Life North of the 54th

Transcript

• 00:00 - Background
• 12:43 - Personal and Professional Development
• 30:00 - Finding Community
• 42:10 - Some Stories

00:00 - Background

Opening Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff]

Garett:
Welcome back to Life north of the 54th. I'm Garett Brown.

Preston:
I'm Preston Brown. Happy to have you join us today. And our guest today is Mr. David Woodruff, so we'll have him introduce himself.

David:
Hey, I'm David Woodruff. I'm currently an Edmonton resident, but I spent most of my life in Grande Prairie. Kind of moved around a lot since then, but pretty happy in Edmonton.

Garett:
Thanks for joining us, David. It's been quite a while since I've seen you, but it's great to catch up with you.

David:
Yeah, thanks so much for having me and for allowing me to make podcast debut.

Garett:
Yeah, well, welcome. It's an honor for us then.

David:
Yeah. [chuckles]

Garett:
So do you want to share with us some of your earliest memories of the Peace Country?

David:
So I was actually born in Pincher Creek, which is southern Alberta, but moved to Grande Prairie in grade two. Pretty much when consciousness memories started. So lots of memories of GP. Yeah, I think growing up in GP, it's a very interesting place in that. It's kind of interesting politically. The climate is super far north. Really not too many people live that far north in the world. So I think a lot of my memories, of course, are with winters and the snow and kind of how you keep yourself occupied in those winters. But just those days where you just get, like, feet of snow and you can go on the shed and jump off and just land in your yard and almost like a little ball pit in your backyard. And just the vast openness of everything. Like you can drive 5 hours in any direction and not hit any bigger civilization.

Garett:
Yeah. So the wintertime, I mean, it does feel like it lasts most of the year. That's probably maybe half a year at best. But do you enjoy winter sports? Do you enjoy the wintertime?

David:
I think in recent years I've been a lot more, trying to pick up a lot more winter activities, so I kind of keep saying so. Just lately, I've been bringing up cross country skiing. Back in Grande Prairie, I would go to Nitehawk a lot and I got pretty decent on these little ski blades. Never got too much into skating, but of course the summers were always pretty great too. Being able to stay up so late. I actually have a lot of, I feel like a lot of my, yeah I was reflecting, many of my memories where I'm kind of like, kind of outdoors and just kind of more experiencing the Peace Country say more was actually like, at your place.

Garett:
Oh, wow. Okay.

David:
And getting up to whatever we'd get up there, I feel like every time I went there, it'd be something different. Like, are we going to play Axis and Allies for like, 6 hours.

Garett:
[chuckles]

David:
Or are we going to sword fight our way through a giant stack of stakes?

Garett:
Yeah, dangerously stacked, pallets.

David:
[chuckles] Yeah, dangerously stacked, pallets. Maybe we'll have a big giant bonfire. So, yeah, I feel like, in a way, the land I connected to most might even be like, yeah, your guys' acreage up there.

Preston:
Well, thanks for that. I do think in the winter, the snow was so deep, but also the older I got the more I realized the snow just never melted, so it just kept stacking up. And I was much shorter then so the snow was much deeper in comparison to how I live now. [chuckles]

Garett:
I don't know. David, were you there was a youth activity in the winter at our place once that was like a camp out. I don't remember what age I was at the time. I know Preston was there because it was at our place, but I don't know if you were there.

David:
I can't quite remember. Do you remember any of, like, activities?

Preston:
We did slingshot paintball in the snow.

David:
I do remember slingshot paintball, yeah.

Garett:
I mean, I was just thinking of that as a winter activity on the land that we were like our acreage, I think, that year it had, there was a lot of snow, but it had melted a little bit, and it made, like, a layer of ice over the snow in the field, which made for cutting blocks of snow out really great. You could cut them out and stack them much more easily then you could roll it or something like that. It made great for forts and then made excellent for paintball forts. [chuckles]

David:
That's awesome. Yeah. I think another, I guess, kind of like outdoor memory I had a lot is there's a tradition for my family to go to O'Brien Park in the fall. And O'Brien Park is just a park with tons of deciduous trees, and there's not really a big field per se. It's quite wooded. So we'd go in the fall when there's just tons of leaves and just rake up the biggest leaf pile, have hot dogs, and jump into that.

Garett:
Oh, man.

Preston:
Yeah. O'Brien, it is quite beautiful. And it's probably some of the largest deciduous trees in the whole area by diameter and height there, because it's mostly coniferous forests that are like the true woodlands. But because it's slower in the valley, it's quite beautiful there.

Garett:
Maybe a little warmer, a little bit longer growing season at the bottom of the valley there. Yeah, it's a beautiful park. I have great memories from O'Brien Park, too, sometimes with your family or other people from town. But yeah, it's great. Really great place to hang out and have a picnic, especially in the summer when the sun doesn't set for quite a while.

David:
Exactly.

Garett:
So David, as you went from high school in Grande Prairie, what took you afterwards? Like, where did life take you after high school?

David:
Right. Yeah. So I stayed in Grande Prairie for another year. I moved out. I was actually the last one of my parents and my sister Cat to live in Grande Prairie because my dad had retired and they got their retirement place set up their acreage and they went to go live there. And I wasn't quite ready to go to school, so I stayed in Grande Prairie, just kind of worked at Best Buy and I guess a bit of a gap here. Then left Grande Prairie, went to Edmonton, started school, and yeah, I found the university to not be quite as fun as high school. I think I really missed having just my constant friend group that I had in high school. And I moved in, actually, with Steve and Kurt. That was my first place in Edmonton, Steve Makus. So it was really great living with them. But I think I found the transition to university quite difficult and kind of bounced around in different things to study. Ultimately ended up with a computing science minor and a psychology major. And yeah, during my time in university, I think around the second year, I was having a really bad year. Probably one of the more lower points in my life. My GPA was, like, 2.2, 2.3, lots of, like, withdraws and C's and D's, and I got in the habit of smoking cannabis every day. And it was just, like, not a super healthy place and I knew it was not a great place and I just wanted to get out and experience life more because I kind of felt I was just in a bit of a rut. And then my best friend that I grew up with from Pincher Creek actually finished his mission and came to Edmonton. And so we decided to live together. And so we moved into a YSA house, which I was pretty open with doing at the time because I kind of almost felt it would be my, like, kind of rehab house, I guess, you know. I was surrounded by people who were, you know, not doing the kind of, like, weed and stuff so it would be a lot easier to keep my grades straight. So my GPA definitely jumped up, like a full point, which was great. But I still felt like some adventure in my life was kind of missing because my main hobby probably up to that point was just playing video games and with friends. Didn't really feel like I didn't really have that many interesting hobbies. So I heard one of my friends at university talk about this program called Explore, which is a federal program where they basically give you a bursary to take five weeks of Language Immersion. If you're English, they will pay for it in French, and if you're French, they will pay for you to come to Language Immersion in English Canada. So I took them up on that and it's like housing. You can get some money for food. And so I shipped off to Quebec for a summer. And, yeah, I think that I still reflect on that as one of probably the best five week periods of my life. I just felt like I saw a completely different side of myself that I didn't know existed. Like, I've always kind of identified as introverted, someone who, like, gets energy from being alone. But over there, like, if I was just by myself, like, it just felt off. I was like, I need to go find someone just to hang out with and spend time with. That was a lot of fun. The most fun probably I've had in life. And I think my mindset was just in such a unique place that I had originally thought of maybe staying over there for a bit and going to Montreal. But I also had another idea kind of at the back of my mind where, what if I just biked off to the East Coast? And I thought that idea a few times, actually, just in a drive between Grande Prairie and Edmonton, when it's just like, vast stretches of highway and wilderness. And I'd always kind of thought, like, could you bike this? Would someone ever bike this? And I'd kind of, I think grown attached to my bike in Grande Prairie because Grande Prairie, it's a good size where you can get around town pretty easily on a bike. And Bear Creek Ravine is really beautiful and actually just visited Grande Prairie last year and went back to the Bear Creek Ravine and yeah, I was really impressed with just how beautiful it is down there and that whole trail system. We would go through quite a bit of walks there with my family, and I think that's kind of another place. I really connected to the nature of the area.

Garett:
Yeah, I agree with that. It's one of my favorite places in town, is the Muskoseepi Park Ravine area.

David:
Yeah. So good. Yeah. So I kind of had this thought of, like, what if you just bike on the highway? So before I left to do it, I Googled biking across Canada into Google, and then I found some guy named Steve who just plotted out the whole trip in 60 days. And not that he did in 60 days, but broken down into 60 parts. I was like, okay, that's a thing. I'm going to go do that. So I got a pawn shop bike. I went to Canadian Tire, found a discount kid carrier that had the attachment to the bike broken. So I would lash it to the side of my bike and I just kind of threw everything I needed into the back of that kid carrier and probably looked pretty interesting sight on the side of the highway. But over the next month and a half, I biked from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, all the way to Halifax and then up north, and I took the ferry to Newfoundland. And, yeah, I had a real blast. I would just random camp wherever I wanted. I think I only paid for camping around three nights.

Garett:
In actual camping places?

David:
Yeah. Otherwise the sun is starting to go down and you just start looking for a good place to put your tent in because Canada is so huge and it's pretty easy to find.

Garett:
Yeah. Not very many people in a lot of the spots in between on the highway.

David:
Yeah.

Preston:
It's very adventurous. I must say.

Garett:
So you were cycling alone there on that trip?

David:
Yeah, all solo. Actually. Quebec was a good one to do, too, because part of the way, they have this La Route Vert which goes up the St. Lawrence on the east side, and it kind of has a few municipal campgrounds where you can just set up a tent for free. And I ran into some other cycle tourists, which was really cool to see. Would travel with them for a few days. Yeah, it'd be beautiful because you get to see a sunset over the St. Lawrence every night. And I think that's one thing I love the most about sleeping outside is the sunsets every night. Because indoors you just kind of are watching your TV or whatever and the sun goes down, you don't even notice. But yeah, when you're outdoors, you know, you can't help but notice it.

Garett:
Yeah. Especially since it changes the whole, the whole experience of being outside. The natural light's gone. Then you got to figure out what to do.

Preston:
[chuckles] The sky really is the big screen of our world.

David:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Garett:
What time of year was that? Was that the summer then?

David:
That was yeah, summer of 2014.

12:43 - Personal and Professional Development

Garett:
In a previous episode I had with Steve Makus, because we talked a lot about the transition from high school towards adult life and how it's difficult, how it's not very straightforward, and you feel like it's difficult to find footing. Steve and I both felt that it took 10 years to sort of get a foot down on what it really means to be living as an adult. Yeah, I'm glad you--- that sounds like a pretty amazing trip, quite the experience. If you want to elabourate on it or tell us more about what you did after you got to Newfoundland.

David:
Let's see, yeah, after I finished the trip, yeah, it felt really great. But I also felt like I really just stumbled my way through it. Like I'd been kind of keeping track of my pace, and it was like 12 kilometers an hour, very slow. My pack list was not good at all. It was very bulky. And yeah, just kind of a random bike I got off the pawn shop. And I just had this really deep desire to do it better, do it bigger. So over the year, I was able to get through the school year. I remember the end of that school year was also not as difficult, but I just had this big bike tour in mind, and I just wanted to get to that so badly. And so yeah, I planned my gear list. I had done more research, bought some proper gear. And so the next summer after that first bike tour, that's the summer I biked from Edmonton down the West Coast. So Edmonton through the mountains to Victoria, ferried across to the States, and then just down the highway. That felt really good, because it's like all my pieces of gear. I knew what I needed. The first month was pretty solitary, kind of finding wherever you could put your tent. And I remember the first few weeks, I felt like you're not sure, always at the beginning of adventure, if it's the right thing you should be doing. When you do something big and unknown, it's kind of like, well, what am I doing? Why am I out here? Why am I not back at home doing normal stuff? But I've always found there's kind of like a point, and it's usually fairly early on, but there was always a point where that mentality just switches. And on that bigger trip, that point for me was about halfway through the mountains. I ran into some other cycle tourists, and they're like, hey, we set up at this municipal park right here. You should come join us. Here's some groceries we got. And so I sat down and talking with them. And there's this one guy, and he's kind of a shorter, slightly thicker guy. He's just got this small frame, 26-inch tire mountain bike. And he's got a trailer with this duct-taped tote with a bunch of cracks in it.

Garett:
[chuckles]

David:
And in talking with him, I find out his name's Steve. And we always talk about how much you bike tour. And he's like, oh, yeah, I've gone back and forth a couple of times. And I'm just doing the short one with my buddy from Calgary. And I've actually written a book on how to do it. Yeah, so it turns out I ran into this guy that had wrote the book on how to bike tour in Canada and who I had looked to and used his guide to go eastward.

Garett:
Wow, yeah, that's pretty cool.

David:
So yeah, as soon as that, I was like, OK, yeah, this is awesome. This is worth it. Even if the next two months are terrible, it's been worth it just for this to happen. But once you get to the coast, it's really easy sailing because it's a very popular cycling route. So you have almost kind of a network of people. Everyone's going north to south. And everyone's staying at the same state parks where you walk in, six bucks, hot showers. The state parks book out as soon as reservations open. But there's like a space just for your hiking bike people.

Garett:
Wow.

David:
So yeah, you just get to walk in and stay at these world class state parks on the coast and see people that maybe you saw them yesterday, maybe you haven't seen them for a week. There's like the guy on the recumbent bike who you always pass, but he's just slow and steady and he'll catch up at the end of the day. And yeah, so that was a really special time. And I still keep in contact with some of those people. Like, yeah, I was just able to fortunately visit with one couple I'd met on the coast just earlier this month.

Garett:
How long did it take you to get from Victoria down? Did you go all the way to San Diego?

David:
Yeah, to San Diego. I spent three months on that trip. I wasn't going a super fast pace 'cause I was also working on like a personal iOS app development project. I was trying to like build a interesting take on like a social media app. I was trying to build an app specifically for students that could kind of meet together in study groups, without like sending text messages. 'Cause I felt like text messaging, meeting people over text is kind of an uncomfortable thing to do and people who are in the same classes, maybe they have a spot at the table and just wanna sit down with somebody. So there's a lot of time I'd go to like a state park and you can stay max like three nights and I'd hole up there and then ride into town, go to the library and work on my app and carry on down the road.

Garett:
That's pretty cool.

David:
Yeah, it was very creatively liberating. I think like it was a really good balance of physical activity and just like thinking about an interesting project you're working on. 'Cause you'd have these big intense moments of lots of work and then you'd be able to spend the next like two days thinking about it as you biked down the highway. And I'm sure you guys can relate, but I find like when you're doing physical activity, you kind of, you just feel like you're able to process things a little bit better and things maybe stew a little bit faster.

Preston:
I would agree with that.

Garett:
Yeah, so would I.

Preston:
As long as you're not doing too much critical thinking while you're trying to work. If it's just like pushing the pedals on a bicycle or shoveling dirt, it's really easy to think a lot about things.

Garett:
Yeah, the thing I noticed most about doing a PhD is the downtime of doing hands-on labour work of some kind and thinking about problems isn't there because I'm just pushing pencils all day. And so it's always mental labour and it's kind of exhausting. Yeah. I know what you mean, David. The physical labour really lets you take time to think. And especially when it's something that you have just enough focus in doing, but not as Preston says, not so much that it's critical and pushes out any chance of complex thought.

David:
Yeah.

Garett:
So when you took this trip down the West Coast, had you graduated at that point?

David:
I hadn't graduated at that point. I think I still had, yeah, I had another year and a half after that. So not the most practical financial decisions. I'd kind of just use the leftover money from student loans and buy a bike with it. But I think it was foundational in helping myself build an identity in that transition to an adulthood and grow as a person and learn a lot more about myself and just finding that, you know, I really like the just chipping away kilometer by kilometer at a big problem and seeing the benefits that coming out of that. And yeah, not so much about the highs and the lows, but just like that nice steady level of effort is where I really like to spend my time.

Garett:
I've also found that this is something that's a difficult thing to learn, of doing, like, as they say, like Rome wasn't built in a day, like doing something big, but slowly and deliberately. I mean, I did it a lot in Grande Prairie when I worked construction. The superintendent says, do this, do that. It's like a little bit at a time and then suddenly after many months it's done. But it's a little different when you do it yourself and like you're managing how much time you're putting in and you're managing the kind of work that you're doing. Learning how to build something large a step at a time. It's a lot and it's really empowering.

David:
Yeah. It can be sometimes hard to see the bigger picture when you're kind of in the thick of it. But after all that time doing the project, doing the thing and finally seeing it come together is so rewarding and able to look back and see your journey is very rewarding. But yeah, so I got back, kind of leveraged more into that personal project. I don't think I ever really had aspirations to be the next Zuckerberg or whatever. I kind of just felt like I had a lot of ideas in my head that I just needed to get out there and experiment with. But I eventually launched my app towards the end of my university career and I got like, I think 13 users. Someone actually made a posting, a group in it. They didn't make it right, which is much more my fault as the designer than theirs. But that day was such a roller coaster.

Garett:
Yeah.

David:
After that kind of rush, I kind of realized that I was getting less interested in the problems of university students.

Garett:
[chuckles] Yeah.

Preston:
[chuckles]

David:
Which, I don't mean to dismiss those problems at all. But yeah, you just start kind of looking out into the bigger world as you finish your university career. And seeing all these things like the intense poverty that can be in a city started to really attract my attention. And just kind of the helping sector, the nonprofit sector, I found really interesting. And I only really learned about the nonprofit sector as like a possible career option pretty late into university through like a nonprofit internship board mentoring program. 'Cause yeah, none of my friends or family had ever worked in nonprofits. So it was pretty out of my radar. But yeah, that was kind of where I went right after university. I got a job with Boyle Street Community Services in Edmonton, which is kind of like, I want to say one of two organizations that if you're barred from there, like there's probably really nowhere in the city you're allowed to go. But it attracts people experiencing homelessness. And there's some people who are scared to even drive in front of the building. They'll refuse to do it. But I got a job there as a database administrator for basically the data system that they enter personal information and service delivery information in. 'Cause the transaction between Boyle Street and the government is, the government gives them money and then Boyle Street gives them data about what they're doing with that money.

Garett:
Right.

Preston:
Yeah. 'Cause you always have to account for where money goes if you get government money.

David:
Exactly, yeah.

Garett:
I mean, you should account for it in whichever money you get, but you know, government is very concerned about it.

David:
[chuckles]

Preston:
You don't have to do it personally, but it's a good idea. [chuckles]

David:
Yeah.

Garett:
Yeah, after I had sort of left Grande Prairie, I hadn't, David and I, you and I hadn't really crossed paths very much, but you ended up down in Utah when I was there as an undergraduate.

David:
Yeah.

Garett:
And you were in Salt Lake for a conference or some kind of training. And we met up and had a great chat.

David:
Yeah, Boyle Street was this really cool employer and I really liked their style and it was very much like, we're just gonna try things, you know, very low bureaucracy if you had an interesting project that you wanted to bring about. So I was starting to feel the travel bug again. And also kind of had the feeling of, okay, like this is what it is to be an adult. Like I did five years of school just to like have to go sit in an office for like 40 hours a week. And I think there's some kind of like internal struggle, you know, accepting that reality.

Garett:
[chuckles] Yeah, yeah.

David:
So I was like, the world is so big, there's still so much I wanna know. So I pitched to Boyle Street like, hey, will you let me work remotely and I can go to the States and I'll go to like 13 cities and visit like all their kind of like most impoverished areas and then I'll see the nonprofits that serve them and see what they do for data. 'Cause I feel like it's such a niche area that I just wanted to know what other people did with it. And somehow they said, yeah, that's a good idea. And here's even like a couple grand grant to help you along your way. So yeah, I plotted these 13 cities that I did in two months and did a bit of a write-up for each city. And one of those cities was Salt Lake City, which I was really interested to go check out because they had gotten some press around solving homelessness, which whenever you see a headline like that, you know, it's probably not true.

Preston:
[chuckles]

David:
They just are like, you know, doing a housing first model.

Garett:
Right.

David:
Yeah, I was curious to go see there and catch up with those nonprofits and get the vibe, I guess. And working with nonprofits in that way, I think is really nice because they're just like helping people. Like that's just their cause for living is helping people. So when I come and I have an interest in this, like I just would walk in and be like, hey, do you have a data person I can talk to? And they'd say, yeah, oh, here's Bob. Like, and then they just like talk to me for an hour. And I just, we just have a great conversation about what they did, you know, what we did in Canada. And yeah, I was able to learn a lot, see a lot of different styles.

Garett:
How did you find the nonprofits in those cities? That sounds like a hard task.

David:
Yeah, it was, actually I would just go on Google Maps and search like homeless services.

Garett:
Oh, okay.

David:
And I would kind of try and find like the Boyle Street-ish ones. So like not a shelter, but like still serving that population. If I was being good, I'd call and email ahead of time, but yeah, other times I would just kind of walk in and go to the front desk.

Garett:
Yeah. Do you have an appointment here, sir?

All:
[laugh]

Preston:
Like those who need would make appointments.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
Yeah, that's pretty amazing.

David:
Yeah, there's some really great organizations out there. I think one of the most impressed I was, was in Nashville and yeah, I just showed up at the front desk to this place called Room at the Inn. And a guy immediately kind of met up and we did a tour. And one thing I thought was really interesting was they had their staff clean the feet of their participants once a week at that time, which of course is religiously symbolic, but also just like a very powerful act of service from again, like to a population that I think a lot of people would be scared to go near, let alone touch and wash their feet.

Garett:
Yeah, that's really intense.

David:
Yeah, and even the CEO of that organization just like took some time to sat with me and gave me some pins that they had given to their Canadian hockey team with the Nashville Predators, like the hockey Canadian hockey players on that team. And they had some like specially made Canadian Room at the Inn pins made for them. And yeah, it was just a pretty special place. And that's one reason I really liked working with non-profits is yeah, it's just some of the highest quality character people you can find.

Garett:
I don't really have words for that. That's incredible. It would be really moving.

Preston:
Yeah.

Garett:
The people at Room at the Inn, a lot of them, or some of them I assume were volunteers as well.

David:
Yeah, sure. And they're always trying to like innovate on programming and they're actually like kind of right across the street from like Jack White's Third Man Records place. And they had like a relationship with them and they were like building a new housing develop on top of their building so they could better house people as they try and like battle addictions and get out of homelessness. Yeah, some really cool things. And I was able to kind of take all that and go back to Boyle Street and give a bit of a presentation to everybody and kind of share some of my learnings. And yeah, it was a good time. And I got to see, catch up with some old friends I haven't seen in a while. Yeah, I was really lucky that they went with that.

Preston:
Did you find that you gathered any information or ideas that really helped advance or revolutionize what you were doing at your own nonprofit?

David:
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think more generally some of my biggest learning was just kind of seeing the difference between like Canadian and American systems. And that Canadian has a lot more government funding whereas American is a lot more philanthropy based. So actually most times I would walk into a nonprofit and ask to talk to a data person, like if there, it could be like a fundraiser data person instead of like a programs data person like we would have in Canada. And yeah, that's just 'cause like, if you have people giving you money then you don't really need to bother yourself with getting government funding. And actually I kind of had a bit of a, I guess like, not identity crisis, but career crisis, crisis is a strong word. But I went to this one place outside of Austin, Texas that was like a tiny home village for people who'd been in poverty. They started as like just a meal delivery service and built community up and eventually got a plot of land and got tiny home companies to come build them tiny homes. And participants would come in, they'd get a house and they would kind of need to find a job. They would do, and they had all sorts of stuff there. They had like chickens, they had like a glass blowing place. Some people would do leather working, some patchwork. And I think that above all else has been the most effective programming I saw and just that like you could just feel the community there. And I would try to ask them like difficult questions, like, okay, is there an alcohol problem here? And the guy who was giving me a tour would just like flag down whoever was nearby. And he's like, Jimmy, is there an alcohol problem here? And he'd be like, yeah, not enough of it.

Garett and Preston:
[chuckle]

David:
But just like, yeah, just a super laid back, everyone had a purpose to be there. Everyone was super excited to be there. And it really just kind of made our, some of the normal housing shelter systems I've seen in Canada just look like a soulless machine in some ways. Like there's a lot of good work being done there, but there's a really big spectrum of what is actually gonna help people and what is just gonna put people in a house so they stop spending time on the street.

Preston:
Everybody needs to live for themselves, you might say.

Garett:
Yeah, having purpose.

Preston:
There's always something we can do personally, and having purpose.

David:
Yeah, yeah, purpose in a community, like without those two things, I think, yeah, life is pretty dreary.

30:00 - Finding Community

Garett:
Would you be okay to expand on that a little more, David? I feel like a feeling like you were an introvert and then going through this life experience and finding that actually being with people does actually energize you in your terms and like being a part of community. I don't know if you have any thoughts or feelings that maybe you want to share more about that.

David:
Yeah, I mean, I guess my identity with the community has gone through a lot of turbulence in my life. I think stopped going to church around 16 or 17, which was like, at that point, had been a huge part of my identity. As I'm sure, you know, you too can relate, like in Grande Prairie, there's not too many LDS people. So like when you are LDS, you really stick out. And at that, I'd kind of like reveled in it in some ways, I guess. Like, you know, often it's like the first thing you talk about when you're meeting someone new. Hey, this is who I am. And you know, the guy in gym class would just call you like Mormon and not like as a derogatory term that was just like, what he you call you. And you're just like, yeah, that's me.

Garett:
Yeah, yeah, some people just called me church.

David:
Yeah, you see, exactly. So kind of leaving that put me in some different ways, identity wise, I think that's kind of why I drifted not so well in the following years after that, 'cause I had built all my identity around something and then I left that behind. And so I, you know, really needed a new identity and a new community. And I think that's still something I'm working towards today. Like for a while, even after university, like the idea of committing to a place or a community was like very anxiety provoking. Like a year lease was just not something I wanted. I wanted to be able to just move if I felt like it. I wanted to be able to just, you know, if I started getting that travel bug, just go off to South America for three months and go do something there. And I think eventually while those travel experiences were great and you learn more about yourself, you really start to see the value in having that base and that community and those people you can really trust and just freely spend hours with. So up until like August, I'd been kind of flip-flopping on where I wanted to live, but I kind of just had to like put my foot down and be like, no, Edmonton, you know, I got really good friends there. I got lots of family there. Sure, I could move to Vancouver and be closer to the mountains, but like building that social network would just be like 10 years of work of putting myself out there and trying to build those connections to the point that I have them here. And those are just 10 years I could spend doing other stuff here.

Garett:
Yeah, thank you for sharing. Do you have a thought or question, Preston?

Preston:
I was just thinking, we were talking about identity. Like I personally, I often tell people when I meet clients or whoever I'm meeting, it's like, oh, I grew up in Grande Prairie County, like very rural area of the province. So for me personally, I still have some identity with the Peace Country or that area. But David, do you have any relation or identity for being from Grande Prairie area, like going to school there or anything?

David:
Yeah, that's something I think I felt differently over the years. Nowadays, I would be more on the liberal side and very concerned about the climate. And so kind of coming from, you know, the oil town and finding that a lot of like the privilege I experience in my current life is, you know, from oil money and being from, you know, one of the most conservative places in Canada. It was the kind of, I think kind of switching my identity, I switched, you know, far more to the left. And so I think in some ways it was a weird mix of, I don't know, I guess like change seems too strong, but like a mix of like, yeah, I made it out of there and a mix of like, oh, I've like kind of benefited off this, you know, potentially species ending thing. But I think in the years since I've kind of come, I guess, I don't know, you, you know, it's still home. And even though politically I might not agree with everyone there, like I think we have far more things in common than we have difference. So yeah, that's, it's kind of tricky, I guess.

Preston:
Yeah.

Garett:
Yeah, it is. It is really complicated. I think, yeah, understanding that life and feelings and our sort of sense of self is all just really complex and complicated that we're constantly figuring out. Yeah, it's a, it's difficult to even just like accept parts of ourselves for feelings of like regret or mistakes that we feel like we've made, but still accepting them as part of who we are, even if we don't share our mistakes with everyone. We recognize that what we understand and what we know is informed by the mistakes that we've made or the feelings of the past. And I mean, it's something that I grapple with. Even now, like just in a different but similar way, I'm still working on my PhD and I basically been going to school now for, I think it'll be 10 years, like basically 10 years straight coming in January. And I wanted to do a PhD when I was in high school. And so I'm sitting here now thinking about how like a 16 year old, 16 years ago told me that I should do a PhD. And now I'm like, I'm almost done, but what do I do now? Like, I'm not going to ask my 16 year old self what I want to do now. So, but it's sort of complicated. It's like all that I've done so far has been built up based on like what I've done. And yeah, it's just, it can be complicated.

David:
Yeah. I do want to say, I think there is like something powerful about spending time where you were raised and where you grew up and where's home. Like, you know, even when I visited Grande Prairie last year, like, yeah, there was a part of me that was like, huh, I just thought about like, you know, what would it be like buying a house here and living here? 'Cause, you know, I think it's wrong to just disparage somewhere just because, you know, you disagree with some of it. And if you're willing to put work in and enjoy the community around you, like, and that's kind of where your home is, I think that can be really fulfilling on a deep level.

Garett:
Thanks for sharing, David.

Preston:
We've had quite a deep philosophical discussion about finding oneself, which is a good thought. Everybody would have this sort of, not identity crisis, but like finding of oneself.

Garett:
Yeah.

Preston:
I don't think identity crisis is the right word. I just like discovering who you really are outside of where you grew up or your external, you know, external factors that were on you as a child. You know, we all find oneself.

David:
Yeah, do you guys feel like you've kind of, you know, I just turned 30, but I feel like now it's starting to like, you know, you're really starting to settle into it. You know, you're not in your 20s anymore. So like, do you two feel like you're kind of like almost working to like build those, I guess like, I wanna say pillars of support or pillars of identity in your life that just kind of like, you know, bring structure and stability to your existence?

Garett:
I do feel that that's something that I want to do, but it's hard coming towards the end of a PhD. And my wife, Jessica, is also in a PhD and just sort of the mentality of being a student, of being a university student, the environment sort of inflicts on you this feeling of a sense of temporariness. We both feel that we want this sort of permanence or like sort of stability and support, but it's also so uncertain, especially for PhDs, like when will it finish and sort of like, what will it be once it's done? But we do have stronger feelings about moving to places that can build more community. Toronto is very big, for Canada. And there are lots of people who have similar interests, but it's difficult to feel community when most of the people that you interact with don't feel a part of your community just because of how many different communities and how large it is. So yeah, I do feel the sense of it, but at the moment it's still so unsure about what it means or where it is. But being in Edmonton this past summer, it was great to have familiar feelings about, really actually one of them just being Northern Summers. I mean, it's not as far North as Grande Prairie, but it's great.

Preston:
A lot farther North than Toronto.

Garett:
Yeah, it is way farther North than Toronto. I mean, like Portland's farther North than Toronto, so. [chuckles]

Preston:
I find that like making pillars of identity, like part of it has been after high school, just wherever the wind blows. I got a local job in Grande Prairie and I worked there for like three years. That really helped set my career on path as I got in construction. And eventually in 2016, I got my journeyman certificate and then been living in Edmonton for some years now, been married, took a mortgage out on a home, been self-employed for almost two years. So like really putting down roots here in the city, one might say. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah.

Preston:
Getting married and buying a house are pretty long-term commitments. [chuckles] But like, I was thinking about those things, those choices I've made, David, in relation to like your bicycle journey. It's like, you really just take it one day at a time and you work on your relationship one day at a time, one week at a time. You work on the house, on the mortgage one day at a time. And it just slowly accumulates and builds up secular things, but also it builds up who you are as well as you're doing all those day-to-day things.

David:
Yeah, did you find those decisions to get a house and settle in place, did those come easy to you or was it kind of like, oh, I'm not so sure.

Preston:
Well, I've never made a decision like that quickly. I've wanted to be a homeowner for like a number of years, but then it's like, all right, you decide to be a homeowner and it's like, what do you buy? Where do you buy? How do you buy? When do you buy? All those things, and it's like, and that's just like any other major decision. You make the decision and you just have to commit to keeping that decision, which we do things like that all the time.

Garett:
Yeah.

Preston:
So I'd never made them lightly, but I must say it really wasn't difficult, I would say.

Garett:
For my wife and I, this has been, well, living where we are now in Toronto, but also just living in Toronto has been the longest we've lived in a place, and particularly the longest we've lived in the same apartment or home since we've moved out from home, like since we graduated high school, sort of, and left home. Either because like doing schoolwork or something else, maybe like you don't stay in the same house with the same roommates through your whole university experience or something, but so there's that in part, but also the PhDs take longer. And so part of the strangest of my experience has been that like a lot of things following high school have felt like they happened quickly, like, oh, I'm doing this now, and I'm doing this, or I'm moving here, or I'm going there, moving apartments, you know, getting home for the summer, just a bunch of different things happening. And then with doing my PhD, and the pandemic, and being in Toronto, which has had pretty extended lockdowns over the first 18 months or so, it was sort of like, even with everything feeling so slow, like in the outside world because of the pandemic, it felt like my progress felt slower. And it felt for the first time that like I was the slow one and the whole world just kept going. And that was a very strange experience to sort of be a year apart from like catching up with someone and they ask how things are going, and it's like actually the same, like I'm working on the same problem, like same problem at school, and I'm living in the same place and like doing the same things, and nothing for me has changed. And yet it feels like it's been so long. And it was, yeah, it's been something that's been harder to grapple with 'cause it's sort of like, in terms of building something like one day at a time, it's like I am working on things. Like it's not like I haven't done things, but PhDs can be really isolating because like who else literally in the whole world is working on the same problem as you? 'Cause if they are, then you can't both do a PhD on the same topic. That's not how PhDs work. So it's very, it can be very isolating. And part of my motivation for this podcast is to feel less isolated and have people to talk to about things and catch up with people about their lives. And also I think to have a project that has a faster turnaround time. [laughs] So I can finish, I feel like I'm finishing something on my way to actually finishing a PhD.

David:
Yeah, hit that publish button every couple of weeks.

Garett:
Yeah, it's much different than solving physics problems. It can go on for a long time.

David:
Yeah.

Garett:
But yeah, yeah, thanks for asking, David.

42:10 - Some Stories

Garett:
Yeah, so I guess as we come closer to the end of our time, David, do you have any fun memories or fun or interesting things with the typical Peace Region things like weather and driving or any funny memories you feel like you wanna share? Maybe we'll lighten the mood a little.

David:
[laughs] Yeah, yeah, I mean, I look back all the time. You know, we got to hang around together and all the sleepovers like we had either at your place or Alex's place and just mucking around in the backyard and jumping on the trampoline. I think those are among the best GP memories for sure.

Garett:
We'll have to talk to Alex, I think.

David:
[chuckles] Yeah, I mean, I think one kind of funny story that kind of came up recently was my Dad actually just bought winter tires for the first time in his life a couple of weeks ago.

Garett and Preston:
[laugh] Wow. [laugh]

David:
And like he'd kind of said a year before I told him like I got my winter tires on and he's like, "Oh yeah, I never get those." And there's like kind of a flash that was like, "Huh, my Dad doesn't need winter tires. "Like do I need winter tires? "Like have I been hosed?" And then I just kind of had like a mental replay of all the times like my car just like careened through a turn and ran into the curb and busted the axle. And like the time Catherine and I were driving out of Nitehawk and like ended up in the ditch and all these events. It's like, "Oh no, winter tires, that's the reason. "How many accidents could have been avoided?"

Garett:
[laughs] Did he comment on his winter tires? Like aside from just getting them for the first time or did he say it made a difference?

David:
I think he's, yeah, he's definitely noticed the difference. Yeah.

Garett:
[chuckles] Even today, it snowed here today.

Preston:
Oh my.

Garett:
And I commented as we were walking. It's like, "Oh, that person does not have winter tires." [chuckles]

David:
Yeah, oh yeah. I saw someone do a huge fishtail out of the parking lot today.

Garett:
Intentionally or unintentionally? [chuckles]

Preston:
[chuckles]

David:
No, yeah. This is in South Common and yeah, I think I've kind of noticed that like people become way more aggressive drivers like in and around a shopping center complex, you know? Like it's just like doggy dog out there.

Preston:
It's getting close to Christmas too, so yeah.

Garett:
Yeah. So David, I believe you were there. We were at Alex's house and we were goofing off staying up late to bounce on the trampoline and stuff. I think we had a ball that went over the fence. So, right, they lived in basically the middle of the street. So it was quick to hop over the fence and then get the ball back. Then it would be like run around all of the houses to get to the ball and then go back because they'd landed by sidewalk. So we hop over the fence and some people were walking by and they saw us and they saw that we were juveniles. They started shouting that we were like escaping or like getting out.

Preston:
Or rebels or something like that.

Garett:
Yeah, rebels or something like that, "Rebels, rebels!" I don't know if you were there that night, David.

David:
I'm not sure. I sometimes have a bad memory for specific events.

Garett:
That's understandable. Maybe we just felt, or maybe I felt too pierced by the thought that I was a rebel at the time. [chuckles] It just been embedded into my memory.

David:
Yeah, I'm kind of wondering now like why that stuck out to you so much. [chuckles] Like what? No, I'm a good boy.

Garett:
Yeah, it's like, don't tell anyone. We're just having fun. [chuckles]

David:
No, yeah, all those like, those youth activities were pretty great too. I think some highlights are like the manhunts. I forget, it had a name, but where they like dropped you off at Suicide Hill and you had to get back to the church.

Garett:
Without getting wet.

David:
Yeah.

Preston:
Getting marked with the water gun.

Garett:
Those were pretty fun. So we had to make it back some number of blocks from like point A to point B while other people were going around with water guns and water balloons, trying to mark you and get you wet.

David:
Yeah, and I remember I had gotten picked up earlier, like marked, lost, and Brother Bly was driving me around and there was someone out the window and I went to throw a water balloon out the window at them, but it hit the inside of the car and splashed all over Brother Bly driving.

All:
[laugh]

Garett:
Yeah, I don't think you can do those kinds of activities in Toronto. I think somebody else would.

Preston:
I don't think you do at all anymore. It's just such a liability. You know, I'd be like---

Garett:
Letting youth wander around it alone.

Preston:
There's adults that are responsible for these minors and they just let them go. You know, I mean like, that's a lawyer nightmare. [chuckles]

David:
Yeah, yeah, sneaking through the woods.

Preston:
Probably could get lost, kidnapped, injured, and you wouldn't even know it happened till later. It's like---

Garett:
Yeah, I do recall as well for an activity, we went to the hill, I guess the renamed, which once was Suicide Hill, and we went down the no sliding side. [chuckles]

Preston:
[chuckles] I remember this one.

Garett:
I broke my nose.

David:
I remember that night, yeah.

Garett:
It's just like, oh man. Yeah, I was out for the rest of the basketball season for good reason.

David:
Yeah.

Garett:
Yeah. Lots of blood, lots of blood that night.

David:
Yeah, and someone would like bring one of those giant inner tubes from like a tractor or something.

Garett:
I think we brought it.

Preston:
I think we brought it.

David:
Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. We played like King of the Hill on that tube while going down the hill.

Garett:
Yeah.

Preston:
Yeah, that was a great hill.

David:
Actually King of the Hill on that hill outside the church, that was a lot of fun.

Garett:
Yeah, I do recall those two. 'Cause it's not a very steep hill, not a very large hill, but you do some sort of hand-to-hand wrestling.

Preston:
And you're all bundled up in your snow gear, so it actually acts as armor and protection from getting hit. So like getting tackled in a snow suit really isn't that serious in the snow.

David:
Yeah.

Garett:
Especially when it's so dry and powdery, it's just poof.

David:
And I think another, yeah, just kind of occurred to me, another really cool thing about living that far north is the Northern Lights. 'Cause you know, in my travels and like, you know, telling people I'm from Canada and from the North, everyone's like, "Oh, have you seen the Northern Lights? Like, I wanna see them so bad. I'm gonna like fly up there just to see the Northern Lights." And you know, for us, it's just kind of been like a, every now and then you look up, you'd be like, "Oh yeah, those are going on right now, cool."

Garett:
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Like undeniably, it's really cool.

David:
Yeah.

Preston:
Yeah. I think there's a few astrological phenomenons. Northern Lights is one that you get up here, but also like, I think sun dogs are very fascinating, but you can only get it in, I wouldn't say extreme cold weather, but reasonably cold weather, right? Like most of the lower 48 states don't get that cold to have sun dogs. It would happen, but like, I always stop and look at it and be like, "Man, it's just beautiful to see the sun and then like the ring around the sun and then the two sun dogs equally on each side." It just looks very fascinating to me.

Garett:
I think sometimes you also get in the cold, like light pillars, really, like really intense light pillars. If you're out of town and you're looking into town, then the lights from town just like shoot straight into the sky because it reflects off the ice crystals as it goes up and it goes to your eyes.

David:
I didn't know that.

Garett:
Yeah, it's hard to see in town. You usually have to be in a dark place looking at the light stuff.

David:
Yeah, that does make sense though.

Garett:
I mean, I study like astrophysics now and when I was taking like beginning courses in astrophysics, it astonished me at first just the way that I would talk with people about these astrophysical phenomena and things that seemed really basic to me, people just didn't really have the same sort of grasp, mostly in terms of the interaction of the seasons with the way that the moon rises or the stars rise and all that sort of thing. And like where on the East or West horizon, the sun comes up or goes down depending on whether it's summer or winter. 'Cause in the North, right, that change is so extreme. I go far enough North and you go from the sun never setting to the sun never rising. But just to be even in a place like Grande Prairie where the difference between the longest summer day and the shortest winter day, the sun just sort of peeping over the horizon for a little bit and then going, as it's gonna do in a few days up there. But then also in the summer, seeing it basically come up in the North and then just spin around all day and then go down in the North again. Those things to me were just sort of obvious. Obviously the seasons do that, don't they? [chuckles] And then meeting people who were from places closer to the equator, it's like, oh no, actually the sun just does the same thing every day, year round, it's just always the same.

Preston:
Yeah, I met someone from Kenya and he's like, the difference between the two solstices was like 15 minutes or something of daylight difference. Like minimal. And I looked it up and at Grande Prairie during the equinoxes, the sun will move about seven minutes a day difference in daylight. So if you're driving to work---

Garett:
Like from each day?

Preston:
Yeah, because it moves the fastest during the equinox, right? And during the equinox days, it's like, if you're driving to work the same time every day, you'd notice it immediately from that week, you'd be like, wow, the sun's already 20, 30 minutes different this week. [laughs]

Garett:
Yeah.

David:
Yeah, I think another thing for me that was like, you just kind of grow up thinking it's normal and then once you kind of get out there you realize it's not normal, it's like, driving five hours to get to the next biggest or a bigger city. Like you just kind of like, yeah, that's the way if you wanna go somewhere else, you gotta drive a really long way, but then you kind of get out there and you're like, oh, if this was Europe, you could have driven through a couple of different countries and different cultures all in a span of a trip to Edmonton.

Garett:
Yeah. Have you found as well, David, meeting people and talking about things that you thought were also normal and then realized were actually just Canadian? For example, I had this experience today where I was talking about the cartoon show called "Little Bear" and then it was like, what are you talking about? I've never heard the show before. And I look up and like, oh, apparently "Little Bear" was produced by CBC and it's a Canadian show. It's like, oh, that happens to me often where I talk about some sort of Canadian music artists or Canadian film producer or some show or something. And it's distinctly Canadian and I didn't realize it. I don't know if you've had that experience very much.

David:
No, I don't think so. I feel like mostly I tried to consume as much. I guess, yeah, I think growing up, I was almost kind of like, I don't know the right word here, but not super interested in the Canadian identity.

Garett:
Yeah.

David:
Like kind of more just of the mind, like, oh, we're basically just like US light. Like all my favorite things are from the States. All our major news is from the States.

Garett:
Yeah.

David:
Yeah.

Garett:
Maybe it was the consequence of having just only two channels and having only CBC and CTV to find.

Preston:
[chuckles]

David:
Yeah. YTV had some good Can-con.

Garett:
Yeah, that's true. Anyway, thank you so much, David, for joining us. It's been great talking with you and great catching up with you. Thanks for your perspective and for taking the time to share with us some of your journey so far through life. It's been really great and really insightful.

Preston:
Yeah, it's been a pleasure, David. Appreciate you joining us on our show.

David:
Yeah, well, thanks so much for having me on and I hope we can reconnect in the future.

Garett:
And thank you to all of our listeners. If you would like to share your story with us or give us feedback, you can email us at lifenorthofthe54th@gmail.com. Or you can check us out at our new domain name, peacecountrylife.ca. We're really excited about that too. Well, David, we hope to see you around soon. Take care.

David:
Yeah, you as well. Thanks.

Garett:
Bye.

Preston:
Bye.

David:
Bye.

Ending Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff with drumbeat]