Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. #150 - Byron Christopher

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Just click on it. Sweet jesus - Byron is a investigative reporter who has some just crazy stories. You want the Oilers winning the cup and giving his media pass away to some random guy, being told never to come back to 2 different countries or else, stories about corrupt judges, guns pointed at him, telling the Vice President to F**k off, psychics and more. Just wow   I'm curious what you think Text me! 587-217-8500

Hi, this is Brandon Holphy. Hey, this is Tanner, the Bulldozer, Bozer. Hi, this is Brian Burke from Toronto, Ontario. This is Daryl Sutterin. Hello, everyone. I'm Carlyagro from SportsNet Central. This is Jay On Right. This is Quiddiquity coming to you from Tuffino, Saskatchew. Hey, everybody, my name is Steele-Fleary.

This is Kelly Rudy. This is Corey Cross. This is Wade Redden. This is Jordan Tutu. My name is Jim Patterson. Hey, it's Ron McLean, Hockeynet in Canada, and Rogers' hometown hockey, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Hope everybody is staying warm. She's a little chilly out there this weekend. Now, I got to throw up my prediction. I certainly hope Tom, I'm doing this before the Super Bowl. I'm really hoping Tom Brady wins one more. That's where my money is. That's who I'm pulling for. So hopefully I don't make an ass out of myself by taking Tom Brady right now.

150 episodes like holy crap i don't know where the time goes some days it just seems like yesterday we're firing up and and now we're at 150 actually to be clear or to be precise i guess it's two years ago almost to the day that i first started out february 2019 and we're now in February 2021 so two years 150 episodes later i go i hope you guys are having as much fun as i am i'm having a blast doing this uh look forward to hearing your guys feedback on every single episode i have and and i just i don't know where this leads but i'm having a lot of fun doing it um before we get to today's episode which which byron is you're not going to forget this one like this is this is an awesome episode before we get there let's get to today's episode sponsors carly claus and the team

over windsor plywood they are the builders of the podcast studio table it's it's migrated from the first studio now to the second here and uh everybody who comes in i mean it's just a piece of work and you're looking for anything wood these are the guys whether we're talking about mantles decks windows doors sheds when you want quality stopping and see the group at windsor plywood or just hop on your phone like we're all probably doing and and check out their instagram or or facebook page you'll see it firsthand all the different types of wood they got they just got beautiful chunks uh and they can do something like this for you all right give me a call 780 875 966 666 Clinton team over at trophy gallery.

I saw they just opened the showroom back up from 10 to 4 Monday through Friday. They are located downtown Lloyd Minster. They are Canada supplier for Glass and Crystal Awards. Business owners, this is the perfect way to show your appreciation for your staff. He can engrave these awards right in the store with, I mean, a variety of, like anything you want, Clint can do. I mean, guys, very talented. He's got the stuff. Take a look online.

Trophygallery. dot CA you don't need to be in Lloydminster they ship Canada wide they got all size of shapes price ranges if you just contact Clint or Dean at Trophy Gallery Downtown Lloydminster today Canada's award store or visit them online trophy gallery dot CA you'll see what they're working with

Jen Gilbert and team for over 40 years since 1976 the dedicated realtors a Coldwell banker city side realty of served Lloydminster in the surrounding area their passion about our community and they pride themselves on giving back through volunteer opportunities and partnerships as often as they can. They know that home is truly where awesomeness happens. Coldwell Banker, Cityside Realty for everything in real estate, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

780, 875-3343. And if you're looking into houses or maybe you've got your mortgage, you're wondering about, how about Jill Fisher, mortgage broker? I say it all the time, her name says everything. But right now in the world and where mortgage rates are going and uncertainty in the future and everything else, why not give a lady a call who understands, you know, maybe how you could save some money, maybe how you can position yourself better in the future. For all your mortgage needs, give her a call 7808722914 or visitor at jfisher.com.

She serves all of Lloydminster, Bonneville, and Cold Lake, and Vermilion. and she's looking forward to helping you out. Clay Smiley over at Prophet River. I keep telling the story, because I find it fascinating. I probably have to have Clay on here at some point. But here's a guy who was a school teacher and started importing firearms from the United States, and, you know, it just blows up.

And now he's got, if you haven't been into Prophet River, like, it's an impressive store. And they can help you with anything gun-related. We're talking firearms. optics, accessories, and they serve all of Canada. So if you go to Profitriver.com today and check them out, they can help you out. They're experts in that field, and you're going to find nobody better than Clay. The SMP billboard across from the UFA, a huge shout out to read and write with the amazing work of Miss Deanna Wander.

Mrs. Deanna-Wanler, dang, that's like the eighth week in a row of that. And she could just make you look sharp. That's what she's been doing for me since I started working with her, and that goes back to the home on Hitman days. Finally, Gartner management in Lloydminster is an Lloydminster-based company specializing all types of rental properties to help meet your needs, whether you're looking for a small office or a 6,000 square foot commercial space. Give Mr. Wade Gartner a call 780808, 5025, and if you're in any of these businesses,

make sure you let them know you heard about them on the podcast. Now let's get on to that T-Barr-1 tale of the tape. Born in 1949 in Campbellton, New Brunswick. He started his broadcasting career in 1965, working in Newcastle, Quebec City, and Dawson Creek. After this, he would head to Australia for two years. From 1981 to 1995, he worked for the CBC. He's spent time at 6.30, Chad, teaching at Nate, and now a freelance journalist.

He's broke stories such as the Talisman Energy scandal, David Milgard, who was wrongfully convicted and spent 23 years in prison. You may remember the tragically hip song Weakings with the line, Late Breaking Story on the CBC. He's written a book, The man who mailed himself out of jail, the Richard Lee McNair's story

about a man who escaped from prison three different times and then later would converse via letters with Byron. His Wikipedia page probably says it best. Byron's style of reporting is Armageddon-like, blood and guts crime reporting. Yeah, I'm talking about Byron, Christopher. So buckle up. Here we go.

This is Byron Christopher, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. I was really excited to come sit here because I've been, you know, we were supposed to do this. Well, I want to say almost before Christmas. Yeah, it was a month ago, yeah. More than a month ago, yeah. And then I had something, it was like somebody didn't want me to come that day, right? What can you do? You just sit back and go, I guess it'll, well,

wasn't meant to be today. Well, you're here, so, and you brought coffee. That's right. That's a good start, isn't it? Yeah. It's even a better start. I have something for you. You mentioned that you had ordered a copy of my book, the man who mailed himself out

of jail. And it got stolen off the front step by a couple of, I don't know, kids, let's call it. I thought they'd have a real chuckle when they opened that up, Byron. Yeah. And, uh, here's, here's your book. And that's, that's part one of the surprise, but I'll sign it there in a minute but open it up to the first page very first page now they're right to the cover page and check the date at the bottom holy moly that's today's date

January 31st that's weird there's something even more weird go look at the very last printed page where it gives credit to people very last page let's see a pile of names and look down toward the bottom You see your name? What? That's cool, eh? So that's one souvenir you'll never forget and you'll never give away.

Benji. That's a dog in the background of a little Benji, the two-year-old American Yorkie who owns this neighborhood. How did you, how did you get my name in there? When did this happen? That was specially ordered just for you. Just for me? Yeah.

And there may be someone in England that has the same copy. of the book or in the United States, I don't know. They keep ordering them and I keep amending them. You can do that. But there you go. Well, that's a pretty cool little, uh, that's one way to start a podcast part. There you go. That's a first.

That's a first. And I'll sign it for you as well. If you got a pen? What kind of a salesman would I be? I don't have a pen. Isn't that strange? We'll have to do that after the fact. We'll do that later, yeah.

Well, that's your book. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. I am joined by Mr. Byron Christopher. So first off, thanks for, doing this for me. Well, you're welcome. Thanks for the coffee and thanks for making the trip into Edmonton. Well, as all of us out in the rural parts of Saskatchewan, Alberta, this is what we do. Like a two-hour drive is, I don't know, it's just another day.

It's not, I came and did Reed Wilkins when I first started the podcast. And he was, oh, I can't believe he drove two hours to come. See? I don't know. Honestly, I feel like you're sitting in my back, my backyard right now. I think this is pretty cool that you're just sitting here. Yeah. Yeah, well, thanks for coming.

I appreciate that. You make the trip to see me. We haven't met before, and I Googled you and saw your podcast. You've been busy. You've talked to a lot of people. Well, I was saying this before we started. I feel like I'm 34. I turned 35 in May.

Actually, a day after you. You're May 1st birthday. I'm a May 2nd birthday. I'm not so sure what I did for my 20s. I feel like I probably like a lot of people in their 20s, right? I got married and started having kids and, you know, maybe drank too much, maybe chased too many, whatever, right? I just feel like, my 30s are, I want to figure some things out

and I want to talk to some people. And every day that ticks by is a day gone, I guess. And so, yeah, I try and stay busy and not overdo it for the family, but, you know, I read your, I read your, I guess I should give a shout-out to Justin Tyndall. He's a guy I work with. He took a course of yours, or is it Nate? And he said, I should come do you. And I forget what it says at the top.

But the first, I was kind of like Byron Christopher. I don't know who that is, right? Well, who is that? And it's Armageddon-like crime reporting. And I'm like, well, gee, that sounds kind of interesting. And then the deeper I dig, the more interesting you become. Thank you. Yeah, and I sense just in talking to you now and a few moments we had earlier,

that you're drawn toward journalism and information and giving out the information as well. And I see that with a lot of people. They'd like to be a reporter, a journalist, as they call it. And there's always a little bit of them, a little bit of that in them, and I see that in you. It's curiosity, but more than that, you want to share your information with people. And I guess that's why you're here today. Well, I was going to wait until later. I would like people to get noise.

So I'd like for you to talk about your story and your journey in the journalism. But one of the things that really draws me to your story is, I was saying to the wife on the way up, and I hope I do a good job of describing. But I feel like the human population is like they're sitting in a movie theater. And one of those old movie theaters where it's got the curtain that draws across and media opens up the curtain and we get to see what they want us to see. And then they close it again and they open it up and you just get to see the acts. You don't actually get to see what's actually going on behind the scenes. But you're a guy that for all your life, I feel like, has been behind the curtain and actually knows what's going on, which has given you some insight into how the world works, so to speak.

Yeah, that's perhaps an interesting way of looking at it. I'm from New Brunswick, a small town in New Brunswick, northern New Brunswick, Campbellton. And I grew up on the edge of town, and I was quite shy. And something I could not do until I was around 14 or so. I couldn't talk. I stuttered a lot. I was so nervous. So therefore, I didn't get into town very much.

and the oddest thing happened when I was 18 I was a disc jockey that's just weird of your life changes like that so from being a shy introvert person I think you study things more you try to find you're always trying to find the why here why this happening why is this you know so that was perhaps part of my character

my father was big on integrity but you didn't know that until you got old You know, you're just an older man, but now I look back and I say, I'm quite proud of that guy. I like how he stood up for things. And I look at people in the town where I grew up, those who pushed humanity in the right direction. I see them now as heroes.

You don't know who they are, they're not famous, but in my mind, I look up to these people. So I think there are some events in your life can shape the kind of work you get into, and I became a disc jockey. And I was, I think, average at that. I wasn't good or wasn't bad, somewhere in between. And when I was doing the afternoon show at CFRN FM, it's now called the Bear, the format change, I remember walking out to the teletype then. This was the late 70s, teletypes, how we got our

news. They're very noisy, like a typewriter. So I'm at CFRN FM. And the teletype machine was clunking away. Very noisy machines, kind of neat. And there was a news summary coming across. And they come across every hour or so. And they're from broadcast news. And it had a summary of all the major news items in the world. And the very last item on this news summary had to do with a massacre in the square in Tehran, in Iran.

About 700 people were killed. So one of the announcers was walking by and I said, hey, look at this. This is the last item here. And look, 700 people died in this massacre and they buried it at the bottom of the summary. That's bullshit. That should be the lead story. And he said, quite sarcastically, well, if you think you can do any better, you should get into news. I said, well, anyone can do better than that.

That's just wrong. And I tell that story to students. So I tell them I get into the business because I was critical of it. And the question I get asked years later, decades later, well, now that you've been in the business for a while, do you still have the same thoughts? And my response is, no, it's worse than what I thought. You know, I'm sorry, it's far worse than what I thought it was.

And that comes around to my blog, no news release journalism. It's a bit of a dig at the reporters who simply get their news at news conferences or news releases. I've always told students and fellow reporters, get out and get your own stories.

I mean, the news releases are fine, but go beyond that. Get out and talk to people and get your own stories. A very small percentage of the news is covered. What percentage? maybe 5% of the news is actually covered. The rest is, it's just out there.

So, all if that answers your question. So there's 95% of things going on in the world. Nobody's putting a spotlight on. Sure. Yeah. And it's impossible to cover it all. And in some cases, as we saw with the American election, most of the major media outlets were partisan.

they shouldn't be. They should be just reporting the facts. You shouldn't take sides. And when you're biased in the reporting, then censorship gets involved. People begin to censor stories because they feel it's going to hurt their candidate. So we saw that happen.

So you can see the mess the world can get in if journalism isn't true to its goals, which is reporting the facts. And sure you're bound to stray every now and then, but it got so much, so far out of hand in the U.S. it became a bad joke. So what do you think of the U.S. election then? Because as a, I try and come to terms with what's going on, even in our own country.

And it's hard because it's so divisive right now, right? Like you even go on social media. And if you want to go down the rabbit hole of why Trump should be in and it was a false election and everything else, that rabbit hole is built. And you can go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. Yeah. to the point where you're ready to march on Washington. You can also go the opposite way,

where they've built the rabbit hole of why Trump is Hitler. And you can go down that rabbit hole. And you can go deep, deep, deep until you think the other side of your, and that's what it feels like. I know there's a majority of us sitting in the middle, but the longer it goes on, the more you start to stray to the outsides, because that's what the world does.

That's what social media has certainly done. Yeah, yeah, social media is another media, outlet. It's like the people's voice. They're not, a lot of these people are not trained journalists, and not that training is going to make you honest or anything, but it's a step in the right direction. But it's, there's mainstream media, social media, I mean, it's all, it's a whole pile of information out there.

Information overload. Now, if that information was more factual without a bias. I mean, if you run a news company and you tell your reporters we're out to get Trump, there's a problem there. Those reporters should be asking that guy to leave

so they can do their job. The same thing if they said, we're out to get Biden. That's not right. And we're going to censor this story on this candidate because we're rooting for him. We don't want that out. That's not journalism.

That's propaganda. And I think the public can pick up on that. and sadly some members of the public don't give a rat's ass if the coverage is crooked they don't care as long as their person is winning so that's even more tragic yeah so the U.S. election I've always focused on media coverage of everything

and the same with the COVID controversy there's two sides to that you know so and both sides should be presented without ridicule or without censorship. Yeah, so it's a complex world. It's the world as it is. You have a question there.

Well, I, it was something I found on your blog that I found, I assume this is something that every human being always feels, whether you were born in the year 200 or the year 2000, is that this is the first time we've had this conversation or the first time that media folk have, you know, sat down and discussed whether the current media is doing its job. And one of the things, and I'll read it here, that you have posted as John Swinton from 1880.

Is that, do you know, well, I'll read it. Yeah, you better read it. Yeah, so many stories on the blog. That's right. Well, it's a picture, and it said, there's no such thing as an independent press. There's not one of you who dares to write your honest, opinions and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I'm paid weekly

for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Any of you who would be so foolish as to write an honest opinion would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinion to appear in one of the issue of my paper before 24 hours my occupation would be gone. The business of journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to vaughn at the feet of the mammon and to sell his country and his race for the daily bread. We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings and we dance.

Our talents are possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. And that was written in 1980. A lot of that applies today, unfortunately. That's like, you know, it's... Another way, Sean, of looking at us, free speech is a figure of speech. Complete honesty will get you in trouble. I'll tell you a story. When I was, I had a story published on the front page of McLean's magazine, we'll call him Thatcher.

I got a phone call from a retired policeman, EPS detective, who wanted to tell me his story, essentially of minor league corruption within EPS. And he was involved, he was a whistleblower. And he told me, we met at Tim Hortons and he told me his story. It was very complex, you know, talk about rabbit hole. And he said, do you think McLean's would be interested in it? And I said, well, start with, I'm, I just freelance that story on Thatcher with McLean's. I don't normally deal with McLean's magazine.

But I don't think they would be interested in it. And he said, why not? It's all real. And I said, yeah, it's real. but it's so complex. I couldn't follow what you just told me. Even if you said it 10 times, I couldn't follow it. So it's so complex.

But I think you're valid, your points, but it's hard to convey that information. So we parted on that point. I said, sorry, I can't follow what you're talking about. And it's very complex. So it was not a major story, but for him it was a major part of his life. So then I changed the subject to what disappointed you most about being. a police officer. And he told me this story.

He said he was a constable. And at the same time, a worker with the Edmonton Sanitation Department, a garbage collector, was picking up garbage, and he found a VHS tape. We're talking 80s here.

The guy brings the tape home, pops it in his VCR machine, turns on his TV, and he's watching this homemade porn tape. It's an adult male having sex with a juvenile. So what does he do with the tape? Hands it over to the police. This constable got it, looked at it,

and he went, oh my God, I know that guy. He's a judge. So the tape was taken over by the chief of police, and he assigned various detectives to look into it. And the officer telling the story says, I went back to my computer to see where the file was and had been deleted. Just like it never happened. And the judge resigned for family reasons, but was not charged. He was a court of Queen's Bench Justice.

So I said to the officer, can you give me his name? He said, no. I asked him three times. He said, sorry, Byron. I'm not giving you the judge's name. Okay. The years pass. I'm over here at 7-Eleven.

I bought some sports select tickets. I'm walking home. Cell phone rings. On the line is a retired homicide detective. Wanted to know about a murder case downtown. He was involved in years ago. I said, sorry, I can't help you with that. I don't remember much about it.

I said, by the way, do you know anything about a judge and a porn tape? He said, yes, I handled that file. Oh, great. What happened? So he says, well, he and two other detectives got on an RCMP plane, flew to Ottawa, met with the Federal Minister of Justice and the deputy minister. He said, they put us up on a nice hotel downtown, the Chateau Laurier. He said, they saw the tape and they drafted a letter of resignation for this judge. So we flew back to Edmonton.

I went around to the law courts building, up to where the judge had his office, handed him the letter. He signed it. He told him to clean his desk out and be gone in five minutes. He was gone. He said he never returned to the courthouse. I said, can you give me his name? And he did. But I can't share it with you.

No, I can't. Because he was never charged. So I phoned back the constable and said, I know the name. that judge. He said, yeah, it was him. But he said, don't do the story, Byron. That's too dangerous. No, I could never, I did the story. I called it the law court secret porn star, but I can't identify the retired court of Queens bench justice because he was never charged. At the end of the story, I met a birthday party for a medical missionary who turned 90. I'm there, she asked me to be there. I show up.

there's also a retired court of queen's bench justice there not this one and he approaches me and says well Byron what are you working on now I said actually a story of one of you guys and he says well that's nice and I said no it's not nice the guy was screwing a kid up the ass he said oh did his last name start with and it mentions an initial I said yeah he said we heard he left because of possession a child born. That's what we heard. I said, possession of it. He was a star actor. And immediately the judge says, what are you doing

with it? I said, I'm glad you asked. Here's a draft of the story on my iPhone. And his eyes went up when he saw a line in there, but we trust these people in power to do their jobs. Yeah. There you go.

That is a story. That's no news-released journalism. him. Kind of makes your skin crawl, doesn't it? Yeah, because you don't expect that. You don't expect that from the police? I challenged the officer. I said, well, why didn't you charge him?

And he said, it was a plea bargain. I said, no, it wasn't, because he was never charged. And the same with the retired justice at the birthday party. He said, Byron, that was a plea bargain. I said, no, it wasn't. And you know it wasn't. That was an under-the-table deal. There you go.

they don't want people to know those stories. And if you're in a newsroom, you'd have trouble getting that out, that story. Just like I had trouble getting out, the story of talisman energy and lawsuit against it for its behavior in Africa. That was met with a lot of opposition, but I got it out through our website in Toronto. Can you describe to us? I don't think I understand, so I certainly know the listener doesn't understand what you mean by opposition. opposition. Well, they weren't in favor of that story. No, I understand, I understand that part, but are you talking, your bosses basically said,

do not, you are not allowed to? I forget the wording, the exact wording. It was one of, more like roadblocks. Well, how do we know that's true? That document could have been manipulated, you know? I said, well, I know it's true because I phoned New York and talked to the courthouse. and they verified it. Oh, well, we need to talk to our lawyer first.

And I said, yeah, I'll do that. What's his name? And the news director says, I don't know. You see, roadblocks. So the story is done, but it doesn't run. Two copies if it were made, it never ran. So then I contacted a website in Toronto called RABL, RABB-B-L-E, and they said, well, that's a good story, we'll get it out.

Rabel was run by Judy Rebick, formerly the Globe and Mail. So Judy said, we've got to get that out there. They hired two lawyers to go through it, and I had a lawyer in Alberta go through it. So we had three lawyers going through that story before they put it out. And once the story got out, it was picked up by the Financial Times of London, England. They ran it, and then the wire services got involved. Reuters, Ajean's France, these people.

Then it went all around the world. And at that point, the Canadian press picked it up, and they ran it. Even the Calgary Herald ran it on the front page, believe it or not. And it led to the demise of Talisman. Talisman broke up after that and taken over by other companies. But now Rabel, in its promotion, will say that story was one of their big ones. because of the consequences of it. So when I talk about opposition to it,

I mean, when I was poking around and getting comments from Talisman, guess what arrived at the radio station? A letter from the company, saying if you're going to pursue this story, we're going to take legal action against you. I put that in the story, by the way, the letter and everything. Screw them. Let the public see what you're up against when you try to do,

legitimate stories. So, yeah, there you go. Opposition. You know, I don't feel, there's probably more than I give credit. But I feel like there isn't many Byron's out there. Most don't do all the legwork of calling New York and verifying things. Maybe not. I thought it was a good story.

And, uh, well, I mean, it's not just Alberta. I mean, I'm sure it goes on in North Korea. Oh, yeah. It goes on in Los Angeles. and it goes on in New Brunswick with the Irvings down there. They own the place, you know. So it goes on everywhere. You know, like, how would you feel if you're working in the Vatican

and you approach some of the archbishops and say, hey, let's do a feature on child pornography. What do you say? Or child abuse. How is that going to be received? They're going to say, no, we've had enough of that. Get out of here. And the reporter would know that.

They know where their bread's buttered. They all do. They all have mortgages, car payments. I mean, the best example of that that I saw when I get into reporting was the embedded reporters with the military. These reporters are on junkets, but they don't announce that when they do their reports in their dispatches. They don't say their flight was paid for by the military,

the meals are paid for, the accommodation is looked after. They should, right off the top, and read at the very end of it. So the audience will know, hey, you're not really neutral here. You know, if you want to cover that story, your company should pay for it. But the military does that, so it's good public relations. And it comes across as a legitimate story, but it's not, of course. So that's the first instance I saw of reporters and news organizations on the take.

When I worked at Ched Radio in Edmonton, I was working on a newscast, and I rewrote a story that was in the Edmonton Journal, and they had a reporter in Afghanistan in Kandahar. And I knew the reporter. So I called him, and I said, you didn't include any reports at the military. It's a sponsored trip by the military. It's a junket. He said, no, they don't want us to do that. You know, I didn't sense he was ashamed. He was being used.

But in the case of a rewrite from the Canadian press, same thing. I phoned the Canadian press in Toronto, wanted to know how many junkets their guys had taken over the past 10 years or so. And why don't they put in their stories that it's military sponsored? And the guy told me, I'll get back to you. That was 20 years ago. He's never getting back. You ever

Have you ever danced around a story? Like if the story was getting too close to something you loved Have you ever? Because you know, the wife and I on the way here Had this argument You can imagine We're driving and we're talking about I hope I didn't lead to your divorce

No God no no No I really respect my wife's opinion I really She's American and she's from Minneapolis. Yeah, Americans are more straightforward. 100%. And I love how her brain works.

It always surprised me. But anyways, we get driving here. I'm getting in a argument. I'm reading, I'm in a book club. Yeah. A male-only book club. Not that that matters, but five guys start a book club

to be better husbands, better fathers. And it's led down a rabbit hole of its own. Right now I'm reading Guleg Archipelago. Mm-hmm. And so we get talking about this. and what she says, and now I'm going to chop up our words, but basically is everyone has their bias.

How can you possibly ever know everyone's bias, right? No matter if it comes from the best, and he's seen things, but he's got a bias towards it. And that's the way the world works. No matter where you go, that bias is going to be, Byron's going to have a bias, Sean's going to have a bias, and how they do things. How you handle that?

Is that what you want to know? Yeah, yeah. It's simple. You try to keep your biases. in check. And that was one of the guiding points we had at CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where we worked on stories, especially political ones, we vote too. So what happens? I mean, there was a time when I would turn out at a voting station and not vote for anyone. I'd say, there's got to be a card here I sign, and they'd roll her eyes, yeah, there is one. You know,

you'd sign it, and I wouldn't vote, and I wanted to be totally neutral. But our, our, our style guide said to keep your biases in check. And sometimes you do a story on, let's say, abortion. Some Morgan Toller was, Dr. Morgan Toller was in town. So I would do a story on him. And you get phone calls saying, oh, you're biased. You're, you're in favor of what he said. No, I didn't indicate that at all. I just reported what he said. You know, but so there's situations like that. But you ask about a story that I had to dance around. Yeah, I'll tell you a good one. It was in 1997 or 96.

I can't recall the year. But I was in Nicaragua with two journalism students, natives. And we were doing a series of stories involving the indigenous people of Nicaragua. The war was over. I'd been there during the war, and I remembered that. It was funny to be back. And there was still a lot of tension in the country. and we went out to the east coast.

We're in a town called Bluefields with an English name. And I'm walking down the street and just had some time to kill. I don't know where the students were. But I saw an embassy of Columbia. And I thought, what's that doing out here? Embassy of Columbia. So I asked around, and they said, a lot of the drugs come in here. Cocaine.

They arrived by submarine. Lots of them. Everyone knows that. Arrived by submarine? Yeah. Submarine, yeah. And a lot of them arrived by aircraft. And it had so much cocaine on them,

they didn't even bother recovering the plane. They just crashed land a thing and just take it and destroy the plane. So much money involved. But that was the story I got. So in an interview with the mayor of Bluefields, I popped that question to him. And I said, I understand. I've been told that a lot of cocaine comes in through your town.

what do you know about that? And he gave an answer that he didn't know anything about it, and that's fine. But what he did, I found out later, he phoned Monagua, capital. I got on my cell phone a call from former ambassador, Nicaragua to Canada, Pastor Vallegadai. He was then a trade consulate. He said, Byron, Byron, Stop being the white knight on the white horse.

he said they're going to kill you he said don't ask questions about cocaine and i said i simply want to know that he said by and i said you've always said pastor and i recall you arguing with ronald reagan at the time Reagan was saying a lot of cocaine was coming to nicaragua from columbia but you denied it he said Reagan was right i was wrong but i did not know it at the time but it is happening by her and I'm ashamed of it. He's a former trade consul he had resigned or retired. He said, just keep your mouth shut and get out of there. You're with some students, you're all in harm's way now. Shut up. I said, I had no idea that was happening. He said, he had no idea. He said,

when you're in Monagua, didn't you see the big houses on the hill? I said, yeah, there are mansions. He said, where do you think that came from? He said, just be quiet. Just get back here. So I did. So that's one story I danced around. They ended up killing a reporter who dug a little deeper than me. His name is Gary Webb, W.E.B. He worked in San Jose for a paper. He broke the story of the CIA of all people importing cocaine

for the black people in Los Angeles to the ghetto. It would screw them up. But they were behind that. And he broke that story. And he lost his job because of it. He was ridiculed. And he supposedly committed suicide. First bullet in his head didn't do it, so he had to pull a trigger again.

That's how Gary died. So there's something to it. And that's the story I danced around. So most people just put their head down and go about their day and just, it's like trying to figure out the universe. Yeah. It just hurts your brain. Yeah, it does. And when you're talking about absolute truth of what's actually going on,

it would probably hurt everyone's brain. Yeah. Yeah. Like the pedophile judge. Who wants to hear that if you appear in the courtroom? Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. There's a lot of stuff out there.

You work on it and, you know. How did you pick stories in by our? That one came to me. I was there on an innocent thing about the native people of Nicaragua having their own school set up and their own network and their own information network and that. These were two native students I went down with those teaching then at Grant McEwen. So that I got by accident and I was fascinated with that. I said, wow, cocaine arrives here. And one guy said, yeah, a lot of it.

He said, that's why the Colombian embassy is here besides in Managua. But Pastor's honest remarks, I mean, I was touched by that. I mean, he ended up saving my ass. So then I did get to Monagua. I didn't quite shut up about it. I wanted to meet the vice president, whose name was Danielle Ortega. He's now the president. So I went around to his compound.

Talk about heavily guarded. I mean, this is crazy. I pull up there, and there's about 20 guards at the front gate. They've all got army fatigue and machine guns and grenades hanging from them and pistols. And you can't get in to see Danielle, of course. So I pulled out a carton of cigarettes I bought in Dallas. And I said, you may think this is a bribe, boys. and it is. Here's your cigarettes.

So I get in. I get in to talk to Maria, the secretary. And she said, Danielle, through a translator, Danielle is busy or out of town or something. Three times I was back there, three times to Daniel's office. Third time, he pulls up in our Mercedes, sitting in the backseat, just a short little guy. And I meet Maria again, then the translator,

And she said, oh, Danielle is, he's traveling soon. I said, yes, I understand. He's going to Cuba. Yeah, yeah, but you come back tomorrow. I said, Maria, through the translator, stop fucking me around. The translator says, I cannot say that. He's our vice president. We cannot use that language here.

I said, say it. I'm paying you to translate it. I wanted to ask him about the drugs. And so she said it to Maria. And Maria goes, Nusignor, no, signor, waving her arms, you know, frantically. I didn't get any interview. But that night, I'm back at the hotel.

I get a call from reception. There's someone to see me at reception. I walk out. Some tall guy, you look like a diplomat. He said, may I have a private word with you outside? And we sat in the place, you know, they have these umbrellas, these round tables, and you have a beer. We just sat there and talked. He was head of the Sandinista Party, president of the Sandinista Party.

And he wanted to know about a conflict I had at Danielle Ortega's office. He said, I wanted, and he spoke English perfectly. And he said, I wanted to know if you told Maria to fuck off. I said, yes, I did. And he said, thank goodness, someone did it. He was quite happy. Isn't that weird? And he became the ambassador to Washington.

But there's a story you kind of dance around, you know, and I never did interview Danielle. But I'm told by the trade consulate, don't return to Nicaragua, Byron. Do not. And you also mentioned about Danielle having sex with his 12-year-old, adopt. a daughter. I said, yes, he said, don't go back. I said, that's true. He said, well, everyone knows it's true, but we didn't write about it. There you go. So if I go to Monagra, you'll see me dancing at the airport. You know, at the start of that story, you mentioned you left alone and got out of there, but then you're talking about how far you duck. Yeah,

I was angry at that. Yeah, I was angry at that comment, and I did go back, and I was leaving very in a short time. I thought I'd go right in their face and say it. And nothing happened, but I'm told, don't go back. I had a similar thing in Nepal in 1981. I was there for an innocent story on a national magazine called Today, the old Weekender magazine,

the old Star Weekly. Your parents would know that. So it's supposed to be a good story. Canadian medical missionary builds a hospital on the side of a mountain in Nepal. Wow, good story. So I get over there, do the story. And there was a national strike looming by the communists.

They wanted no one to go to work on a certain day. So I thought, well, today's the day I'm going to climb a mountain and get some, this is before drones. And I wanted some near aerial shots of the complex, the hospital and the grounds in the village, and that side, to climb this mountain. So I'm heading up there with my tripod, two cameras. There's a roadblock.

20, 30 guys standing around this roadblock. I knew what it was about. They were with these Marxist group, and they didn't want anyone to go to work. So the leader, believe it or not, is standing on a rock that is about as tall as my house, the first roof. And he jumps down, believe it or not. And lands on the ground, and he walks over,

and he starts speaking to me in Nepalese. I know no Nepalese, but I knew that he was upset. he saw the tripod and figured I was going to work. So he put his hand on my chest and told me, I don't go. I told him I'm going up the mountain to get shots. And he didn't speak English. They had no literature as well.

So I took his arm and I pulled it down. I said, I'm going. And all the boys moved and I went through them. And I remember the looks on their face is like, what do we do? But I checked around, not one had a weapon. no gun no rifle nothing so i figured out if they they wouldn't shoot me in the back they'd fire a warning shot they let me go however i returned and uh some nurse at the hospital said they had talked to the maoas people and they said that i was um they used a term that i meant that i was rude to them

I said, no, I thought they were rude to me, but they weren't happy with me. Two or three months later, those same mouse gorillas shot and killed two Europeans on that path. And it's always bothered me. That little conflict did it make them more determined? That will always haunt me. And so I started a blog, and I did a story on this medical missionary, and complimentary story, you know, and people from the village now. adults, the children, wrote, do you remember me?

And, you know, I remember you and things like that. One guy, and my email address was there, and one guy started sending me, looked like a medical picture. It was a fellow who was on a motorcycle, had crashed his motorcycle behind something, and you could tell he was deceased, there's a lot of blood there.

And I thought this guy has become a paramedic. and the next email showed a man three men hanging from trees there had been hanged I thought this is not a medical person he's either with the police

or a guerrilla group or something and the next one the third one and then I had to delete his emails showed a man in a bus with his head hanging out the window and half his skull was cut off with a machete and the blood was his skull was hanging there because of the skin

a lot of blood down the side of this bus and I thought, who's sending me that? And I realize it's a message from the rebels. If you return to this area, we've not forgotten you. Nobody sends emails like that. So that's one other place I won't be visiting. Have you never worried for your life? You mentioned just walking through and being like,

if they shoot, you know, they're going to fire a warning shot. Yeah. Like there has to been. I did that too, leaving Danielle Ortega's office. The translator was like, terrified. She said, I can't believe what you told our vice president. And I said, yes. And I said, we have about 300 feet to walk to the street. We're going to turn left. And she was like, terrified. She said, we might get shot. I said, well, there's two of us. So probably they'll fire

a warning shot first, but maybe not. Let's find out. And we got to within 100 feet. I said, so far so good. 100 feet to go. 50 feet. You try to make light of it. But she got back. to the hotel she was a missionary too and she and she was telling everyone this story and of course my phone rings and it's the future ambassador to Washington having a word with me but yeah you kind of think about it but you know so I also find it exciting and I'm not really afraid of death I hate to say that I don't don't want people think of them crazy but I think there is an afterlife and I'd rather go down swinging and just on the ground cowering, you know. So if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't,

I got a good story. I said the same thing when I worked the prison beat. I was always fascinated at these guys. And I walked into a meeting once and there's a group of lifers there. They're all killers. And there was about a dozen of them. And there's always a big mouth in the group, always looking for attention. And this guy starts putting down the Edmonton's son. Now, I didn't work at the sun, but they figured media. So I said to the guys, I said, well, I got your attention here. Is there anyone in here for a brave act? I've yet to meet one. Maybe you guys know one. Well, they did not like that. The head of the inmates committee phoned and he said, don't talk to them that way. You know, they don't have a lot of pride and don't destroy that. If you want to work here,

you don't humiliate them like that. Well, they got even. I was going to see a con one night, and I was teaching him, actually, with journalism. And there was a group of guys got out from the industrial area. They'd be about 20 of them or so. They just got out to go into their cells. And one guy, there was no cameras there.

One guy took a run at me. I could see him coming. He was just going to hit me really here. It's like a check in hockey, except if he got no equipment. So I moved my books to this side and braced myself, and he hit me hard. I thought I hit him hard too. Neither one of us fell, but I was sore for about a week.

My left shoulder hurt for a long time. So then I got called into a meeting. The deputy warden called me, and he said there was an incident. Do you want to talk about it? Can you identify that prisoner who hit you? I said, yeah, I probably could. Do you know him? I said, no, I've never seen him before.

And he said, do you want to identify him? And I said, no. I said, I've learned my lesson. And he folded, he had a folder. And he just clapped me. He said, well, it's the end of that. And that turned out to be a good thing because the head of the inmates committee heard that I hadn't rat it on the guy. And we talked about that.

And he said, thanks for not ratting on the guy. But don't put them down, Byron. And he said, another thing, stay away from the pedophiles. We don't like you talking to rapists. And I said, well, there's still stories there. Well, you got a choice. If you want to talk to the rapists, you don't talk to us. And I said, I'll talk to all of you.

And that was just a false threat. Never happened. I continued to talk to all the prisoners. Yeah. But no, sometimes you run into these things, and it's not as bad as what you say, you know, as what you hear. I remember being in Nicaragua the first time in 1980. I was with a sound technician from CFRN, Larry Arno.

And the war had ended, sort of, at night. It flared up again when the electricity went out, a lot of shootings. And they had just killed an American reporter. He was with ABC. His name was Stuart. I think he was the first name was Bill. Bill was reporting toward the end of the war, and is captured on video.

You'll catch this if you were to Google it. Bill goes up to a National Guardsman and you're talking and the guardsman tells him lay down on the ground so he complies, lays down and the officer takes out his pistol and shoots him in the head just above the ear, kills him.

It's all captured on film. So the reporters all took off. They said, the hell with that, we're not covering this war. If that's how are you going to treat us? So when I returned, the war was over but I don't think there's any reporters there then. So this sound technician had seen the video clip of Stuart being executed.

He wanted to know where it happened. And I said, well, let's go there. We got the address. We're walking there. And we passed the palace where the government was. The head of state was stayed in this palace. There was a broken down fence where the tanks had run over it. There was a guard there.

He's laying down on the grass guarding the palace. And he hears his talk in English. so he yells out, stop, alto in Spanish. And Larry says, what did he say? I said, he's telling us to stop. Are we stopping? I said, no, we didn't understand them. We'll keep walking.

So the guy takes his rifle and aims it at us. Larry said, he's going to shoot us. And I said, no, he'll fire a warning shot first. But he never fired a warning shot. Never fired any shot. But on the way back, we had to find a different way to get back to the hotel rather than that route. But sometimes you push it and it's okay.

I didn't think that guard was going to shoot us. I thought he was just a lazy guy lying down in the shade. And I heard us speak English, thought we're grinkos, I guess. Americans, that never happened. But sometimes you've got to push the envelope. If you're going to run away from every boogeyman, oh, hell, that ain't life. Well, I can tell the look you're giving me.

You're never going to go on a reporting assignment with me. No, I try and quiet my, I really try hard to just listen. But when you talk, sir, and you start talking about all these stories, my brain is just, really? It just, well, I go, I wonder the first time you had a gunpoint at you, if you were that calm and cool. Because that's, I think that's a special talent. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Yeah.

Because I think over time you can then, you know, if it's happened a couple times, you can understand, oh, that guy, you don't want to go around that guy. Look how he presents himself and everything else. That's what I hear out of you. But I also think maybe at some point in time in your younger years you decided, you know, listen, I can die just as easily driving to work on, you know, the Anthony Hende here in Eminton as I can being over in Nicaragua walking down a street. Yeah.

To the common person, we feel a little more comfortable hopping on the Anthony Hende. It's the standard way of life. Whereas going across the planet and digging on some things seems, well, it is an adventure. And there is certainly danger very present. But there's just as much danger hopping on the Anthony Hende. Yeah. And I think Larry wanted to see the spot where that reporter was executed. And we went there.

We stood there. And I said, now you've been here. He had watched the clip many times as CFRN and was bothered by it. He was terrified, actually. But he still wanted to see it. I had not seen the clip until years later. I now posted on my Nicaragua site. Yeah, it's right beside a McDonald's restaurant.

He's the only one in Nicaragua at the time. Yeah. And I asked around about that when I got there, and I said, why would you guys kill a report? and people I spoke with there said he asked the wrong questions. They, the dictatorship of Samosa losing the war. So they were circled. They were at the palace, but there was one or two miles that they had.

That was it. They had lost. And they were about to airlift Samosa out of there. And he said, you walk up and you're a reporter. And the question, now I've only got one side on this, that Stewart seemed to have asked how do you feel, you know, like the war is over, and you're losing. And the guy said, I'll show you how I feel, lie down. They also executed that soldier, so Americans would be happy. But after that U.S. journalist was killed in Nicaragua, the President Jimmy Carter withdrew all the funding for the dictatorship.

So it helped bring about the end of the war a lot faster, actually, because it was. death of Stewart. But yeah, I mean, you think about that. And I think another sad case I read about. There was a guy from New York State. He had just graduated from journalism school. He was a photographer, a shooter. He was on an assignment somewhere in East Africa,

one of those volatile places. And there was a demonstration or a riot taking place. So he was with a group of reporters. They were all in the back of a pickup truck, and they went there to cover. this story. And then they got out of hand, and the reporters said to the photographer, let's get out of here. So they all piled into the back of a pickup truck to get away. But the guy wanted to get some photographs. Well, the mob surrounded him and stoned him to death. And he was like

21 years old. First day on the job. You see, that's one of the turns in life you never thought, well, I want to be a journalist and I want to go overseas or whatever. And then, you know, you'd you die with rocks, you know, sinking in your skull. That's, wow, it's not a way to go. And he's just doing his job. And the same with the ISIS guys. They went really stupid executing people. Some reporters, just doing their jobs.

There was a guy, a reporter with one of the Japanese outfits. He was on the front line and he was captured along with the people just there covering a story. And he was taken prisoner by ISIS. so his producer at risk cross the lines into the ISIS territory to say, you know, my friend here, he's neutral, he's not against you guys. They ended up killing that reporter and his producer, taking their heads off. Nobody goes to work thinking that's going to happen. But you're right. I mean, your point's well taken.

You could be driving the Anthony Enday and someone could blow a red light, a transport truck, loses. its breaks and you could get killed in an accident. It happens every now and then. It's like a lottery, but I would think that being a journalist in the volatile countries, it's far more risky, far more. Here I am in Nicaragua doing an innocent story on the indigenous people there, the Mesquito Indians, setting up their own school and their own media, their own university and that, and then you just stumble across this drug thing.

Well, why wouldn't you pursue it? I didn't expect to be told that, though. I mean, I still think it's a fascinating story. But some of these stories come at a price. And even if you're reporting in Canada, you can, there's an economic execution, too. I think a lot of good reporters are out of work because they're good. That seems counterproductive, doesn't it? Yeah, it is.

Yeah. We have a saying in the industry, people that take the report. reporters who take the word of the police on everything. They're known as cop suckers. That's funny, but it's sad too. What got you into the crime beat? You know, you talked way back when about starting off as a disc jockey and moving around the country. I think I read that you moved to South Australia for a couple years.

Yeah, I was in Australia for a couple of years. At what point do you, you know, you have a, an interesting mind, Byron, where, you know, you go to Nicaragua and maybe everybody would dig into the cocaine, or maybe people would see it and go, I might leave that one alone and just do what, you know, we're here to do with the students. Yeah. But you don't. So at what point does your brain, you know, you talk about being a shy kid and being a disc jockey, but at what point did you go, you know, that is something I really want to pursue? I don't know what, what it says about my character, but I was initially.

When I get into news with CBC, I was doing international development stories, foreign aid, if you will. And that brought me to Nepal, in Nicaragua, who's the war had supposedly ended, and a few other places. That was interesting. And then I, from there, got involved with Native Affairs stories. But I also got in trouble. I did a lot of stuff on the Lubicon Cree Indians, northern Alberta. and do you ever hear that expression, disputed territory? Yeah, I coined that.

No one else had used it at the time. You coined disputed territory? Back in 83 or something with the Lubbican Indians, I started using that all the time. And then eventually others used it to dispute of territory. And I said, well, the Indians say it's their territory, and the government says, no, it's Crownland. So I called it dispute of territory.

The Indians did not mind that, gave them. some credibility, but the government hated it. And they would, I remember one time I did a piece, was on National News, CBC Radio. The very next day Tom Siddon, the Minister of Native Affairs, flew out to Edmonton to have a news conference at Canada place to counter what was in my story. And one of the boys in the newsroom, David Cooper, said, that's interesting, Byron, you can determine the flight schedule of a cabinet minister. I said, David, that is not good news. The wheels are turning behind the scenes.

And there was a boardroom meeting with Indian Affairs and CBC Brass, including my own editor. I wasn't told about it. I found out about it through a contact at Indian Affairs. He said, Byron, there's a meeting yesterday. You were on the agenda. I said, oh, I didn't know about that. my own people didn't tell me. So he shared that.

And that's part of the danger of working on stories that counter, you know, the government line or industry line or whatever. Yeah. So, yeah, the true story. So there's a lot of difficult stuff to cover out there. But I enjoyed that phrase, disputed territory. I used it for years. I still do if I work on stories.

That's not to say I'm a support. of the Lubricon Indians, but I believe I'm a supporter of the truth. This is what happened. They haven't signed a treaty. So how do you take their land if they haven't signed a treaty? I always brought that out in the stories. And that's right. Oh, the government declared it's theirs. Oh, okay. So the government declared, I have northern half of Florida. Okay, you know, what? It doesn't make sense. So these stories are difficult to do. Very difficult. And with the one on Talisman Energy, a fellow in Toronto, a former Canadian press worker for years retired, he was involved in some support group, I guess, for third world countries.

And he said they talked about that story at a meeting that I had brought down the company. I said, really? I didn't any intention of bringing down talisman. I just wanted to do a story in a lawsuit, alleging genocide. So I did it. As a result of that, it did hurt the company badly. Let do it coming down. Does anything about now, like, do you worry about things?

Like, I just think right in the middle of what we're in, we're in COVID-19, the entire world is, I don't know, shut down, so to speak. you know we're in wife and I came and stayed in Emmington last night but there's no nowhere to really go I mean we stayed in the hotel room and and I don't know

the latest one is you know we haven't been back to the states now to see your family you know by the time it happens it'll be closing in on two years and the government sounds like it's starting to try and make even that you know to travel across the border tougher yet and the latest one was

oh shoot Dave Dave known us Dave Nailer Dave Nailer wrote a story about federal isolation facility where a wife came back from traveling out of country

and her husband had contacted Dave Nailer about they wouldn't tell her where they were taking his wife for 14 days and well as any I think any person can be in especially in Canada and be like well that seems pretty concerning yeah yeah like do you stare around what's going on in Canada right now I mean you're a guy who not sitting here saying you've covered pandemics but you've seen how the world works I think somewhat yeah there are two versions of that one is pandemic and the other is planemic

there's a good amount of evidence out there that this is a bit of a hoax and I'm not saying it is but there is some evidence pointing to that and there's also censorship of that evidence and we just had Edmonton's former citizen of the year medical doctor who specializes in berolegy and he knows a thing or two about germs saying it's greatly exaggerated it's a hoax and when you have people like that saying my God, you know, I don't want to discredit them, but at the same time people are getting sick, but are they dying purely because of COVID? That's another issue. Or is it related to it? Would they have died anyway of pneumonia or any other flu? I don't know. I don't know that. But I'm just saying the information should be out there, but I'm not as worried about it.

Sorry as most people are. It doesn't, I roll my eyes. And yeah, of course people are dying, but I've known four or five people to have this COVID, whatever you want to call it, the flu, and they're fine. But to me, an interesting stat is of the 300,000 people who get it, let's say, talk about people under 65, 300,000, one dies. What? Is that true? If it is, then, but you know, when senior managers of big companies are saying, Byron is, It's part of the great reset. They want to take the economy down and start all over again. Is that true?

I don't know. But they have the freedom to say that. So I'm not on one side or the other. I'm just, sorry, I'm just standing back and checking it all up, but does it make me afraid? No, sorry. You arrived at my door today. You weren't wearing a mask.

I'm not worried over it at. I'm not wearing a mask. But here, let me point you in this direction. So why is it, why? hasn't your brain who sees cocaine and digs on it, why haven't you Doug Harder on COVID-19? Yeah, because I've been busy with another project. That's why.

You didn't expect that answer. No, I didn't. No, no. I'm working with an American network called Discovery on a four-part series on the book I wrote, the book I gave you a copy up there. Yeah. It was mail them up out of jail. I'm knee-deep in that project.

So the COVID thing is, affected me because I can't fly back to the states for more interviews. I had to fly to Montreal for my interviews there. But I'm quite involved in that project. And that will be the documentary series. Once that is done, they're talking about a movie. So I'll be involved in that. And it isn't, I say, involved. I mean, my God, we're talking contract talks. The last one dragged on for two months where we finally settled on a payment and conditions and the movie contract will be hopefully not as bad but at least it pays it pays good and I like that part of it but that's what I'm busy with but COVID is just a minefield of information misinformation I wouldn't know where to begin

but there's valid points made by both sides I don't want to sound like super neutral I have private thoughts about where some of the bullshit lies, but I'll just keep it private until I work on a story. But I have thought about it, but my priority now is that project. It would be ironic that I would get COVID and check out because of it. You could play the interview back and say, check this out. It's like Hank Aaron and the baseball player in the States. He took the pen the vaccine and was promoted as someone who's taking the vaccine. and look at this and don't be afraid of it.

A few days later, he's dead. Like, oh, that backfired. He may have lived in 97. I don't know. He was 87. But it's sure affecting a lot of old people. And a friend of mine used to play in the National Hockey League. You might know his name.

He's 89 now. He was a goaltender. And when we meet at his farm, I got to keep away from him just in just in case I have it, you know. And I wouldn't want to. And who's that? Your first name is Glenn. The family name is Hall. Oh, yeah.

I might know that name, Mr. Goley. Yeah, yeah, Glenn, yeah. I'm glad you know him. Yeah. Just hang on a sec. Cut your tape there. Yeah. I'll show you something.

So just so everybody's aware, we take like a 15-minute break at this point, and Byron calls Glenn Hall. Like, just dials them off on the phone. They sit there and have this, like, a little wonderful chat. And, uh, and Byron goes,

One day I'm going to bring this kid over to see you, and we'll sit down and have a, and I'll let him interview you. Yep, Byron, sounds great. Okay. We'll chat with you soon. And I'm like, as you can imagine, my jaw is on the floor. Like, I mean, it's Glenn Frickin Hall. Anyways, that was a cool little side note that obviously didn't get recorded because we stopped and had a phone call chat with Glenn Hall. So back to Byron now.

Well, that was, here, I'll turn your mic back on. We just got a phone with Glenn Hall. That's pretty cool. You know, as a media guy from Amminton, 630 Chad, we got to talk some Oilers. I mean, you've got to have some great stories about being around in the heyday of, you know, I was pretty darn young when the Oilers were in their heyday, and that's all you hear about, the Grexkis,

the curry, the messier, the low, the fewer copy. I mean, the list goes on. Do you want to hear a good orler story? Sure. Yeah. I'm at CBC and I was part-time there. So I was working in the newsroom plus doing sports or national sports in Toronto. These are drop-ins at the top of the hour.

So we got to go to the Euler games. And when you do these drop-ins, you go to the game and you're up on the halo and you've got a 45-second report, and you give an account of how the game is going. But afterwards, you've got to get down in the dressing room, get clips for national sports, and then you talk to the players, and you get to know them. So here the Oilers were in the playoffs,

and they were very close to winning the Stanley Cup. It was the final game. It was so important that all the traffic in Edmonton stopped. Everyone was home watching TV, and no one on the roads. and national news, not sports, wanted an item on that. They said, go to the game, we'll get you a pass to get into the game again, but leave after the second period. If the earlers are ahead and you think you might win, head out to a pub

and get reaction, maybe get the countdown or something. I said, okay, I can do that. So I go to the game, and I got clips of people watching the spectators, and then as instructed, I left after the second period. But I checked my tape recorder and it went, wah, wah, something was wrong. I thought the batteries, what the hell? Ran back to my, I had a motorbike then, put in new batteries. It was still, the tape recorder was screwed up.

So I rushed back to CBC, got a new machine, got back in time, and the third period had started. And there was a pub called the Form Inn, right opposite the Coliseum. So I go in there. Is that the one, was that the one right across the street? Yeah, right across the street. Okay. Yeah, yeah, and it's on the ground floor. And it was very noisy.

I don't go into pubs very much, but they had these TVs they're on. They're all blaring away, and people are pretty pissed and watching the game and happy. Edmonton was winning at that point, and everyone was just counting the time down, 10 minutes to go, you know, nine minutes. Wow, they cleared the buck, eight and a half minutes. And there was a guy sitting by himself at a bar. And he struck me as a tradesman. I don't know, just the impression I got, you know, his clothing and his appearance, and maybe a welder or something, I don't know, but he's by himself.

And every time the Oilers made a good move, I cleared the puck or had the puck in the Islander End, killing time, he would put his right arm up in the air and he'd go, right on, right on, like that. And I thought, he's a real hockey fan. So I went up behind him and I miced him. I wanted the sound of this guy being excited. And he turned around and he said, who are you? I said, I'm a reporter and I just wanted some wild sound.

Don't worry, but I don't have to know who you are. Okay, he gets back to watching the game. And then I noticed I had my pass in my pocket. Pass to get into the game. And I thought, I'm not using this pass. So I went back to the guy and I said, you know what this is? It's a pass that'll get you into the game. There's five, ten, eight minutes to go or something.

you can see the end of the game. In fact, I said, the pass will probably get you to the dressing room. And I gave it to him. He called over the server, paid his bill. I forgot to say thank you. He was really excited this guy. And then I saw him run across the street through traffic.

He didn't wait for it to stop. He was dodging the traffic. There's like four lanes. He was running fast to the Coliseum. So the game ends. The Oilers have won. Everyone's happy. I go around getting clips.

I try to find. find people aren't so drunk, you know, so you get some good clips. And I looked up, and there's John Wells, he was working for us then, and he went to work at TSN afterwards, and John is interviewing the players in the dressing room. They had built a little platform that was up about a foot high, you know, so he was elevated. So John is doing the interviews there, and I saw the guys, and I went, geez, you know, I followed them all through the season at the big game. What do I do? I gave my pass away. That was kind of stupid. So I went back over to the Colise. and the people are leaving, they're high-fiving one another, and everyone's happy.

And I go down to where the dressing room was in the bottom floor, like in the basement. And there's like hundreds of people there. They had to keep them back with cattle gates. And one of the guards, I remember he wore a cap, he spotted me. He said, Byron, come on in, come on in, get through this crowd. And he parted the crowds, and I went in. He didn't ask for the pass. So I get inside, and I was right in the middle of the celebrations.

So I went around, got clips of the guys, and who do I see? This guy that I gave the pass to is standing right beside John Wells and national TV's behind them. And as the players are going by, he knew all their names, you know. There was a guy, I remember he was a forward, David Semenko. And he puts his hand up, gives him a high five, right on, Dave smack. And they go, and the guy was just part of the crowd, you know. But every now and then he bumped John. John's trying to do an interview.

And so I went up to him and I said, who the hell let you in here? And he looked down in me and he held it. He touched the pass in his pocket and he said, hey, you, you're the one he gave me this pass. Here I am in the dressing room of the Stanley Cup champions. Right on there, Eric. And he'd slap another player. And he said, this is the biggest moment of my life. And he was so high.

It wasn't funny. So it was a funny evening. I remember one of the Finnish hockey players. Didn't play that game. He wore a suit. And it was named with Newmanin or something like that. I don't know. But he was standing there looking quite perplexed. And looking at all the confusion, you know, the Finns are very reserved. And I said, Sepo, it's a big deal in Canada when you win the Stanley Cup.

And he looked around. He said, apparently so. He's very reserved. I love that quote. And there was another guy there. His name was Coffee. Paul Coffy was sitting down and Messier, Mark Messier, was walking by the Stanley Cup was all by itself on the table.

So I'm interviewing this coffee, the defenseman, guy, and he's trying to give me his analysis of the game, but he interrupts himself and sees Messy walking by the cup, and Messy just got on like a towel around his waist, and he

says, mess, mess, call him mess. Look at that. That's a fucking Stanley Cup, he says. It's a fucking Stanley Cup. And I said, Paul, I can't use that. Oh, sorry. And then we get back to the interview. It's just a weird moment. And then, so I get back to work next day. I'm bringing my equipment back to CBC. And one of the reporters, Lloyd Milden, says, I saw you on national TV last night. You were in the dressing room. Yeah. I said, I was getting clips. He said, Byron, there's a guy in there with a blue jacket. He kept bumping John. I thought, Who is he? I didn't think he was a reporter. I didn't think he was a player. I wonder how he got in there. The security must be lax.

Oh, no shit. I worried about somebody ratting me out, but somewhere out there, that guy's got the souvenir. He's got the greatest story ever. And I'm at a media event, and I was telling that to another player. He was a defenseman for Edmonton. Kevin Lowe, you know, Kevin, number four? No, you're looking at how you're saying, do you know who Paul Coff? You're like one of the greatest defense. advancement of all time. Yes, yes, Byrd, I know exactly what you're talking about. Kevin Lowe is at this media event and we're talking about this thing and he said, and I said, I wrote about it on my blog. He said, oh, check it out, you know, so he sent a comment. He said, the boys love that story. You'll find it on the blog. It's about. I search for that.

Justin, it kind of told me a bit about that story. And I was like, wow, that's a true story. Yeah, and I never got a picture of the guy, but I remember he was about 40. and he had a blue vinyl jacket on. Yeah. He said it was the greatest moment of his life. You know, that was a cool story. But I worried about it. I thought, sure, I shouldn't be doing that.

Yeah, and for Lloyd Milton, the reporter, saying, gee, the security must be laxed there. Oh, yeah, it is. That's a cool little story, isn't it? Nothing to do with crime. I tell you what. You're staring on a toothless guy who played his life in hockey, talking about the team they voted as the great.

greatest hockey team ever, and you gave your pass to some guy in the bar, and he got to go down and party and see the party firsthand. Yeah, that's an unbelievable story. And he was getting drunk and Parklington champagne, too. He was helping himself to that. It was crazy story. I've often wondered, who was he, you know, where is he from? And he never ever bumped into him again. No, no. He never phoned me, and he kept his secret. He never told anyone where he got the pass. And he obviously waved it, got by the guards, and got inside and helped himself to the champagne. And he knew the names of all the players. It's crazy, you know.

He just, he said there's the biggest moment of his life. And I thought, oh, that's cool. Well, I got to, you know, it's taken me, as you can tell. We're just saying this when you called Mr. Hall. I was just saying, you get rambling, telling stories. I like listening. Yeah. But I should ask, you know, you handed me the book right at the story.

start. Yeah. You've written a book, the man who mailed himself out of jail, the Richard Lee McNair story. Yeah. You mentioned that you bought a copy of that on Amazon. Yes. It arrived at your door, but some thief. Stole it right off the front staff.

Yeah. Could you maybe tell, I'm going to assume a lot of my audience doesn't know who Richard Lee McNair is. No. Richard Lee McNair was a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force back in 1987. but he was also a thief who broke into industrial places at night for the thrill of it. And he had a handgun, and one night he went wild and shot two men, killing one, 1987, in Minot, North Dakota. So he went down for murder.

And when they arrested him, they put him in a jail, and he escaped. Remarkably so. Then they got a sentence, they put him in a state penitentiary. He escaped from there and was on the run for nine months. and then they put him in a federal penitentiary. They're almost escape proof, and he mailed himself out in a package. And he was on the lamb for a year and a half, and they captured him in Canada. Funny enough, my hometown in Campbellton, New Brunswick.

So he had never been interviewed this guy. He refused to be interviewed. And I suggested to a reporter down east we wanted to, quote, for a beer with me. And I said, why did you do a story on this guy? Did anyone rat him out? He said, nobody knows him. anything. I said, well, write him. He said, well, he'd never write back. And I said, well, maybe, maybe not. But he's been in solitary confinement for a year. Maybe now he'd talk. I don't know.

The reporter did write, but McNair didn't get the letter. I think the guards destroyed it. I wrote McNair, two-page letter, and I asked him, with all the publicity you brought the town, I trusted the Chamber of Commerce to send you a nice check for the publicity. It's a bullshit line, But it worked and he wrote back and he told me a few things. And he's since written 354 letters. 354 letters. To you? Yeah, I have him upstairs and boxes.

So he's outlined how he escaped and all his escapes, where he hid out in the lamb, he would get into Canada, his brushes with the law, how he was captured and his regrets and all of that, the murder, everything. It's all in there in the book. It's a 600-page book. So it was picked up by a producer in New York City who phoned me and said they'd like to do a series of documentaries on it. So that's leading to a series now in Discovery.

Most of the filming and the video shooting has been done. I expect to wrap that up at the end of April. When Discovery puts it out, I have no idea. That's their call. But it'll be a four-part series on Discovery. And I'm showcasing it. I'm the guy walking people through it. So that's the McKin.

an air story. But now you told me that you bought a copy of the book and that somebody lifted it off your porch. So I thought, well, how do I hit Sean between the eyes here? So I had, I can send in changes to the book. And because it's Amazon, it's printed fairly quickly. So I had the revised date made for today, January 31st. And because I know you, you know, you've been promoting the book and will, I put your name at the back as one of the contributors so that it's a gift you will never forget and you'll never give up. No, I, I mean, you didn't expect to come here. You thought maybe you'd get a copy of the book, but you didn't expect to see today's date on it and your name at the back. You know, when I think about this podcasting thing

or journal, you know, I interviewed Judy Reeves once in a point of time. She's probably my favorite interview because she survived the perfect storm back. She's a lot of it. She's a little bit of a lot of time. she's in the perfect storm book by Carl Younger. And her story is unbelievable. And she called me, she was the first person ever called me a journalist. And I was like, I'm not a journalist. I'm just a guy, I don't know, searching for stories.

She laughed and said, that's exactly what journalism is supposed to be about. I was like, okay. So when your name came up, I didn't know who you were. And so then I just just, hey, search them all. See if it's something you'd be interesting. And of course, and then it took me from 8.30 in the morning. I don't even know. Maybe 15 minutes.

And at the bottom of your side, it says, call me. I'm like, it can't be that easy. Because, I mean, to get a guy, you know, you talk about some of the, well, Glenn Hall, the mask sitting in front of me, it isn't that easy, right? You've got to do some serious probing in to find out how to maybe get close to a guy like Glenn Hall or Paul Coffier or Wayne Grexkey. I've thrown a big old book at and come up empty. hand it. But at the same token, I call him, yeah, sure, we can sit down.

I remember walking back over to Justin be like, well, I guess I'm going to sit down with Byron and he looks out and he's like, really? I'm like, yeah, like I mean, that's it. And to see where it's led, yeah, this has been something I will never forget. This mask, Glenn has

the actual mask in his basement part of his museum, and I'd like you to meet him someday to get out there and talk to him, just as you're talking to me. it'll happen. Well, and for the listener who can't see, Byron has one of Glenn Hall's mask sitting on a pedestal, pedistol signed by Glenn Hall, Mr. Culley.

I was leaving one day, and we always have a beer or two or three in his living room by the fireplace. And I was walking out, I was getting my shoes on at the door, and I said, man, that's a nice mask. And it was there on his table. And he turned and he said, that's for you, Byron. I want you to have that.

No, I did. And then he said, can I have, he said, I'm always signing things for you, little autographs. Can I have your autograph? Okay, grabbed a piece of paper and he said, aha, the young people, they can't make out your writing, he says. That was his comment. Yeah, no, we have a lot of good chats, Glenn and I. And I said, Glenn, you know, this is a year ago. I said, you're getting up there now.

You're 88, soon to be 80. One of these days, you won't be around and we won't have these talks. And he said, you know, if I die before you, Byron, that would really piss me off. Where does that come from? But I enjoy talking to him about the hockey days and stories. Yeah. And I said, he said, do you ever play hockey? And I said, I couldn't because it was so painful.

My feet hurt because the skates were narrow then. It was so painful I had to take painkillers to skate. So I could never skate. And I said, bet, had I been able to skate, I would have maybe ended up playing for you in the NHL, playing defense. I used to play defense when I played road hockey and soccer. And I said, Glenn, I would have saved your ass a few times.

And he said, just get out of the way. He said, that's all I needed to see the shot. There's a little conversations. Yeah. what I enjoy, Glenn. He's got a good sense of humor. He's got the good joke about the lawyers, and yeah, he's pretty alert. Yeah, so yeah, we'll make it happen. But I'm glad you could hear his voice. Yeah, that... I'm glad you knew him. Yeah, you know his name. That was nice. Well, I spent most of my life hockey. I ingrained in hockey, right? Like, I love, I love hockey. I love the Oilers.

It's the only professional team I give everything, like I'll cheer wholeheartedly for. I can't do it for anyone else. It's like a piece of me. I get the story about giving the guy the past. Yeah, yeah, I could just, that'd be a guy to have on here just to hear that. Yeah, he was happy. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, he was in another world.

Yeah, and I've published Kevin's email where Kevin commented on that. It's there if you find that story. Yeah. Now, there's some good memories of the Coliseum, but I remember the, I did the hard news stories too. I remember going out covering the riots downtown for national news. Remember one guy he was climbing a light pole. He was at the top, you know, he gets down. He's a tough guy, a lot of tattoos. And I don't know what you say to him. He was pretty pissed. So I said, well, what do you think was a turning point in the game? he said, I don't know.

I don't even know what the score was. And he was just out partying. I said, okay, that's an interesting clip. You know, another Yahoo. Yeah, so no, and I was, I'm glad that Glenn gave me his mask. And he was telling me that there's a rink in Stony Plain. They named it after him, the Glen Hall Arena. He said, do you want to check it out?

So I went over there and took a pile. of pictures. And then I came around and I said, there's some pictures of the rink they named after you. He said, well, thanks. And I said, I got you 30 copies so you can send them out to your friends. And he did, you know. But I was at the table one time. There was Pauline, his wife, she's dead now from cancer, but the three of us were just talking. And the phone rings. Of course, Glenn's from another era and he doesn't have a cell phone. So he has to walk over to the wall-mounted phone. He takes the call and he's very gentle, you know. He said, yes. Yes, I'm sorry I can't talk right now.

I've got someone, a visitor here. I'll phone you later. Yeah, okay, bye for now. And he walks over and he pulls out his chair and he sits down. And I said, who was that? He said, Cordy. Gordial. That would have been a man to meet.

I met him too, yeah, covering the games, yeah? Yeah, you're a tall fellow, polite. Well, yeah, we used to cover the Euler games and they'd give us a free meal. Forehand, the media did. I didn't know the media crowd, the sports reporter, so I sat by myself. And this guy pulls up and pulls out a chair,

and he said, you're eating by yourself? I said, yeah, I am. And he shook hands. He said, Gordy, how? And I said, never heard of you. That's just joking. He sat down. We had a good chat.

We had a meal together. Maybe he just felt sorry that was sitting by myself. That's a special guy, though. Yeah, he was from Saskatchewan. Yeah, the stories you hear about him. Yeah. Yeah, he and Glenn are good friends. Yeah, they were good friends.

Well, this is what we're going to do. I could probably spend another three hours talking to you, but I don't like to overstay my welcome, so to speak. So I have a little segment at the end called the Crude Master Final Five. It's five questions. They go as long or short as you want to go by her. and just to pick at you a little bit more. It might be dangerous there because you can be here all night.

That's all right. But I do appreciate you cutting out some time for me here today. So the first one I always ask is if you could sit down with somebody like we're doing right now to pick their brain, hear their stories, who would you take? Jesus. You'd take Jesus? I'd say, what do you think of all this crap going on today with your religion? and yeah. Yeah, you'll notice on my computer here

when I crank it up that I have a modern picture of Jesus. Oh, no, it doesn't appear there yet. But, yeah, that's, yeah, I'd like to meet him and see what his disappointments and all his joys. But yet I don't go to church. I'd like to tell.

There you go. He's up here in the corner. Yeah, I'd like to interview him. Yet I don't go to church. Someone asked me the other day, you go to church? And I said, I'm an atheist, thank God. That's funny. But, yeah, he's one guy I'd like to interview.

Are you an atheist? I don't know. I don't belong to anyone religion. But I believe in pushing humanity in the right direction, you know, being a good fellow, as opposed to a prick, let's say. believe in basic goodness and being kind to people, helping people. But, yeah, I'd find that to be a fascinating interview. I think he has a lot of disappointments, the way things have turned out down here.

So one of the stories I did do had nothing to do with crime. I grew up in this small town, Campbellton, New Brunswick. And when I was a kid, grade one, going to school, And there was a bully in the town, and he beat up other kids, and he chased this guy, a bit older and less, and he caught him. And he starts kicking him and punching him and punching him. And he got beat up pretty bad for no reason. But it turned out the victim was a gay guy, and he was simple. He was challenged.

Okay. Yeah, and he was ridiculed in the town. You know, he ran around a lot, and people would see him running, and they'd toot the horn, tease him, and that. And he was too simple to even know who he was, you know, but he was like the town fool. And when I returned as an adult, I saw him again. People honk the horn, you know, and he'd wave and he'd be in another world. And he was always ridiculed. So I returned a few years ago and I said, I'm going to talk to this guy.

So I found him. I went around to where he was staying. He did not know me. So I said, do you remember this attack that happened? He said, yes, I do. You know? And I said, I'd like to talk to you about your life. And he gave an interview, and I took him out for a meal.

I said, I remember that attack. I was kind of waiting for you to get up and punch a guy, you know. But you didn't. You just turtled there. You took it. I said, I was waiting for that knockout punch. It never came. So I brought this guy out for a meal.

And as soon as I walked in the restaurant, the owner sees me coming with this guy, and he pulses into a side room. He knew it would be a private interview. So I brought up the attack again, and I said, okay, Bobby, I'm doing a story on you. I'm going to give you an opportunity to address all that ridicule. And this guy was like in his 70s, so he'd been ridiculed for more than 50 years. I said, now, it's your chance to speak out. What do you have to see to these people? And he thought about it, and he said,

there's a lot of nice people in this town. A lot of nice people. I've got many friends. And I thought, whoa, there's a knockout punch. So I did a story on that. And then one day it got almost 10,000 views. Everybody in the town was reading it. And it recently got 6,000 views in three days because the guy has cancer and is dying.

So it's posted. So there's the story, it's nothing to do with crime. It's just, it's really bothered me for years not to take action, you know, not to stand up. So, oh, that's a story where you've, I guess, enlightened people. And it was not just healing for Byron, was healing for the whole. community. Everybody had ridiculed this guy. Through rocks at him, beat him up. And all of a sudden, I said, well, he's not really a bad guy. He's sure been punished a lot, but he didn't commit any crimes. He's gay, and he's simple. So he was ridiculed, especially by men. Women were more sympathetic,

but the whole town felt bad about it. And when the story came out, they said, we're not so bad after all, we just didn't understand ourselves or him. Now he's dying, and you can see you on the site all the comments on, you know, quite sympathetic and regrets. So there's a story that you beyond the news release, you see a guy and he's, I'm going to do a story on that. I had mentioned it to the local editor, and he said, no, Byron, we shouldn't do that story. It'll bring more negative attention.

I thought, no, I don't think so. It depends how you write it. And sure enough, it turned, now people, they do honk the horn, they give them a lift, and they give them gift cards for Tim Hortons. It's funny, I think of this podcast is no news or release journalism. That's all I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, same thing, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's a cool story.

You know, you had another one on your blog. It was written about a childhood friend. I think it was Ed. Oh, yeah. And his battle. Dementia. Yeah. And it's something that I admire about the way you write.

It seems to me you stick beside people or stick with time doesn't seem to pass where you drift apart. You maintain relationships by her. I think I'd like to think I do that. I'm just going to find that story now. I have a computer here up on this table, and it's between us here. Let's see if I can find this story on this gentleman. I'm able to check my stats every day, and I try to get 100 views a day. Today it's 173.

See, some days, the other day it was what? 7,000 or something, 6,000. But here it is called the knockout punch. Click on it. There's the guy. there's the story there's a better shot that's where I found him at his place

there he is with his puppy there he is he's his mother's grave the funny thing is all these flowers there and I said Bobby where'd where'd the flowers come from and he wouldn't answer he stole them from other graves put it on his mother's grave

so when that came out people donated money so he could buy flowers he had all kinds of flowers in the end You see all the flowers you put? The people saw the story and they gave them flowers. Here's where we had. There's an aerial shot with a restaurant where we went.

There's my rental down there. And I did the story and the city named them one of their top 50 people in the last 50 years, give him a certificate. And there's the flowers he got from the public. And some school kids wrote poems, letters about them. And there they gave them the certificate. And once he got it, he went in the back room, and he cried his eyes out. There'd be a lot of hurt, you know.

That's a lot of healing there. There he is with the mayor. There he is holding up his certificate for me. And when I did the story, all these cards came in from around the world, and I found one from Australia. I said, someone sent you a birthday card from Australia. And his response was, what's that? I said, it's a country on the other side of the world.

And he went, oh my. He has no idea. He said, of known. And you see this little caption here? Anyone can find the dirt in someone, be the one that finds the gold. Yeah. So that's what the story did. There you go.

That's very cool. That leads me into my next question. Maybe that's the guy. My next question was, who's the one individual you've sat down that has made a lasting impression? I think report that's a blanket question for all reporters and there's so many

I don't know I think maybe I was impressed that a student remembered me someone you know but I think the story of Bobby Steve's

how it turned the community on its head an editor there said there's not one person in the town who hasn't read that story we all now treat him differently

because of that story So I suppose that's it. But in Nepal, I did a magazine story on that medical missionary. She ended up getting the Order of Canada because of that story. And then bitch about it because I didn't give credit to Jesus. What's one piece of advice you can pass along to people? Be their own editor. Be their own editor.

Never you pick up a newspaper and you read a story. or you see something on TV or listen to it in the radio, don't buy it completely. Just sit back and say, what are other sources that I can go to? And, you know, newspapers have editors. They go through stories, you know, cut out words or shorten things and that. And I say to people, when you're watching TV, be your own editor.

Just don't buy everything. I'm not saying it's all bad or evil or wrong and that. Just be critical of it. And that would be my advice. Be your own editor. You don't have to believe everything. You know, use your own judgment. What's one book that you've read that you could pass along people?

Besides, if you're listening to this, the man who mailed himself out of jail, you can get on Amazon, and people should do that. Yeah, I don't read books. You don't read books? I'm not a book reader. Really? Yeah, even though I wrote to that another crime one, I'm not a book reader. but there was a book written by a philosopher, just a young guy, and he taught at the university in Hawaii, in Hawaii, Honolulu.

And I forget what it was called. It was a small book, and it was something, what would Jesus do? He looked at the Ten Commandments, and he said, well, if you were Jesus, what would you do? Would you go beyond? Or if you run into adversity in life, what would Jesus do? And so he follows that philosophy. And I thought, that's a great book.

I never even thought of that. And I like to think of myself that way, that I go beyond the call of duty and helping people or perhaps getting a story, perhaps seeing a point of view, perhaps I'll befriend people who have been pricks to me. I never did that before. I'd say, this guy's an asshole, but I'll get him a gift.

You know, when I was 20 or 30, I would never do that. I do now. So I don't know. So it's I would say that book and I forget the name of it, like I say, I'm not a book reader, but that made an impression on me. It was very thought-provoking. Another book that made an impression in a horrible way, I had been at Auschwitz in southern Poland at Nazi death camp there for CBC. And I slept out there. There's a hostel there. And doing my reports. I stayed there for a few days. And that was tough to walk around and go to the killing fields that were out of bounds. And you could see where they had executed all these Russian troops. And they just buried the bodies. They didn't even burn them then. And the bodies broke up in the soil and all those bone chips were all over the place. You just sat on the edge of a cavity in the field and like millions of bone chips.

And you're thinking, wow, those were human beings at one time. And they were enlisted to fight, defend the country, the homeland. They were taken prisoner and then marched to Germany and executed there in that field. And that's all against all war behavior, but it happened. So that was sad. I remember doing a short documentary on that. And then I came across a book that was written by people whose job it was to burn the bodies. They were prisoners.

They were all executed too. So they would pull the teeth out of the victims. and they would burn them. But they knew they were going to die. So they got scraps of paper, and they wrote their story in the pieces of paper, and they buried them in glass bottles out there. So when the Russian troops came,

they found these things, and they dug them all up. And there's a book of all their thoughts, you know, of what trains they board it, and what they said goodbye to their parents, and they knew they were going to die within days. And I found that book just horrible. horrible one to read. I have it downstairs. That book made an impression with me. I have a story about Auschwitz and I went out there with a former prisoner. He's number

88. He was there the day the camp opened. He was a Roman Catholic guy. He was 17 years old. Sigmund Soboloski survived the war at Auschwitz. Came to Canada and he settled in Fort to Sinaboyne and places like that. And he just passed away in Cuba a couple of years ago. But I got to know him on over there with him. He was invited there for the 50th anniversary of the opening of the camp, and CBC sent me there with him. So he had access to everything at the camp.

We went out to the killing fields to a part of the camp known as Canada. Funny enough, it was a warehouse where all the goodies were stored. But he told me a story of a woman arriving at the, through the main gates where all the trains came in and there's a platform and that's where they made the selection who would survive for a week or two and who died almost immediately. There was a woman there and she was holding a child and the woman was crying and SS officer walked up and asked her what's the problem and she said we were told we're coming here to resettle that is not true you see those chimneys over there

we're going to end up being burned in them. I know that, she said. I was told that. And he said, who told you that? And she said, I'm not telling you. So he took out his revolver and pointed it at the child's head and said, if you don't tell me,

I'm going to blow your kids' brains out right here. So she said it was one of the workers over there in the warehouse and a break came over and told her that. They spoke the same language, but she didn't know who she was. So they called all the workers over. there was about ten of them that lined them up on the fence and she pointed out the one that told secret

well the woman and the child died very soon they were gassed and then their bodies burned and she was right she did end up there now for the woman who told the secret they brought her over to where the ovens were all the workers were there and they tied her feet together and her arms behind her back she was naked

they threw her in alive into the fire and made everyone watch it and then they said you don't talk and I'll never forget that story from Auschwitz what a place what does a man say to that yeah

yeah the world is some ways really screwed up badly but yeah some assignments are they're interesting but they're rough too yeah same in Nicaragua

when I was there I mean I had nightmares about that place every year I'd have the same nightmare getting shot, the bullet, slow motion, coming, hitting you in your chest, you wake up. And then the friend said, write about it on your blog. Maybe it'll go away. So I wrote about it. And the nightmare, I've not had the nightmare since. So I think this blog I have, it's, yeah, it's been healthy. Good thing. I get out a lot of stuff that bothered me. Like the gay guy in Campbellton who was beat up all the time.

It's always bothered me. Now, not so much because they see them differently. So there's some reward there too. And I'm sure you too, Sean, feel that way. When you talk to people and you learn things, you get out the information. You're sort of on a, you'll have a PhD before this thing is over, you know, just by talking to people and learning. I tell people a lot. But when COVID hit, I was only doing one of these a week.

I was doing one episode a week and just, you know, it was a lot of fun. But I was, you know, work full time and family. And when COVID hit, and also you're in your house and you're not leaving in that fear, I mean, that was something else to, you know, in 30 years, Byron, my kids asked what it was like. That's what I'll remember, that fear, that paralyzed, like, that's something. that I think everyone in the population felt. Right. And I decided right then and there, I'm like,

I got one or two ways to go about this. At the time, the only way I was doing it was like this. Yeah. I love this. Yeah. Seeing the person across from you. And I decided I only had one of two options. Either you shut it down and you wait for COVID to go away,

or we're going to dive into this harder. And because it's very healthy to talk to people. Very, very healthy. And that's what I tell people, you know, we got nothing but technology at our side, whether we're talking phones or email, text. All of it can be very good. Yeah. There's a story, yeah.

No, it's good. You learn. And you have to be inquisitive to do what you're doing. You have to enjoy it. So it's a good combination. Yeah. And what I like about what you're doing, you can, it's like you and I are talking now in a bar, except we're not drunk, you could now pass this information on to other people.

They'll learn from your questions, maybe something I would say to them, might touch them. But they'll say, okay, I hadn't looked at that. Or they might say the guy's an idiot. They might. Yeah, whatever. Here's the thing. We've been going for almost two hours, and the two hours will get released because I don't believe in sniffing. And I remember in the beginning, somebody used to say, what happens if they don't like it?

I don't know, turn it off, right? What happens if, you know, because I've thoroughly been, I don't know if it's entertained or whatever, but I've enjoyed sitting here talking to you. And now you're pulling up your article about the guy he gave a bastard. I see two players there. There's Mark, Messier. They called him Mess. And this guy was Pozar.

He was some Czechoslovakia. Yeah, this is. Number 10 or something. And he and I used to sit together on the press box when he was benched. He would sit together. And I would ask him, what's it like to be? living in Canada and he was so worried that his wife was so lonely here. I said, what do you mean?

She doesn't know anyone. She goes to the shopping centers and sits down on the benches and that. So there's another story. Here's a guy who's an NHL star, but his wife is bored out of her tears here. And he was so worried for her. And I said, well, what kind of a car do you drive? He said, Mercedes-Benz. And I said, he's got it from Germany when he played hockey there.

And so he was actually well-known in his town. But here we are shooting the bowl and that little halo at the top and we'd always sit there and And whenever he was benched, I knew where he'd be sitting. So we walked over and he'd yell out, hey, Byron, we'd sit together and I'd grab my notepad and have a little chat with him. Yeah, but there he is. There's a picture of him and there's Glenn and Muckler, Glenn Sather, and there's Yari Kuri and his wife. She was a reporter for a Helsinki newspaper. She used to sit beside me at the halo, and she was reporting for the Helsinki Sonomat or some paper.

We would talk Finnish. I used to live in Finland. So I remember she got down one time. Yadhi came out of the dressing room, and she was telling him in Finnish. This guy speaks Finnish. We come over and we talked. Yeah, we talked quite a bit. Their kids were born here at the Mizzercordia.

They had twins. Yeah, there they go. So a lot of little memories come back. Well, here's the final question for you then. I posed this to Keith Morrison back Geez when I sat down with him That's a little while ago now

But I'll ask you another guy who's been around the world reported on a lot of different things What's one truth you've learned Along the way? There's no definitive truth I don't think and that's one thing I've learned about that Just keep searching for information

And as I said Just repeat myself be your own editor. Don't buy everything from anybody. Just keep an open mind and look for viewpoints that are opposite to yours to see what they are. And also I, where I'm coming from, and you don't have to put this into this personal belief, that we've all been here before. This is not our first go-around in life. And I know that from seeing three spirits. Three people who have died, they've appeared. And it's like real, and it's freaky.

The first two scared the shit out of me. The last one, not so much. But, so I know there's an afterlife. There's no doubt in my mind. You mean three parents? Well, now you got my curiosity piqued. Yeah. First one was in Nepal, 1981.

There's a child at the hospital. She had severe pneumonia. She was just an infant, like a year old, maybe a bit more. And she died. I woke up in the middle of the night in that little place I was staying at. It's like a cabin there. And she was in the room, elevated to my left. And she was like alive in the air just floating there. And I went, holy shit. You know, I screamed and she went away. The second one was a girl who was abducted, appeared again, the middle of the night, just over my head. And I knew who she was. So I knew that she was deceased. That was freaky. I also screamed and she pixeled away. The third one was a murder victim. I was working on his story. In fact, had just been looking at his autopsy photos that night had them all up on the screen. And he appeared, sat in the edge of my bed in the middle of the night. And when this happens, when you wake up, you're white awake. You're not like half asleep. You're like wide awake. And I looked at him and he turned and looked at me. He didn't say anything. I thought, oh, he's just.

just trying to keep me honest. I wasn't afraid this the third time. But it's the last one I've had. And that was about 10 years ago. First one was in the early 80s. I've only had three. So when I talk to psychics or mediums, they say there's no big deal, but it's good you talk about it. But there is more than our time here. And I remember the first time I had got to know a medium was on the Tonya Murrell child abduction case. He was a British guy. He was a British guy. He part of a group of psychics being interviewed at the Weston Hotel downtown for a psychic fair his name is Ralph Hurst H-U-R-S-T and we did the interview there was about half a dozen reporters there and then we broke up for private interviews in a

side room so I chose him we went in there and I began by saying I don't wish to offend you but I think a lot of you people are frauds and he said I'm not a fraud But I agree with you, but I said, I want you to know I'm not a fraud. I said, okay. So all this is recorded. I was for CBC then. And I said, I understand that we all have guardians. Is that right?

He said, yes, of course. He said, you have one. I see him over your left shoulder. And I turned. I couldn't see anything. And he smiled and said, you can't see him, but I can see him. He's Chinese. I said, oh, he's Chinese.

Can I ask him a question? He said, yes, of course. So I said, I'll ask it in Chinese. Didn't faze him. He said, yeah, go ahead. So I did. I don't know a lot of Chinese, but I know one question. So I asked him, and he said, he smiled, and he said, his health is fine.

What did you ask him? I said, I asked him how he was. And then the psychic says, do you have any more questions? I said, no, I didn't know what to say. You know? So it's funny, we worked on that file, and he's the guy who had identified this. the suspected killer just by the way he looked and the behavior and the friend of the family, acquaintance of the family. So I, and the police later said, yeah, they're 99.9% sure it's him,

but he's deceased now. But anyway, he came to Edmonton on another visit and I said, can I take you out to the school where she was taken from? He said, sure. So we drove in my car. Remember it was late spring. It was a beautiful evening. Sun was shining, kind of mellow. We parked outside the school, and I got talking, and he said, stop it. He said, I have to concentrate. So he went back to that time when she's walking. He said, it's very cold. A lot of smoke coming in the back of the cars, and I said, exhaust.

And he said, the door opens, and she gets in. I said, willingly? Yes, and I'm thinking she knows that guy, if that's true. And he said, there are two kids ahead on the sidewalk, too, same side. he's looking at them he's thinking about them too okay so that reading ends and I said

she went out of the main doors here didn't she and he said no there's a door at the back of the school she exited there and I said I don't think there's a door there put the car in reverse backed up yeah there's a door okay didn't know that

next morning I got on the phone to the homicide detective handling the file I said what door did she go out of He said, one at the end of the school. Were there two kids on the sidewalk ahead of her? He said, yes. But they didn't see anything. No.

To get back to that evening, I drove on the street, and I said, I will show you where she lived. There was about 24 houses. It's like a cul-de-sac. And he said, turned to me, and he said, no, I'll show you where she lived. Time to put Byron in his place. Or driving the car, I didn't say a word. He said, stop, stop, stop. He said, he leaned for it.

He said, it's that White House right there on the left. I said, yes. And he said, pull ahead a little bit. Her bedroom is on the side. It should be a second window. It was. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, so.

And he's the one that told me, he said, you can connect with people on the other side. And he showed me how to do it. And I've done it a few times, and it's proven to be accurate, the information. But I found it draining. and I've also found it's not my business to do that. You know, it's just thought, oh, man,

you just open yourself up for ridicule and it's private. But the information was accurate that I got. No, do what you want with that information. So I'm telling you, that's what happened. But that medium and I became friends, but he died of cancer a few years ago. I wrote about him in the Tanya story. He's the guy.

So this is one of the benefits of doing, these interviews you learn these things but you gotta have an open mind and you experience something that yeah comes back to one of those descriptive words where you know it means more but you can't really explain it odd strange yeah yeah powerful weird powerful yeah yeah when you wake up in the middle of the night and there's someone sitting at the edge of their bed and they turn to you I mean, you're not going to forget that. Well, I always tell a very good friend of my brewman gotten a bad car accident.

He's paralyzed from the waist down, and he's back ranching on the farm, so shout out to your brewery, because I know he'll listen to this part, but best friends with his older brother, and he gotten a bad accident, and it was, I can't remember how many days after the accident. It doesn't matter.

Anyways, I went to bed that night, and I had a dream, and I was into this house. And there's a group of people sitting around the table, and I can't remember the people, but I stood up and Brew walked in, and we shook hands, and I said, you're walking. And he goes, yeah, of course, Numes.

And I woke up, and I, like, my entire body was, like, hair standing on end, right? Gives me chills thinking about it right now. But that isn't the crazy part. I held on to that for a little bit, because I didn't know what to do with that. I was like, I don't know what that was. Right? Well, then I started talking to other people while he was in hospital,

and they'd had the exact same dream and had been the people sitting around the table. Yeah, there you go. So you tell me what that is. Yeah, there's something more there than that, and I think if people who are cognizant of that, they would behave differently. There is such a thing as karma, and I often give thanks when things happen. I like candles all the time. They like light and candles on the other side. It's my way of saying thanks. I do it almost every day.

And we often say, oh, that's a coincidence. Even now, this meeting between you and I, not a coincidence. That's arranged, I feel. Well, I'm reading a book on coincidences right now. And I was saying to my wife on the way up, so I don't want to give out the guy's name because it doesn't really matter, but I was out working and get talking to him. And here he was a guy that was convinced.

convicted of manslaughter. And at 18 was in jail and I went, you got to be kidding me. This is like two days ago. I was like, what are the chances? And he goes, he goes, well, why? I told him about you. I said, I'm going to sit down with a guy

who worked around the prison system for 30 years. I don't know. Maybe it's just coincidence, but it seems a little more than that. Could be, yeah. Well, I just had a guy here the other day a couple of weeks ago now and he came in

and he had a little gift for me. If you want to just put that on pause, I'll show it to you. I'll just cut it downstairs. So this guy came by the house the other day and he had this gift it was a book of photographs from the 1940s.

I'm born in 1949. He was born in 52, I think so. But he wanted me to have that. I had worked on his his story for years and he wrote a little caption there. David Milgard. Yeah. Yeah.

David spent some time here at this house. I'll show you something else. David likes to go to the Rockies. We make some, make a fire and has some stakes and he took pictures of the last time we were there. And he had them all framed. and there's a note he I guess he wrote but there you go

pictures of David Milgard For the people While I read this I forgot what he wrote So it'll refresh my memory He said I had a good time on her trip I thank you for it I hope I hope

I hope you like the pictures Maybe we can eat No hopefully we can Maybe we can get Geez I'm terrible at reading Are I David's terrible Mark to go out

that way with us in the future. I plan to take Robert one day two. Thanks, David. Mark is Mark Lewis of the Edmonton Oilers. And Robert is his son. When David got out of the prison, he came here to the door to say thanks for working on my story.

David Milgard came here to this door, knocked on it, and I said, where the hell are your shoes? He had sock feet. He said, I sold him for cigarettes. So he came in, I gave him shower, bath and he's singing up there in the bath and and he wanted to stay at a hostel and I said well I'll

drive you there and I had this old car 1937 Oldsmobile driving down the white mud it's summer night it's 1030 or something David rolls down the window he's on the passenger side he starts singing going down to one of those bridges you know over here in the white mud and I thought she's singing at the top of his voice you know and I thought God, sort of embarrassing, but I thought, no, he's free. You know, it was just like he was free and enjoying himself at the wind, hitting his hair, and, you know, I thought if anyone's looking at this antique car going down the highway, his guy with his head out the window, they wouldn't know what's going on.

Yeah, so he, yeah, Mark Lewis, the Oilers, Mark did the public address announcing for years. We're good friends. We go back to Quebec City. We were disc jockeys at a radio station. They were young. So we kept in touch. Mark and I always went to this camping spot in the Rockies, and David wanted to come along.

So the three of us were there. Well, for listeners who don't know who David Milgard is, he was wrongfully, he's a poster boy of wrongfully convicted. 23 years in prison. Yeah, for murder he never did, yeah. Yeah. So, but at that point, he had not been exonerated by DNA evidence. He was still being investigated, even though he spent 23 years.

I had been talking to prisoners at the joint here, and one of them told me that David didn't do it. I said, well, how do you know he didn't do it? He said, well, I know who did. He confessed to him. He said, Larry Fisher. I said, holy shit. Larry told me that he killed that girl, not David. So at that point, I became involved in the file with Milgard.

So anyway, to jump ahead on the story, Mark and I, Mark Lewis, and I, we go back quite a few years. We're out in the Rockies, and David wanted to come, so he joins us. Three of us are out there, and it's a camping spot that's off-road. You know, it's kind of nice and private. And we're burning wood. There were some old trees that had fallen, cut them up with the saw, and I handed the axe to David, and I said, do you want to split some wood? He said, okay, so he splits a log.

And he said, there you go. And I said, David, we're here for three days. He's like, should want to split some more? Well, I don't know. Like he's complaining about it. And I said, you know, I've got proof that you did not kill Gail Miller. Yeah, and how do you know? I said, you're too lazy to kill anyone.

So it's kind of a conflict there. And Mark said, oh, is there David holding the axe and I'm going at him, you know. And he said, I didn't know whether you'd be knocked out or what. It was funny, funny. But we often talk about that. And David, the Tragically Hip did a song. I had a big scoop on Milgard. Yeah, Wheat Kings.

Yeah, and there's a mention in there. It's a fantastic song. Yeah, you've heard of it. Yeah, okay. Well, it's tragically hip. Who in Canada hasn't heard of the tragically? No, no, the song, yeah. Oh, the Wheat Kings, yeah.

Yeah, well, David, he had phoned me one time. Oh, geez, we were living in an apartment then. We had people over, and his phone rings, in his collect call from David Milgard. Oh, David Milgard, he was in a penitentiary, and he'd phoned. He wanted to know about a shooting, hostage-taking at a penitentiary. I said, yeah, I covered that story. He said, that's why I'm phoning him.

He said, a friend of mine, he said, died there. I said, yeah, I remember. He was in Newfoundland. He said, I want to know if he suffered. I said, well, I'll get the file. So he phones back. and he said, what did you find out? And I had to file at home.

I said, yeah, he took him 15 minutes to die. He got hit in the back with a shotgun blasts from the guards. He said, oh, that's all I need to know. And then he phoned back a third time. And he said, this is off the record, eh? When I said, well, you're phoning me for information. So, like, he was kind of mixed up. I said, yeah, it is off the record.

Do you know who I am? I said, yeah, I know who you are. Yeah, I remember your case. So that's how we kind of met. And then one time he had called CBC Newsroom to talk to me. He had a big story. He had fired his lawyer, Hirsch Walsh, told me this. And I said, well, really?

So I got the recorder going. So I did the interview. And I said, what did he say? What did Hirsch Walsh say? And he said, he doesn't say anything because he doesn't know it yet. I said, well, I guess you can fire someone through the media, but it's your business. I said, what does your mom say? And he said, I haven't told her either.

I'm mad at her too. Okay, end of interview. I didn't run it. I just kept the tape there. Next day, he phones. Same time, 10 o'clock lockup is done. He phones, and he's in a panic. Did you run that story?

And I said, no, David, I didn't run out. Thank God. We had a big meeting last night, and we sorted everything out. Why didn't you run it? I said, well, you were quite apprehensive, and I felt I should sit on it. Oh, thanks, man. Thank you. owe you one. And then I trapped him. I said, you don't owe me anything. Yes, I do, man. I owe you one.

I said, David, help a stranger. We're good. No, no, man, I owe you one. And the day he was released from the penitentiary, he passed, like, I don't know how many reporters out there, 2030. He didn't talk to them. He got to his mom's townhouse and phoned Byron. And that's where the line comes home, a late breaking story on the CBC, and it's by the tragically hip. So David told me about that. When he comes out here, he plays it, the song. It's a great song. He says, it's a song about you and I, you know. And there's another one he likes about a prisoner. And yeah, he's danced in this floor a few times, the music, crazy. But yeah, he called the other day and wanted to have stakes and we made them on the barbecue on the deck here. Yeah. But he's more settled now. But I remember

he came to talk to my students when I taught at Nate. I asked him. He was in Vancouver and he phoned and he was talking about stuff, you know, that he was, I think, a better person. And I said, yeah, but you've got to be more giving of yourself, David. He just can't be a poor me kind of guy, you know. I said, I have students now. Do you want to talk to them? He said, I'll be there tomorrow. And he drove all night.

He got here and he slept on the couch. He was so tired. I brought him around to Nate. And it was a story in the journal. I tipped off Tom Barrett. Tom did a story on it. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So next morning, he spent the night here.

Next morning we walked over to the 7-Eleven over here, and he bought the newspaper, two copies of it, one for himself, one to show to his mother. So we're both in the same story, and he's quite proud of that. We're having coffee here at the table and making them breakfast, and I said, David, I have a confession for you.

When you were convicted, I said, I was an announcer at a TV and radio station, in British Columbia, Dawson Creek. I read TV news there. And I said, I remember doing the item on you and thinking you were an asshole. That's what I thought. And I said, I thought about you over the years

when I moved to Australia. I wonder how that asshole was doing. And then I'm on a prison beat and I talked to a guy and he said, it's not you, it's somebody else. I worked on that file then. And I got to meet you and I really feel bad. I had those thoughts about you.

I apologize. Well, he was sitting on the chair right there, and I was standing by the island there. So he got up and he walked over and he gave me a hug and he said, let it go, Byron. Let it go. That was touching. So, yeah, we go back away as David and I, but it's nice he has those good memories. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you sharing with me. It's been, it's been, I'm glad we got to do this, Byron.

It's been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed it. Well, thank you. Thanks for thinking of me Hey folks Thanks for joining us today If you just stumbled on the show Please click subscribe

Then scroll to the bottom And rate and leave a review I promise it helps Remember every Monday and Wednesday We will have a new guest sitting down To share their story The Sean Newman podcast is available for free On Apple, Spotify, YouTube

And wherever else you get your podcast fix Until next time Hey Keeners I got to give a shout out first off to Tina Burnett. She emailed in from Queensland, Australia. If you go back to the S&P Archives episode from Past Friday, Eric and Leonabemish. She says, thanks for recording a great podcast with Eric and Leona Beamish. I was one of the agricultural trainees that lived with them,

and it was certainly a great summer in 1992. They are a wonderful family and a treasure of the time that I spent with them in Lloyd Minster. It was wonderful to hear their stories. I thought that was really cool. You know, other side of the world reaching back out and listen to the podcast. You haven't listened to Eric and Leona Beamish. I know there's a lot of people that are like not into the old stories, but they talk about the Spanish flu.

They talk about time before rubber tires on tractors. And talk about Leonel was a nurse. And so she talks about dealing with not pandemics, but diseases that were, you know, people were worried about it. It was a very interesting conversation. Anyways, if you're still listening, I hope you guys have a great week. I hope the bucks won, because if they didn't, I'm going to eat it when I walk into work Monday morning. And if you're the chaper, get your feet off the desk, buddy.

Go back to work. All right. We'll catch you guys Wednesday.