properties to help meet your needs, whether you're looking for a small office or, you know, things are moving along and you've got tons of employees. Give Mr. Wade Gartner girl, 7808, 5025. And I should point out that if you're a business anywhere in these, I don't know, actually it doesn't even matter what province,

if you listen to the SMP and you like what I babble about, and sometimes you like how I torture a company, and maybe you like how SMP stands for freedom of speech and a couple other things, and you want to get involved. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there is open spots. We'd love to have you part of the team. Just go to the show notes, phone number there, shoot me a text and we'll get in touch see how we can work together and would love to have you

on the tail of tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years they've been an industry leader in bulk fuels lubricants, methanol and chemicals delivering to your farm commercial or oilfield location for more information visit them at Hancock Petroleum.c.c.a. He's been a journalist for more than 30 plus years with experience in mainstream and independent media. His style of work has been referred to as Armageddon-Ly. like blood and guts, crime reporting. He's filed stories across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, with most of his journalistic career focused on Western Canada.

During the two decades that he worked for the CBC and for 630 Chad, he won national awards for both his print and radio journalism. He's known for his ability to secure exclusive interviews with convicted criminals and is sometimes the only media source that high-profile criminals will contact. Finally, he taught journalism at Grant McEwen College. I'm talking about Byron Christopher. Buckle up, here we go. This is Byron Christopher, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

Okay, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Byron Christopher. So, sir, thanks for having me again. Well, it's good to be back with you. I see you've made an improvement to your face. You have a beard. Beard and teeth, yes, it's quite the improvement. You know, before we got going here, I was mentioning it was episode 150 is when you were first on the podcast.

That was February 2021. And as we sit here now, it's February 2023. You're going to be episode 395. There's been a lot happen in a couple of years. And parts of our first chat, well, are an interesting time capsule. You weren't concerned about COVID at that time. You weren't concerned. And you joked about it being a pandemic or a plandemic.

And I remember hearing that and being like, oh, actually, I don't know, you know. That was so early on, and maybe not even that early on, but well before I was interviewing all the doctors and everything else. How have you been over the past two years, I guess? It was maybe where we should start. Well, I believe I had the COVID flu because I was under the weather for about a week. I was not ever vaccinated against it. And I'll tell you why.

It's an experimental injection. I won't take part in that. I've been vaccinated many times, especially back in 1969, when I was traveling to Australia because my plan was to work on the freighters to get there for a cheaper rate, and I had to be vaccinated for every damn disease possible, and I was injected many times. I've never worried about it at all. But those vaccines were more true vaccines. They had been tested, and back then the drug companies did not have immunity.

from prosecution. If they served a poisonous product, they could be sued. Not the case today. That ended in the mid-80s with Ronald Reagan changing the laws and we followed suit. So they have immunity. So I'd rather not take experimental drugs. I did meet when I was on a prison beat, a prisoner at the Edmonton Institution here. I forget what the topic was, but remember we met in one of lawyer rooms and one side of his face was deformed. I said, what happened to your face? Were you in a fire or drugs or what happened? He said, no, he said I took some drugs here. There were experimental drugs hoping to get a better shot at parole. So the prisoners willingly took these experimental drugs, hoping there was a benefit for them in it. And this

one, in this case, this gentleman, his face was deformed. on one side, it seemed odd. And I checked with a senior guard there. I said, does that go on? Do you do, like these guys, agree to be guinea pigs, I guess. He said they do. He said it's not right, but it's been going on for years. So what's happening today, the people now are like that prisoner.

They would like to travel, like to go to movies and so forth. So they agree to it. So I'm not into that, sorry. And I think I had that flu and I got over it and I'm fine. But my daughter's mother-in-law, Joyce, when she had her second injection, she was in a coma within three hours. And she never got out of the coma. They pulled her off life support and she died.

That was because of the Moderna drug. Then I checked around a bit more and then look at David Milgard's death. He didn't have pneumonia. They said he did. Well, I talked to David quite often. Every few days he'd phone, send emails, hundreds of them. That guy never had pneumonia. The kids said that too.

But the doctors said he died related to it, but it's funny, he was not aware of it. And then there's other people as well. I'm aware of their deaths are suspicious. And, of course, the leading cause of death in Alberta is no longer cancer or heart attacks. it's unknown. Think about that. Christ, they can dig up a mummy that's 2,000 years old, and tell you why that person died.

And they mean they can't tell me this day and age that it was because of the injections. And look at the blood clotting. The autopsies tell everything. So I'm not, if people wanted to get injections, it, that's their business, it's fine, I don't try to talk them out of it. But if they try and pressure me into that, I would say, no, no, thank you. And I'm well aware that some companies in Edmonton, major companies, were pressuring their staff to be injected. And just hang on a second. There's a

Canadian Bill of Rights, the Constitution, that prohibits that. It's illegal to do that. It's like me telling you, Sean Gwot and rob a bank today. I need a little money, I'll take half the money you get. You would say, Byron, that's not legal. Yeah, well, neither are forced injections, coerced injections legal as well. And so, I mean, if the Constitution means anything, people should be able to say that simply and that's the end of the matter. No, okay, no thanks.

I won't take the injection. Yeah, we're good with that. But that's not what happened. A lot of people were forced to take it to keep their jobs and to travel. So these injections were not. so much against COVID they now know they're not safe and not effective as a fact they're more they took the injections to make sure they kept their jobs or could travel or go to a movies or join a bowling league or something that's why they took it you know that's my

sermon on the injections well it's interesting you know you bring up the bill rights the Constitution all those things did it surprise you that All those pieces of paper just, I mean, they weren't worth the paper they were written on, to be honest, at the height of this thing. I think that's surprised, you know, I just always assumed at some point law would step in and would take over and deal with this. But that wasn't the case. No. It, you know, all the way up. Everything's for public safety.

Everything, everything, everything, everything. Yeah. Throw everything out like over and over and over and over and over again. Yeah, that's true. That was a surprise. And as well, if a doctor or nurse is going to inject anything in your body, you should be told about that. What's in it? You should be told the side effects or what have you.

It's a full disclosure. That never happened. My daughter phoned a clinic. Said, I'm inquiring about the injections. Yes. When would you like to come in? With just a second. Can you tell me about them?

What's in them? The government says it's safe and effective. I said, yeah, but isn't it your right to inform people to give them a choice? And she hung up. That was the answer. Yeah, there's, you know, that these are all for me turnoffs and obvious signs. But I'm trying to see a bigger picture and I'm, I can't. I can't tell you what it's all about.

I sense strongly there are powers to be on this planet that are more powerful than our politicians. These people have money. And then when they belong to a club, the club of Rome or to attend the meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which advocates the one world government, that's what they're pushing for. When you have our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, a proud card-carrying member of that organization, whoa. And then you've got the head of the organization, Klaus Schwab, advocating this publicly.

It's not a secret. And he regards Justin Trudeau as one of his friends, and he said, I'm proud to say we've convinced most of his cabinet to go along with this. He breaks about it. So, and of course, when they interviewed, when Klaus Schwab has been interviewed, behind him is a bookcase. And on the bookcase is a bust, a statue, Vladimir Lennon, former leader of the USSR. That's one of his heroes.

I mean, I'm not knocking Lenin, but I'm just saying that's where the guy is coming from. We should know that. But I am very leery of politicians, especially those who fire cabinet ministers when they're doing their job. That should never happen. And we have a national police force, the Royal Canadian Mount of Police.

When they found out about that, they said we're investigating, and they weren't. Nothing's been done. How is it that an engineering company in Montreal can break the rules and nothing happens. Well, I guess they voted liberal, but all that's wrong.

And the whole thing just smells. Whole damn thing. This business of the virus starting at a marketplace in Wuhan, China, right off the bat, there were scientists, and I remember one in England, went online to say, that's not true. That's not how it starts. There are no live bats at that marketplace.

There's 700 kilometers. away. That's bullshit. Two years later, they're finally admitting it came from the lab. Oh, duh. Who didn't know that? Americans worked at that lab. So did Canadians, Australians. It was a French design building. I mean, there's a lot of international effort there. Excuse me, for coughing. And then the most stunning thing, you've got the chief medical officer, can call them that in the United States, who had shares in the company that was developing this germ warfare. I mean, what? That would be like a church supporting the development of the missiles that Germans were flying over Britain during the war and having explode on villages

and towns, killing people at random. And now if a church sponsor, that, you'd wonder about that church. So you've got this gentleman in the States, the head of their medical profession there, their chief advisor, Fauci, who is in his shares in the company that's making this germ warfare. Like what? That's criminal. And then you've got the center for a disease control. They've known all along this was not safe. And then he got the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, when reporters said, tell us what's in these injections, they said, no, we want to keep it under wraps for 75 years. Do you remember that? 75 years. And it was a judge in Texas that overruled that. They said, you can't keep it wrapped up for 75 years. One year from now, you'll have all this disclosed. And now we find out the number of side effects, according to Pfizer's documents, it's around 1,300 side effects.

Whoa. And one of them is death. And is Pfizer a reputable company? Didn't wait about it, really. Now I found out that just a few short years ago they were given the largest criminal fine in U.S. history, $2.3 billion. They paid it. They make big money. That's like a traffic ticket to you and I.

I mean, all this. Do you trust these people? I don't. Yeah, anyway. Well, so that brings me then to, you know, certainly, you know, I'm nodding my head as I go along. And I assume most of the audience is nodding their head as they go along as well. And you're a guy that I admire because you're, you know, not only your willingness to go and invest. investigate different things and I would encourage people before they travel further down this rabbit hole

they go back to episode 150 and you can hear some of your travels byron and and you know different things you've seen saw and dealt with anyways I hear everything he just said and I'm like okay I know it's a simple answer because they're bailed out by the government but I assume it's a simple answer and that is you know when I hear all that the media is just as complicit in this as anyone. Totally. Like, everybody just swept it under the rug.

They just enacted like none of this was even remotely factual. They branded anyone who would talk out about it, censored this, censored that. I mean, looking at your former profession, you know, looking at like working for the CBC or 630 chat and all these different institutions. And watching how they went through this, I was just, I guess I was curious your thoughts. Yeah, I was shocked. and also ashamed. You know, I'll take you back to an assignment I had

1990, it was in southern Poland, Auschwissium, a little town there. You know it by its German name, Auschwitz, the death camp, the big one, the biggest death camp. I went there for CBC on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the camp. And I stayed right at the camp, in fact, stayed in a hostel there.

And so I never left the grounds. And it's a huge complex, but I got to walk around at night. And I went out to where the trains would come in, it would be with a platform where these people arrived from villages all over Europe. And they were lied to. And when the soldiers went around to their village, they said, you've got an hour to pack your gear and get down to the train station. You're being relocated.

Don't worry. We're an essential worker. We need you. So these people, they weren't happy with it, but they went along with it. There's, of course, an element of force, there are two. So they brought with them their children, their children's toys, clothing, jewelry, cutlery, things like that. So here they arrive now at Auschwitz, late at night, and it wasn't a regular train. This is not a passenger train. This was like a cattle car. They could not get out once that door was locked. That was all a lie, you know, that they were being relocated. So they arrived at Auschwitz, and there's thousands of them every day arrived, about a thousand a day. And they were all bewildered, like where are we going next? And there would be an SS guard there, would direct them, make a decision who would die very soon, and who would be used to labor for a while. And that guy was given extra rations of rum to do his job,

because it wasn't easy playing God. And they were completely fooled these people. They lined up for their showers. One guy, and I think he was from Romania somewhere, a prisoner survived Auschwitz told me this, they were marching these people into the gas chamber. They didn't know it was a gas chamber. They told they were going to have a shower.

And on the way in, these guys from Romania were saluting the German officers outside. They were so, they so bought into it. Once they get inside the gas chamber, they closed the doors. They locked them. They couldn't get out. There's only one door. And they died within 15 minutes. It was all a big lie.

It was a big con job. You know, and I think today, that's what happening with COVID. Is that a con job? The injections, and time will tell. That's the best way to describe it. But I'll tell you that those people who died in those camps are all lied to being relocated. some were working in the camps at for instance Auschwitz was a big complex the size of red deer so they had all kinds of plants there

Ford and IBM and some American companies were there too so they were complicit in Auschwitz yeah general motors yeah they helped the Nazis with a lot of their trucks uh IBM set up the computer early computer systems to manage the flow of people to the death camps yeah drug companies were there they benefited it from these experiments. Now at the Nuremberg trials there were select executions. Not everyone died. The drug companies, I think they just spent a few months in prison. That was it. A lot of people died and media people were executed because they went along with the bullshit. And that's the point I'm raising now that I'm hoping there's a Nuremberg 2 where these people instead of being balanced, giving both sides of a story, just gave one side.

You know, it's safe and effective, yes, and yeah, well, that's not what the people outdoors are saying. Look at the protests. Look at the protests in Melbourne all over the world. Look at the deaths. How is it that all-cause mortality has shot up around the world since the injections? Is that a coincidence? How is it? Alberta's leading cause of death is unknown.

Come on, wake up, you know, be a bit of awful. honest about things, at least be balanced. But back then they did take out a number of media people for being part of the charade. Who were the media? Do you know off the top of your head who the media people were? From Auschwitz? Yeah, the ones that got executed. No, I don't. I don't have the names of them, yeah. But there were a number of them killed. And were they from Germany? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that troubles me. Well, they were part of the bullshit and they knew better. Imagine yourself now, imagine you and I working in Auschwitz or Auschwitz as a reporter.

The trains come in. I asked the people who lived there at the time, do you not know what's going on in the camp? Well, yeah, everyone knew. I said, well, how do you know? There's no tours of the gas chambers. So we knew they're killing lots because of the smell. It would burn them and you would really stink in the town. So we'd say, yeah, they're killing more Jews today.

And also the trains arrived full. They left empty. They always left empty. Every day they arrived. So we knew. And I asked one woman, I said, did you speak out against this? Like how old were you? She said, 17, 18.

I worked in one of the little factories at Auschwitz complex. I said, did you speak out against it? And she said, obviously, no, I didn't. Why didn't you speak out? And here's the answer. I didn't want to lose my job. See? You see it happening today?

People don't want to lose their jobs. And that's a concern, of course. But they really, of course, they, I'm sure, cared that innocent people were being murdered, especially women and children. They're not soldiers, but lots of them died there. But their concern was, I can't speak out, I'm going to lose my job. You see that today. Take the shot, and you'll keep your job.

So there's a lot of bullshit like that went on then. And I wondered if I was a reporter then in Auschwitzia trying to report on that. What would happen? You know, go to the editor and say, there's a big story here, the plant down the road, they have four crematoriums and their gas chambers, they're killing, murdering lots of people every day. This should be our lead story. It won't never get published. I would not only be out of a job, but be out of a life, I suppose, being that close to it. So I've often wondered how I would behave if I was a reporter then. I think I would have,

I would have tried to do the story, of course. I don't know what would have happened to me. Maybe I would have lost more than my job. I don't know. But I see it happening today. I mean, I don't watch television news. I haven't really watched it in 30 years, but the glimpses I've had, they should all begin with a full disclosure. This is an example.

50% of our budget is subsidized by you, the taxpayer. You know, be honest about it. Interview the editor and interview, the editor and have him on camera explaining, well, what percentage of our budget is now paid for by the federal government? And what does that do to our credibility? Put that right out there. That's the story. Don't you want to know that? If you're watching Global. How do we ever get back to that by now? Yeah. I don't know if you if you can, but if in my dream world, I would imagine a newscast starting with a warning at the banner at the bottom, just full disclosure.

this percentage of our budget is covered by taxpayer funding. It's a grant. So, I mean, just be honest about it. But people find it out and it destroys your credibility. So many people are, you know, like Pierre's ran on a little bit of defunding the CBC, right? And I'm curious your thoughts on that, right? Like if you wiped out the CBC, let's just say the CBC is no more. They take all the funding away and now it becomes a skeleton organization.

maybe it becomes a zero organization. Maybe it's just not there. Is that a good thing for Canadians or a bad thing? I can't answer that. The time I worked at CBC, we were very proud to work there. And I'm sure some members of the RCMP have the same line. But the real world is there too. I recall the director of our outfit.

There's a guy in town. He wanted to be in. He was going to making the rounds. who's bashing CBC, and he said, I won't have him on our station if he's bashing us. And I said, you should have him on. That's free speech, even if he is bashing you. Let's hear what he has to see. So I could see censorship there a little bit.

It's more blatant in the private industry. When I did stories on an oil company, oil and gas company in Calgary called Talisman, I worked at a private station. Now, that did not go over well when I told him I had a story. They sat on it. The story was broken by an independent media organization in Toronto. And they had three lawyers working on that story, something my station didn't want to touch. And eventually they did when it was picked up overseas by the Financial Times of London

and then by the Associated Press in New York. So then it became national and international. But they didn't want to touch it. And the oil and gas company went around to the station with their notice, their threatening notice. You go ahead with this. We're going after you. and that scared him. But in the day, you know, with CBC, we did those stories. I could remember one, but I could see a change, and I'll share one story with you. There was an accident at West Edmonton Mall

in one of the rides, and this was just after the mind-bender accident where three people were killed, and it was maybe a year or so later. We got a report from someone there that a child, a young girl, was trapped in a device. It had collapsed and she was down at the, it went under the ground and went under the floor and she was trapped down there. She was injured. And so I went out there with a television reporter. We shared a vehicle. We went there. It was a Saturday afternoon, light newsday. And I walked around and I saw a security guard standing there on guarding something. There was nobody around and I said, was anyone injured here? And he said, was anyone injured here? And he He said, no.

I walked past him and looked down into the hole, and there was a girl strapped down there, conscious. And he approached me and grabbed my arm and says, you're out of here. So they called more security, and they escorted both myself and the TV reporter to our car, our cruiser, was station wagon. We drove away, and the reporter's name was Anna Maria Tramonte.

She did television at the time. I just started doing TV. I was doing radio, both CBC. So we went back to work. I was in the radio side typing out the story, and Anna Maria came over, and she said, are you doing it? I said, yes, I am. She said, I just got a call from West Avenue Mall. They're threatening to sue us if we go ahead with it. And I said, well, so be it. I'm going ahead with it. And West Avenue them all did phone me. The head of communications, the same call she made to Anna Maria. If you go ahead with this, you will be sued. And I said, I guess we'll see you in court. See you later. And I did the story. Anna Maria didn't. She stopped it. But I could see then the pressure,

even with the CBC. And the girl lived. She was taken to hospital. She had a back injury. The equipment had failed. And it's hard to describe it, especially on radio. But it was a device that machine that brought you high in the air and dropped you very quickly, even beneath floor level. But it didn't have the proper compression at the end. She just hit with a thud. Something broke, and she was injured because of that. They eventually closed that ride. But now the woman, the communications woman with West Ham and the Mall said,

we don't need this publicity right now. And this is a reference to the roller coaster accident where three people were. people died when they're trolly and went off the tracks. And I said, yeah, you got that right. You don't need it now. But I did the story anyway, of course. But there was no flack from that. The story about talisman energy, there was a lot of flack over that.

We did put it out. And I remember another one where there was a strike by workers at the Shaw Connoisseman. conference center in downtown Edmonton. It was a bitter strike fighting on the lines and that. We got an email from management not to mention the name Shaw. We were owned by Shaw. Jed Radio was owned by Shaw. We were not to mention that it was the Shaw Conference Center. We were to call it the Downtown Conference Center. And my point was that that's not honest. So I think I was the only reporter who referred to it as the Shaw Conference Center. I led with it by saying that more violence at the Shaw Conference Center.

And the guys in studio were just rolling their eyes and here we go again. You know, but I mean, you have to just put the truth out there. Not that I had anything against the Shaw family. You know, but geez, facts are facts and news is news. and your point that you're raising and you seem to want to ask the question, can we trust these people? And the answer is you cannot.

You really have to be your own editor. And in this day of the Internet computers, you can get alternative news. There's lots of it out there. I mean, you can, if you want to read the Pfizer documents, you can, even the ones that they didn't want public. You can read those. And you can also read what scientists say, virologists say.

You can read all that too and make up your own mind. I think too many people sit in front of a television and want to be told. What to think? Yeah, here, think this way. You know, sorry. And I bring you back to that story, and I may have relayed this before. In 1988, the Winter Olympics were held in Calgary. And as part of the Olympics, every occasion there's an Olympic here, they will carry a torch across the country.

And the torch will be carried by various people, you know. And it's quite an honor, yeah. And I remember getting a call from Bob Johnson in Toronto. He was a CBC announcer, a reporter. He did personal insights into things. Bob is very good writer. And he phoned one day, and he said, Byron, I'm looking for a different angle for the Olympics.

You've got them coming up in Calgary, and I said, well, we have the Olympic torch. It's now left to Saskatchewan. It's on its way to Edmonton. I said, I do have a story about that, that the Olympic torch did not start 2,000 years ago in Athens, Greece. No, it didn't. It only started this century.

And it happened. The Olympics were being held. and the European country, and the leader of that country wanted to unite the states. They weren't all getting along. So he came up with his idea to run this torch all around his country, and it got everyone all pumped up. This was something nice. Now, I said, the guy who came up with that idea, he's long dead, but his idea lives

on with the Olympic torch relay. And he said, that's an interesting story. I didn't know that and I said, yeah, that's true. You can check it out. He said, who was this fellow? I said, Adolf Hitler. They didn't want to do the story because it was Adolf Hitler. That's not right.

You've got to detach yourself from taking sides. I just say, no, that's a fact. And that was Hitler's idea. And what are you going to do, tear up the Autobahn because you don't like Hitler? or destroy all the Volkswagen's? It's just, yeah. So news reporting is tough

because you've got to be impartial. My stupid mic stack keeps wanting to slide down on you. Well, that's a tough name, right? Like, I mean, I was curious where that story was going on who it was going to be. I had a couple names in mind. Yeah, that's a true story. And, you know, you don't not do news because of that, you know?

And yet that's where we're at. Yeah, it's even more so today. Yes. But even then, I'll tell you another good story. We had this terrible tornado in Edmonton. It killed more than two dozen people. I worked all night on that. And in the evening when the body count was coming in, I was in the newsroom.

We were then on 75th Street. And the director of radio for Alberta came up. He wanted to know what was going on. The name is Ron Smith. But he didn't enter the news. There was a little bit of a hallway just before the newsroom, he entered the newsroom. He went no further than that. And that was respectful.

I've hired you guys to do your job to get the information. Today they'd be walking over and saying, what do you got in your screen here? And oh yeah, don't mention that person, that's my neighbor there, you know. I mean, that wouldn't happen back then. So it was more of a respectful, it was a profession you were a person. Proud to be, proud to be in. I know that when I switched from being a disjockey to researching and then became a reporter, I felt very, I was very proud of that.

I still am. I felt if I could use this analogy, and I don't mean to be a smart ass, but I felt as if I had joined a church. But now I find out it's really a brothel. These are horrors when they do not put out both sides of the story. I mean, it should be your choice if you want to be vaccinated with these drugs. That's fine. That's your business.

But it isn't black and white. There's another counter story to that that they're not safe. They call it a conspiracy theory. And I saw one meme. What's the difference between a conspiracy theory and fact? Three months? Yeah, three months. I've also seen that where it says,

conspiracy theory should be called a spoiler alert. Yeah. So, you know, God, I've seen so many things that were reported to be initially as true

when that found out it was bullshit. You know? Sorry, but it is just so disheartening. There's a, there's a rise of, and I don't know if it's a rise,

it's just certainly with the internet, anyone become, you know, I was saying earlier, You're kind of like a citizen journalist or independent or whatever term you want to tack on to it. But it's very easy to have a live stream, a show, public figure account or an influencer account, whatever you want to call it. You broke a lot of stories that took you to kind of like the edge of the sun where you were almost so close you got burnt up, you know? and I was curious, you know, when I first started talking openly after I interviewed you,

you know, probably episode 180-ish, I started interviewing doctors and journalists and lawyers and professors and the list goes on. I had people like, you know, text me at back then. Like, you better be careful, you know, you're getting close to the sun here. And I never, you know, I think the first time I was on with you, I think I was probably a bit naive to what I was trying to do. And now I'm not so much. Now I'm, you know, I think at times it's time to grow up, Sean.

Like you've got to realize what you're, what you're, you know, playing against someone. To all the citizen journalists, you know, I was curious if you could share some of your, I don't know if it's expertise, maybe per se Byron, just on, you know, when you were getting close to the sun, what did you see happening? Were you ever worried about government or private businesses or CIS or any of those organizations where you were like, ooh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this? Did you, and how did you know? Well, you sense it.

I remember working when I was a CBC, many stories on the Lubicon Cree Indians of Northern Alberta. They were living, they had never signed a treaty. They were way out the middle of nowhere. But they lived on a huge pool. of oil and gas. And when the government found that, the government simply went in and took it. And their statement to us was that,

well, that's government land. We declared that back in 1930. And the Indians said, that's fine, but we've never left this land. Of people have been there hundreds of years. Do you think you can just come in and say, this is your land? Can we say to you, take the northern half of Florida?

Are you happy with that? It's not right. So that was the issue there. So I began to use a term, and then it became somewhat popular, disputed territory. I didn't say it was crown land. I didn't say it was the Indians had it. I just said disputed territory.

And who didn't like that, the government? I think the Indians didn't mind it, but because it gave more or less a neutrality. And this business of a land claim, hello, Who's got the land claim, it would be the government claiming land. The natives had for hundreds of years. So that was an early experience in that. And then at some point, I was tipped off, believe it or not, by someone with Indian and Northern Affairs in Edmonton.

They said, Byron, there was a meeting at your radio building, and you were on the agenda. I said, really, how do you know that? He said, I was there. I said, you were? Who else was there? And he names my news director. I went, what?

He never told me that. He said, yeah, that's because you're on the agenda. They weren't happy with your coverage. I said, well, I think it's honest. He said, that's not the problem. You're going against the status quo here, buddy. And did it make me afraid? No, which it made me angry, actually.

I said, no, with these fuckers, I'm doing more of these stories, you know. And then I got a national award shortly after for homicide in Saskatchewan, so they had to lay off a bit. But, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've had some weird things happen. The worst one, I think, was I set up a surveillance house on my property in the west end of Edmont and kitty cornered to mine. There's a guy, they, meaning the government, likely the communication security establishment or ceases, I'm not sure.

It would be a spy agency. They had this house, and I was told at the time, it was a surveillance house, and I was the person they were watching because of stories I did on Talisman Energy. I didn't believe them. And I said, well, you know, you don't believe me. Just send an email to a retired agent, you know, in the Maritimes. Let them know about the surveillance house. Watch what happens.

The next day, that house was the moving truck. moved up, cleaned it out. And the reason I became suspicious that there was a male living there, man and a woman. The man would be Caucasian mid-40s, maybe. Who knows? But he spotted me twice on my deck, and each time he saw me, he fled into the house. He didn't walk. He just like fled. I thought, whoa, what's that about? I thought maybe he's in a witness protection program. No, It turned out, he worked for some agency. And so the moving trucks moved out, cleaned out the house in two days. And a month later, they put up a for sale sign.

Usually it's the other way around. The for sale sign is up first. And then I met with the agent in New Brunswick, and he confirmed it was a surveillance house. I said, why? He said, well, we've been monitoring you, and we don't like what you. They didn't like what you did with Talisman. For instance, the head of the Canadian Petroleum Association, I don't know if I have the title right, but it's a group of oil and gas companies in Canada.

And once had a president, it still does, but at one time, the head of this organization, his brother, was the head of CES. Does you beginning to see how things work now? And I didn't do that story on Talisman, and had to do with a gentleman. and had to do with genocide in South Sudan and a court action, a lawsuit filed because of it by churches in the United States. This is a simple story. You get a copy of the court statements, and you do the story, you know.

But they didn't want to run it here. But they did in Toronto, a small news agency, and eventually went around the world. But I'm told that's the reason they moved in. and I didn't feel afraid. Now, had I been working in Managua, Nicaragua say, I would have been shot like the other reporters. But here it's an economic execution. They'll make sure you're not employed.

And then I had a really ugly incident. I will not mention the name of the person. I'd love to, but I can't. But it was a lady. She worked in a newscast. capacity at CBC Edmonton. Working late at night, she was waiting, brought in her vehicle for repairs, was going to take the bus home. I said, well, you'd be on the bus for an hour and a half. I know where you live. I'll drive you there. And I got off work around 1130 or so, and I dropped her off at her

house. And she said, do you want to come inside for a drink? I said, what is it? Well, no, I'm driving. I'm not going to have any alcohol. No, no, we'll have an orange juice then. And I had been there before for a party with Alice and her wife. And I knew where the house was, older house, small. So we entered the house through the back, dark area where they had a porch. That was the door she used.

I go inside. I sit down on the couch. She sits down on the floor and asks me to sit down on the floor with her. I thought that was odd. I thought, well, I don't want to make her feel bad. She's a little bit hippie-like, so whatever. I sat down. I would have been four feet from her, four and a half, five feet away.

She was wearing a skirt. She opened up her legs. She could put a two-foot ruler between her kneecaps. And she raised her eyebrows up and down, up and down. I went, holy shit. So I looked at ornaments on the wall and talked about them and got out of there. And I mentioned it to a social scientist. I said, what was that about?

Because she's never hit on me at work. Yet this happened. He said, I know what that's about. That's not sexual. That's political. You're being set up for a sexual assault. And I said, yes, I get it. So true story.

So these companies are not always honorable. A sexual assault because they wanted to control you? Yeah, get you fired. Yeah, sure. I mean, what do you think Jeffrey Epstein's Island was all about? Do you think? I'm going to redirect that. What do you think Jeffrey Epstein's Island was all about?

It was a blackmail operation. There was a huge complex. And if you could see all the cameras they had in there and all the screens, they got men in there. Men enjoy sex, I think, more than women. But for some reason, some men like having sex with minors. Yeah, some of them like teenagers. I mean, they don't look like they're young,

but they're pretty and they're young and innocent. And they enjoy having sex with them. But they was all videotaped. The whole damn works, and there's hundreds of guys there. And prominent people. That's why Epstein died. He didn't commit suicide. It was impossible to hang himself from that position,

and he was screaming before he died. So put two and two together. He knew too much and had to be taken out. That's my view. And I think if we could have God mediate this and rule, and whether right or wrong, bring them down. You'd use your religious connections. You know, hey, God, am I right?

He'd give a thumbs. up. I think this is, it's a blackmail thing. Yeah, Operation Blackmail. I'd love to see those tapes. Not to learn any new positions, mind you, but just to see who the hell they are. The names are out there, but yeah, that's my, that's my take on it. Wouldn't that be something? I mean, it'd be a pretty open-truck case if God came down and just said, okay, let's just sit here. Common sense would prevail in about 10 seconds, and he'd go, like, this ain't worth my time. I'm coming down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, to summarize about what goes through a reporter's head,

I remember we had guys over in Iraq in the first war guys, me and the CBC people, but they left when the fighting started. And I texted or emailed them, what are you doing? Why are you fleeing to Lebanon? This is a war. You cover a war. Well, we might get hurt. I know. Well, that's the idea. I mean, soldiers are going to get hurt, killed. And if you can't accept that, it's not the job for you. You know, I blasted head office over that. And even, you know, I can see on TV, the foreign reporters were fleeing to Lebanon.

Because when the fighting started. And the Iraqi reporters followed them out at the airport and they're saying, what are you running away from, boys? This is a story. And they let them know they weren't doing their jobs. And it's tough. But if you can't accept that to be a reporter that you might get threatened or hurt, maybe killed, don't be a reporter. The same with medics.

When I talk to the ambulance people, they're not in the business for a long time, maybe five years. It's hard to take what they see. Hard to take that. So they get out. And they know that going in, that it's rough. you know i remember being with a reporter one time and over a crime scene and she was crying and i said well this is part of being a reporter you know it's going to upset you but you can't let your emotions get in the way same with the homicide detectives i mean the good ones will

talk about a file and you don't see them running away to the bathroom crying and i mean just dealing with the facts. And reporters should be like that too. And of course, not every story involves a threat of death in that. Most, and I guess if you're stepping on toes involve the threat of loss of employment. Yeah. I worked with a guy. He was an operator, an operator. He had a very good voice, and I told him so. I said, why didn't you become a DJ? He said I was for many years. Worked Vancouver, Calgary, big markets. And what happened to him? Well, he worked at a radio station in the Edmonton area.

He felt he was not paid for the extra hours that he worked. And he brought his case to the labor board. They ruled that he was going to get this back pay. It wasn't a lot of money, $7,000 or something. But you know what? He was never a DJ again. He was an operator. That was his punishment.

So eyes wide open walking in if you're a podcaster such as myself or if you're a documented filmmaker or if you're, you know, broadcast news, you know, the list goes on. If you're going to, you know, one of the things that I've started just recently is I've started a substack, just lightly writing because people, you know, as people learn from me on this show, I try and pull. out, you know, what Byron has to offer. More so, certainly I share my thoughts from time to time, but I started writing to try and get some of my thoughts out for people if they wanted to know. Either way, one should realize walking into this, eyes wide open, the way they will attack you in Canada then is exactly what you're saying, economic suicide. They're going to...

Economic execution. Execution, not suicide, sorry. They're going to try and pull away your job. and discredit you and everything else, even if you think it is trivial what you're talking about. If you get too close to the sun, you know, I'm sitting across from a guy who's had CIS or what's the other organization? It's called a communication security establishment. C-S-E. Yeah, they have a huge complex outside Ottawa.

You cannot get near it. Yeah, and they have the finest computers in the country. They monitor all emails. And if you don't want to believe me, next time you send out an email for the hell of it, put down toward the end kidnapping, women's rights, native rights, cocaine. That email you thought was private is being read on a computer in Ottawa. It's being highlighted. So I'm going to walk over and say, yep, let's get a copy of that. Nothing is secret.

All the emails are in fact, can be read by people at the communication security establishment. They are part of a five, they're part of a network called the Five Eyes. It used to be called Echelon. And the other nations, United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. They trade information all the time. I recall working on the story, funny enough, we just mentioned Talisman. In South Sudan, where these atrocities happened, there were two guerrilla groups fighting the government in Kartoum in North Sudan, North Sudan.

And one of the guerrilla leaders was still in South Sudan, but his wife was living in the United States in Minnesota. Excuse me, I contacted her for information on her husband's group. And we talked for, I don't know, 45 minutes, an hour on the phone. And the next day, or maybe a couple of days later, very soon after, she phoned and she was very angry with me because someone had got into her computer and wiped everything out after our talk. And I said, well, that would be your friends at the NSA, the American electronic spy agency, or maybe the Canadians did it on their behalf. I don't

know, but she blamed me for it. Not that I did it, but that because she talked to me, she was punished. And I said, yeah, I think that's true. So, I mean, that's the real world out there. Not what we think it is. I want to throw an experience at you. And from a guy like yourself, I'm curious your thoughts on it. I went to Ottawa. I caught the convoy in Ontario, followed it in. It was as close to a Bob Marley song as you'll ever get playing out in front of your eyes. But I listen to you tell stories and I go, that was the last time I think Sean got to be so naive in the world that nothing, you know, bad could happen there or that people weren't there for all the right reasons or what have you. And I go, if Canadian intelligence will put

a building up beside Byron Christopher for a story he's doing, what will they do to people in Ottawa that we're trying to get those stories out. Yeah. And at the time, I would have thought, uh, they, you know, like that, that's nothing. But then I told you, Sean ran into a brick wall and came back, licking his wounds and everything else. Well, it's been a year since then. What do you think, uh, the Canadian government sees this, all these different organizations

when they stared at Ottawa would have been doing? Yeah. Well, to back up a bit, this organization that I talked about is the communication, security establishment of CSC. You can Google it. They have a website. They won't tell you a lot, but they have files, and this is parliamentary information, on one in four Canadians. That would be you and me. And anyone else listening to this, who's a bit of a shit distributor, they have a file on you. Yeah. I was told that by an agent that I got to know well. He retired, and he said, yeah, we have a file on you. Yeah, well, I said, well, that's nice to know. So it's

your taxpayers money, it's funding this bullshit. And they didn't, they didn't build that house, Kitty Corner. They rented it. Rented it. That's what I meant. So I went to the neighbor, neighbor, and I said, who's your neighbor here? And he said, oh, he works at the post office. I said, that's a nice house for someone working at a post office. I live in a nice neighborhood. And the last time I spoke to him, I said, tell me about your neighbor. He said, oh yeah, he was a banker. story changes. I said, why did he leave? And he said, he left because he,

they foreclosed on his house or something. I said, if you're a banker, they don't foreclose on your house. You know, that's a bullshit story. They left because they were busted. Your buddies, and I referred them to the story I did on my blog, and I'll give you the name if it's called the, some of the reference, I forget the headline now,

how the spies deck me is the play on the word deck yeah yeah for the listener where can they go to find all your work byron it's easy it's my name and i'll spell it byron is b-r-r-o-n the family name is christopher regular spelling so that's byron christopher dot org and you'll find all and i would add in if you just google byron christopher that's what comes up yeah there's a whole part of stuff on me now yeah out there. Yeah, even Wikipedia's down a page. Seems weird. So come back to it. Ottawa, when you stare at Ottawa, when you saw Ottawa play out, what went through your mind? What were you staring at? Well, I followed that a little bit, and I remind you, I don't watch a lot of TV, but of course you can't help avoid it if you're in a lunchroom somewhere. And they got a TV

up and you watch it. And of course, you hear comments and people. There was quite a ground swelling of support for the truckers. They were just everyday people, not media savvy, but well-meaning. They and their sentiment gathered a lot of support. They started moving across the country, got a lot of attention here internationally across the world. They were known in Australia, Russia, everywhere. So they arrived there and they made a lot of noise. I was wouldn't have done that. I would have just stayed there for a day and they were there to meet the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who ran away actually. So what maybe would be a better idea instead of honkin there for several days, stay a couple of days, deliver to Parliament buildings

diapers for Justin, diapers, leave all these boxes there. They'd give them to daycare centers and you make the point that he ran away. He was not a leader. But then they started playing dirty. They started seizing freezing bank accounts of people who had given money to them. What the hell is going on here? You know. So you see the true nature of these people. That's pretty devious to do that.

And there was somewhere along the line, I think somewhere in Manitoba, someone objected to the convoy drove a car and hit some of them and they were charged. I wonder how long they spent in jail compared to the leaders of the organization. And the trucker's convoy, they are forbidden by law from talking about it. You couldn't talk to the leader now. No, that's censored. I mean, where have you heard that story before? It's funny.

I was supposed to have Tamara on this week and it's gotten backed off. Oh, yeah. To the listener, as I spoil that, Tamara is at some point going to come. come on and it'll be an interesting chat. Yeah, I mean, they had no business doing what they did to her. I mean, please stop knocking the Russians, you know, because we have that, I grew up fearing the Russians. Some of that, I'm sure, was propaganda, some was true.

But we have our own gulag here too. When they tell someone, you did a demonstration, it was peaceful, noisy, you made your point, fine but now we're going to seize bank accounts of people that support you are going to put you in jail and they said oh you showed uh nazi flags here well were they actually part of the the demo or is that a protester or was the nazi flag to indicate they're up against uh nazis look at ukraine look at the nazi involvement there it's massive huge you don't see them make an issue of that Yeah. So, I don't know.

I didn't follow that story closely, but when they started seizing bank accounts, and I went, okay, what's next? I've always, I've thought a lot about my time there. And, you know, I was walking around interviewing people on the street. I mean, you didn't have to walk 10 feet, and you'd find a story over and over and over again. I mean, the people that ended up there went there because,

they couldn't see any other way out. And yet, at the Ark Hotel where I was staying, you know, and the head of the convoy was all situated, when I think back on that, there was zero security. So if you were a CIS agent, if you were a nefarious individual, it doesn't matter. All you had to do is say a couple things, and you probably could have walked right into that building

and had no issue. So it's like, well, at some point they were there. You know, one individual in my mind sticks out so much because when he walked in, you know, I'll rewind the clock. When I was there, everybody was worried about Antifa. I did an interview on it. Just trying to figure out what Antifa was, what I should be looking for. I had no idea what Entif, I've never seen one.

And so, you know, there was different people standing around in our hotel that everybody went, oh, yeah, I bet you. But they wouldn't go talk to him. I'm like, I'll go talk to him. I mean, if they're in Tiva, I'll know, right? and every individual I talked to turned out to be not in teeth, or at least not in my mind. There was one individual, though, that I thought for sure had to be an undercover officer. Don't know for who. And the reason why was how clean he was.

Every tracker that ended up there, including myself, had about four days beard growth. We looked like we'd probably been run over by a train because, you know, he'd been driving long hours. The amount of emotional toll that had taken place on the highway, seeing all the people interacting with them, you were just drained over and over and over again. And there was one individual in the bottom of the dark hotel and he wouldn't talk to me. And when he caught my eye, he left and made sure that he left. And I was like, that was strange because everybody else...

He's doing his job. He's doing his job. Yeah. Yeah, let me tell you a story. Are you done your story? Sure, yeah. Well, I just... No, no, that's your your soul is also picking up this guy is not legit.

I mean, you can tell. Years ago, when the Americans were testing their cruise missile, they did some of the tests here in Alberta. The missile was launched, and northern Alberta would land at a military base in Cold Lake, and the Americans had an office or building there. And the Edmonton Journal broke that story, that the cruise missile was being tested in Alberta.

It was a great story. No one knew what the dam. thing looked like. There was no pictures of it in American military. I called them out there and they said we can't comment on it. They confirmed they were testing it. I said, can't you show me what it looks like? Send me a picture? No, we can't do that. So I called the, what was then the embassy of the USSR in Ottawa, spoke to their head of communications, Alexander Podacken, former reporter for one of the news agencies in Russia. And I said, said, Mr. Podakin, I'm working on stories on this cruise missile.

He was aware of the testing in Alberta. And he worked for novicey, the novicey press agency. He was Ukrainian. And so he sent me pictures of it. They were large pictures, eight and a half by 11, like big size, and they were color and quite sharp. And there was like four or five of them. So I got to see what the missile looked like.

Now it doesn't mean anything for radio, but at least I had that. Those pictures disappeared from my desk. That file was gone. But whatever, I did see them. And when Padacken came out here, he phoned me. He was at the Weston Hotel, a nice hotel in downtown Edmonton. I went down there in my motorcycle to meet him.

I went up to the desk, and they wouldn't give me his room number because he's a diplomat. He came down. We went across the street to a restaurant that was underground a bit. we go into this restaurant for a meal and I sat down at a table and he said no you and I will change seats I want to be able to see the door see who's coming in fine we we talked a long time there we each had a burger I think it was and we never stopped talking and he suddenly became very agitated I thought it was something I said but it wasn't I said is there did I say something Why are you so upset?

He said, this guy followed us in here shortly after we arrived. And he said, look over your shoulder in a minute or so. You'll see him. He's eating alone. I did. I looked over in the guy slowly eating. And I thought, well, he's eating all by himself. He should have finished at his meal a long time ago.

He said, this always happens when I come to your country. You get these people following us. And he said, you know, I'm not allowed to go. 25 miles outside this destination. He said, for instance, I couldn't go to your home in Spruce Grove. That's outside. And he said, the same is true for Moscow. We have diplomats there from around the world.

They can't freely run around the country. They have a 25 mile perimeter. Fine, I get that. So he said, but that guy follows in. It happens all the time here. And he said, it's become angry at it. So when he left, we finished our meal. Then we were walking out.

and Podacken leaves me and walks over to this stranger at his table. He stood over him and glared at him. And the individual looked very nervous. He was a guy about 40, you know, short hair, I could tell. He was probably RCMP. And he was afraid. I thought there would be a punch-up. Nothing happened just looking and dirty looks and that.

He wanted him to know he knew what he was up to. So I called a contact at K Division, RCP, about that. I said, do you guys get involved in that? And he said, yes. He said, Byron, leave him alone. He's just doing his job. So you can see there's this conflict, you know, behind the scenes. And I can't understand it.

But you see it firsthand. You know, it makes sure wonder what else is out there. When, when, um, he said when I come to your country, this always happens. Did you ever ask him about what this doesn't happen in other countries? I did. Yeah. He said it happens everywhere. I said, I brought up, I said, well, I don't think it's any different if I went to, to Moscow and, uh, and was doing stories that things would happen. Yeah, he didn't deny that. I was talking to a hockey player. Um, Frank Mahavlitz, remember that name? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. He played.

for Toronto and Montreal. He was on this big series back in 1972. And he told me that it was, he wanted to go to the opera in Moscow. And he said, they followed him there. He said, just a hockey player, you know. And yeah, he always little things like that, you know. But yeah, it's, that's that life and I don't quite understand it, but you, you, uh, you, you know, uh, you're It came close to it, you know, but to get back to your point with citizen journalists, we all are that, you know. I think advice I give people when they ask me, well, who do you trust? And I said, well, that's up to you. You do your research, but use common sense.

If you're watching a television network and they're heavily subsidized by the government, use your head. You're not getting impartial news. Know that. But if you want to accept it, go ahead. It's up to you. The internet is out there. There's all kinds of credible stuff out there. Yeah, there's bullshit too.

There's also bullshit in the mainstream media. A lot of it. But you have to sort that out and decide for yourself. So I tell people, you know, be your own editor. You decide. Okay, that makes sense. They try and make it seem like we're not capable of that. Of being our, you know.

There's too much disinformation out there, misinformation, all these different things. Well, I mean, I was a disc jockey, and I remember working here in Edmonton, CFRN, FM, it's now called The Bear. I did the afternoon show there, and I remember the back then we had a teletype where our stories came in. It was a machine and typed up all the stories. The summaries came from broadcast news, which was a branch of Canadian press. And there was a summary. Every hour they had a summary of news, Canada and around the world. and the very bottom of the summary, news summary, was a story from Tehran in Iran.

There had been a massacre in the square. I think 700 people or so died protesting Shaw. But it was buried down, and I said, why isn't that the lead story? Like 700 people is a lot of people, even if it's far away. I think that should be the lead story. That's not right. And one of the other announcers there, I was complaining to him about this, And he said, well, if you think you can do any better, why don't you become a reporter?

And that was my inspiration, that argument. And I mentioned that to a talk I gave somewhere. I forget now where. But I mentioned that. I said, I was suspicious of the news business. He said, well, now that you've been in it for 20 years, what do you think of it? I said, it's worse than what I thought. And that's true.

And that's when I was in it. And today it's even far worse. Far worse. So I could come back to the analogy I gave you. I thought I joined a church. It was going to use truth as a light. And as much as I could get as close to the truth as possible, not taking sides,

we're just putting the facts out there and let people decide. But I found out that, you know, there are agendas and you don't report people and you censor people. And that, I can't get over. that. I can't get over it. But I remember working at Auschwitz for the CBC then and wondering how I could handle that as a reporter then. And I thought, well, guess what? I'm seeing it today. I'm feeling now what the boys at Auschwitziem must have felt. I'm talking about COVID here and experimental injections and that. Yeah. So. And just the, and there was a

stretch there where it was dark, very, very dark, you know? And we did it to our fellow countrymen. You know, we, we, we, the fear of, of the cops coming and busting down the door or whatever was enough to push a lot of different people to yeah, do some pretty incredibly terrible things to each other, just the way we treat each other. Yeah, it's, it really left a, A bad image for Canada around the world? Totally. Same with Australia. Look at the goon tactics down there.

And even in Ottawa, I noticed photographs of the officers. They had their names covered up. Well, I tell this story lots about the officers in Ottawa. When I was there, the first day, Byron, they were arms crossed. They had belliclavs on, very standoffish. And by day two, I would, I would, this is what I, hypothesize, I guess, is they've gone home. One of the crew, one of their, one of their group has turned on the CBC, because everybody

did it at least once, just to see what the CBC was saying, or global news or whatever. And then they watched it, and they came back the next day and witnessed it was going on. And pretty soon, by day two, the belliclova, or the arms were uncrossed, you know. By day three, part of the belliclava was removed. And by day four, they were laughing and, and then they get removed in the next group would come in, you know, and I could be off of my time frame by a smidge. But if, if you were down in Ottawa for longer than 30 minutes, you're going, well, this isn't what they're talking about. I don't see anything in what they're talking about. And you could see it play out with the cops

over and over again, you know. Like, I mean, by the end, Sean could joke with them, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Tap them on the shoulder, that type of thing. Like, it was, pretty, none of those stories really get told a whole lot, but that's what I witnessed. And then, you know, whether it was they put them on, you know, maybe it was time off or maybe maybe they literally had shift change. It doesn't matter what it was, but new shift would come in and I remember seeing the new cops. They all come in and they all think they're going into the war zone and it starts all over again.

Yeah. And literally, if you've been around there once again for a day or two, pretty soon they start to adjust and everything else. Yeah. No, good, good for you for going there. But if you base your observations on common sense, you should have, everyone should be pretty well on the same level. But it's when you got the agendas. Oh, you can't mention Pfizer, you know, they're supporting our news magazine show at night.

Okay, so you can't mention that they were fined $2.3 billion, the largest criminal fine in U.S. history. You can't mention that? No, he can't. what are you thinking, you know? So you see that stuff and it's so discouraging. It is like so discouraging. I remember we had, and I don't remember her name, but she was a gal who joined us.

I'm talking to CBC days here, early 90s, I guess, from Regina. She transferred out here. And she did the afternoon show here. And then she was wanted. on Canada or Western Canada warrant for theft. The allegation was that she had stolen to Nagra, N-A-G-R-A tape recorder. Very expensive for tape recorders.

I believe they made in Austria, very high-end stuff, stolen them, and had them in her house in Regina. And she was dating a taxi driver who brought her to work. She shared that information with him. that she had these tape recorders and she had taken them from work. And when they broke up, he ratted on her. So they got the equipment and she was in Edmonton at the time. And I remember the RCMP issuing a news release.

They were looking for her. They had a warrant issued for her arrest. She was on holidays in the Rockies with her brother, who was an RCMP officer, funny enough. I did a story on it. That did not go over well. I remember typing it out and her unit, the afternoon show came over and they said, are you going ahead with the story?

And I said, well, yes, it's news. Why are you doing that? I said, it's news. We did a story on the ITV, now global lady who was caught stealing a book at the Bay here at Southgate shopping center. They charged her. ITV got on the phone and called all the media network saying, don't do the story.

CBC did. We did the story. She was a former Miss Canada. This lady, I've forgotten her name now. But I mean, she, you know, ponied up. And, yep, she was stealing this cookbook, and that was it. You know, walked out of the store with it. So we did that story.

Others censored it. But it's not right to try to censor it. But they went after me for that. So I ran the, I was doing the morning news. I ran it, we had three casts, 630, 730 and 830. I put it on the 630 news and again 730. And after it aired at 730, the phone rang in studio. It was a director of radio, a former reporter, TV reporter, Susan.

And she said, you've aired that item twice. That's enough. That's interference. I said, yeah, I aired it twice, and I aired it again at 8.30. So I got called into her office. This was 1988. She said, you're down to cover the Olympic Games in Calgary. I said, yeah, they have a room for me there in the media office.

She said, not anymore. We checked our budget. We can't afford to send you there. I was cut from that assignment. So was my boss, James Work, a news editor, We both lost that assignment. They had a jacket for me in a room and everything and I was to do feature stories for national news.

But that ended. So I mentioned that to people, that that wasn't right. And you know what? Someone close to me, I don't want to see her name. She said, you and your big mouth, you missed out on that. So some people are in favor of censorship, yet they want to sit down from TV and want the news, yet you favor censorship.

Do you ever regret some of the stances you've taken, Byron? No. Are you clear with your conscience? Oh, no. The only thing I regret is not taking a bigger stand. You know, I don't regret it at all. I'd do it all over again. I'd be more suspicious.

And then when that lady invited me to her house late at night and did that, I thought it was sexual. And it was a friend who said, no, that's political. you're being set up for a sexual assault. So that made me very cautious. And I remember coming back to my office, there wasn't an office, it was a desk in the newsroom. And sometimes I'd open my drawers and I'd check for stuff,

see if anything would plant it there. Imagine that. I became suspicious. I never found any cocaine. But I thought, I don't trust these people after what that woman did. And I exposed her when I left the company. I said, this happened. And she went on sick leave for four weeks.

She couldn't take the laughter in the office. And then she eventually quit. But there are stooges out there. They don't have the talent, you know, but they know how to get ahead. But I would never do that to anybody. But that's what happens. I mean, that's not an accident. Well, I think it's one of the things that over the past couple of years,

Sean's become less naive. There was some time there where... You'll do that with age as well. Now, I'll probably be gone another 20 years, maybe 10. You'll be around. And if you could talk to me then, you'd say, I've learned even more. You think you've uncovered some shit.

Look at what I found. It's like that, you know. And I don't knock people if they want to watch television and buy everything. You know, I'll hear that from people. where I work. I saw this on TV and I said really do you believe that? Oh yeah it's on TV you know it's okay yeah well I remind them and I said what channel do you watch and CNN I said do you know that CNN has fewer viewers than the

cartoon channel do you know why that's so no it's credibility yeah what age did you realize Byron doesn't know shit I think when I left home when I was 18, they realized I lived a sheltered life. I mean, put it this way, you may not believe this. I did not know what homosexual men did until I was 37 years old. Somebody in the newsroom told me that. I said, what? I didn't know that.

That's how sheltered I was. But I just, even as a child when I was four or five years old, my mother, I remember asking, we're in the kitchen. what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, I want to be a priest and live in a cabin in Northern Quebec. I don't know. Didn't know why in the boat, Northern Quebec was just a kid, but I wanted to go to the wilderness. And to this day, I still talk about living in a cabin, final days. The priest's not so much.

My mother was Catholic. I never went to church. I never got wrapped up on that stuff. but although I did meet Mother Teresa I was hugged by her what did you think of Mother Teresa she was short that happened at the airport here in Edmonton

I went out to cover her arrival she was in Alberta to collect a couple of million dollars for her charity in Calcutta India so and I was just simply getting her arrival she landed and she had these

guys with her, whether, I don't know, some religious group, Knights of Columbus or something. They had these fake swords and the goofy hats with the whiskey tassels hanging. And there was three or four in either side of her. She was in the middle, and she was short, remember that. And she was maybe 10 feet away, and there was a huge crowd. There was a good crowd there. And as she passed by me, I said to her in Serbian, welcome to Canada. And I don't know Serbian, but I looked it up.

and she turned and looked at me and then stopped walking and the guys stopped walking with the guys with the swords and she cut through the crowd and came over and reached up and gave me a big hug around my neck so and she was on her tippy toes so she was kind of a little shorty so I gave her a squeeze put my arm around her and gave her a squeeze of my right arm and I can tell you she was pretty bony, pretty thin gal. And she whispered something in my left ear, probably God bless you, or I don't know, maybe she was asking for my phone number, but I had no idea. So, and that was it.

But she knew I was a reporter because I had all this gear on me, a tape recorder and microphone. And the most horrible thing happened, and I was hugging her, I put my microphone in a not as secure spot on my chest. it dropped to the floor. It has a crystal on the front of it. It hit the hard floor out of the airport, and I thought, oh, my God. I busted the crystal for sure. I don't know how to explain that, getting back. So the crystal was okay.

Maybe God intervened and helped. I don't know. But nothing happened. I teased about that for years over that Mother Teresa, I think. But yeah, I saw her again at St. Paul when she got the money. And I remember Peter Loheed was the premier then. He was there and the Minister of Culture was there. The mayor of the town was there and it was a flying saucer pad.

That's where they had the ceremony. And I arrived there in the cruiser and we all have kits, you know, reporters. You have your own recorder, your own microphone, your own tapes and wind protectors, all of that. microphone stands. Some asshole had taken my mic stand. I arrived and I wanted my own mic stands because I stand a distance away and turn it off. And so I had to kneel there and hold up, hold up my microphone. And you've got all these people talking. You've got the mayor talking. I don't want to use it, you know, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings. So I kept recording. Peter Lahi, the mayor and all these people. I can't even remember. I think Mother Teresa may have said a few words.

But we're all up there in the flying saucer pad, and I'm right beside the podium and holding my mic up. And try holding a microphone for 30 minutes with the arm extended. It's sore. So I had to brace my arm to hold it. It was sort of painful. I looked back and people sitting, excuse me, people sitting at the back there, not far away, 10 feet away maybe,

Peter and the group. Mother Teresa was there. and they were watching me. And Peter gave a goofy smile, like, how are you? But Mother Teresa, I give her credit. She would lean over and look concerned. She knew I was in pain holding this thing. And she would squint, and I would say, it's okay.

Ten minutes would pass. I see her lean over to check on me again, and I would say, it's okay. We did this four or five times. And in the end, I wasn't, I was just saying, just winking and saying, it's okay. And then I realized, what am I doing here? I'm winking at Mother Teresa, you know. It's so crazy. Yeah, I remember going back to my cruiser and complaining to the technicians.

I said, some asshole took my mic stand, my arm's really sore in that. And well, how was Mother Teresa doing? I said, she's in the back seat here. You want to talk to her? She's just having a beer. You could goof around like that. back then. Now you'd be called into a meeting, you know. But now I do remember her being short and thin. Yeah. You mentioned when I talked about the clean-dressed guy in Ottawa,

when I caught eyes with him and he just left and he wouldn't talk to you. You said, your soul is picking up, he's not legit. One of the things that surprised me right at the end of our first interview, is you talking about talking with, and I forget his name right now, but he was a psychic. And, uh, uh, from British Columbia. And then, and then, uh, the spiritual experiences you had had with, uh, people sitting on the end of your bed and that type of thing. And it's one of the things that I find very curious about you, Byer.

I, uh, you know, you, you said it again. You said, uh, well, you brought up that your soul's picking up something. you mentioned that you were raised in a Catholic family that once upon a time you wanted to be a priest but you've kind of lost that that you don't go to church and yet you've had some of these experiences that are

I don't know what quite word to put on it but I understand what you're trying to say and I wonder if it's a special ability you have or if it's just something a lot of people have lost and don't put much faith in themselves being able to discern like there's something off there and so many of us just write that off

two years ago I would have written that off a lot like yeah there's something a little funny about that but yeah it's not a big deal yeah but I put more and more faith I guess into that that feeling or that reaction it's called an intuition women are better at that than men

women are very good at intuition I think they're better with their feelings I will pick up when a person is holding stuff back or is a fake or whatever You were too. Your soul was saying this guy is not legit. You can pick it up. But he's giving you signals with his appearance. You look at his eyes. You know, the eyes often shout what the lips fear to say is another tip. Watch the eyes. And you can tell when a person's legit. I mean, when you're talking to a child, he's eight or nine years old, they're legit. When a dog comes up in his tail, is Wagan and that, they're legit. You know, you know bullshit. And people are cautious. They don't mean to be harmful, but I suspect that individual, yeah, was a plant. And why were they not? There's

probably all kinds of plants there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, I can't answer your question. I don't know how to answer it. But it's, you often go by gut feeling. Now, when I first, the first spirit that I saw, I was working overseas in Nepal doing a story on a medical missionary. A child had died at the hospital. She was maybe a year old or so. Emaciated. She had had diarrhea and died.

They couldn't bring her back. She appeared in my room, I would say four feet up or so, just the top of her head down to Butterworth. waste a little bit more. She wasn't at floor level. And when I woke up for some reason, I was like wide awake. I'm not talking 75% awake, 100% awake, alert. And I saw her there, and she was moving, so it wasn't a picture or an image. And it's my first experience with a spirit, some would say they're a ghost, but I call them spirits. So I knew then and there, I said, oh, I've never been taught about this. This is crazy. And I didn't. And I

didn't know who to tell it to. And I had a second vision that was accurate. It was a child who was abducted and murdered. I knew she was dead and everyone was saying she might be here. And I said, no, she's on the other side. And when I was working on the book on Richard Lee McNair, the murder victim, I had up his autopsy pictures on my computer, which you see over there. And they were pretty bad. This guy was shot point blank range. We see where the point. We see where the bullets went in and the damage it did to him. He died instantly. And I had this up because I was writing the murder chapter

and I wanted to be reminded of what this guy went through. But that night, I don't know, around three in the morning or so, two, I could feel the mattress on my bed, the compression, go down, and woke me up and I was again wide awake. And there he was sitting there on the edge of my bed. He turned and looked at me. Sort of a studious look, not anger, more indebted. different. I think he was trying to say, you've seen me nude and in that shape. Maybe he's trying to say,

be honest about it, you know, or don't do it. I don't know what he was, he didn't say anything. He just looked at me. And I was not afraid of that. The third one, I said, I'm used to this. Whatever, you know, I just, we just looked at each other. And this went on for 20, 30 seconds. He didn't get up and walk away. He just pixeled. way, like the other two, gone. And they're gone like, you could time it. Second, half a second, they go fast. They don't.

And I don't know what that's about. But no one, you'd ever tell me that when you die, that's the end of it. No, you do go somewhere. Yeah. I'm more than convinced of that. And there's enough books on that. It's not anyone hearing this. Well, I never heard that before.

Well, just Google any mediums that have written books. well have the same stories. And I once, this is not a news story, a personal one. I was in the west end of Edmonton, and they had a Walmart store at the Centennial Mall. It's moved now. But I went in there on a busy Saturday afternoon to buy some running shoes, black ones.

I walk in, the place is crowded, and I spotted off in the distance a woman in a wheelchair, looking up at shoes on the shelf. and nothing unusual about her. So I go over and I sit down in one of these little stools, and I'm trying on these shoes. I'm bent over, tying them up. I look up, and I can see right in front of me,

is this wheelchair. I could see the shiny rims, the metal rims. And this was a woman. She's looking at me, and she sees, we make eye contact, and then she sharply turns her head and says, we've met before. And I knew what that meant. I'd never seen her before, but I got the drift of what she was saying,

maybe a previous life or whatever. We've met before, and it took her courage to say it by the way she snapped her head when she did say it. I said, I understand. How long have you been in a chair? She said, 26 years. She had a sing-songy kind of voice, you know. And she was upper 40s, maybe early 50s, I can't tell. Especially with women, you can always say, you can't tell.

So I said, were you in a motor vehicle accident? She said, no, I had a brain aneurysm. And I died. I died twice. I said, oh, you've been to the other side. She said, yes. She wasn't a pretty gal. But when she smiled, she was warm, you know, a very pleasant lady.

And she said, yes, she was so excited to tell me about what it was like on the other side. And I said, so what was it like? And she said, well, the first time I died, she said, I met my dad there. And on earth, my dad only had one leg. But in heaven, he had two. He had two legs. And I saw him. And she said, what a feeling of peace.

I can't describe it and how bright it was there. And how good I felt. And so they pulled me aside and they said, it's not your time. You have to go back. She said, I argued with them. I did not want to go back. and she said then I wake up in the hospital but she said that happened and she said I want you to know that you should see the other side how beautiful it is you'd never want to come back she died again

this time in a hospital she said I remember passing through the walls and seeing her relatives outside waiting in the room and she said it wasn't long before I got there it is not far away she said you can't see it it's all I don't know how to describe it She said, I arrived with a little girl, and she got in, and she said, I get into, this would be what we call the pearly gates, and she said, they brought me to a room and told me, it's again not my time. I spent more time there, and I argued with them. I really argued that I did not want to go back.

She said, Byron, you never want to, she said, she didn't know my name, but she said, you'd never want to be back here again, not after being there. So, and then she said, I woke up in the hospital, and I said, how do you support yourself? She said, I don't. My husband and I live in an apartment building, and he does jobs there, and they give us free rent. Okay. Her name was Cheryl. I remember that.

She gave me her name is my sister's name is Cheryl, so it's easy to remember. And I said, well, it was nice talking to you, and she started to wheel away. and I said, what is it? You don't like about being here? And she stopped, and she said, people are not nice to each other here. But before she left, I said, well, you're willing to call me if you want. And she was holding on her lap a black purse where the little snaps on it. You know, they open up with a little snaps.

They kind of click together. She had that black purse there. I said, I'll give you my card. If you're free to phone me, if it was a business card. I turned it upside down and she doesn't look at it. She says, I know who you are. I said, you do? She said, I recognize your voice from the Dats Bus, Disability Bus, speakers on the bus.

Oh, he turned it over and saw my name. Isn't that weird? So these encounters, I think, are meant to be. Yeah, she's never phoned. But nonetheless, I've never forgotten that talk at the back. of the Walmart store, the lady in the wheelchair. You think these, I don't know, Sean walking in your house two years ago and then this, again, is meant to be then?

Yeah, definitely, yeah. And sometimes you can have, again, I say women are better at this than men, this intuition. It was 1969. I was working at a radio station in Quebec City, CFOM. and I was invited out, at a girlfriend, and she invited me out to her company function of one of the islands in the St. Lawrence River. We went out there in a boat. And there was maybe 75 people in the room, and they had them all organized.

It was a U-shaped thing that had all the tables. People on either side of the table. I sat beside Elen, and they had three door prizes. They gave us tickets when they came in. They had three door prizes. We each got two tickets. She got two, I got two, everyone got two tickets. So they announced that they were going to call out these numbers.

They're for the winners. Before he called out the number, I stood up. It was my number. But I stood up before he called it. So that shocked Helene. She said, how did you know that? I said, I had no idea. I can't explain.

but I don't normally stand up in a crowd. Never do that, especially then. And I sat down and I gave the prize to her. They had a second draw, and I don't know, got it. And the third one, I said, I'm getting the third one too, but I'm not going to stand up, and I got the third one. That's freaky. So you ask, how does that happen?

How do you know that? And I can't give you an answer. I don't know the answer. A medium, maybe could tell you that. Maybe 10 mediums would have 10 different accounts. What happened there? But it's real. And I'll tell you what, it freaked out Elen, girlfriend.

We talked about that in the bus going back. I said, I have no idea what happened there. He said, it's scary. And I said, yeah, because I don't understand it. And to this day, I don't understand it. But I think you have, not talking about you, when I met, you, I think you seek the truth. You're not here for the glory or the money. You'd make a hell of a reporter. I don't know how long you'd last, given today's market, but I appreciate you seeking

the truth. I think you're being used too by upstairs. That's my belief. And I'm not religious. I'm just saying that's, I mean, they see a lot of shit going down here and they're not happy with it. And you're like anyone who seeks the truth has become like a little soldier, you know, fighting for the truth. And I have contempt for people in newsrooms as censor others. Like Rebel News does a good job in breaking stories. But when they attend news conferences, they say, oh no, you're not legit. Screw off. You know, they've broken more stories and the mainstream media put together. and they're not on the take

I don't work for rebel news but I'm just that's an observation yeah it's an interesting thing to to just want to have open dialogue you know I don't think there's anything dangerous in that except oh there is

everything dangerous in that right? Yeah yeah yep you know and here's another story I can share with you but I can't say the name there's a criminal act here

but the person was never charged. Some time ago, and I can't identify the year because it identifies the guy, but let's say 80s, our garbage men in Edmonton working to the city of Edmonton, sanitation worker, fines, I don't know if I ever shared this story with you. You did, the VHS tape. The VHS tape brings it home.

This is pedophile, an adult male screwing a native kid up the ass. He videotaped himself and, well, they brought it to the police. Police talked to the officers involved. The judge, it was a judge, court of Queens Ben's Justice. He resigned when they gave him the letter to sign. He cleaned out his desk. They said to clean out your desk in five minutes and he's gone.

But they wouldn't give me his name, but one of the officers who flew to Ottawa to get the papers for his dismissal. said, yeah, we made, it was a plea bargain. I said like hell, it was a plea bargain. He was never charged. You cut him a deal. That wouldn't happen to me or you. Most people out there, they'd be charged.

The evidence is right there in the VHSA. So anyway, and then I shared that with the retired Court of Queen Spence Justice here in Edmonton, not the same guy. And this fellow was a straight guy. And he knew all about that. He said, we heard he was, he had child porn. I said, child porn. I said, he was a leading actor. What are you talking about?

He said, it was a plea bargain, Byron. I said, it wasn't a plea bargain. You guys cut him a deal. Police did. Because his brother was a very senior politician. If I told you who he was, you'd know who the offender was. And he's never been charged. But along the way, you know, you were trying to put this story together

and getting evidence, trying to talk to the guy. he's not available and then he was he was a liberal appointee by Pierre Trudeau and he was in tight with the Liberal Party and who contacts me one of the organizers liberal organizer lady she said we know about this guy because brother told me all about him don't do the story Byron because it would upset his wife I said well I suspect his wife doesn't know if he's a pediful while. He's not identified, but she still didn't want it out to embarrass him because word would get around. I said, the story's going out, and I put it out on my blog. The next day,

phone rings, law courts building. They want to know who the judge was. And I said, I'm not giving you a name. He's never been charged. But if you really want to know, go over to a court Queen's bench, talk to the senior judges. They'll tell you who he is. That wanting to give a name out over the phone is a trapdoor. Then they could say, oh, Byron identified you or whatever. But yeah, so there's another story of how it difficult to do stories. Now, I mentioned this to a certain son reporter who was working, who would have known his brother very well. And I said, this is a great little story. And he said, oh, Byron, we all knew about that.

We just didn't want to do it to cause embarrassment to the child. I said, bullshit. You knew who his brother was. You work with his brother. That's why he didn't do the story. And you never knew it anyway. I don't think they just bullshitting. Didn't like to be scooped.

I did it. It's up there. And occasionally I'll run into a judge and I'll mention that. And there's an Alberta judge, Larry Anderson, I'll tell you who he is. He's a criminal defense lawyer. One of a good guy. And I ran into him. And he said, what are you doing?

And I said, I did a story in one of you guys. Yeah, so I told him the name and that, what it was about. So I get back home, and the number of hits on that story, I must have had about 10 in an hour. Larry must have been phoning his buddies to tell him. all about this story. Yeah, so that's funny. When you covered the prison beat, you said something that,

there's lots of things about the first time we sat down by her and that really stuck with me. I don't remember much of that. One of the things that stuck with me is you said you trusted inmates more than you would media. Yeah. You also mentioned in there that they, I can't remember if it's the guards

or the other inmates or who was it, didn't want you talking to the pedophiles. And you were like, I'm going to talk to everybody. Yeah, that was the head of the inmates committee. Johnny Schumann said that. And he said, is it true that you talk to this pedophile? I said, yes, I did. I brought him up into the office, in fact, warden's office.

We sat down ate coffee and biscuits. That's funny. So the reason I talked to him is that he spent time with David Milgard. wrongfully convicted. At this time, Milgard was still in the joint. And I said, I know you spent time with the shuffles. What's he like? So he gave me a rundown.

And I said, who do you think killed Gail Miller? He said, it wasn't shuffles. I said, who was it? So he tells me. I said, how do you know that? He said, Larry told him. Larry Fisher was, eventually went down for that crime. I said, who told you that?

He said, Larry did. He said he killed that girl and got away with it. I said, where did he tell you that? And he told me where the prison they're at. And I said, well, so I told Schimmons, I said, that was an important meeting. And he said, well, I don't give a shit about that. But if you're talking to the pedophiles, you don't talk to us. I said, that's fine.

But I am talking to anyone in here, whether they're pedophiles. or killers, like you. I said, Johnny, you killed a guy with a baseball bat. I know you've killed another guy and got away with it, right? He said, yeah. I said, well, why am I talking to you? You know? So we had our out and that, and in the end I end up talking to everybody,

including guards, to this day. Prisoners send me emails, read the site, get on. One phone call I got one day was from a prisoner who said, You've identified the killer of another prisoner here And it's not him, Byron, it's somebody else. It's definitely not this guy. And the guy making the call was Colin Thatcher.

Colin was quite reliable. He was dead on with his information. And I checked, and sure enough, he was right. I found out who had taken out this other prisoner. And when I did a blog story on what it's like to be a prison reporter. I was sitting in my car one night, my phone rings.

It's a British Columbia number. It's from Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. The guy identifies himself. He said, do you know me? Do you remember me? I said, no, I don't. He said, I was at the Max, the federal prison.

I was in A unit. I said, I didn't know the boys in A unit. I was more B unit, Thatcher and Schimmons and these guys. He said, well, I read your story. He said, I knew all those guys in the story. He said, do you want to include me in it? I said, well, I don't even know you. Do you murder someone?

Well, yeah, I did at the joint. I said, well, why? What are you in for? He said, I was the guy doing the jewelry heist. I said, oh, you're the guy that ran a truck through the front door of a joint? No, no, that was another guy. I wouldn't do that. I'd had other kinds of jewelry ice.

I never heard of him. He said, but I wanted to join the Angels, Hell's Angels of Bikers Group. And he said, but they didn't think I was tough enough, so I took out a guy at the joint. I said, who was that? He said, the guy in the lunchroom, I said, oh yeah, he was a pedophile or something.

He said, yeah, it was me, it killed him. Well, he said, but they didn't have cameras at that point, not on a spot. He got away with it. He said, that was me. And he said, I'm with the Hells Angels now, and I'm in Nanaimo. I said, okay. And he said, before I phoned you, I checked with our office in Vancouver, and they said, you're okay.

I said, oh, that's good. I got a thumbs up from the Hells Angels of Vancouver, this stupid world. So he wanted me to include him in the blog story. And I said, no, you're not sort of high-profiled enough, you know, but he phoned a few times, and, you know, he kind of felt left out, I guess. I said, well, give my regards to your biker boss over there. And I said, oh, by the way, if you're connected with the bikers, what happened to Leo? I did a story on him.

He said, oh, yeah, Leo, I used to talk about you. Well, Leo, you're not supposed to know, but he did a bank robbery and got caught. And now he's back in the joint, but if you're not supposed to know that, I said, that's okay. It's just weird. It's weird being on that beat. But yeah, as you get back to your point, I have found, I got this from a criminal defense lawyer, David Wilson. When people, he used to be in real estate,

and when he studied law became a lawyer, he became a criminal defense lawyer. And he would go to prison, and his real estate buds would say, what's it like being at the prison, you know, it would be pretty awful. And it was his observation that he saw more honesty with prisoners than people on the outside. Now, I've evolved that to say the media, which I believe to be true.

A lot of the boys in there, they don't have anything to lose. No, shit, they'll just square with you on anything. Remember, I went out one time fishing for a story. It was fall. And the natives prisoners had a native day there. They had in elders to give a talk, their little pow-wow thing, and they're beating on drums and dancing and that. And it was kind of like a social thing.

I went out fishing for stories. And I was sitting at the edge of the hockey rink. You used to have a hockey rink there and it was empty, but they kept the boards up. I was sitting at the edge. This guy comes up, sits down to my right, or a short guy, your native guy. I said, what's your name?

And he gives me his name. Didn't ring a bell. He said, you know who I am? And I said, no. He said, I killed a guy and upbrenner Peace River. I said, oh, yeah, you're the guy. He was at a party or something. He said, yeah, that was me.

I said, oh, okay. I said, well, what feelings do you have now being here? I mean, they're talking about native spirituality and trying to get your life together. You were high on drugs or something. Yeah, I said, you all are you guys and you stab people. But how do you feel about that now? He said, you know that guy I killed? Yeah, he deserved it.

When I get out, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to piss on his grave. I said, well, I don't think the native spirituality is quite working out for you. He said, see you later. And he tapped my leg and he ran off and joined the crowd. What a weird experience, prison. Do you ever, you know, 74 today? 74.

We're 74 on May 1st. 77 in May 2nd. 37 in May 2nd. So we're nice and tight our birthdays. Oh, yeah, there you go. Yeah. Do you ever wonder how the heck you ever got to where you're at, Byron? Like, you know, you go from, you know, disc jockey to reporter to crime beat to, you know,

like having CSE set up, you know, steak out beside you, you know, you just sit there and you go, what, like what is going on? And, you know, we've done the full gambit today all over again, you know. Yeah. Well, I hope you find it interesting, you know, you can learn from it if you can. You know, I've made some mistakes and done some right things as well as part of life. But as a child, I was very shy. One of the greatest gifts I got was a crystal radio.

They don't make them anymore. But you had to assemble them. And you had to hear it with a headset, you know, a little cheap headset. I would listen in bed at night to the local station, even though I would have had C.B. programming at night, which is boring, but I was so excited to hear that, and I would listen to it. I could feel the cold coming in through the window, the storms and the maritime, the big snowstorms, and it just felt so neat. And I thought even as a kid, it would be nice to drive around town and play music for people. They could, there were cars that would go around announcing when there

was boxing matches and that. It wouldn't be nice that people could hear some music, and I could maybe do that. But as a child, I stuttered a lot. So I was not good for any announcing job. And then as a teenager, I played indoor soccer for a team that won a few championships, and they voted me captain of the team. That was a play defense. That was nice. And then they, one of the radio, the radio station down asked me to do a report on the stats for some league, so I did.

I was doing stats for a hockey league. So the manager said that kid sounds, you have some talent. Can he come in and read our sports? So I did. And man, was I nervous? Oh, geez. And I recorded it. I would never do it live.

Recorded it and went home and turned off all the radio so no one could hear it. I was so ashamed. And then when I turned 18, I didn't have any work. And I was doing sports. And one of the announcers there said there's an opening. at a station in Newcastle now called Miramishie. They're looking for a DJ and I said, well, I haven't done that. The guy said, well, I think you'd be okay.

So I applied and got the job, worked evenings and then afternoons and was there for a short while and then worked in Quebec City. And then in British Columbia, TV and radio, and then I moved to Australia. We're talking 1970 now, worked radio there and then TV. But I was in sales because of my accent. I couldn't get on the air at the way. as where I could hear. But I did commercials, and the commercials went over well.

The products were sold because it was so different. And then I moved to get out of that. I found very deceptive, the sales business, a lot of con and that. I really wrestled with that. I didn't feel good about it. It felt terrible, really. But I did okay with the sales. I just didn't feel good inside.

So I left the business, went to Perth, West Australia, met a lady there. It became my wife and we traveled to Africa, stayed there for a while. But when I was in Johannesburg, the major city in South Africa, I did get around to the offices of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. They were downtown on Wellington Street. And I cut a tape there and they wanted me to read news to a short wave that would go beam to North America. And I said yes. but my girlfriend, Hauderdas, who was from Finland, said, no, she didn't want to stay in South Africa, she hated it.

So we ended up leaving Africa and went up through Europe, took a train, and went all the way up to Germany, Sweden, and Finland. We're docked in 1972, and Hartis and I spent the year in Finland. And I would learn some Finnish, and it was really different being away from you were in Finland, too. That was your home for a while. I stayed in Turku. You know where that is? It was called Obol in Swedish.

It's a major city on the port on the Gulf of India. I worked there on the docks and no one spoke English there. So when I came back to you... That's quite the experience to live somewhere where they can't speak your language. Yeah, no, and they spoke Swedish, but I didn't speak Swedish. And the Finnish I picked up was, I couldn't really use it because I lived in a Swedish community. It was like French is in Quebec. They were all Swedish there on the island.

So I'd go into town to try and buy something and talk to them in Finnish, and they didn't understand Finnish. It was just Swedish. It was just weird. The Russians, I didn't mind on the boats and I enjoyed talking to them about hockey. At the time I was there, the Canada USSR hockey series was on. Yeah, I remember that? Yeah, because the boys would ask me off the ships and I said, do you want to come here and watch it on the TV?

And I said, the Russians, and I said, no, I can't, you know. Yeah, they're okay. I remember I pissed off everyone on the dock. There was a lot of workers there. They made big ships because one of the Russian guys said to me, what's the price of vodka here? I said, I don't know. I asked around and told them it was 50 marks or something for a bottle.

and they often sold their vodka to the dock workers, the Russian guys from Leningrad. But they were mad because the Russians then knew the real price of the vodka, and that's what they wanted for theirs. And we said, we always undercut it, you know, by 20 marks or something. What are you doing? So they're quite annoyed at me for a while. Anyway, that was left there, and we traveled back to Canada late 1972. And we're at the airport in Helsinki.

You've been there, I'm sure. and there were some Canadians there. I could hear them talk. And I said to Hardest, do I sound like that? She said, yeah, you sound the way they do. I said, that's weird. I didn't think I sounded that way. But you don't hear English.

Suddenly you hear it, and it just sounds weird. Yeah, I arrived back in Canada, and I tried to get a job at a radio station in Brampton outside Toronto. And I was explaining my background to the man on, I think it would be a program director. and I had trouble with some words. You know, the words weren't coming right. And he just hung up the phone. You know, I'm going to hire this guy.

So I worked in the government for six years and to talk about a square peg in a round hole. It was the federal government. It was not for me. We were building another airport outside Toronto at Pickerling or Pickersley or something. Pickering and it fell through. but there's some corruption there too.

I saw that and it just bothered me, that the amount of money they'd spent. Anyway, it was not for me, and I left and came to Edmonton. I did the afternoon show here, CFRN, FM, now called The Bear. And from there, I started doing soft documentaries. Work in FM was boring, I thought,

because we played three or four records in a row, and you weren't saying anything, so I just used to go to typewriter and work on little soft things. and that led to freelance work, work with the CBC and then when I got over there

I think my career took off and worked in current affairs and once I got into news I began breaking a lot of big stories all the time which is just fun which is like cracking a home run I got a thrill out of that

still do and CBC led to overseas assignments you know Auschwitz you know Nepal Nicaragua during the war stuff like that. So that was all interesting and a good part of my development. And then as you get older, you become more critical of stories. How could I do this better? Why did I not see this? Here's another

point of view. I think the CBC, and I know people knock it, we at least had ethics, you know, generally speaking, that we were closer to the truth than the others. We felt maybe I'm biased. But along the way, when I left, I left Ched, I did a story, and I forget what the story was about exactly, but I had to do with ethics and journalism. So I called the Canadian Association of Broadcasters in Toronto. They're like, it's an umbrella group. And I said, do you have a code of ethics? They said, yes, we do.

It's a broadcast standards. And they showed me or emailed it to me. The code of ethics is pretty good. And I said, let me see now. you've got hundreds of TV stations that would be members and radio stations. How many of these, these code of ethics were for sale for the members? How many have you sold? One.

One media outlet and all of Canada had a code of ethics, and that was it. And I went, whoa. CBC, we had a code of ethics in our handbook, but I'm talking about something you'd display on the wall. You'd put up in the newsroom. one. The woman wouldn't tell me where it was. So I got phoning around. I began calling Hor houses. You can phone them. They're in Vegas, they're in Melbourne, they're all over the world, brothels. I found one outside Melbourne. The guy answered, and I said, do you have a code of ethics?

He said, yes, we do, sir. It's right here as you enter our premises. It's right here by the door. You know? Okay. So there you go. I check around. I don't find any. in the newsrooms, but horror houses have a court of ethics. Think about that. That's an eye-opener. And the guy in Australia was a good fellow. He said, are you down here very often? I said, well, I do go visit people.

He said, well, I'll cut you a good deal if you drop by. And guess what? I never did. It's just funny he would offer, you know, but it's just like, what? Crazy world Well I've You know I've enjoyed this

I don't know why I waited two years But then again Always chuckle It's Sometimes it's just meant to be You know Like good thank you I appreciate you

You bringing me in And allow me to Curl you over the coals again I'm not sure exactly that That is what this was But certainly enjoy Discussing and hearing some things You know I should point out

You know You're going to be a part of the SMP Presents Legacy Media on March 18th here in Eminton. You're going to be one of the four keynote speakers. You're going to get to experience that night. This will be my third iteration of it. So I look forward to it. But to anyone listening, if you've liked what Byron's been talking about,

in the show notes is the link. You can click on it, and you can go buy a ticket or two and come see Breyer and along with. It would be fun. I enjoy one of the problems I have. I can't shut up. talking about the media. And I've got to be careful. I remember there's three other guys.

There are three other people there, so not to hog anything. Just let them maybe out. Well, that's... It's my night to be a listener. And I take that serious. You know, I had a haircut two days ago just in preparation for this. Well, the nice thing is, is as a host, I've got to do my... You know, I've had to sit on stage with the likes of Danielle Smith and, you know,

Todd Lowen, Travis Taves, Brian Gene, Rebecca Schultz was the group. There was five of them in Vermillion, and I had to battle with five politicians, if you would, trying not to get them to. And it's funny. I didn't find that big of a problem, you know, as a host. I feel like there's a bit of an ebb and flow to people talking and everything else. That's going to be my job. Your job is to come and let people listen to what you have to say.

Well, the advice I give people all the times, be your own editor. Don't sit back and hear news on the radio or read it in the papers or watch it on TV and say, that's the gospel, that's it. No, no, no, no. We're only getting maybe 5% of the news. The rest is never covered. And, you know, look at the COVID disaster, the bullshit with that. And they went along with it.

safe and effective. They use that term all the time. Yeah. Yeah, especially if they had sponsorships paid by Pfizer. They always said it. Oh, he's an anti-vaxxer and all this propaganda.

It's a conspiracy theorist. I'm a conspiracy realist of anything. But, I mean, if you just in life seek the truth, I want to know what's going on. And you're like that. Yeah, you'd be a good reporter. I don't know how long you'd last, but I think you'd be a good reporter.

I pick out people like you all the time. I'll work with someone. I'll say, you'd be a good reporter. Or this person would be a good editor. You know, they're very balanced. And this person's so opinionated. You know, you know, and I think this. And I don't know.

They're not going to be a reporter. You know. You stay with your forklift or whatever. But no, it's... But I've been... I wouldn't do anything different. The defeats I've had in life, I'm glad I had them. Because then it showed me, okay, I'm not made for that.

I don't want to be... in a job where I, like some people at CBC, and I don't want to knock them, but toward my end there, I would say, how's it going there, Larry? And I said, you know, I've got four years and three months and two weeks. Now I get my retirement. You know, so many of the guys talk like that. And I said, I said, I never want to retire. I want to work up until noon on the day of my funeral. You know, I love this stuff. But these people were caught in a trap. you know, mortgages, car payments and that. And guess what?

They all died early. They're dead. They never got a retirement because they didn't enjoy what they're doing. And you have to like it. And I've met people that just found their element. Like Brian Hall, sportscaster. Brian loves what he's doing. If he's 110 years old, he'd still like to report.

Because that's his little valley there. He just, he's at home. You know, good for him. He's found his spot. But a lot of people are in boring jobs. You know, I've, I had a job like that too in Toronto with the federal government. I didn't fit in there. And I was not happy.

I even contemplated suicide. I was so unhappy. It's not right. And I'm glad I got out. And I'm glad I was on picket lines when the rocks were big boulders or flying all around and fighting in that. Yeah, you could get hurt, but shit, that was fun to me. there's reporting and things got smashed up a bit or in the joint when you piss someone off and they pin you up against the wall and you punch back and forth you know and yeah it's not right but it happens

you make a name and now they're going to talk to you you didn't rat on them you know and i get to call some prisoners all the time emails you know and and talk to judges with stuff and it's cool with me you know but as long as you're real and honest and seek the truth is best you can, you're going to have doors open for you. But if you want to just stick to a news release and defend the establishment or defend a union or whatever, you're just a deadbeat waiting to die. Well, one final question before I let you maybe let myself out of here. I don't know.

I've been enjoying this. But we did the first time around, we did the Crude Master Final Five. I've switched it to the final question brought to you by Crude Master. and if you're going to stand behind a cause and stand behind it absolutely what's one thing Byron stands behind I think it's just seeking the truth and that goes for yourself

you know like what am I all about and how can I improve better be a better human being I think as I got older I'm more diplomatic than what I was when I was younger and little issues that are still wrong I don't make an issue of it it's not really worth it, you know.

But I would say I would just stand for what I think is the truth. When I check out and arrive on the other side, and mind you, I'm not religious, but I'm smart enough to know that we go somewhere. I don't want to arrive there and be an ass kisser. I want them to say, I want some high fives. I want them to say, yeah, you pushed humanity in the right direction. and your little shit disturber and a little wink, we like that.

You know. Well, I appreciate you doing this, Byron. I look forward to being on stage with you here in a couple weeks, and hopefully a whole lot more people get to, you know, if they haven't figured out who Byron is, they certainly are getting a taste of it right now. Yeah, well, thank you. And I hope when we meet again on the other side, let's say,

you ask about me, and I hope they don't tell you he's down below. I don't think that'll be the... No, I know it won't be.