The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - Canada: Whitehorse: A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world

Episode Date: May 21, 2023

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I'm Jessie Cruikshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know what thirsty meant until there was all these headlines and i get schooled by a tween facebook is like a no that's what my grandma's on thank god phone a friend with jesse crookshank is not available on facebook it's out

now wherever you get your podcasts a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com I have done a lot of thinking this week. Strong. And one thought has led to another. And has led to another. And has led to another.

And then I've started researching the things I'm thinking about. And then the research has led to more thinking and more research. And what has basically happened is over the last seven days since last we spoke, I have gone on a train of thought that's going to seem a little esoteric. But I'm just going to tell you the end result, okay? I'm coming to Canada. I don't 100% know all the steps that got me there, but if I know one thing now, it's that I'm coming to Canada.

I think my thinking went like this. Although I don't really know the beginning of the thinking. And I know this is meant to be a podcast about me trying to earn $500,000 to buy a boat. And I know last week I spoke about how I was just going to have viral stand-up comedy to that end. Listen, there's been a lot of thinking done between then and now. Also, I possibly have the novel coronavirus, which is a wry irony given that the bit of stand-up comedy I did about not liking the vaccine. Anyway, whatever. Whatever. Whatever doesn't matter. If this is an insane feverish thought, then let it be thus. I'm coming to Canada. My intention is to

come to America later in the year. That has been my intention for some time. Because let me tell you. The number one thing that I've done. For this podcast and its growth. And my journey to boat ownership. Was that trip to America. We got all these wonderful American fans. And I love my American fans. And we make a sizable fiduciary ascension.

We get a lot of money from American fans on the Patreon, and we're happy to have it. And that money goes towards me having a boat and the journey. So I've got to go back to America. But as good as it's going to be for the podcast and the money to have a boat to go to America, I actually can't afford to go to America and not have any money while I'm there.

Now, usually when I travel around Australia, that's fine. I just do a stand-up comedy show and I take their money. But in America, they have this visa situation. It's like $15,000 and all these bureaucrats have to sign off. So while I can go to America on holiday and I can do free shows and I can meet people, I can go on podcasts and all these things. I can't make any money back doing shows. That's where Canada comes into the equation. In Canada, you can. I could just do shows in Canada. I can go to America, do all the podcasts, have a great time, meet all the people, grow the listenership, make a good career in roads. What's a headwind?

I'm sorry, I think I do have the novel coronavirus. I'm not thinking well here, but you understand what I'm trying to say. And then just on the end of the trip, pop into Canada and do a show to my Canadian fans. Grab that money to have paid for the whole thing, and then fly back. You see what I mean? There's a business, pleasure business. Do you understand? So my goal then, if I'm going to make this work, just a man looking at me there. Man almost came off his, let's just hit that that lock button there sorry i'm just sitting in the volvo and um two people on bicycles have just ridden past and i've never seen two people

look less comfortable on bicycles in my entire life their knees are out the wrong way it's like it's like two grown-ups on crappy mountain bikes with weird helmets trying to teach each other how to ride bicycles i've never seen anything like that in my life and they were staring at me like i was the crazy person you're the grown-ups who don't know how to ride a bicycle so my plan now that i've, so that my plan now is to build up a following in one Canadian town. If we build up followings in many Canadian towns, fine. But what we need is one Canadian town with roughly 100 people. That would pay for my return flights, if I could do a show, to roughly 100 Canadian people in one area.

It's no good for me having 100 Canadian fans spread out over the whole country, because then I can't just do a show and have them all come. I have to target my following. So at the moment, I have, in terms of... The only way that I know how many fans I have in a place reliably is this podcast, and I have 10 Canadian listeners spread out across eight Canadian cities or towns, some of them. So what I'm going to start doing, each week I'm going to pick a different Canadian town where I have listeners. And we're going to see if we can grow that.

And then as a competition, the first one to have 100 listeners in a certain Canadian town, I will come and book a show and do a show there. So the first one, I've done it sort of reverse alphabetical, was a place called White Horse. I had a listener in White Horse, and I've just done a whole lot of reading and research about White Horse. Basically, that's all I've done for the last three days, is read about Whitehorse and Whitehorse-related things

and write to Whitehorse-related personages. So if you're my Whitehorse listener, hello! It's wonderful to be speaking to you. Now, I've since noticed that I also have a Winnipeg listener, and Winnipeg should come before Whitehorse. But I didn't see that, so also have a Winnipeg listener, and Winnipeg should come before Whitehorse, but I didn't see that, so I'll do Winnipeg in the future, but this week it's Whitehorse. Hello? Whitehorse listener. Whitehorse is in the Yukon. This is a northern Canadian province, territory, state? I'm not sure, and it's next to Alaska, and it's on

the Yukon River. White horse! It's about 30,000 people and one of the first things I did in my white horse learning about journey, if that's how we want to phrase it, man, I would have done this earlier in the week if I'd known I was going to get the coronavirus late in the piece, but I have to record it now because I think I'm going to be much worse mentally afterwards. White horse! In the Yukon.

And I didn't know much about the Yukon except that there used to be a television program there. Yvonne of the Yukon. It was a children's cartoon about a Frenchman who didn't wear trousers. And I've tried to find an explanation on Google as to why this cartoon character had no trousers. Often a cartoon character won't have trousers because they're an animal, like Winnie the Pooh or Donald Duck. But Yvonne of the Yukon was a man. And he wore underpants, but it was... There's probably a good explanation, but I haven't found it yet. Okay, anyway.

One of the first videos I watched to learn more about Whitehorse was one of these, it was called Whitehorse Downtown, or the Downtown of Whitehorse. Whitehorse Downtown. Whitehorse Downtown, sounds like a disco number. It was high-definition footage that someone's just taken with their camera, like three years ago or so, downtown in the central business district of Whitehorse, for like 15 minutes, just looking at buildings. And it's actually a very depressing way to see a town because once you've entered into minute eight of looking at buildings from the outside,

you start to feel like you should probably go into one of these buildings. And it feels a little bit like a homelessness simulator. It makes me feel like when I'm in a city and I have nowhere to go and I'm waiting for the gig and I don't have a hotel to go to and I'm incumbent and I'm just walking around, you don't know anyone and there's no one there. But lovely town of Whitehorse. It looks, there's a beautiful river. I believe that's the Yukon River named for the Yukon Territory. Is that right? Well, we'll check that. It's a beautiful river.

And there's a lot of log cabins in downtown Yukon. And modernist architecture reminiscent of log cabins, I think, on your library. Or perhaps it was a government centre. It's like plastic cladding that's been made to look like log cabins. But, so from the outside, these people on their fucking bicycles are coming back. They look insane. What are they doing? Hold on, hold on.

Look, maybe I'm the, now that they've gone, maybe I'm the. Maybe it's more unusual to be recording a podcast in your Volvo on the street about Whitehorse than it is to be learning how to ride a bicycle. Maybe I'm the. Yes. They're coming back again. They're just going up and down the same street. Well, that is how you'd learn, isn't it? Just going up and down the same street.

I don't know why I've got such a bee in my bonnet. It's because the man is ageless. I can't tell what age he is. He's like somewhere between 18 and 50. And he's with a young woman who's again, she's like somewhere between 12 and 35. They have haggard souls and fresh faces and these mountain bikes. This is the disease talking. They appear to have gone inside a house now. I wish to talk to you about the largest city in Canada. Sorry, in northern Canada. Definitely not in Canada. One of the smaller cities if southern Canada is taken into account. Whitehorse. It has 30,000 people.

It's got the world record for the city with the least air pollution in the world. Wow. Whitehorse. You can get there with the White Pass and Yukon Route narrow gauge railway. So if I do build up a big Yukon fan base in the Whitehorse, I will either fly in or catch that train in, or drive in. But I found out that until 1942, rail, river, and air were the only ways to get to Whitehorse. There was no road until the US government built a road through it to do with

Alaska and the war. But I thought, just how wonderful to live in a town that did you you couldn't get a car there i loved the sound of that so it's the beginning i was looking up sports because i thought how can i grow in white horse how can i have more white horse fans other than you my white horse listener telling more people about it um so i was looking up sports and the main thing seemed to be sledding. It hosts the beginning of the Yukon Quest, an annual dog sled race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, Alaska. And it made me think that, man, there used to be a lot of kids' movies about dog sledding. Like every six weeks, there'd be a new dog sledding movie coming out or a TV show that featured dog sledding and nowadays you know I see the things that my kids are watching dog sledding features almost not at all I guess that was taught just as CGI was coming in and there were probably all these dogs that people had

trained and then they had all these dogs and the dog people were going let us work make another movie about sledding for for crying out loud. The big sledders union. But now those dogs are all dead, and I assume there's not as many. If you want to make a dog sledding movie, it probably is a big effort to get it off the ground rather than having to make the movies

to justify the teams of movie sled dogs. Do you know what I'm saying? Who let those dogs out? Who? So there's a yukon comedy festival and that doesn't seem to have happened in a few years but i wrote a text message to the one comedian in yukon now there's a bunch there's a bunch of comedians but there's like one guy who seems to be putting on shows and his name is Steve. And so I wrote to Steve on WhatsApp and I said, Dear Steve, I'm a comedian and podcaster in Adelaide, South Australia.

Recently, I've noticed that I have some Canadian listeners to my show. Of my show, I should have written. And one of them is in Whitehorse. From my research, it appears you are the top comedy producer and comedian in all of the Yukon. I'm interested in growing my listenership in Whitehorse and potentially coming to do a show later in the year. If you have any ideas about how I might grow a listenership in there,

brackets bars that I could have posters put up at, newspapers or radio to talk to, I'd be very interested. If you have time, I'd love to have you on the pod to talk about this. For reference, it's called the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. Best and good luck with the upcoming shows, James Donald Forbes McCann. As at time of broadcast, Steve, yet to get back to me. But Steve, if you're listening, hello. So I sent him a text and then I thought, well, could I get onto one of their star sports

athletes and interview them? If there's one thing I know about small towns, they're very, very interested in sport. And sadly, Whitehorse doesn't appear to have a sports team. They have had a couple of sports teams. They've closed down for various reasons as far as I can tell. It slows down for various reasons as far as I can tell. So what I did is I found the most famous athlete to come from Whitehorse.

He's a hockey player named Dylan Cousins. Cousins. And he's much beloved in the Yukon newspapers. So I wrote, hi Dylan, I'm a comedian from Adelaide, Australia, and I'm planning a tour to Whitehorse. You can see the feverish train of thought has gone from, I think in that first one, saying I'm thinking about booking a show, and it's now become, I'm coming, I'm coming to Whitehorse, and I hope I do get to come to Whitehorse. As far as I can tell, you are the most successful and beloved person ever to come from Whitehorse or indeed anywhere in the greater Yukon

area. As far as I can tell, that is true. He's got over 50,000 followers. And when I was looking up famous people from Whitehorse, overwhelmingly, they were just politicians in Whitehorse. This is on the Wikipedia page of people from Yukon. It's politicians in Yukon. That doesn't count. Yukon. It's politicians in Yukon. That doesn't count. Everywhere has to have politicians. So it's not of note. Do you know what I mean?

But Dylan Cousins, he seems to be the real deal. He's a very good ice hockey player. And he plays for Buffalo. So Dylan, it would be an honour, this is the message I wrote, an honour to interview you if you ever have the time. This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. I'm Jessi Cruikshank. I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend.

I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant. Gemini can help you summarize your unread emails, suggest what to make with the food in your fridge, and it helped me achieve a family photo where everyone is smiling at the camera. I didn't think it was possible, but it is with Google Pixel 9. Learn more at store.google.com. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. The podcast powers the world's best podcasts.

Here's a show that we recommend. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know what thirsty meant until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a node. That's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com...me to win the hearts and minds of the good people of Whitehorse by association.

I see no reason to lie. Dylan, I want the clout, and I want to grow in Whitehorse because people want to hear you, and by very osmosis, I'll be nearby. A little about me. My is james onward we can podcast school and don't of course we can't get around playing i'm trying to buy a boat hope all is well and that this season is a good one they were one game away from playoffs last year best james oh now white horse is very cold is another thing. It appears to be a very, very cold place. It's sub-Arctic.

And I know it's cold because the Wikipedia page is trying to pass itself off as not being that cold. They just keep on saying, Whitehorse is not as cold as other places in the Yukon, alright? Clearly people in Whitehorse trying to draw tourism dollars, which I am in support of. But it does appear to be very cold. The average temperature is, it was either 0.1 or negative 0.1, but it was basically zero. The average summer temperature is 20 degrees Celsius. The average winter temperature, negative 20 degrees Celsius.

There's not a lot of other people other than Dylan who are famous from Whitehorse. One of them was the actor Victor Jury, who played a carpetbagger in Gone With The Wind. But the big one I saw was Robert William Service, who was a poet. Well, can I bring you some of his poetry? Robert William Service is called the Bard of the Yukon. And he wrote a book of poetry that sold really well, but that he wrote very quickly, and other poets thought that he wasn't a real poet. And when I read that, I thought, ah, I feel very, yes, I understand. So here's some of one. This is called The Shooting of Dan McGrew.

A bunch of the boys were hooping it up in the Malamute Saloon. The kid that handles the music box was hitting a Jagtime tune. Back at the bar in a solo game sat dangerous Dan McGrew. And watching his luck was his lighter love, the lady that's known as Lou. Went out of the night, which was 50 below, and into the din and the glare. There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog dirty and loaded for bear. He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of louse. Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar and he called for drinks for the house.

There was none who could place the stranger's face though we searched ourselves for a clue but we drank his health and the last to drink was dangerous dan mcgrew there's men that somehow just grip your eyes and hold them hard like a spell and such was he and he looked like me like a man who had lived in hell, with a face most hair, sorry, with a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done. As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one,

then I got to figuring who he was, and wondering what he'd do. And I turned my head and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou. Like, okay, I can see how people thought this wasn't good poetry, but I love it. And I can see why the people bought it. This is the real valkish poetry. I'm going to keep reading it. His eyes went rubbering round the room and he seemed in a kind of daze till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.

The ragtime kid was having a drink. There was no one else on the stool. So the stranger stumbles across the room and flops down there like a fool. In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt, he sat and I saw him sway. Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands. My God, but that man could play.

A little backstory on this. I believe the poet wrote it in a single night. Were you ever out? Here, by the way, the poem takes a turn, and I think it really takes flight. Here we go. Were you ever out in the great alone When the moon was awful clear

And the icy mountains hemmed you in With a silence you most could hear With only the howl of a timber wolf And you camped there in the cold A half-dead thing in a stark dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold. That's a good line of poetry. I don't care who you are. A half-dead thing in a stark dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold. While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the north light swept in bars. Then you've a hunch what the music meant.

Hunger and night and the stars. I've never been out in the great alone when the moon was awful clear and the icing mountains hemmed you in with the signs you most could hear. With only the howl of a timber wolf and you camped there in the cold. A half-dead thing has stuck, decked well, clean, mad for the muck, old gold. I've never had that happen, but I know exactly what he's talking about. And hunger. Sorry, what did we say? Hunger and night and the stars.

Here we go. And hunger not of the belly kind that's banished with bacon and beans, but the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means, for a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above, but oh, so cramful of cozy joy

and crowned with a woman's love, a woman dearer than all the world and true as heaven is true. God, how ghastly she looks through her rouge, that lady that's known as Lou. There's not much more left, but I am fading fast. I do not have the energy. I've got to get to the end of this poem. I've got to get to the end of this poem. I've got to get to the end of this poem. It's such a beautiful poem. And I never would have found out about it if I didn't have a Whitehorse listener and I wasn't planning a trip to Whitehorse, please.

Then on a sudden the music changed so soft that you scarce could hear. But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear. That someone had stolen the woman you loved, that her love was a devil's lie, that your guts were gone and the best for you was to crawl away and die. Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair and it thrilled you through and through. and it thrilled you through and through.

I'll guess I'll make it a spread, Mazere, said Dangerous Dan McGrew. Mazere, M-I-S-E-R-E, not sure. The music almost died away. Then it burst like a pent-up flood and it seemed to say, Repay, repay, and my eyes were blind with blood. The... I love it, man.

If it's written like this on purpose, this is terrific. But it's hard to tell. I'll need to read more of his poems. My eyes were blind with blood. The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash and the lust awoke to kill, to kill. Then the music stopped with a crash and the stranger turned and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way. In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat and I saw him sway. Then his lips went in, in a kind of grin.

And he spoke and his voice was calm. And boys, says he, you don't know me. And none of you here care a damn. But I want to state and my words are straight. And I'll bet my poke they're true. That one of you is a hound of hell. And that one is Dan McGrew. Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,

and a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark, pitched on his head and pumped full of lead, was dangerous Dan McGrew, while the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou. These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know. They say the stranger was crazed with hooch, and I'm not denying it's so. I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two, the woman that kissed him and pinched his poke was the lady that's known as Lou. And I did have to look up what has pinched his poke means.

And that means, I think he was a gold prospector and he had some gold on him. And the lady who's known as Lou stole his gold. Fickle, fickle woman. So that was, I think that was written like 1907, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, and that was by Robert William Servus, part of the Yukon. And I think all of his poems are sort of like that, just long verse. Dog rule, people accused it of being dog rule, and it is dog rule in terms of not quite fitting the meter that it's meant to and obviously being a first draft but i loved it and i hope you loved it too oh now he here's another see this is what i mean i just got into a big oh the research it's been a lot of research on Whitehorse. And specifically, after that point,

the part of Yukon Robert Williams' service, because that poem really affected me, and hunger that's not of the belly kind. Is that what it was? Hunger that's not of the belly kind that's banished with bacon and beans. I want to get that again. Hold on. Hunger and hunger and hunger. What was it? And hunger not of the belly kind. It's banished with... I've got hunger of the belly kind. Banish it with bacon and beans. But the one I thought was really great was that a half-dead thing in a stark dead world clean mad for the muck called gold. A half-dead thing in a stark dead world. I'm taking a half-dead thing in a stark dead world. A half-dead thing in a stark dead world.

I love it. So he submitted that poem first to the newspaper that they had at the time there, which was called the White Horse Star. And it's an independent newspaper, and it's still going to this day. It's mighty impressive. So I'm going to, I have a poem that's it's still going to this day. It's mighty impressive. So I'm going to... I have a poem that's not dissimilar to that one. It's called The Ballad of Jean-Baptiste.

And I'm going to submit that to the White Horse Star. And if they won't publish it, I'll buy an ad. It's not a huge newspaper. I mean, again, it's a town of 30,000 people. How much can it cost to take out an ad? And I will have my poem published in the White Horse Star, The Ballad of Jean-Baptiste. I'll have a a QR code for this podcast and maybe we can grow like that. So I'm going to get, I haven't written that letter yet, but I'll write to them this week.

And my goodness, I've been reading a lot of the stories in the White Horse Star. Here's some recent stories. Massive ice chunks have invaded town site. The extent of damage to the historic site of 40 mile cannot be determined and to crews able to get into the area to make an assessment, a Yukon government spokeswoman said today. So they just had huge pieces of ice. It was like 10 meters by 3 meters, huge shards of ice. A jam broke, which must be like a more delicious kind of dam, and it's invaded that town site.

How about that? And then here's another story. Become ready for potential emergency. City tells residents. The city of Whitehorse is encouraging residents to be prepared in the event of a large scale emergency, specifically wildfire. So look at that. You've got to watch out for huge pieces of ice running you down in the street and wildfire. How's that for a song of ice and fire?

Only it's good. And then there was stories about Dylan Cousins, and that's how I found about him. I feel very positive about our growth into Canada and Whitehorse. All very positive. It's all very positive. Oh, the hunger. It's not of the belly kind.

I'm going to have to lie down because I feel quite feverish. Now it's time for the whip. Here's Jake Ford with the whip around from Melbourne. So, Alex, have you heard of the James Donald Forbes and Ken Catamaran plan? I have not. I don't know who that is, but good luck to him, I guess. I do love a good catamaran.

They go hard. Why do you ask? They are hard. They do go hard indeed. And if you want your own catamaran experience, go to Spotify and find the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. You can also find a link to his Patreon and become one of the Sailing Club members.

Thank you very much, Jake Ford. That is the end of the show for this week. If you'd like to be featured on the Whip Around, tell someone about the podcast and send through that audio on the email or find me on the internet. You find a way. I have done a lot of thinking. Hey, it's Mitch from Side Note Podcast, I have done a lifesaver. And if I'm feeling stuck creatively, I just ask Gemini for help and bam, instant inspiration. You can learn more about Google Pixel 9 at

store.google.com. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Kirkshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture, but when I have questions, I get to phone a friend.

I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know what thirsty meant until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no. That's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jessie Crookshank is not available on Facebook.

It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com.