Shaun Newman Podcast - #866 - Jim Sinclair & Willy MacDonald

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Willy MacDonald served 24 years in the Canadian Military and did 6 tours overseas.Jim Sinclair served 33 years in the Canadian Military. He’s proud former member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and served in 4 tours overseas.To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionWebsite: www.BowValleycu.comEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail]

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Substack, if you haven't subscribed to it. it's free to subscribe to and um well that gets you the week in review it gets you if you become a paid subscriber gets a little behind the scenes it'll get you the latest view of the the studio as well as the full cornerstone forum from this year and last year i might add well if you're watching or listening on x youtube rumble facebook make sure to subscribe make sure to you know hit the retweet button share it with a friend leave a comment all the things and me and jamie especially based in today's podcast. We couldn't remember the lady's name who first introduced me to Hank and Jamie,

and that's Latasha McMullen. So here's a shout-out to her for giving me the initial introduction to Hank and Jim, who have now, you know, Jim's become a mainstay of the podcast coming on quite regularly on military roundtables, but in the middle of the podcast, we couldn't remember her name. And then it was after me and him got talking, and we dug it back up, and we're like, oh, man. Anyway, so shut out to Latasha. She is the reason that Jamie first entered the podcast. and now years later, he continues to be on.

So, with all that being said, let's get on to that tale of the tape. The first spent 24 years in the Canadian military and did six tours overseas. The second served 33 years in the Canadian military and served in four tours overseas. I'm talking about Willie McDonald and Jim Sinclair. So buckle up, here we go. All right, gentlemen, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. We're coming in fast and furious today. I'm joined by Jamie Sinclair, Willie McDonald.

gentlemen thanks for hopping in thanks for having us Sean thanks for having us go ailer's go well by the time this airs it'll be like at least a game or two in but go Oilers go agreed okay fair enough yes a game or two in

yeah yeah by the time this is once tonight yeah well this should be turned out by tomorrow morning no do your diligence no I already got one out coming out tomorrow well for one thing you're even forgotten

that we were coming up here. So at least it's going to get out. At least it's going to get out. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Thank God that I phone you. That is true. Oh my lord. So first of all, thank you for having us here.

But thank you for putting on that forum down in Calgary. And what a great group of people there. Like it was amazing. Like, one thing I must say when you walk into a group of people and like, There was, you know, people there that from every walk of life, but pretty engaged and pretty switched on. And an attractive looking crew.

Like there was some, there was some guys there that I met from. Oh, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Oh, hey, hey, hey. Hey, we're allowed to do that now. There are some guys there that I met that I'd love to fucking go to battle with. Like, they're just big burly. Once again, once again, that was an interesting choice of words. Mr. Sinclair.

Big burly men, very fit, strong, and there's some attractive looking ladies running around out there. Like, you attract a good crew of people that listens to your show. So, yeah, I hope that's a compliment to you. It should be a compliment to your listeners because, yeah, they were pretty engaged. I got to walk around and meet lots of people. And they kept saying, well, we can't wait to hear you talk. I said, well, no. Sean said, I got kicked off.

Didn't you tell you guys? So did you actually tell about a podcast Did you kick me off or was that like Are you just going to mention that? I asked Jamie on a podcast, Willie. And then I talked to Jamie before we got close Because I'm like, I would like to put Tamara Leach in your spot this year

Because everybody's talking about Alberta separation, right? Yeah. And how do you have somebody on from Saskatchew? I'm like, it doesn't work. So I'm going to have to, you know, like move some things around. Hey, I'm okay with Tamara Leach take them. my spot. That was the most great thing to do. I know you are. But you didn't tell everybody that I

wasn't going to be on there. Well, because I probably had a ride on my head. So I just figured I would sneak away out the background. You know, it was behind the curtain. Sean disappears. What happened to Jamie? It's like he's gone. I have to wait until 2026. Anyways, it was awesome. And the Bush party that Henry and myself put on, that was awesome. Like you wouldn't believe the amount of people that came to that. You know what? That cost me 100 bucks, by the the way cleaning yeah cleaning hey you got your revenge on me hey hey fuck you i bought six cases of bow up there that was way more than a hundred bucks i literally get a call 120 on you i get a call from the like the the manager he's like uh sir we're gonna have to charge you a bit of money and i'm like

what happened like somebody like what and then he's like i don't know what went on in this room i'm like oh well actually that's bullshit because uh a few of us went down there the next morning and cleaned it up like i don't know and i even asked i even went to the to the counter i said hey do i do i owe you anything for that and they said no you're good well so they lied it was they lied to us no need like for the kid this year them bastards the other thing is uh it was a great great venue you enjoyed the venue yep and i and i loved like all the other stuff like getting to go to a silver gold bowl meeting all those guys it was it was it was a amazing. It was this like, like it was first class, speaking of silver gold ball.

Speaking of a silver gold bull, this is a new, look on the back of that. Oh, it's got the, it's got the king on it. It's got the king on it. Nice. We happen to have metals that have that on there. Yep. There you go. This is, not this nice. Let's see if I can get that close enough there. There you go, folks. That's the back of the new one ounce silver coin. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Doing a terrible job of this. Anyways. I guess you're going to buy me beer later. Here.

Oh, fuck you. That's my beer. Well, at least you're not like Chuck and pull out like an American army. Joe better have beer for us when we get to Miami. Just think just just just just just one of those either. Boy. Just in case. I got one for you at the campground.

Speaking of the campground, um, one of the guys that taught me on the hunt when I was a kid, Dave Arsuick. He's up in flimflon and, uh, I pray for all those firemen. and everybody is working on those fires right now. And they've had some terrible wins.

Oh, everything's been terrible up there. It's horrific. But anyways, people are moving south. So hopefully Dave ends up back at the campground and we're going to put him up for a couple of weeks so he figured out if he has a home or not. Yeah, yeah. You know what was funny?

They were talking about it on the radio today. And apparently the Army isn't capable of fighting fires anymore. I don't remember that ever being an issue when we were in. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I haven't been tracking that part of it very closely. So I don't know if they've even asked or requested help or how they have in Saskatchewan in Manitoba. But the Army is saying that they're not equipped to or able to actually fight the fire,

but they can aid in transport. And one thing that I'm thinking of is back in when Colonna was on fire or camloops or whatever that was When the army actually went and did that we were still fit and now that everybody's 75% They'd be having fucking they don't want to go do work Yeah and and the fucking firefighting equipment they have probably won't fit them fat fucks anymore So they have to they can't do that they can just drive trucks Yeah, I don't know I don't know no comment What do you think of Russia getting hit by Ukraine?

I've been waiting to add. I've been fucking brilliant. I've been fucking brilliant. Brilliant. That's brilliant. It's never been done ever in the world. Like that's the modern day Trojan horse. Like that was, that's a fucking brilliant.

That's almost as good as the Israelis blowing up iPhones and pagers on the fucking enemy. Like that was a well executed. plan. You've got to be the first person. You know what? To the audience, I've been sitting here waiting on pins and needles after he called me. And I'm like, oh yeah, we were doing that today, weren't we? Right, okay, yeah, sounds great.

I'm like, I've been waiting to call you to ask you about this, but I'm like, I should probably bring them on the pocket. So it's like, you know, perfect time. And you're like, it's brilliant. It is a brilliant attack. It was very smart and well executed. Oh, I'm not arguing that. But you're literally poking the.

bear that has nuclear capabilities to go blow things up? Well, here's the thing. So remember we talked, I don't know, about a year or so ago, I said the best way to end this war is to bankrupt Russia and get India and China to stop buying their oil and then they won't be able to like carry on with their war. Well, that's what Trump's going to start doing. He's getting China and India to stop buying their oil. And Russia economically, like the oligards are going to stop buying their oil. And Russia economically, like the oligards are going to stop him from having this war. And NATO will have to back off to pre-existing boundaries and the Russians will back off on the east side of Ukraine

and there'll be a corridor. A trade corridor set up through the domads where they got it all fucking blown up and destroyed anyway. And there'll be like a peace treaty that'll come from Russia being bankrupt. by any once indian trying to stop buying oil then russia will be fucking will have to negotiate with with the west what do you think willie you know what i i i i mean i agree with jamie that it was it was a brilliant attack um because it sends a message it sends a message that hey we can reach out a little bit further than we have in the past and we have we pack a little bit more of a punch than

what you thought we packed. And again, I mean, you know, Jamie said the key words, oil, right? We know what the situation is in terms of oil reserves and the cost of oil and everything. We're having that fight here in Canada, for God's sakes, about, you know, are we going to build more pipelines? Aren't we going to build more pipelines? And, you know, where does our autonomy come from in terms of natural resources? And you've got a pretty resource-rich environment in that point.

part of the world and and uh i don't know it's it's i haven't wrapped my head around it completely yet i don't think but i don't think russia would would would push the big red button um i don't think that that's that's a possibility but i could be wrong i mean everybody that i've had on to talk about russia talks about they have the capability to press the big red button and i would argue that Putin has shown restraint in not pushing the big right button. But I'm sitting across from two men who literally went across this world and fought everywhere. So it'd be like a, I don't know. Well, here's the thing about the nuclear weapons Russia has, and I brought this up in the past,

is that like a nuclear weapon will lose so much yield like per year. So they haven't been building nuclear weapons since like the 80s, right? So that's 30 years ago. So every year so much yield is lost per weapon. So effectively, how effective are these nuclear weapons that they have and how much yield will they produce if launched? Now, the United States, their weaponry is more advanced and technically is going to produce more yield than the Russian. So they're basically going, okay, we push the red button. We might get 10% of what we used to get because now we'll lose missiles in orbit

because we haven't been maintaining them. And when the Americans retaliate, like, it's going to be catastrophic. Because they're not going to have. So you don't think the Russians have any capabilities? Oh, they do. But they're not going to fucking ruin their world. Because the oligards that support Putin, they're like, fuck you. Like we want to, we got families, we want to survive, we want to live too.

They're not going to, they're not going to go to the ends of the world to. To this point, has, you would call Russia the aggressor then? Well, yeah, they invaded the Ukraine. But why did they invade the root? Because Obama told or dangled the NATO carrot in front of the Ukraine that they could be part of NATO. That was like Russia put in nukes in Cuba. and the whole fucking world went nuts and there was about to be a world war

if those nukes ended up in Cuba and turned around and moved them back so the Russians invaded Ukraine because of NATO over expansion in Europe which should never have happened like they shouldn't be in Poland they shouldn't be in So wouldn't you Paul

but you okay so right there you said NATO keeps expanding expanding right to their border and if it had happened on the United States the United States would have what on, well, they did. It was Cuba. Yeah.

So the same thing happens to Russia. Yep. Why? But they're the aggressor because they've actually physically attacked. But I might argue that, I will argue, what choice did they have? Who? Russia. Well, yeah, no, that's right.

Yeah. And it's Obama's fault for allowing that to happen. They should have been offered European status like Russia was actually offered that same status when Putin first got into power. But they had to clean up their elections and be like a, like a approach democracy and have fair elections throughout Russia, which didn't happen. So the NATO or the European nation was pulled back from Russia. And your guys is, you know, like you've been deployed.

Willie, how many times you've been deployed? Six. Okay. In your six deployments, how many times did you run into Russians? Just once. And what did you think of the first? Russian forces back then? They were not very good. They weren't

and that was in Kosovo and the Russians basically came in. They got into Kosovo ahead of us and they basically took control of the Pristina airport and

they had checkpoints so you weren't allowed in there and you know the political situation in Kosovo was a little bit different but I mean their equipment was dated what year we talking 99 so it's been 26 years since then yeah you have to believe they have changed since then yes well you would think so but uh i mean like look at the can't look at the canadian military around the flip side like we right in front of her eyes in the last decade we you know we go

from you two like it's like who would you like to serve with yeah really and jim i'm like yeah that'd be that'd be fun and i mean at the end of the day I'm like, I know I'd, I, the guys standing beside me are going to protect me and go into a burning building to pull me out. Today, I would say the Canadian forces, and I know you guys still know guys in there, but like every year that goes by, you were mentioning the obesity rate that's in the Canadian military. Like 26 years ago, okay, so the Russians weren't, but over 26 years of Putin being at the helm, don't you think that they've improved immensely? Not to mention being in war. Chuck always talks about being battle tested. You two are definitely battle tested, right?

So you walk in your first tour. I assume it changes the next tour to the next tour. By the time you're in the sixth tour, man, I assume you've seen almost everything, probably not. But, you know, there's probably always a few different surprises. Our battle testing is, though, that a lot of us came back. What the Russians are facing in Ukraine, like their casualties are. a thousand a week. Like we lost

158 guys in 10 or 12 years? Jim, the recent stat that Rebecca Koffler just told me the last week was for every one Russian they lose. They're killing 14 Ukrainians. Yeah. Like the casualties are high on Ukraine side. It doesn't sound like it

on the Russian side. You've got to be careful where you're getting your stats from. Like you've got to look at both sides. I agree, but Rebecca Koffler was a Soviet Union-born lady who came over, immigrated to the United States, calls the United States home, went to work in the U.S. intelligence agency as a Russian analyst,

basically analyzing and bringing back the data. I don't know. If I can't trust that, she goes on, you know, she's outspoken about it. Yeah. No, I'm sure that she's not off the mark. But is she including civilian casualties as well as military casualties? Like how is that stat breaking down? And so are they comparing just combat?

combat deaths or are they comparing combat and civilian deaths? So you can make stats on anything. But if you're not looking at the right stats, you're not going to have the right numbers to make a decision. So I would just be careful on the stats that she's getting and where she's getting them from. The other thing is the big push on making the Ukraine actually stop fighting through what Trump is doing.

So they want to have the larger numbers for the Ukraine. Iranians dying to put more pressure on, you know, getting the world to go against the Ukraine to stop the war as well. So there's lots of stuff happening underneath the table and behind curtains that we don't know. And we've seen that in Croatia, Bosnia, where the, like, the misinformation is being pushed upon us to say certain things to get other people to change their minds. So what really is happening? Can you talk about that? Oh, yeah. What was being pushed on you guys back then to, are you talking about to say back to the Canadian population?

In the media, like I was in an example where the Croatian army shelled one of their own villages to blame it on the Serbs because they had media people in that village as well as United Nations people. So when a round hits the ground, it makes a splash. And if you shoot a back bearing on that splash, you'll know by the size of the round roughly what that was. Was it artillery or mortars? If it was mortars, okay, it's like three clicks that way. And it could be 800 meters, but you just go back that same distance and you find them like the motor position.

Like there's a crew of fucking Croats there. Well, they're the ones shooting into their own village to kill their own people so that they can make it look like the Serbs are doing it because they want the world to be enraged against Serbia, not Croatia. Germany was behind refunding the Croatian army. In fact, when they reprinted their money, their old Kuna looked just like a Deutsche Mark. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so like, but they want the world to blame Serbia, right? So all these kind of lies that are pushed upon our media, you know, it's just, human lives at the end of it that are paying for it but well you two would have a very you know like um how do you even bring that information back to like the canadian public and even make them understand half of us don't you know you know i understand where Croatia and Serbia like i understand on a map where it is but like never been never been there never don't know like the the intricacies as you're talking about and then all the different players at play in that game trying to get each side to resemble something to the world so that emotion is garnered to their

side so that people will fund it and keep it going essentially, correct? Yeah, like there's, like if you think about the Israeli war that's happening right now, and you look at just, I think it was this week, they were talking about an aid station, the U.S. was, you know, bringing an aid into Gaza, and they said, oh, the Israelis opened fire on this aid station and and then all of a sudden there's drone footage that the Israelis provided of you know Hamas gunmen are actually the ones that open fire and started killing people and and so it's really hard to sift through all of that and figure out what's true and what's you know what's fact and what's fiction and and the thing is like there are there are people whose full-time

job is propaganda and and it's been that way since like World War II probably World War I if we're if we're you know being honest with ourselves and it wasn't as sophisticated as it is today but I don't know I find it hard to to watch almost any news outlet and go oh well that's true and the unfortunate reality is we have a very large slice of our of our society that does do that and they read a soundbite on on a news network and they go well that has to be true because they believe in journalistic integrity, et cetera. And maybe those journalists aren't purposely spreading information that could be questionable, but they're doing it and it's happening and people are believing it.

And, you know, Jim brought up about, you know, the war in the Balkans and even Kosovo in 99, you know, there was all sorts of weird things going on. there you know who's the bad guy because the Russians were backing the Serbs and NATO was was was from my perspective there to sort of keep the two religious factions apart but you know we dealt with the Serbs and and and I think what Jamie was saying and I believe it to be true and it was no different in Afghanistan the Serb people are good people the the The Muslim people are good people.

The Afghan people are good people. It's their governments and the institutions that are forming policy and shaping the geopolitical landscape that are doing a disservice to everybody. And we've seen it in this country. We've seen it happen. I mean, I talk to people coast to coast to coast. And we talk about the recent election. We talk about the state of the economy. We talk about all sorts of things.

And, you know, the overarching sort of theme is we haven't done very well in the last decade, you know, given what we have to offer as a society. And, you know, I'm not slamming one party over another, but I certainly wouldn't, you know, race to the polls to vote for the liberals, regardless of who the leader is because their policies are garbage. but you talk to someone from Ontario from time to time. And like I had people calling me last week saying, oh, is this separation, Alberta separation thing? Does that have any steam? Like, is there any merit to that? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, there is.

But that's not what they're hearing in the media in Ontario. What they're hearing is it's a bunch of fringe minority people that are making a bunch of noise. And there's no, there's no steam behind this and it's never going to happen. And I mean, listen, I was one of those guys. Jamie can tell you. I said, oh, it's never going to happen, man. Well, and I'd phone him up. I'd be like, Willie, what's the thoughts?

But can I just get in here real quick? Because Willie's talking about that incident in Israel where the Israelis attacked a, like, I believe it was some kind of a UN. It was an aid station. An aid station. But there was like a Hamas, whatever, that was. was there. And a good friend of mine, Captain Wolf Val Kruger, he got killed in one of those same incidents where the Hamas had their command center underneath the UN aid station. And they

blew the whole thing up because they had to kill these Hamas leaders that were underneath there. And then in the same clip it, they didn't mention who did it, but then they said, and a hundred or 12, 12 Palestinians were gunned down at a food aid station. Well, well, they, they, they, they, they, They want the people to link the 12 Hamas that were gunned down to the Israeli air strike and think that the Israelis also killed these 12 people or whatever it was, 40 people trying to get food. But that was really the Hamas fighters, killing the starving Palestinians that just wanted to get the food.

But Hamas takes the lion's share for their fighters, not for the starving people on the streets. So they'll kill their own people just to get the food for the food. their fighters. And that was the same shit that was going on in Mogadishu back in Somalia. So this shit, and if you guys ever want to, like, read the art of war, like the Sun Xi Chita? Sun Tzu, yeah. Yeah, like, so, so this, this disinformation stuff has been going on for 3,000 years.

Yeah, I was going to say when you were like the last couple hundred years, I'm like, it's a short, the art of war is shorter than I thought it was going to be. and it thousands of years later you're like holy crap it's still it's still relevant it's still so relevant like yeah it is I mean in terms of being disciplined

enough to follow all the tenants that are outlined in that in that script I think what I was getting at was you know propaganda it's it's much easier to sell now than it was 100% yes yes yes and and so it's become it's become more more, you know, robust. With AI, right?

Like, now it's, you can, you know, I've watched some dub videos. Because I'm a firm believer and give me the raw footage. And then I can, you know, or even an interview Trump does, you know, the one that, you know, I made sure to find and then put it out on X or retweeted on X was the full Zelensky, him and the old, because everybody clicked like the last eight minutes. I'm like, why the last eight minutes? Why not the full thing? Why wouldn't you just put the full thing?

It's like 40-some minutes. Maybe I'm a little off, 52 minutes. And you can see how it progresses to the last eight minutes. Because that's important, I think, you know, seeing the entire thing. And with AI and stuff and the ability to dub voices, dub, I'm like, man, in life, that is tricky. It's, you know, I'm constantly watching videos now to see if there's any movement from the actual speaker with the words that are playing. because it's getting like we're in the early stages of AI think of this in 10 years well and that's that's a thing like we got to get our shit together like um AI is the going to be if you don't have if

you're not the leader in AI like if it's America or or the West has to be the leader in AI like China has already got a jump start on all that shit um we've got a we've got a to turn turn that ball around we've got to be on top of it and not underneath it because if we're not the leaders and and controlling AI then everything that we believe in and that we that our values are will be gone because they are going to steamroll us and it's just it's it we are not going to have a leg to stand on if we can't control AI globally yeah yeah I couldn't agree more we're going through this whole you know we we talk about all these different books that were written you know 40 50 60 years ago and and you know Fahrenheit 451 let's burn all the books and you

know we're not we're not quite there yet but but damn we're close we're close to you know we've had we've had leaders not just at the federal level but at the provincial and municipal level that are trying to erase history and rewrite it and and you know change the narrative and and it's the biggest mistake you can make like are we perfect as a society absolutely not have we made mistakes yes and we need that history to be able to reflect back on it and go what did we do wrong and how do we get better and and the problem is they're trying to solve all these issues right now and you know and it's out of context and it's you know it's it's It's based on factless history that somebody has written somewhere.

And I think it's absolutely in like insanity. It's absolute insanity that that's happening to us. Well, good point about race and history. Look what they did when they invited that Ukrainian soldier into our parliament. And then the next time they had a meeting in parliament, they're like, well, let's erase that part of out of Canadian history. Well, how can that even be? thought of to be brought up in a place, especially the parliament, where it's supposed to be public knowledge of what you do in there. You can't start erasing shit because you did something

wrong. Um, you know, like it's, it's just mind boggling that we're at that point in history right now. It's insane. Yeah, you got to learn from that stuff and it's, you know, I mean, geez, it's it things are are are seemingly complex i was looking over here at one of the signs you have here and it says like you know life is simple don't overthink it and man i don't think we're i don't think we're living that anymore i think it's super complex and you know i got a 10 year old son at home that asked me all sorts of questions and and uh i'm challenging in circumstances some of the things he's been told and to a certain extent some of the things he's been taught And I'm like, no, it never went, went down like that.

And it's it's not based on just pure ignorance. It's based on the fact that people read something and believe what they're reading. And that used to be true. Used to be true that we could watch the 10 o'clock news or the 6 o'clock news. And we could trust that they were literally just giving us the facts and allowing us to, you know, develop our own opinion on that. But you can't now. there's there is a spin to everything that's reported and it's you know i'll go back to pierre pollyev before i think it was the last election and and not this past one but the previous one and there was

some the c tv news gathered a whole bunch of sound bites and somebody asked a question about the dental you know the free dental program that the federal government's trying to launch and then they cut right to polyev saying no we don't support that and then it came out like two days later that that they they had cut the you know the they had cut a whole bunch of clips together yeah and and what was the what was the consequence of that the consequence was oh they made a they made an apology on the 11 o'clock news that took them like 15 seconds it's a sound bite that nobody watches anyway but somehow they're absolved of of any culpability for let's give another

150 million do hasn't the government learned like um i'm talking in the highest, you know, like the Trudeau of the world and that group of leaders, that if you get caught in something, you just deny. And if you keep getting caught, it's just an ethics violation. There's no teeth to it. And at some point, as a population, speaking of Canada, at some point, the rule of law has to come back. You have to hold anyone in power accountable. Otherwise, you get what's going on here.

And I mean, we, I mean, we're talking about. them trying to erase parts of like their stupidity. Well, why are they doing that? Because they don't want to have that on record that they were that dumb to have invited a guy who fought for the wrong side and get a standing O in the parliament, right? Like, that's what happened. And now they're like, oh, we messed up on that one.

We'll just get rid of the guy who said the things. And then we'll just, you know, we'll slide it over here. Nobody will ever know what happened. And in 10 years, it'll all be gone. It won't be a big deal. You watch all the ethics violations. At this point, if you're in government, you get caught doing anything.

it's like does anything happen really you know we were talking remember the the the was it the consulate the Chinese guy out in Ontario was going to run and made the joke because when you watch the the the interview or the press conference it's kind of like he's joking I was just telecon they'll arrest him and they'll send him back to China well no but but here's the thing he might have made a joke

but it was an actual thing from the Chinese government that if you bring this guy to the Chinese consulate, we'll send him back to China and we'll pay, there's a bounty that they will pay. So at what time do we allow Chinese consulates in this country to allow to pay out a bounty on somebody they wanted to detain? I would fucking shut down every Chinese consulate in the country, wait fucking then and there.

you don't know what they're fucking doing and that's totally illegal you can't kidnap people and pay this isn't slap shot okay this isn't slap shot where you could put a bounty on a guy's head like you can't do that and and our government and that's why we're the cuba of the north that's why the yanks that's why the american government's so pissing us we're so friendly with china they got these tariffs put upon us and and they could have been dropped just like the uh mexican president was asked and put 10,000 people on the border and we'll drop the tariffs. Trudeau said he was going to do that.

He didn't do that. They still got the tariffs so that we could have an enemy so the liberals could say, oh, bad Trump, so we would reelect the fucking liberals. But they still haven't put anybody on the border. So we still have those tariffs. Those tariffs would go away, like automatically if we would just put our border guards down there or the military or somebody. But they won't do it.

because they need to have that enemy so they can pass these budgets and they can get $300 million or whatever the fuck they're trying to get. So it looks like we have somebody we have to fight. They don't want us to fight. They just want us to clean up our shit and stop fucking being friendly to China and India and be a sovereign nation. And that's all they want.

You got any hope that Carney does anything different than what the liberals have been doing? Well, I mean, you know, everybody deserves a chance. Fuck that guy And I say that with a bit of a forked tongue I don't I don't honestly God I don't You know it's gonna be it's gonna be platitudes I mean listen they they passed a budget without parliamentary approval And said you know we're not gonna make it public

Because we don't want to tell you how much money we're gonna spend and where it's gonna go Which which should be illegal right and you know we go back to the rule of law that you spoke about earlier And it's like okay well all the all the all the leaders of the of the of the law enforcement agencies are political appointees you know and and i got nothing against law enforcement i think for the most part they they want to do the right thing but there's always going to be those those those folks and it's no different than the military that they care more about their career than they do about the institution and and you know that's one of the lessons that i learned you know as a young soldier was hey you know um there's going to be people

people that are career chasers, they're ranked chasers, they're, they're, you know, their paycheck chasers. And it happens in private industry. It happens all across, you know, the entire spectrum of business. But the Canadian Armed Forces and law enforcement, those should not be businesses, but we're trying to run them like their businesses. And, and nothing could be worse. I mean, the first thing that gets cut when you need to make budget cuts is the military and law enforcement. And the RCMP is a great example of that. And, I love that institution. They've done really awesome things for this country.

But, you know, when they start to lower their standards and they start to cut the time in training and they start to partition resources, then you become a less effective force. And the RCMP is not a fighting force. But what you end up with is you end up with bullies. You end up with bullies that carry a gun. and the one bad person that happens to wear a uniform and carry a badge does something stupid because they're a bully and they manage to get through training and it paints the entire organization in a really bad light and the and the Canadian forces saw that as well you know time

after time and and I just watched a video recently about the parliament in the UK where they said yeah we have systemic racism and we renounce it in a all its forms. And I agree with that. But one of the parliament parliamentarians in the UK said to the one of the senior generals of the British Army, you know, can you give me an example of something that's happened in terms of systemic racism? And then went further and said, are white soldiers treated differently than other colored soldiers? And the answer was, well, no, they're not. They have the same access to the same resources and the same opportunities. And the question became, okay, so where does the systemic racism exist then and where does it come from?

And I'm not saying that it doesn't because I don't know all the facts. What I'm saying is if you don't ask the hard questions, if you just make these statements that paint organizations in a negative light and nobody questions it, then where do you end up, right? You end up in the situation where the Canadian Armed Forces is right now. And I would never, ever say, hey, the army was way better when I was there than it is now. The Canadian Armed Forces has evolved. The soldiers are way smarter. I'll give them that. Right.

They're not as fit. They have access to better technology. They have, you know, they have different enablers that we didn't have when we were soldiers. But were we a more fit fighting force? I think we were. But Jamie and I also went through a period where. There was a war in the Balkans. We wore the blue beret and then we traded the blue beret in for our green beret.

And we did peacemaking instead of peacekeeping. And then we went to war fighting. So we were extremely fortunate as soldiers to be able to go through all those gateways and understand what physical fitness and mindset and, you know, having the psychological advantage in terms of being able to fight through the pain of some of the things that we. had to do whether that's climb a mountain or chase each other down in the desert that's a good story like like those those things are important because at the end of the day if you don't have that resilience and you don't have the ability to when when all the enablers are gone there's nothing your radio doesn't work you can't get an airplane you can't get a helicopter you can't get a bomb you need to rely on yourself and your skills and the people around you right so so getting back to

fitness and and I brought this up a thousand times work ethic and physical fitness will beat talent any day anywhere anytime because the one the one thing that we have as Canadian soldiers that that no other country has is the fucking winter and when you train in the winter you're all it's like you can't never take a second off or you'll fucking die of hypothermia like you constantly constantly have to, so that's an edge that Canada has over everybody else. And that learning how to constantly fight weather and conditions, it leads into other things that as you get to be a more experienced soldier

and you're moving on into whatever it is, that that's one aid that we always had in the Canadian Army, but we don't do fucking winter shit anymore. We've got to start doing it again because the Arctic is something. and we got to start fucking being involved in. But Willie's totally right. Like if when everything goes to shit and you don't have like all the fancy Gucci shit that needs batteries to work,

at the end of day, it's what's in between your ears and how fit you are to carry on the mission. And we got to get back to that. And listen, there's really good guys in JTF2. There's really good guys in Csore. There's really good guys in the patricias

that are still serving and they're still there. But they're becoming fucking dinosaurs, right? Like the people coming in behind them aren't what they used to be. And that's got to change. And the standards have to be brought back up to where they used to be. And we've got to get on top of the ball again instead of underneath it. So, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more Willie on that. How do you change?

But how do you, I had an old, Skip Craig. He was like, I forget how many, this is in the first 50 episodes I ever did. And he was talking about, you know, playing hockey when, you know, before helmets and, and, and then they brought in the helmet. And, you know, and I was saying to him, you know, like, how do you ever get back to that? Well, we ever get back to that. And he's like, well, hockey mirrors society. Hockey today, we look at it and there's no fighting. Well, in fairness, we've become a very soft society.

It doesn't mean we don't like the fights. I would argue everybody loves the fights. Totally. But hockey mirrors society, right? And I remember thinking that, man, that's a really interesting. So we're never going back because as society progresses, you just become, you know, we're not going back to the Coliseum. We're not going to watch people killing each other.

At one point in time, that was entertainment, right? Now you fast forward and you watch a game of hockey. It's super skilled. Like, it's insane skill. But there's still the Evander Kane flying around out there or Kachuk, Marchand, all these guys. And there's something we all. can remember very fondly. There is a part of hockey that is still there.

How long? I assume it's going to go on for some time. But you wonder how long before they just try and obsolete that because they can't play most of the season. But there is this intangible intimidation part of hockey where you go in the corner with a Vander Cain or Corey Perry falling on the goalie or on and on the list goes. But they're becoming obsolete.

And you wonder if military is similar to that. It mirrors society. Listen, I mean physical fitness and mindset are free. they don't cost any money they don't need any fancy equipment you really don't you know like when we were overseas you know we would we would take a a tent pole and put two 20 pound jerry cans on either side and lift weights that's the original crossfit game from yeah i'm serious and those those things are free and and and it's not war one yeah it's like jamie and i are both raising our children to maybe not be the same as us,

but to be better versions of, of, you know, what we had hoped to be. And hope is also a free thing. And it's not a good course of action, but, you know, it's about mindset. And if, you know, you're consistently beating on people and saying you're not doing the right thing and this isn't good and that's not good,

I mean, you look at what the Americans are doing and they're changing not only the culture, but the mindset in the military. We are building. war fighters that's what we are doing there's no room for green hair and face tattoos and all the rest of it and that's important because that's the first line of defense and we everybody knows the best defense is a great offense right and their recruitment went right through the roof once they announced that it's like fucking right we're like i like who doesn't like one of the coolest

fucking commercials ever that i heard when i was a kid was The sound of a bunch of paratroopers in the middle of night jumping out of an airplane. It was on radio. And fucking your hair's standing on your top of your head. You're like, sign me up, motherfucker. You mean the commercial was on radio? The recruiting radio, the recruiting Canada put out a recruiting ad on the radio. And it was just all the commands of the jump master yelling at all the troop paratroopers to stand up, get ready, hook up.

and then fucking the then the sash or not sash cords the fucking static lines slapping each other and the parachutes and everybody yelling airborne as they're jumping out of the airplane it was fucking insane it was like and I remember I was like 16

driving my car I was like holy fuck I want to do that shit like it was and it was just a radio ad and that's the minds you've got to capture as the young minds that want to have some kind of adventure and go somewhere and do something. Once they join and they see what they're going to get into, then they then it gets real serious real fast, but you got to bring them in and and and and they want to be around aggressive

hard-nosed people like we're going to be going to see Steve Ambrose tomorrow for his retirement party. Same same generation as us but like want to talk about a fucking great career and all the shit he got to do and and just a hard-nosed kind of guy. Kind of like Danquitz like the last I saw you. Fuck, his eye hung over. Whoa, look,

that was a good time. Anyways. How many, how many, Steve Ambrose? Is that what he said? Yeah. How many,

how many years did he serve? He's got to be over 30 for sure. He's probably 35, 36, I would think. Oh, at least 36, I would say.

Yeah. Guess what else I'm doing when I get the Wayne Wright? I'm phoning up Morley. I met him at I met him at your thing there. We're going to go out a couple beers. Shout out to Morley.

If you haven't read, Morley's an absolute beauty. So, hey, anybody that sends me their contact information. You met him? I met him. I met him at breakfast. Yeah, yeah. We had breakfast with them.

Yeah. Morley's a great, dude. So anybody wants me to come out of beer with them. I don't care if you're in Western Canada. If I'm in your area, I'll call you up and go have a beer with you because fuck it. I'm telling you, that was a great, that was a great time. Met some awesome people. Well, you know, speaking of the cornerstone, no, I want to hold on this for a second.

Congrats to Steve, I guess is what I was trying to point out like on a... You should get him to talk at your cornerstone next year. Well, I'm not, we've learned if I ask on here, it doesn't mean... No, fuck you. You just got to be a man of your word. It doesn't mean anything. He's got to be a mad of your word next time. Instead of fucking... It's both mentality shot. Just trying to fucking slide away from it.

You just got to fucking own just got to do it. Just be a man of your word. yeah no I was it's funny because I was listening to I was listening to the radio I can't even rebuttal them you know because I'm like you're right

I'm eating crow I've waited a long time to ask him because we had a guy that's why you're trying to forget we're even coming here you didn't want to fucking faces again I was listening to the radio and I was listening to actually I was listening to a podcast

that Jim sent me in and I went back further than you told me to go back because I wanted to get a little bit of context but anyway one of the things the guy in this podcast was saying was, you know, you have to want to be at the top of the pyramid. And that, again, goes back to the mentality. And, you know, we put it in the context of business,

but the context was like, hey, like if you're in business, it doesn't matter if you're playing sports. It doesn't matter if you're working for a company. You should have that desire to be at the top and be the absolute best that you can be. And we know that not everybody's built the same and not everybody has those, those aspirations. And that's the old saying, you know, strong men make, you know, make weak times or hard times. No, no, strong men, strong men create good times, great times, create weak men, weak men,

create hard times. Right. Right. Hard times create strong men. So not everybody has that mentality. but if you think if you like you can you can almost compare anything to sports right like you think about being a kid and growing up and you played a sport you played hockey you know you played hockey whatever whatever the case may be you wanted to be the best you could possibly be and and there

comes a point in time where as as you start to become an adult you lose your imagination and maybe you stop aiming for the stars and you kind of settle somewhere in between because you're like, well, I'm never going to be as good as that guy. And, you know, again, I'll go back to raising our sons. Like, Jamie and I are on those kids all the time about you can go out there. You can do that. You can be the best. You can.

And it's not about driving them into the dirt or setting unrealistic expectations. If they have the desire, and this is what he was talking about, what's between years, then they can make it happen. And we've, we've kind of lost that, I think. we've kind of become this, you know, passive sort of, oh, you know, it's okay if I'm just getting by. And, you know, as long as there's food on the table and a roof over my head, then, then we're okay. And you know what? Like, I've never ever thought that way and I don't think he's ever thought that way.

And I think it's an important point to bring insofar as, you know, there's business people out there that that are millionaires, billionaires. and they're not millionaires or billionaires because they decided that this was good enough. It's because they continued to achieve and continued to strive for something better. And I think it's just super, super important that we cultivate that mentality and both our boys.

They're very competitive. They're 10 years old. And so you expect them to be competitive. But we're also honest with them. They're beutes. Yeah, we're also honest with them. hey listen you didn't do so good there you know you could probably do better here and a lot of the time I say to my son how do you feel you did before I give him any feedback and say well you know I was pretty

slow I wanted the team to do a lot of the work and you know they both play hockey and my son he's only been playing hockey for two years but in the winter he is out on the the community rank every single day because he has that desire and and I think that that's him important and I don't know if he had different parents if he would have the same mentality right well just give you a little background well wait before background all I was going to add into that you got to listen to it because he gave you a shout out when I had Larry on it also takes um mentors or coaches hitting your children at the right time right I I I got to play I consider a pretty and I'm still playing hockey but I got to play a lot longer because of one coach and I'm

I was happy to get to, you know, sit and chat with them again. And thank you for the shout out, by the way. Well, shout out to Larry for, you know, it was, it was a cool, it's like one of those surreal moments I had, and it was right after the Cornerstone Forum that I got to do it. But, like, you know, it's hard to explain. I still have great parents that pushed me, and, you know, I had some great coaches along the way, but I hit 18, and I was done with hockey. I was done being told, you're too small.

I mean, I tried out for Kindersley, and they said, like, the coach said, if you were four inches tall, you'd be on the team. And I said, well, fuck me. That's great. Thanks. Thanks. You know, and out the door I went. And I got told that over and over and over again. Hey, you're looking at two other short guys.

I know. Worked in the best outfits and everybody were monsters. You just got to go prove them wrong. Well, and so, but also you, you, a little bit of belief can light a fire under somebody. like nobody's nobody can like I watch it when I was interviewing athletes I saw it almost in every one of their stories they'd have one coach come in and just knew how to talk to him knew how to motivate them knew how to and get them into you know the importance of discipline and and and like working on things and development knew how to talk to him and how to just and for larry you know like I he called

i don't know how the you know it's a Friday i was working at west can washing trucks and I was I was not going anywhere anywhere fast, and I was quite happy about that. I was just like, I'm done with this hockey thing. I've been told I'm not good enough enough. I'm good. I'm done. And I took one phone call in a Friday afternoon. My dad called and said, hey, remember that coach from last year?

I'm like, yeah? He's like, he wants to come play in Ontario. I'm like, awesome. I'll be there. Click. Walked into my boss office. I've got to quit my job. Sorry, but I'm leaving to go play hockey.

He's like, yeah, pretty much. And he's like, oh, yeah, sure. It was almost like, you know, like he knew he was going to. lose me at some point, I assume. And by Monday, I'm meeting, you know, Larry in a husky house, which I guess is probably no more now, right? And buys me a meal. I have no idea where I am, start playing hockey. He just put a little belief in me that you could, you're exactly what we need. Give you a chance. And I haven't stopped playing hockey since. And so not only can you instill in your kids that, but if you can find the right mentor or coach who can pull that out of them,

man, they can be absolute world beaters and set them off. Because I was telling Larry in that podcast, Like the lessons he taught me in hockey I've brought to podcasting. It doesn't mean it's perfect, but the work ethics there and the reps are there and showing up every day and sometimes it's a great game. Sometimes you suck.

I have the moments. You know, and it culminates in cool things like the cornerstone where you put it together. Your idea works. And you see all these great human beings, the morales of the world show up. And you're like, man,

this is so cool to see these human beings get to interact. Because like the fact you're going for a beer with them, I'm like, I played a little small part in that. That's super cool because I think very highly of both of you. The reason I'm getting a new studio, I don't know how much the, like I've talked about it a lot,

but it's because of this guy, right? We're sitting having a beer at OJ's a year ago, roughly, right? And you were annoyed. You're the only guest to date to complain about the sound quality of this room. Was Jim Sinclair. All people. And the wheels on the fucking chair. And the wheels on the chair.

It'd be a fucking hammer. And the wheels on the chair. Yeah, but I mean, I was hoping by now we'd be in there and this could have happened. out there. But when it does, it's going to be unreal. I can't wait to, like, actually show you what you've pushed on me to go do, right? Because I'd already had the idea.

You just weren't letting me get away with, I don't know, I just, I don't know, right? Like, I'm good. I'm good. Don't settle, man. Don't settle. You know, good enough is never good enough. Let me talk about what we do with our kids. Yeah, yeah.

Like, it's fucking awesome. So when our kids were like, I don't know, eight, no, seven. Oh, yeah, it would be seven. Seven. So we would take him on a two-day camping trip. But it's not like a camping trip. Like it's like boot camp. It's a Jim Sinclair camping trip.

Willie, Willie, it's like a Patricia boot camp camping trip. So anyways, we get them rock sacks, you know, army shit, army fatigues.

And like our kids have been trained like ever since they're like five years old. They're shooting pelagons in my basement. I got a shooting range down there and, and targets three and shit like that. So we've been teaching them gun safety. Like if they could pick up a hockey stick, they could pick up like the Pelagana had anyways.

So now we buy them all the same rifles. They all have the same helmets, the same garb. And we take them like on a march. So the march might be two miles long. You know, what is it, 20 some pounds in the rock? Yeah, yeah. And it's always hot. And it's in August.

And it's the worst conditions. Because guess what? Like we're carrying the same shit. But they're just so fucking happy to be with us. They just suffer through it. So at first, it's terrible. But by the time you get there, the fucking giggling and the laughing and the jokes and like they, like so we're actually making them learn their own lessons through just following because we're also suffering. But they're just so happy to be there with us.

They're actually, we don't have to yell or scream at these guys. They're actually learning these lessons of being, never give up and keep going. And, you know, like we're teaching these lessons a hard way. I've told you many a time. I want to bring my kids to that. Right? Like, I think it'd be really cool for kids to be a part of something like that. Well, we could set something like that up.

Like this year is going to be a super cool year. So when I got the badges made, it's a water midship training. So they're going to learn out of waterproof their. equipment they're going to learn how to float across a river on their rucksacks they're going to learn how to keep their feet dry and how to keep their boots dry we're doing a fixed line too right that we'll do fix line and we're also going to be marching hills like i don't know if you ever marched hills with equipment like that do i look like i've marched hills of equipment so now they're going to learn how to go up a hill now to come down a hill so they don't blow with their knees and fucking like it's gonna and it's really going to be really hard on them and and every year we just notch it up a and notch it up a bit. We never, we're not abusing our kids. We know exactly what they're capable of doing. And we push them that far.

But we never tell them where the end is going to be. They never know. So like they'll march back into our yard, into my yard. But we'll just keep going right through it. And then their minds just explode because they're like, what the fuck? We're not stopping here. So like we're teaching them that they can go farther than. Well, you're teaching them resilience.

Yeah. Like they got to build their own shelter. they got to cook their own food, you know, and that's the, that's the, those things are part and parcel to it, and they don't seem important, but that stuff is very important, right? Because they learn about, okay, I have to set my shelter up so that, you know, if it rains and the prevailing wind is coming from the east, you know, I have to face it a certain way. And, you know, we teach them, we taught them, we taught them, we taught them judging distance. so they both know how to use a map and compass.

Like they can set bearings and like read a map and like shoot a bearing from my house to this point on my farm. Do they look forward to this? Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah, they do, yeah. I have to assume the first one they're like, what was that? The second one they're like, oh boy. And at some point they have to be like this is, even if it's hard,

almost the harder it gets, the funner, I assume it gets, right? Because the last year. Because they got confidence now because they know, They know they can do it. Yeah. You know, like, they had no idea what they're getting into the first time.

They're like these crazy fuckers. Yeah. They're taking us. We left. We left later in the day last year when we went out last year because it was like 33 degrees. It was hot. And even at like 6 p.m., it was still 33 degrees. And the mosquitoes are flying around and they're like, oh, my God, what are you guys doing to us?

But, you know, by the end of it, they're smiling, they're happy. they're proud of themselves, they've accomplished something that they didn't think they could do, but they've accomplished it. They got a reward. We took them to the football game. And they get badges every time. So they stick their badges on their helmets and on their gear. Yeah.

It's important. You know, like I didn't have the military aspect to work with, I guess. But, you know, like when Dustin came back from traveling, one of my older brothers, you know we in 2006 we bike Canada and I remember the first day you know you got this giant country and you're looking at a map and we made it I don't even know if we made it 40 kilometers and we blew tires and you know you just I've ever been almost depressed like 40 kilometers that's how far we're going to go you can imagine Sean has just turned we would walk that back in the day I've just turned 20 I'm in peak physical condition because I'm playing junior

hockey my legs are like brick like it's just like let's go let's go let's go let's see how and you know and I'm sure does had to rain me in multiple times right but it's funny why not that was completed I wrote there was a slogan back in then and I I can't remember if it was Nike or it was another but it was impossible as nothing and I'm like that is 100% true and when you when you do something like that that seems impossible and there was bets on how far we'd make it and we'd never accomplish it and this is a wild idea And yet people do it every year. Like people bike across this country.

Every year you'll see them. And once you've done it once, you're like, it's so gratifying to accomplish a goal that nobody thinks is possible. And it sets you up for success the rest of your life because you look at things and you just go, it's going to be hard. Don't get me wrong. But it's not impossible. I can find my way through these problems,

whether we're talking business, hockey, on and on and on. Military, you know, you're teaching your kids that who the heck knows how to, like, why even use them happen anymore? more right when are you going to use that everybody uses their phone and yet it wasn't that long ago pulling open a map understanding you know we used to as kids navigate for the parents you put we had that in the door like 18 maps you pull up the right map then you'd be navigating going through emminton no turn here and i remember doing that that was the fun of it was navigating when i was in africa i didn't even have a map would i when i would be walking through the bush and following the zambisi

River. I would like in my log book, I would actually draw out navigational points. So I knew how to fucking come back. Like it was, like I made my own maps through the fucking jungle or through the bush of northern fucking Zambia.

Like, and that's like how our pioneers got across this country. Like the Crozness Pass, like it looks like your crow's nest. So that's the Crozness pass, right? Like there's like these landmarks symbols that that people used to get through to navigate to navigate and uh there was never a fucking somebody out there making maps for these voyagers to get across the prairies they actually

went out there and just fucking did it and they made their own well yeah even even to this day when when people ask for directions to my house i'm like okay well i got to turn left at the fire hall and then follow that road around love those directions and it's it's your third right that you should see a bus stop and a and a bench there that's got a some realtors advertisement on it that you know like but it's all landmark based yeah but then I'm like fuck you send me a yeah yeah yeah no I can't do that I can't drive and look out the window at the same time but but no like but here's a here's an thing we're doing so Willie Willie's a fucking like like you wouldn't believe

the amount of people that we pull in to to because as soldiers leave the army, the biggest thing is you miss your buddies, right? And it's, like when I got pushed out of the army, the worst thing to ever happen is you don't have that connection with the boys anymore. So years ago, he's like, hey man, we gotta fucking do something. It's good for everybody's mental health.

Let's fucking, let's do something. And I'm like, oh, what do you want to do? He goes, well, you have a campground. How about we have this? And he fucking comes up with this idea. for having a roundup, a military roundup, out at the beach. So we started at how long ago now? Be nine years.

Nine years. So we do it every July long. Well, I've had, remember I had guys come through here on their way to that? Chuck's coming this year. It's going to be good. But next year is the 20th anniversary of Task Force Orion, which is going to be fucking huge. Like last, on the 10th anniversary, we had hope.

there and a whole bit. Willie's got invites out to the fucking CDS even, so next year's going to be a real big one, but not the current CDS. Yeah, like Hillier. Yeah, so we're hoping to get him out there. But yeah, like, so

this guy fucking comes up with amazing fucking ideas. And just so you know, I'm a big promoter of him, and so as many other people are way above my rank. He's they're trying to nominate him for the Victoria Cross.

So there hasn't been a VC awarded since World War II. And this guy is very humble. He'll never ever fucking tell you about it. But he's up for getting an award for Victoria Cross. And I can't campaign enough for him. And if there's anybody out there listening that cares to write a fucking letter to the government, it should be looked at and opened up again because there's some stupid rule that you can't award Victoria Cross.

because it's past the battle date or whatever time date that they have for giving out these awards. Although every other fucking nation in the world reviews battles and then upgrades medals and such if need be. So you could be interviewing a potential Victoria Cross winner one day. And that pretty fucking cool. I don't even know what to see. You know, the fact that it hasn't been given out since World War II, you know, you go back, Willie, is this your third or second time on the podcast? I think it's the third, right?

I think third, yep. Because we might even be fourth. It might be. Because we did one in Regina for Jamie's retirement. That's right. It might be the fourth. What a fucking party that was. That was a good one. So all I was going to say to the listener is if you go far enough back, you know what?

I'm going to look at it right now. If you go far enough back, you can hear a bunch of the stories from your career. I got to, here, if, you know, let's just take a quick look here, folks. Well, you're fucking with your phone. Well, it's going to take me two seconds. You should play that. Price is right music or some fucking thing. I think it was when you were on with Adam Corbett.

Yeah, it might have been that one. That's episode 401. So if people want to go back and hear a bunch of the stories, episode 401 has, you know, you think about this, this is going to be episode 8 million. 8 million? Well, I think it's going to be 865. Nice, nice.

866. There's going to be a brother's roundtable in there, I think. So 866. So that's 400 plus episodes ago. You first came on the show. And we talked a lot about the things that would get you the Victoria Cross. Right? Like, I mean, that's if people really want to go back and hear some of the stories from them.

But you're right. I forgot about Regina. That was an interesting, interesting group of human beings. I still, the night in the bar. That was so awesome. Well, because, I mean, it's roughly the same time, right? Like, was that the... It was the exact same time.

Was it, was it, was it? Was it, was it? Was it, was it? Was it, was it? No, it was May. So it would have been, it must have been the conference finals. Yeah. The Oilers were, were, that it wasn't,

they hadn't made the Stanley Cup finals yet. That's right. That night in the bar, I'm telling you, I, if I've ever thought I felt safe around hockey guys, being around military guys, I'm like, nobody's messing with us tonight, right? Like, I mean... Well, someone tried to, but you talked them out of it. I talked them out of it because... I'll never forget that.

Like, you know, there's never in my life I've been able to talk somebody out of getting in a bar brawl. But when you looked around and you saw all these military guys, I'm like, just look at them. They've all put their beers down. They're ready for this. You sure you want to do this? You sure you want this? Grab that big, tall oak of a man. And he was mad.

And all four of them left. I'm like, I think I just diverted like a full-on riot. it in this bar. Bloodbath. But there was, how many, there was like 15 of you. 15 military,

yeah, no kidding. That was, uh, so hey, I got to talk about Juno. And the Regina rifle regiment. We're having our birthday

and Willie's the next rifle. It's, uh, June 6, obviously. So last June 6, you talked to me in France and I was crying like a little ball baby

because it was fucking super emotional. Uh, still, I still can't get over how the boys, took that guy down onto the beach and made the King's Garden Prime Minister's detail fuck right off so he could get on the beach

and get his feet wet, which was super cool. But the thing that the kids did at that cemetery where they had the candles on top of the graves and they all had like a little thing they wrote up about each soldier and where they're born and where they died and what they died for.

So what I did is I bought 200 of these coins and they're in France as we speak and they're going to be given to those kids that actually did that last year for the 80th anniversary so they're going to recognize those kids. Also, the trace that the Regina rifles took from Nan Green up to Brentville,

it's all Canadian flags, right? So I want to go back there at the 85th anniversary and I want to put Saskatchewan flags on the markers. So when people, because I've talked to people who have been over there. And Wendy's going over there. So Eddie's going to help.

But I want people to know that it's fucking Saskatchewan people that came through here and freed this fucking part of the world. And now we got our MLA, Blaine McLeod. He's got Saskatchewan flags that are going to be

hand delivered by the Regina Rifles to the kids over there. and with pins so they can put them on their stuff. So Saskatchewan's actually going to be recognized, not just Canada. So it's going to be Saskatchewan recognized there this year as well. That's cool. Which is a huge thing.

So that's fucking my update from Regina Rifles. What anniversary was it just? The 8th. The 8th. So you're going back in essentially four more years. Yeah. Yeah, podcasters should just go on that. Hopefully I'll be retired by then and I can go with them.

Prepare. prepare France for the fucking 85th invasion of Sinclair and McDonald. Why don't you come, Sean? Well, that's what I said. Maybe a podcast you should find a way on that. Totally. Listen, one of the things that I'm hopeful to do with the podcast is I really want to go across Canada, the United States, but further abroad. You know, when you go back to where we, like I don't, you know, an hour ago when you were saying, I forget, I can't remember if it was Willie or Jim, talking about like, you know, all these people.

are good people. It's the governments who mess it up. Like, I would really love to go and interview people from across the planet, but in person, you know, like to be where they're at. Because, like, you know, it was only like a week ago at an interview from Great Britain, then an interview from Germany, then the U.S. And you start to see this worldview of how different things are going on in different countries and to actually like tag along and be a part of something like that. I think last year when you were doing, I'm like, man, I should have, Find a way to just pay for a ticket to get over there. Because if you did like a forum in Montreal.

Because here's the thing. The cornerstone forum in Montreal? Yeah, serious. And send like, send some points there that are like-minded because there's going to be lots of questions. And you have them throughout the crowd and you have meetings and little get-togethers. And like people if, because we've worked with the French, like, although we didn't always get along, At the end of day, if it's one-on-one, you're friends with them. But once there's like 10 Frenchmen, you're the outcast.

Because that's just how it was, right? But when it's one-on-one with people from Quebec, you're the same. You're a Canadian. And if we start opening up channels to different parts of the country, that's going to unite us and the government can't fucking always separate us. Having said that, and I'm going to go out of a limb here. the more I think about Western separation, and I'm totally fucking changing the subject,

if we ever got to Western separation, the only thing that I really would be excited about would be bringing our values and our morals back to what this country was based upon. And that's also bringing Christianity back to the forefront and to the top thing above government. because right now when government got rid of Christian or God above government, that's where our nation started failing.

If we get God above government again, and even if you don't believe in God, you're still given rights that every God-fearing man would have. And that's the only thing that I would feel that would benefit Western Canada, although the fucking gazillions of dollars that are under our feet, that would benefit all of our kids in the future. And we wouldn't have to fucking pay any taxes and all the best people

would want to move here. And even Donald Trump would be like, I want to move to Canada because they got everything. But anyways, no, it'd be amazing if we could pull it together from Manitoba, all the Arctic to BC.

It'd be amazing fucking place on the earth and it'd be fucking awesome. Anyways, yeah, no, I believe that that would be the best, just imagine to Christians throughout the world that would fucking flock here. just to live in a free nation where you can be a like you can love God or you can't love God

but that would be your decision to do and it seems like if you're if you believe in in in in God that you're like nobody even wants to be fucking involved with you right and it's that's not right yeah I mean I agree to a point I think I think you know the Christian values are good values for the most part. I had a friend of mine who was my, my language assistant, because you're not allowed to call them interpreters anymore in Afghanistan on my last tour.

Why not? I don't know. They, I don't know. Language assistance now. Instead of an interpreter? Okay. Carry on. Yeah, it's crazy.

Anyway, he gave me a call about two months ago, just out of the blue. And he lives in the U.S. because he was, he worked with the, American forces as well over there. And so they gave him a special visa to immigrate to the U.S. Because Canada said go fuck yourself. Yeah, basically. But he couldn't get his family there. So I worked with him for years.

He was able to get his wife and daughter to the U.S. He lives in California, poor fella. Anyway, he called me up and said, hey, I want to get my mom and dad. I want to get my brother and the Taliban. and, you know, they're making threats and his brother ended up in the hospital a couple times because he was getting beat by the Taliban. Anyway, so I worked with a couple different groups

to get them to Canada through that special relocation program and then they went to the U.S. to be with their son. So we're chatting away. He called me a couple months ago. Like I said, we're chatting away and I said, hey, how are your mom and dad doing? he goes yeah yeah my dad's doing great he goes uh i had to take my mom back to afghanistan

i said what are you talking about he goes she could not deal with the freedom she she wouldn't go to the grocery store she always wanted to have her face covered like it's like stockholm syndrome right so he literally his mom is in you know the freest society on the planet and she's like i can't deal with this there's too many women run around with bikinis and uncovered and I should be going to chaperone. Yeah. Give me a fun. So anyway, he literally got on a plane.

He goes, don't worry. He calls me Sergeant Major still. He goes, don't worry, Sergeant Major. I didn't get off the plane because I knew if I got off the plane they would arrest me. And I'd probably be, you know, strung up from the town center. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, the point that I'm getting at is that, you know, the American society was willing to welcome.

that family with open arms even though they're Muslim and and you know there's nothing wrong with that they believe in a god and and that family doesn't believe in repressing other thoughts and ideas and the rest of it and you know jane the reason i'm saying is because james brought up christianity and i think christianity has good values there's good muslim values as well the problem is uh again you know we're kind of led to believe that uh they're not a peaceful society they're not a peaceful religion and I don't think anything could be further from the truth the the problem is you know people get indoctrinated to believe that um Islam is not a peaceful religion and that they hate us all and and there are things and jamie and i have debated this several times and he usually pursed me wrong

um that that maybe don't line up but there are things in in the christian bible that that could be um interpreted similarly similarly and And I think the thing is, is that I agree that we should have this free society. And it doesn't need to be a free for all, but you should respect people's beliefs and let them live their lives as long as they're contributing members. And they're not doing anything counterproductive to, you know, tear a society down. But the unfortunate reality is we see it happen all the time. And, and, um, Northern Ireland's a great example. You know, for how many years did that war go on?

You know, first of all, it was a, it was a religious war, and then it transitioned to, you know, the Irish against the British. And, you know, like, try and figure that out. Try and figure out exactly what all the nuance was there. Well, now it's Ireland against the Muslims. Yeah. Like, Ireland's fucking, like, really taking it to task. Like, they're, for an example, two Muslim police officers in England,

arrested an English man for violating Sharia law, which isn't even a law in fucking England. But because they're police officers and they're both Muslim, they're following Sharia law, although they get paid by the fucking British government to be British police officers. So, you know, and I think it's 2050 or 2060, basically England's a fucking lost state and we always follow what England's doing

Canada's gonna be a lost state too like yes there's Muslims like I I worked with 40 of my last tour in Afghanistan and what what I loved working with them for is that we had one thing in common and I was to kill as many Taliban as we could and and that because of that reason only they didn't chop my fucking head off right like if i went back there now because of how we left afghanistan i'm sure they'd want to kill me because they believed that we were going to stay there and help them have a better life but we didn't do that right so if the what's happening in in in canada is they're gonna they're they're they're outpopulating us we have one or two kids they have 10 like but there's nobody saying

Like if somebody does something and there's a shooting at Toronto airport, they don't say why that shooting was. But I guarantee if it was a white Christian that did something, it'd be all over the fucking news. Right. So there's lots of things that are happening, but they won't say who did it and why, because they don't want to put anything towards that culture of people.

And hey, fuck, you do, like, if you're a Muslim, you do something wrong, let's call it out. If you're a Christian, you do something wrong. Let's call it out. but it's got to be fair for both sides. And the only racism is against the white guy right now. And that's not right. And going back to what you were saying,

I don't know what podcast it was, but you said Winston Churchill, the truth is so fucking precious. We have to have a bunch of lies around it to guard it. And that's the truth. Like truth is very precious. And sometimes a secret has to be kept with a lot of lies. where they're keeping secrets with lots of lives

that we should know as Canadian people and it's terrible where we're getting to. Well, you go back to your comment on the governments and how they're, you know, you got all these great people. And then you just got all these like foreign actors seeding, descent and splitting countries. And you go like, do we ever get...

The art of war. Do we ever get to a world where it's Kumbaya and everybody just lives, peacefully. I don't know. I think that's pipe dream. I'll tell you about it. I think that's pipe dream.

I don't think that that's a reality. I think that that's something that, you know, I think that's something that we have this utopian vision of what the world is and what it can be.

I don't think we'll ever get there just because there's too many opposing views. I think we can get close. I think we can get close, but I don't think we can get there. And, you know, the reason is there's always going to be the next dictator, the next leader, the next whatever. And, I mean, let's just look at the narrative that gets spun in our own country in order to get votes. It's got nothing to do with what's good for the country and everything to do with how do I stay in power?

how do I how do I get that that parliamentary pension or whatever the whatever it is right and and the truth of the matter is there's bad people everywhere right but the problem is we're not allowed to call them out anymore well and if we do call them out nothing happens that's right well hey going back to that bar fight that almost happened the bar fight that didn't happen but this is this is like you've realized that's the second time i've been in a bar fight with you and i've to talk the opposing force off a ledge that's the second time but it was easy when there's people

around there when they look around and go it's easy when you got a calming voice I guess that's what I've become yes he's right I don't want to fuck with these guys because I didn't see what is all all around it was all about perspective it was just about perspective just getting him to open his eyes um kumbaya

is a fucking pipe dream he's totally right if you don't have a strong deterrence as a man or as a country or as a group of countries that work together, you're going to get fucking bullied. Like that's reality. We're animals, animals do it all the fucking time.

So stop thinking that we're so fucking advanced as humans that we're not going to want to take advantage of somebody because we are. That's just reality. So in that bar fight or that almost bar fight, it wasn't a bar fight. Somebody was fucking with me. I told him to go fuck himself and get the fuck out of,

my drinking spot and he went and got all his fucking little buddies the fucking come and try to beat me up and then you realize what was going to go on and and so did all the army dudes which filtered into the crowd and we're ready to bounce and you said look at that guy look at that guy you really want to fuck with this guy because that's what you got to do with that's why nations come together and they fight with each other but they're strong nations they have a fucking army they have they're able to do something. Now, can you imagine if I was like a computer geek and had all my computer geek buddies there,

they would have fucking rolled us, right? Well, you would have never got in his way in the first place, Jamie. No, no, but. But it is funny because it was all about perspective. He was staring right at you, and emotion was clouding his judgment. I stood up for what I believed in,

and I told him the fuck off. People got to start doing that again. You got to stand your guy. ground and if you're talking to I was I was paying a speeding ticket the other day there's an old man in there trying to talk to this 19 year old kid that he didn't get a letter from the government that show up in court so he could protest his uh his ticket his ticket and the kid couldn't understand it and he's like can I talk to the manager he was just being polite I talked to the manager could talk to the manager the kid wouldn't wouldn't listen to him and I and finally I stepped in I'm

like, there's 10 people waiting to pay their tickets. I'm like, hey, this guy's a taxpayer. He wants to talk to your manager. Go get your manager right now. And it, like, because he was old and elderly, that young kid was thinking he was the fucking man. And no, fuck you, just pay your fucking ticket. Well, he went and got his fucking manager. The manager came back. Okay, take this to the King's Court, which is down the street, and you can go see a judge. That's But the kid wouldn't fucking listen to the old guy. So sometimes you just got to stand up and say, hey, this is fucking wrong, like the truckers did when they went to Ottawa.

And we got to start doing that shit more. Channeling our inner Jamie. Yep. I want to ask you one thing before. I let you boys out of here. We're not leaving. We're all day. I got my beer?

We're not going anywhere. You said me. You said me. Yes, get out the door. Knock the wheels off here. I can sleep in this chair. Let's you think you're getting to do that hole in the roof. You sent me a video about China having a base on the moon.

Yeah. Do you believe that? Well, that I don't know. No, no, no, what it was, what it was is they're extracting through autonomous fucking whatever. They're extracting that helium three, which is what they need. need to super cool their AI computers. So it's whatever they're sending up there, it's like, just like the rovers, like the Mars rovers, that that's what they're talking about that they have up.

What do you think, Willie? I'm just curious. You think, like, you know, you got Space Force in the U.S. Well, they wouldn't do that unless, you know, there was some thought there that, you know, whether that's just satellites and autonomous vehicles and there, or do you think they've progressed, the military has progressed far enough? to be roaming around outside the orbit of the Earth. Well,

listen, I can tell you the Canadian Army hasn't. The Canadian military hasn't. I worked in force development for a year and a half, and there was nothing but a lack of imagination there and bureaucracy to try and get a new sniper rifle. Like, it was crazy. Anyway, the Americans are cagey, and they have a massive amount of money.

behind their initiatives and I think that there are enough experienced imaginative people that it could be a possibility. I mean, I can't say for sure. We're talking about China. No, I know. But the Chinese, all the Chinese are doing is like again, the Chinese will go back to the sports analogy. They want to be at the top of the pyramid.

The U.S. is a superpower. They're like, hey, we got to catch these guys. and everything that we do has to be to counter their technology or reach above their technology. And I don't begrudge them for that. I mean, like, it's no different than, again, being in business, you know, you want, Jamie wants his campground to be better than the next guy's campground. And how do you do that? Well, you put in tornado shelters and you put in, you know, showers. Actually, you know why I think my campground and I've been told this by many people is the best?

It's not because of all the amenities and close to everything that's in the town. It's the people, the Capcom, that actually makes it the best, which is what I was getting to about the core zone for them. The people that were there were fucking rock stars. Like, I'm talking like, everywhere I went and whoever I talked to, like, it was enlightening. And it was like, I was saying a guy at supper. He was like, what it? lunch, sorry, what is this about? I just said this.

And I just, like, I just point, like, because you could just see this. I didn't fully comprehend it that day, but the next day I started to comprehend it at breakfast because I just got to sit there and not worry about who's on stage and what's next and what is this going right. And I got to just see this, this buzz in the, like, the breakfast room in the hotel. The next day, the restaurant was like, I can't imagine trying to serve that group because they were just, they weren't being. rude everybody was talking and they were just in so involved in conversations

you could go sit and i was watching people they were going and sitting over there and then they'd look over and there's there's jamie oh they'll go sit over and say hi to jane and then they bounce over there and i'm like this is wild here here's the people is a huge is a huge part of of anything here's the thing about the conference though like in in that arena i i would walk around and and kind of ease drop a bit and then i'd introduce myself and i'd be like so do you know this person They're like, no, no, we just met today. And the conversations they were having and exchanging phone numbers and email addresses and shit. Like it's like you're, so you're linking fucking people that are, yes, they're like-minded,

but they're in a, when they're back in their isolated area where they can't communicate with people that are like-minded, you're now giving them an outlet where they can have somebody they can talk to, which has the same thing. thought values and values as they do. So you're linking people. Like you connected to such a huge audience there. Next, like next year, I don't know what your plans are, but it's going to be fucking massive. Well, I just got back from Calgary.

So I just got back. I told myself, you know, what was the line? Good isn't good enough? Is that what you said earlier? Yeah, good enough isn't good enough. Thank you. Yeah. I told myself the night of the corner so far,

I'm going to give myself two weeks before I think about the next one. all right and if drew weatherhead's listening shout out to drew weatherhead because drew weather had given me a speech on here sitting in your chair willie get him get him right next year he he'd give me a speech sitting right there because i'm like i don't know if i'm going to do it again i'm so stressed out and i was having one of those mopey moments where i was just like i don't know and he gave me this pep talk and he texted me the day after he said so you're doing it again i'm like it took 12 hours took 12 hours and my brain wouldn't shut up and i'm like just can you just enjoy a moment of quiet? Like can we just, and it was Monday morning,

so two days or a day and a half after, I'd already emailed the wind sport. And so we were just in Calgary. We went looking at a couple different venues just because of date, more than anything, just because of when I want to have it. And the problem with the middle of April is it seems like that is an impossible date to get

at this current moment. So right now, yeah, we're penciled in for March 27th, 28th. I say penciled in, and I don't want people to mark that on a calendar, just yet because we're finalizing things we're looking at some numbers and I want to make sure that if we go March 27th 28th there isn't a better way to do it a little later in April because it would be nice to have two or three weeks after that when the days are getting longer the sun's starting to come out the snows melted it's just a little bit nicer but I heard it

loud and clear from all the farmers listening they were pissed that it was in May I heard from other groups of people they were pissed because it was on Mother's Day weekend and I'm not a fool, I'm trying, I didn't want to have it on Mother's Day, that was the only day that we could find. And it's like, do you have it? What's wrong with April 8th or April 9th? Like Vimy Day. They're all freaking booked.

Call on a bomb threat. Jesus. You'd have to dub that out. No, no, if I can call it a bomb threat. I will not be doing that to anyone listening. There will be none of that. It's just, yeah, we're working on it. It'll be back in Calgary.

That's what, you know, at this current moment, Calgary was such a success. I have to give a shout out to silver gold bowl. I give you the anyone who comes in the studio. Great people. They get the silver one ounce coin. And then Bow Valley Credit Union. Both those companies twisted my arm.

And, you know, I tell this. Amazing people. You know, dad always talks about the Chinese farmer proverb, you know, maybe, right? Like, you know, his horse has run away and all the townspeople come on. Isn't that so bad? And he goes, maybe. And then the horses come back And then the horses come back the next day

And they bring a bunch of wild horses And they go, oh, isn't that so great? He goes maybe Sun's training them gets bucked off, breaks his arm, Oh, isn't that so bad? And he goes, maybe Chinese Army comes to take able-bodied men His sons can't go.

And they all come, isn't that great? Maybe. And so for me, if you go back to 2023, I had a show with Tom Longo and Alex trainer in June in Lloydminster. And by all accounts, it is my worst show. Not because of the stage

what went on on the stage, just attendance. It was the lowest attended show I've ever had, and it really broke me. I was just like, I think I lost money, to be honest. Or if I broke even, I'm stuck. Yeah. But here's the funny thing. You know who is in that audience?

Silver Gold Bowl, Bowel Valley Credit Union. The guy who gave a flight home to Armstrong, Martin Armstrong, he was in that audience. And who makes all this possible this year? Bull Valley Credit Union, Silver Gold Bull, the guy who flew Martin Armstrong home, those are the three.

So what I thought was the low point was actually a catapult into something that I didn't know if it would be possible, especially this year. I thought we were jumping the gun a bit, and yet you came to Calgary. It was a success,

maybe even higher than a success. It's going to go back to Calgary if I have anything to say about it. I don't see why I would pull it from there next year. And so, yes, it is coming back, Well, when we started our roundups, like we made some tragic mistakes. We bought a bunch of beer.

We put it in a fridge. You know, you got 60 army guys there. They sometimes forget they took a flat of beer. Anyways, like, for a couple of years there, like, we were funding this whole fucking thing. Like, the band's $2,000. You know, but the thing was it was it was all worth it because the group of guys that were there, all the stuff that was being talked about. and, you know, at the end of day, it's fucking good for our souls as well, right?

But sometimes you lose, but eventually you're going to win. Well, as long as you're learning, right, along the way and picking up lessons. And I think any time you put on an event and bring people together or do a podcast, right, there's a podcast, you just, you learn things. And you go, oh, yeah, don't do that. Or do do that. I don't know. Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle.

I'm always searching for it. Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be a time where you do or don't do something and you say to yourself, don't ever do that or continue to do that. And it doesn't work out. It's, it's, that's just life, man. That's how it goes, right? So, yeah, I mean, you do learn along the way. Like we learned, don't fill the beer, don't fill the fridge with beer, make people bring their own beer. Because we were paying bartenders.

We were leaning forward and buying 2,000 beers. And the beers were walking out of the fridge at 2 o'clock in the morning when people were hammered. And they were like, I don't know, I didn't take any beer. And I'm like, the empties are right in front of your trailer. You owe us like 50 bucks, okay? It's just 50 bucks. No, no, no, no, it wasn't me. And, you know, and so we learned that lesson.

We said, okay, no more bartenders, no more beer. You guys bring your own beer. And then everybody's, oh, what do you make of beer? And then Gene brought beer and everybody drank his fucking beer. What you donated? What you donated? So. No, it's just learning lessons as you go along the way.

And I tell you what, you're on to something. And God hates a quitter. Okay, so you're not allowed to quit at this point because a lot of people, you've really helped a lot of people there too. Like, so sorry, buddy. Well, he's got all them fancy books on a show. shelf there. Gold-plated

books back there. Gentlemen, thanks for doing this. Wait, wait, we're not done. We've got to tell you about our story. Oh, fire away then. Oh, shit.

Did you want to tell us? You tell the story. You tell the story. You tell the story. You tell the story. I'll start the story and then you finish the story. How's that sound?

That's fair. So in July, I believe it was July, 2006. There was a forward operating base in Afghanistan. I was right at the base of the belly button,

which is the big mountain in Shawal he caught. Anyway. Big Taliban stronghold, apparently. Yeah, there was a forward operating base air called Gombad. And the general went to visit Gombad, and when he left,

he wanted to bring certain people with him on his helicopter. So he made a bunch of people go, hey, you got to go back to Canada Airfield, but you got to go in vehicles. So, I mean, I'll give you that kind of a bridge version here. One of those vehicles was a Mercedes G-Wagon,

and it rolled over, I believe it was six stacked any tank mines, command detonated, and blew that Jeep to Kingdom Come. And so my platoon, we were going that way, and we were kind of rerouted, and we thought, okay, we'll go through this Wadi, and we're not going to take any of the regular road. So we came out into the chaos. And it was Jamie, Jamie's platoon that was at the, at the fob at the time. And so I went over to his platoon warrant and, you know, hey, where can we help?

Where can we be of help? We don't want to get in your way. You guys are securing the scene, et cetera. So in the process of that, I'm like, where's Sinclair, right? Jamie and I have known each other since we're 16 years old. We aren't like army buddies, you know, like brothers. And I'm like, we're Sinclair. He goes, I don't know.

He fucked off up into the hills somewhere. And I'm like, what do you mean? He fucked off up into the hills. Like, is there anybody with him? Yeah, I think he took a guy with him. Didn't really seem overly concerned about it. And I understand, you know, Jamie's a pro. He knows what he's doing.

But I'm like, okay, I looked at my platoon commander and I said, we got to go, we got to go fucking find him. Like, he can't be up there in the middle of freaking nowhere in Afghanistan by himself with no support. Because there's no radio. He's got no radio. We can't contact anybody. So I convinced my platoon commander that our purpose is best served finding Jamie Sinclair.

So we go up into the into the hills and I'm like, okay, we can we can kind of see some sign that, you know, maybe he's gone this way because there was some trampled grass and things like that. And so I said, okay, well, we're just going to, we're just going to follow this ridge and we're going to, we're going to go find Sinclair. And I think there was about half a dozen of us at the time. Can I just throw one thing in there? Yeah. By this time, the guy that was with me for a period of time, I've sent him back. So I don't know if you guys ran into him or not because he had a bearing of the direction I was going on or not. Yeah.

No, no. It's your turn anyway. So we go into the hills and our mission is to find Jamie St. Clair. So just the back up here. So what happened was Bill, he was the Cimic officer that was. took over for civilian military cooperation is what Cimic stands for

and they were building a school and he took over for the guy that got chopped in the head with the axe. Yeah, Trevor. Trevor Green. Yep. So Trevor Green.

So this is like, there's lots of shit going on there. And it was Bill Turner. Yep. Oh, sorry, Bill Turner. So Bill wakes up in the morning and we're having our morning coffee and all that shit.

He's going back on the G-Wagon. that he was supposed to fly back on helicopter, but the general brought his clerk and took his spot. And he's like, Sinclair, like, I had a dream last night. I'm going to die today. And I'm like, come on, man. Like, don't worry about it. Like, let's just, you know, tell me all about it.

He's like, yeah, no, it was, like, I'm really, I don't want to go back by, I want to fly back. Like, you can't, man. You've got to get in that vehicle and you got to roll. And these guys are going with their pros. I was like, you'll be fine. Just watch your arcs and I'll see you in Kandahar and we'll go for a coffee in a couple weeks. So anyways, he's going to get into his vehicle and there's this old Afghani that comes to the wire.

And he's in this super black outfit, black man hat, man jammies. He's an older dude, big gray beard. He's waving this black handkerchief at Bill. So Bill comes over, takes the handkerchief. and my gut sinks. I just have this fucking horrific feeling. So I go up to him and I'm like, hey man, who is that dude?

He goes, oh, he's some guy he's got a Colossie bag. I've been giving him Colossie bags as part of the aid to this area. And I'm like, don't get in the vehicle is what I'm thinking in my head. But I can't say that to him now. Like he's getting up and he's going. 15 minutes later, they leave the call pound,

15 minutes later, boom. Hear this echo through the valley. we mount up and we roll out there and it's literally like where we dismount it uh it's it's right on the scene and there's like vehicle parts body parts in the trees and our medic uh because i used to like to do the three to five shift because if there's anything bad going to happen it's at three to five so i'd rather be on duty so the medic would always do duty with me so i got to know this guy roll pretty good and Roe's like laying at like a body part in this wadi and he's just crying because he can't do anything. And I'm like, Roe, man, like these guys are fucking dead.

Like there's nothing you can do. And there's like literally a hunk of guts and meat in the trees, but somebody's Gerber that was on his belt blew through him. So all this stuff's hanging from this Gerber. And it's still in the case. And I grab it and I give it the row. at least make sure this gets back to the CQ so Bill's mom doesn't have to pay for it because it's just a stupid joke like that's the black humor we have so now he's laughing crying laughing crying and I got a guy with me so we push through because you always want to take the high ground

in a situation like this so we push up onto the high ground and I physically come upon the site where this guy was laying he's got flat bread there like there's a rife site carved into the stone where the vehicle exploded and I see his footprint. So I'm like, I want to fucking find this guy because I'm the guy that fucking convinced Bill to get in the vehicle. So I get a foot width, a stride length, and this guy comes with me and we got a little PRR radios and they're good for 500 meters. We're already out of radio range from our commander. So we start going, come across the guy's hat. So as I'm tracking the guy I'm with, he actually looks forward, he sees the hat that's up there. So by

time we get there, I take my, I take my Ziplog bag out of my medic bag, which is for a sucking chest wound. If you got one, I pull the hat to the inside so I don't contaminate it at all. And I put it back in my medic bag and I start tracking this guy. We get to a point now where I'm like, okay, I'm not going to bring you with me anymore. I want you to go back, tell me more what I'm doing. Here's my bearing in direction. I'm going on. I'm going to keep going until I find this fucking guy. So eventually

I fucking find the village that this guy's in and it's fucking just a beehive, a men running around, like doing shit. Like there's probably two or three hundred people in that little village. And I'm like, okay,

this is where the guy is. Like, I'm about 500 meters from the actual village. like I know this is where he is. So now I'm coming back. And I'm like, I'm in bad guy country, right? So I got to be careful of what I'm doing. I'm all by myself.

And so I'm always observing. I'm looking around. And who do I see fucking running through the desert? I'm like, so I'm with my binos. I'm like, that's Willie fucking McDonald. And he's like a care more out. And I'm like, fuck me. This is awesome.

Like, because, like, you're a little nervous when you're by yourself, but he's got, like, all the radios that he can talk to aircraft. He can bring in firepower from the heavens. So anyways, I'll link up with him out in the middle of the desert. And I'm like, holy fuck am I glad to see you, big fucking hug. And he's like, what do you got sickler? What do you do it out here? You fucking dumb bastard? I'm like, I'm like, I got the guy.

I know where he is. So anyways, I give him a debrief. He sends it in the hire. You know what they tell to you, Saskatchew, boys? that knew each other since they're 16 and 18 years old, go back and pick it the objective by yourselves. Which means watch it all night. So we fucking go back there, just as to,

out in the middle, like anything could fucking happen to us. But you know what? Like, I don't know why we did it, but we did it. We stayed up all fucking night the next morning. They did a raid on this village, captured 90 dudes. I took the hat down to the dog handler. The dog smelt down the 90 dudes we captured because we did a gunshot residue thing on them.

They all tested positive. The dog found the guy that killed four Canadians 12 hours earlier. And it was because of fucking Willie and I. Good work, brother. So that was our fucking little story. I don't know what to say to that. It's pretty cool. I mean, when you think of two 16-year-old boys linking up and being friends,

and then going off to the other side of the world to see them running through the desert, you know, you paint a very good picture of like, I can't. Is that? That is. They want to make a movie about that. Well, it's a good story because, and it's not just a good story because, like, honest to God, you know, from the time that those four soldiers got killed and blown up, there was no, there was no bullets flying.

There was no craziness. But, you know, it's a good story because Jamie and I were in different platoons. we had different objectives. And when I linked up with his platoon and I'm like, where is he? And they didn't know where he was. I was like, fuck, I have to go find him. You know, I can't leave him behind. You know, I can't leave a brother behind.

So I got to go find him. And then, you know, I had some support with with a couple guys for my platoon. But they couldn't keep up. And it was hot. It was hot as fuck. And I'm like, okay, you know, I was in killer shape at the time. and I'm running through the desert and they're like, we can't keep up with you, man. And I did the same thing.

I said, okay, you guys stay here. I'll go forward and see if I can find them. But I had radios like Jamie said. I had radios because I was a J-TAC. So, you know, I had airplanes in the sky. I had all sorts of stuff. So I felt relatively secure, but I also knew that my buddy was out there by himself. And I can't, you know, I can't in good conscience just leave them behind.

and it ended up that they're like, hey, are you guys okay to, to like draw sketches and, and, you know, line up an attack position and places where choppers can land so that we can raid this village, you know, the following morning. And, you know, we did all that. And that's kind of stuff that you see in movies. And normally there's bullets flying and things are exploding. Here's the thing about the bullets. But it's still really super cool, right?

Here's the things. And I would assume the motivation of running through the desert. even though you're in killer shape, you're like, I know exactly who I'm going to. And if he's in trouble, I can imagine that that was, tired wasn't getting you that day.

That's what I'm getting at. Like, although there's no bullets where Willie was, doesn't mean there was bullets where I was. Like, I was all by and I think you both paint a very good picture of like, you don't know what you're running into and you're an enemy territory.

It goes back to mentality and physical fitness, right? I mean, I had the physical fitness. but I also had the desire to find my friend, my brother, and be there to help him if he needed help. Willie, it goes back to, like, doing what is right. It's not always, it would have been very easy for Willie to go, oh, well, he'll eventually come back.

Or it could have been very easy for me going, oh, well, we'll just stay here and secure the high ground. I felt fucking horrific that I was the guy that fucking told Bill to get in that vehicle. and that I'll see him two weeks and I hope you forgive me Bill but I was fucking determined to find the guy that fucking killed Bill and three other Canadians that day

Willie was determined to find me because we're fucking brothers and although Willie brought up a great point there was no bullets at the time but I was fucking I don't know how many kilometers away several kilometers away it could have been fucked they could add me on a fucking hunk of rock skinning me

alive. Like you don't know what's going on in between fucking there and there. And thank God you came out there. I'm sure I would have got back. But the best thing about it was is that we turned around. We went back there and we observed that position and we got the fucking guy that did it. Like that to me and I hope that makes our souls feel better too. We actually got the fucking dude that did it. And we shut down. that whole that whole fucking village was an IED center where they built all that shit and they went out and they fucking blew people up like we shut down that whole cell and that's usually a fucking multi-million dollar operation that is like JTF2 or fucking seal team fucking whatever and it

takes them months the plan a mission like that we fucking did it within we just did it and it didn't cost him a fucking dime I think I was getting $200 today when I was over there if I was getting paid. That's a pretty damn good salary. Yeah. Gentlemen, thanks for doing this. I always, you know,

we joke about me forgetting and everything, but I do really look forward to when, you know, I... To maybe inviting us to the next cornerstone, but actually letting it speak. You're looking forward to that maybe? Maybe. I want to give a shout-up to Hank because Hank's the reason.

Hank's the reason. Hank's the reason. No, it's actually. The girl, well, I'm having a brain fart on her name. Oh, it is too. Oh, man. Beautiful lady. Oh, that's terrible.

That's terrible because she's the one that says I should talk to you and Hank. That's right. That is right. Oh, fuck. Sorry. Sorry, forgive me. I owe you a beer when I see you next. But yeah, it's because of her.

Yeah, it's because of her that I get to meet you. And then, you know, it just. And that's when we first started talking about. about overseas shit and all. Well, no, and that's when we, you place the idea, too, of like, maybe Western Canada's just got to be a different country. You think about that long, that's a long time ago. That's 2021.

And that's when you first brought up that idea and I'm like, hmm, kind of makes sense, you know, but are we there? You know, and then, you know, and you fast forward and you're like, well, it hasn't dampened down any of that's for sure, right? Like, it's, so it's, it's interesting to me. And I guess I just, I always enjoy when. military men come on because you know you people don't have to love your perspective but there's very few that have it in this area and i seem to have linked up with all of them and i get to i get to

you know bring them on the podcast quite regularly so i feel very fortunate so hey you want to see at the corner store for him start bombarding he's not gonna he's not gonna stop on this get fucking willie to to to speak to everybody because he's fucking great guy thanks but and maybe you let me if I can talk for a minute or two about whatever. Maybe. Or if I can kick me off again, I don't know. I've given him ammo for the rest of life, haven't I? Well, you forgot about our meeting today, too.

There's that. There's that. I don't know. Should I keep going? I think I'll just hold off. I feel like when I get you in the news studio and you get to shoot some guns out out there, you're going to be like, this is pretty good. It's going to be awesome.

I'm very proud of you, Sean, and I thank you for giving people a voice. Yep. Yeah, totally. Thanks for having us, too. It's always a pleasure to sit down and have a chat with you. And shout out to Steve Ambrose for his 36 years of service. Was it 36? I think it is.

30 plus. It doesn't really matter once you're over 20. He's done a lot of good things. So is Willie obviously. Big commitment. Well, stay safe, gentlemen. I know that you won't get into a. fight that you can't finish.

I've seen what was close to what that was going to look like. That might have been a better story just to let it played out. Just so you know, I wouldn't give a fuck. Even if I lost a fight, I'd fucking die on the spot. If I really believe in what I'm fighting for, I'll lose my life over it. Well, you get to watch the Oilers in a Stanley Cup finals this time around. Thanks again for hopping in and doing this gentleman. Thanks, Sean.

Yeah, thank you.