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Diaries of a Lodge Owner
In 2009, sheet metal mechanic, Steve Niedzwiecki, turned his passions into reality using steadfast belief in himself and his vision by investing everything in a once-obscure run-down Canadian fishing lodge.
After ten years, the now-former lodge owner and co-host of The Fish'n Canada Show is here to share stories of inspiration, relationships and the many struggles that turned his monumental gamble into one of the most legendary lodges in the country.
From anglers to entrepreneurs, athletes to conservationists; you never know who is going to stop by the lodge.
Diaries of a Lodge Owner
Episode 69: Shoulder Season Lodge and Cottage Safety
Shoulder seasons at lodges and cottages come with their own set of surprises, but the last thing you want is an unexpected injury. Ever thought a simple task like covering a boat could end with a shoulder injury? That's exactly what happened to Will, even with all his experience. We share our personal encounters with these overlooked dangers, stressing the importance of not underestimating tasks that seem trivial. When you're navigating the close of a cottage season or managing minor shutdowns, safety should never take a backseat. We promise you'll walk away with practical insights on how to safeguard yourself during these transitional periods.
Venturing into the world of lodge management and oil fields, the stakes only get higher. With a tight window for infrastructure improvements in spring and fall, mishaps can happen before you know it. Drawing on years in the industry, from the lax protocols of the late 90s to modern critical safety procedures like "nippling up" a blowout preventer stack, we share how we've learned to prioritize safety at every turn. Listen as we recount the challenges and evolving practices, hoping to leave you not just informed, but inspired to uphold safety as your top priority.
This episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner is brought to you by Nordic Point Lodge a luxury outdoor experience with five-star service.
Speaker 2:Through my career, as I aged and got a little gray, you know you realize how important safety is right when you have a guy die on the way to work, home from work, and you know he's got the family right.
Speaker 1:This week on the Outdoor Journal Radio Podcast Networks, diaries of a Lodge Owner Stories of the North. Folks on this show, will and I, discuss the importance of safety at lodges and its impact on everything. We also talk about why your odds of getting hurt increase dramatically in the shoulder seasons spring and fall and how all of these same safety principles apply to you at the cottage or camp apply to you at the cottage or camp. So if you're interested in hearing stories about how a couple of hardworking men have been learning about safety over the last 35 years while at the same time attending the school of hard knocks, this one's for you, and maybe some of these thoughts stick with you and help you stay safe and be prepared. Here's our conversation on safety. Hello and welcome folks. This is another episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner Stories of the North. And today, folks, we've got a episode and, and I'm really happy, will is here with us. Say hello, will.
Speaker 2:Hey folks, how are you today? Great to be talking to everybody again, Stephen, great to be talking to you as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah for sure, and it is the season for, you know, cottage shutdowns and shoulder season stuff. And one of the most important aspects of this that I haven't really talked about, that you can speak to a little bit, is you know the safety when it comes to these shoulder seasons. Because when I own the lodge and even now when I have my cottage, I really you know it's hard to kind of find people to come up and help close during the week or whatever, or weekend, and you know it's always easy to find people to come to the cottage in the summertime, but whenever you're closing you know what I mean it's a little bit of a different story.
Speaker 2:I never want to jump on board at that point, never.
Speaker 1:No, and I do a lot of it by myself, which I shouldn't, because I'm on an island by myself with the boat. You know there's a lot of stuff, but anyway, willie, enough about me. What happened? What happened to you?
Speaker 2:Oh, steve. So I guess this topic really came up because I was, uh, two days ago, I was uh, playing around in my yard wanting to tarp up some of the boats that we have sitting around, and I was just trying to be constructive. You know, know, do it myself for, you know, a quick one hour gig, right, yeah. And I grabbed the ladder and you know, I got a nice widespread ladder and, you know, grabbed some tarps off the wall and had a gantry stand already made up to hold the center of the tarp. So, folks, we put a we call it a gantry stand, but we put it in the middle of the boat as a vertical structure to hold your tarp elevated. Because if you just put your tarp over your boat, as some of you probably know, you know you get saggage from the snow or you get weight from ice, yeah, which then, you know, tears and rips your tarp and then it ends up draining into the bottom of your boat, right, all winter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a nightmare. Your boat just fills up with snow because of the weight of the snow, pushes your tarp down and then your tarp sags inside the boat and then it's a nightmare. So, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. So that's the port down the middle.
Speaker 2:Correct, correct. So I wanted to go and just put this one tarp on this one boat of ours and so I got up on the ladder and I had to gantry up in and out of the boat, up on the back side of the ladder through the or the back side of the the boat, through the tarp, over to one side, come around the other side, and there was a kind of a tree there so I put the ladder beside it so I thought it would have some little bit of stability. Yeah, and I went to lean right to push, to grab the tarp, to pull it, and apparently it didn't hold my almost 300 pounds of weight, steven wow, you're a solid man like I am definitely a fullback right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So anyways, I, uh, I shoulder first down into the stump and the ground.
Speaker 1:I ended up. I ended up Focusing all of that manliness right onto your shoulder.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely, because absolutely that's. That was a hundred percent. And you know what? I'm not, as you're going to hear tonight in these stories. I'm not that guy. I'm the safe guy, right, not that guy. I'm the safe guy, right, like I've always been the safe guy.
Speaker 1:so it's uh well even when you're the safe guy sometimes you know what you just get doing something and you think? Oh, it's just a little thing and yeah, you know you want to get it done and you've done stupid shit like that a thousand times before without any issue. But sometimes it happens and, uh, you took a wee tumble and focused that uh 300 pounds or so right on your shoulder correct, correct.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so I got a separation and I'm pretty sure I got some carriage. I'm waiting for an MRI here tomorrow. Actually, I'm sitting here right now with a sling wrapped around me just trying to support some of the weight here when I'm walking around.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, how's the pain.
Speaker 2:It's better today, now that I have some.
Speaker 1:Oh, they got you all hopped up on goofballs eh.
Speaker 2:No, I don't take pills. You know I'll take. Uh, I just I'm not that guy. You know, I'm more of a natural aspect ways kind of guy. Steve, I guess you would be too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, I like natural stuff, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's kind of the way I, the direction I take. But, um, in saying that, no, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm feeling a little bit better today. I'm probably a seven and a half instead of a screaming 10 like I was yesterday. It was, I tell you. It was just like my knees yesterday when I blew my knees out. Holy shit it was, it was painful, yeah.
Speaker 1:For sure. Yeah, yeah, that sucks.
Speaker 2:Don't do it, folks, don't do it.
Speaker 1:No, and, and you know what we? We were talking about that whole thing and and we thought that we would talk about the shoulder seasons, because and what I mean by that is spring and fall Because you know, from owning a lodge for 10 years and doing the majority of your work in those shoulder seasons and you know everything is, you're under pressure in those shoulder seasons because in the spring, it's a finite amount of time that you've got to open and if you want to do any infrastructure improvement, you got to jam it all in those times. And we thought we'd talk about safety and some of the stupid shit that we did in the past. Uh, you know so that people, uh, people can learn from, uh, from our, our own doings you know.
Speaker 1:So, um, now the other, the other aspect we could talk about. Our other area is, um, um, you in the oil fields, right, because I'm sure that there was lots of uh, lots of uh, safety protocol and everything else, and, um, I'm sure there was some pretty crazy times um that, uh, it may not have quite been followed right to the t, so so can you take us back to those days and let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. The oil field I saw two sides of it in my career. Yeah, I saw the side of it in the late 90s where, like I remember the first time, we nippled up. Okay, so nippling up means you have a BOP stack, so the blowout preventer stack Gets placed on a stump. Basically it's a welded bowl. We call it a bowl and a stump, yeah, and it's welded to the pipe that's on the surface, from your surface casing, from where we originally drilled the first layer of pipe in. Yeah, so you know, you might drill down 100 meters, put this pipe in the ground, Well, you weld this bowl to that and then you bolt this BOP to this unit. So I remember being down there nippling up. We called it for the first time.
Speaker 1:So that means we're nippling it down, Basically that nipple goes through the bowl and it's sensing pressure in your line. No Like in your well. No Like in your well.
Speaker 2:Nope. So it has different levels of security for the drilling rig. So it's your lifeline if you have a blowout downhole, whether it's rocks and mud coming out, or gas or fire, because usually gas turns to fire fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like a check valve?
Speaker 2:No, no. So there's three different ways to cut it. You have a way to.
Speaker 1:And we're talking about your well. Correct, okay, so the well casing is sticking out of the ground.
Speaker 2:Correct, and this BOP is nippled up on top.
Speaker 1:And that's welded.
Speaker 2:Correct. And then the drill pipe and it's attached to the drilling rig underneath the floor. So the pipe that you're running from the surface, like when you make a tool joint up on the floor. When you make a joint, you're running it through this thing in essence, right, like it's running right through the middle of it. Yeah, okay, make a joint. You're running it through this thing in essence, right, like it's running right through the middle of it, yeah, okay. So in the center you can. You can do three things you can close off your blinds and divert the, the, the gas or the, whatever the pressure may be, material, and then, or you can divert and and shear, so, which means there's an actual ram, a hydraulic ram that kicks in and it cuts your pipe okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then the air. The bag will close over top. It's called a bag. The bag will close over top, right, and it'll hold, you know, up to you know, I think it's like 60,000 kPa is what it'll hold. It depends on the size, right? That again it can go on a rated value Up and down sliding. Yeah so, yeah so. So that's your fail safe, so your drilling rig doesn't burn down Like the unfortunate incident that happened in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 2:That's what happened is the blowout preventer. One part of it failed. So when usually one part of it fails, you have the others for backup. Yeah Right, well, when that part failed, they actually had an integral cement job that went bad right before that that. So because of the cement, they weren't able to to to use their backup system because the cement had cracked on the well below. So basically it took their, it took their lifeline out of production. Yeah, right, so you have no way to fight the well, right? So the only way you can physically fight the well is with weight. Yeah, so, when you put fluid down the hole, fluid dynamics if you lift the volume, yeah right so you're pressurizing, and what kind of fluid would that be?
Speaker 2:so like we. Well, usually it's like it all depends.
Speaker 1:It can be water yeah, something that's obviously not flammable, which it can be.
Speaker 2:it can be a gel-based mud, yeah, it can be a polymer-based mud, it can be invert, so like, so like oil. Yeah, sometimes we'll drill with oil to keep the weight very close and then you'll just you add less chemicals to your imbalance when you have a sensitive, when you have a sensitive area, a production area, you're drilling into, right, yeah, there's several reasons for it. So back to the original story, folks. So we, I remember those days and I remember nippling that thing up, steve and my tool push, throwing wrenches at me, and that's no bullshit, I mean, I remember like-.
Speaker 2:And your tool push throwing wrenches at me and and that's no bullshit, I mean I remember my push is that uh, is that another work? Manager, oh, the big manager, yeah, yeah, because you weren't. You know, if you weren't fast enough, it wasn't, you know, get it, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna give you some more training and I'll give.
Speaker 2:I'll pull you off and I'll give you some more help until you're more experienced. It was you know you're making x amount of money today. I don't give a fuck what it takes. Learn now and learn fast, or I'm gonna throw this thing fucking harder. Yeah, and that's how it was, and it didn't run pipe wrenches at you it did exactly, yeah, but he was right to get a job done.
Speaker 5:We had to move right, so you learn to move, yeah and you learn to be efficient with your time.
Speaker 2:So, but the problem with that is that causes safety problems. Right, so let's get into that after, but so that's. I saw that end of it. And then I saw the end of it in like the last bit of my career. You know, like if I went on to a Shell or a Chevron Chevron was a big contractor I drove for or a location sorry, they, like you, had I had to have like 11 safety tickets to get into the location. And then I had to, like I have like for me to get on to one of those locations, I had to have my class one, my class three for my blowout preventer Uh-huh, a BOP one, my BOP two, which is the safety ticket for the preventer, my fall arrest. So, just like your fall arrest, like if you're a roofer, yeah, right, yeah, Working at heights.
Speaker 2:So you had to have a fall arrest. I had to be certified in high angle rescue, so a guy that could be able to go up on high iron like a bridge.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And be able to hang from my harness and rescue a guy I'm trained in to do that.
Speaker 1:So did you have to? When you trained, did they have like a bridge or something that you had to hook?
Speaker 2:to An oil field.
Speaker 1:Derek hey.
Speaker 2:They had an oil field. Derek cut in half An oil field, so they had an oil field.
Speaker 1:Derek cut in half An oil field, so you were up on the deck of the oil field. How high off the ground were you.
Speaker 2:In the simulated one or the fake one. It was like 35 feet. On a real one you'd be like 90.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 35 feet's still high enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, well, I mean like Do you have any fear of heights? No.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good.
Speaker 2:No, no, so they would do them in like Nisku or Leduc would be. A lot of you know that would be a main area outside of Edmonton where I would take mine. So they actually had an oil field like a drilling rig. I remember back in the day Precision Drilling had a drilling rig floor in the backyard of their training facility and a safety facility center where you did your courses internally for the company. And because some of these companies remember they're so big and they're producing so many hundreds of billions of dollars of oil a year, they have their own people that are trained in ETH or whatever the department is at the time that sanctions the safety course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they just have their own people.
Speaker 2:They have their own people internally to train it right, yeah, but, yeah, like it was pretty cool to be able to just go to your own place and sit down and sit in your drilling rig chair and have the remotes right there. You know, actually, when you were learning to pull slips, right, you could actually go in there and watch the young kids learning how to do it Right, yeah, instead of back in the day when it was like me, like you know, it was a little rougher way to learn, right?
Speaker 1:So wow, like I mean, there's something to be said for both ways. I know the old way definitely is not as safe, that's for sure it was. You know you go from the frying pan to the black floor and the hot blazing sun and you learn by fire. And you know, as a sheet metal mechanic, um, growing up in in that same timeframe, like I'm talking like, uh, mid to late nineties, um, and into the early two thousands, uh, I worked for um, I worked for a non-union shop, a couple of them and when it came to safety back then there wasn't a whole lot of it. You know there wasn't, we weren't union, there was nobody there watching us. You know you were breathing in shit that you didn't even know what the hell it was, and you know. So there is some good and there is also the negative aspect you know what, though, steve, it's.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I was gonna say. I learned, no, over time, that now I'm like, I say I'm a bit of a safety sam in that aspect, right, like you know, like at my lodge it's, it's yeah, at my home, you, I'm very much like that because I've seen, you know, I've had two guys die on my location.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 1:Was that the one? Tell us about those, because you near died on one. I did, yeah, well, and we talked about that. But what about these other two accidents?
Speaker 2:So one was a car accident on the way to the rig. Uh, bad, one rolled his truck, threw him out onto like off the side of the bridge kind of thing, yeah, but the truck came over, it crushed him so like it was a really bad, like bad looking scene physically when you got out and saw because he was crushed right yeah, wow, and like I mean, you would never think about the driving part of it, the driving part.
Speaker 2:Buddy is one of the worst in the the oil field for one but in the world people forget how you know I would. I don't know the statistics now and I should look it up what the amount of people that die on the way to work or home like?
Speaker 1:yeah, the statistic has to be insane because I know, while you're working, like I mean, we did a lot of driving when, when we were working as well, yeah, yeah so, and that's the same thing. That um, that um. We were talking with um rick, um um about the, the forced firefighting, and how driving for those, for the fire jumpers and stuff, is one of the biggest hazards.
Speaker 2:It is right and it's an underestimated thing, driving and it's also like here. I'll finish up this and then let's hop back to this though, because that's an important topic. So that was the first one. Sorry, that was the second one. My family was there for that one. My daughter found the wreck actually. So my daughter and my ex were coming up on that. Yeah, they were at and it was Christmas. They were at the drilling rig for Christmas and it was back.
Speaker 2:You know, like a lot of times, like you know, I wouldn't go home, for you know, weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, and if it came close to Christmas and an oil company wanted to run through, you didn't have a choice. Right Again, it's. You know, if you shut down, the next guy at $1,100 a day steps in, so you can take that chance. But if he steps in there, if he's better, there's always someone better, there's always someone more eager. Eventually, there's always someone that you're that's. You know, you're a little complacent after a while. Or they're cheaper. Yeah, this guy can come in and do the same job and he's only 900 a day, so I wouldn't risk that right.
Speaker 2:To me it was like feast or famine. It was like the gold rush in alaska in the 1800s. Right, it was like go, go, go, so. So my, my ex and my kids would come to the rig and I'd have Christmas there. I'd shut the rig down, we'd pull the pipe out of the hole up in the casing and sit there and circulate, so there was no hole damage. And my oilman would come down and my significant other at the time, my other, my other managers on location that lived with us there was, significant others were there, and then my boss at the time I was still young, so my boss's boss was out there and we'd all have christmas together. That's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was awesome, it was on the ring yeah, man, right in the shocks or right on the big floor. Yep, oh yeah, it's a big family, huge deal, right like it's. You know everyone respects the fact that you're away from your home and you know like in my field they pay you $140 a day to be away from your family.
Speaker 2:Wow $140 a day, plus they put you in a camp, plus they feed you, or they put you in a hotel or they. You know what I mean. So, um, but anyway, so what had happened was is, uh, they had left the location uh, my ex and my daughter and they found a vehicle and then, when they went down to inspect what was going on, they found the body. Yeah so, and then called me at the rig and we sent someone down there, right? So that was the first one or the second one, sorry, the first one was bad. The first one was a guy. He got his harness stuck and his lanyard stuck in the draw works and it drew him in like probably like three quarters was body, I wouldn't say his full body and what is the draw, works and it drew been like probably like three quarters was body, I wouldn't say his full body.
Speaker 2:What is the draw? Works so like okay. So you have a an oil field derrick and oil field it's uh, drilling rig. It's like if you think of the full drilling floor it's like a big crane. Yeah, it's vertical, not even. Some of them, a lot of them drill on 45 degree angles now a lot of them like there's digital sideways and drill it's not even like that anymore. But a standard drilling rig in the practice would be a vertical piece of steel which we call a derrick. Yeah, and then you, where were we going with that, stevie?
Speaker 1:Well, I was wondering about what pulled this fella in oh. Yeah, sorry, I'm a farmer. Yes, I was wondering about what pulled this fella in, oh yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2:So the draw? Yes, I was thinking about the block. So the draw, the blocks and the draw works. So the blocks is like a block and tackle. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, just like you know, or a chain block, a chain hoist, you know you'd have in a mechanic shop.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:But this one will hold 250,000 pounds Okay, you know what I mean or tons, whatever, Sorry pounds on them, which comes out to I can't remember the exact tonnage- yeah, doesn't matter. Lots, it's lots, but so that's connected to cables and the cables run up to a set of shims that are at the top of the derrick.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Okay, yep. So those shivs have a thick, thick cable around it, yep, and that cable comes down the backside of the derrick and goes into a drum and a spool, yep. That spool, okay, is called the draw works.
Speaker 1:Ah, so if you got caught in the spool, that's winding up the cable, that's lifting the derrick.
Speaker 2:Correct, so like it went around.
Speaker 1:And he got caught under the cabling.
Speaker 2:He got caught in the. His harness got caught when he walked by and it pulled him in. And it pulled him in I would him in, I would say about three quarters of the way, but he was like this this piece of equipment goes around, like you know. It was like eight times a half a second, so his body and his head had beaten off the steel, like he was dead before. He went halfway around, right, like yeah, so, but then, but the wraps, the cable was wrapping around his body in there. So it was a fucking mess. Right, it was a bloody mess.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, but we ended up having to cut him out with, uh, we couldn't leave him until the cops came. And when the cops came, they clear everything. Right, because it's an incident. No, hns, yeah, um, we ended up having to. We stayed through because the other crew was on shift by then. Yeah, and the people were starting to get angry. They were like, can you just deal with this, right, like we don't want this sitting here anymore. Yeah, we're done with the investigation. Part of the.
Speaker 1:So you couldn't do nothing with the body until the um, not until the police cleared it.
Speaker 2:So they cleared. They cleared the body out what they could once the police identified it as obviously an accident, which was immediate, and then the remainder was what OH&S was there for. And then that's when they were kind of told to beat it and we stayed over because the other crew, we didn't want them doing it, but we had to cut all the drilling cable out from the backside, like we didn't want to cut where his body was, but we cut from the backside so the cable would release and release the chunks of his body. Right, yeah, so anyways, yeah, that was a rough one yeah, no shit.
Speaker 1:Well, and like I mean you know you can like it's, it's the. The same thing on a farm, like I mean, I was, uh, the. The most dangerous piece of equipment on the farm is the power takeoff, which is the uh, which is the drive that drives all of your implements, and people get caught in that. And now that I understand what this fella got caught in, that's terrible. And like I mean, you always have to be very mindful, especially on job sites like that. I've not been on drill rigs but I've been in lots of factories and in job sites where there's all kinds of different equipment and machinery working and belts and pulleys and gears and all kinds of shit like that. We used to make guards to cover a lot of them, but you've got to be mindful of anything loose your clothing, your hair, like I mean there's, there's that's a big one, even at the lodge steve, I don't know, you know, like like relating this back folks to like your cottage.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, like your cabin and the lodge, like it's a big deal. You know you have to have your hair put away. Yeah, you're working with the lawnmower in different aspects when you're, you know, have the proper, don't be weed, whacking your grass and yeah, flip-flops, I you know how many times I've done that stupid shit. And then I take a tree, branch off the toe and go yeah, that's why, um yeah, that's why I don't do that yeah, right yeah, yeah, I, I totally get it like.
Speaker 1:I mean, and it's a lot of um, it's things that you wouldn't think about. And again, um, your your safety equipment, work boots, safety glasses. You know I was a terrible one um for working um when I was working with steel, you know, with an angle grinder and pick up the angle grinder, and you know you kind of get good at knowing where you can and where you can't put your eyes um to to keep the, the, the, the uh metal out of your eyes. But uh and and then you get lazy and complacent and you think oh.
Speaker 1:I just got to do this one edge. And then you pick up your grinder you don't have safety glasses on you do the one edge and inevitably, you know the the sanding disc catches a piece and it shatters up a little bit and shit flies and you got. You got shit in your eyes, like I mean they at almost 50 now. There's things that I remember I was told to do but we never did because you know it wasn't a union shop and it just wasn't really cool and it was a bit of a pain in the ass.
Speaker 1:But you know, protect your ears and this, like at the lodge at home, you know, whenever you're cutting grass, weed eating chainsaw, throw in either earmuffs or just earplugs. You know. And the earplugs, what a lot of people don't know, especially in a factory setting. You can actually hear people talking better in a loud factory when you put your earplugs in, because they seem to keep out all of that background noise, and then when you're talking to somebody you can actually hear voices better. And so you know, protect your ears, protect your eyes, it's, they're important pieces of equipment going forward.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, right, right. Yes folks, absolutely you got to. Yeah, I agree 100%, steve.
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Speaker 4:Tight lines everyone find ugly pike now on spotify, apple podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts yeah, wow, I didn't know that you had two fatalities on site.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, never when I was, when you were in charge.
Speaker 5:So that was when I was younger, yeah, correct.
Speaker 2:So that's where I was going with that. So as I grew into my career, right like I took man, I'm still trying to think of how many tickets it would take me to get on a location like that, like on a heavy location, Like we would have a car, like I would have to have a defensive driving course every year. A defensive driving course Correct.
Speaker 5:What does that mean?
Speaker 2:So there's a place where in Calgary, and they would send us to an off to a track and you would have an instructor, and it was a race track on ice, and you had a vehicle with semi studded tires, yeah, but you had two steering wheels and an e-brake and the instructor. So you would take a one-day out-of-class course on, you know, just bank-related safety. What are you doing around a guardrail with ice? How do you approach a corner coming into ice, do you? You know, do you?
Speaker 2:Because most of my wife is horrible for it, right, like she's a great driver, but she always accelerates into a corner and it coasts out. I'm like, no, no, you should always. You should always get your angle going into a corner, go slow into a corner. Once you're about three quarters, 60 to 70% through your corner, then you accelerate out of your corner. That's what a race car driver does out of your corner. Yeah, that's what a race car driver does. But if you're on ice, it's the same thing, because you don't want that traction. Your slide point is when you've got to stop, when you've got to brake, slow down. Your slide point's not your acceleration point. You can control that, right, yeah, you're uncontrolled when you're slowing down, yeah.
Speaker 1:So anyways, these kind of things and this is because up in the oil field, like you're in northern uh, northern um uh, saskatchewan, right or alberta no, I were ever yeah everywhere alberta, bc, saskatchewan.
Speaker 2:But they're like, yeah, like, exactly. So you're like I'll give you an example, I'll give you an example like grand prairie, so that's a big city, yep and uh, in Alberta, you know it's like five hours north. Edmonton, you're talking, that's 13 hours north there still, yeah, to the border of the northwest territories, yeah. So, like you know, you're up there.
Speaker 1:So all the road, a lot of the roads, are built on ice well I know when I was a holidaying Canmore they don't use salt or sand. I might as well have been driving on the Shelburne Arena.
Speaker 2:Well, they actually let it build up the snow and then, if they're going to use something, they'll use sand, they don't use salt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in Canmore they use nothing. I near slid through every intersection when I was driving. Yeah, I think I was the only one in town that didn't have spikes on my tires, right yeah.
Speaker 2:All them locals knew yeah for sure they were looking at your license plate from Ontario going Jesus, that Nitzwicky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I know Well, we had a rental and it was from Quebec. Oh Jesus, that Nitswiki. Yeah, yeah, I know Well, we had a rental and it was from Quebec.
Speaker 2:Oh God, that was probably even worse then. Well, I don't know, I don't know I got a lot of fish shaking at me yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, like All kinds of safety courses you'd need.
Speaker 2:All kinds man, I could go on so. So where I was going with that is like through my career, as I, as I aged and grew, you know, developed, you know, got a little little gray in the game. I uh, you know you realize how important safety is right when you yeah, when you have a guy die on the way to work, home from work, and you know he's got the family right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Even seeing guys get hurt, like Steve. I can't tell you how many times it has to be over 50 that I've seen guys crush their fingers and I mean, like I'm talking about a 4,000-pound like a collar pipe, put their hand in between it, or like a young kid on the rig is not showing something properly and I'll be down. You know, I'll come up on the floor and I'm just about to watch him hit the throttle and you know, if he kicks the throttle the wrong way, it'll send him flying across the floor like faster than you know and find my guys and give them shit. And you know what are you guys doing? This guy has to be showing property and you know I took pride in that.
Speaker 2:We'd have safety days and, like you know, I think at one point we got up to 1,200 and 1,200 and change safety days without an at-fault accident on our drone rig. Really, yeah, which is years. Yeah, you know what I mean. So that years yeah, you know what I mean. So that's cool. The boys would get every three months they'd get a, a bag or a belt buckle or uh, something from. This is the old days when companies actually gave a shit right. Yeah, um, you know they'd take care of their men right, and they did. Or they'd give everyone a gift certificate at christmas for their family for a safety day, right, or, yeah, turkey, or something, right, but um, but yeah, like times were.
Speaker 2:So I learned. I learned that I learned how to, how, to, you know, teach my people and and make sure my location location was always safe. So, thank goodness, I didn't have to deal with it later in my career. But there's lots out there, though, steve. I mean there's, there's, there's in the oil fields, the oil field, in our career, now in the lodges, you know it, it's just the same, it's just different. I know me and you just went through one. You know having to make up flyout lists, right. So we do a lot of flyouts and all of these. I'm sure a lot of the people listening do, and you know it's a big thing when you've got a couple guys in the backwoods with they're with nothing and no way to communicate with the world and they're dropped off of the plane, like I've done probably. I bet you I've done over a hundred of them now.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know, and and I've never had an incident, never had an issue I'm a pretty, you know, I'm pretty handy in the bush right, but like there's a lot of things that could happen and you know steve brought it to our attention earlier we were like, you know, we need to address this because you know he's a veteran and we're virgins and uh, and I knew that would make you laugh, oh, yeah so, uh, but yeah, like, so that advice was great and uh and it led to a whole conversation of well, right, and I'm, and I'm that guy, right, like that's, I'm that guy.
Speaker 2:So I was really glad for you to bring it up, because being a virgin in this industry, I'm not, I'm not, you know, to the, I'm not seasoned like that. So I appreciated that. So, but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things you know you could that could go wrong there at your camp.
Speaker 1:If you have a, you live on an island, your camp Stephen, yeah, yeah, Like I mean.
Speaker 2:What's your communication with your family? If there's a problem, do you have one right Like is there a?
Speaker 1:Well, like I mean on the island that I have now, my communication is. You know, there's a couple of spots on the island around where the cottage is, but not every spot that I can text and some places I can phone. Other than that, that's what you've got.
Speaker 2:You've got a first aid kit out there, I'm assuming. Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:You've got to be prepared, right, but the biggest danger that you really have to be mindful of, especially when you're alone, is falling.
Speaker 2:You know just like what off ladders?
Speaker 1:Absolutely off ladders, and you proved that one. You know like I mean the.
Speaker 2:Ladder one Will Filowski zero.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the thing right. If I get up there and I'm up on a ladder and I fall off the ladder and I'm immobilized on the side of the cottage, or you're climbing on the gazebo to clean off the roof, or you're climbing up the side of a tree to cut something down or tie a rope up or anything like that, it's falling and becoming immobilized and not being able to get any communication right. Or if you fall and knock yourself out, and the issue too is like I mean, a lot of this stuff is happening in the shoulder season, so in the fall and in the winter, in the spring, and you just have to really be mindful of doing things by yourself. And you know, I remember a time and it wasn't so much- by myself.
Speaker 2:You really shouldn't, Steve. You should. I mean you should. You should if it needs to be done, but if it's a planned thing where you can have somebody there to help you. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Honestly, it's not like back in the day, dude, I'm as tough as they come man in a lot of different ways in life and but I tell you I've learned and I just had another accident to refresh my memory that have somebody there, if it's my boy, you know my young guy just to hold the ladder, or you know, you got, you got mikey, hey mikey whoever, it is just somebody there.
Speaker 1:So if you hurt yourself and you can't look after yourself, somebody's there to go and get help correct like I mean, I remember at the lodge this would have been maybe my third year or so and it was um middle of summer and, uh, we had maybe it wasn't middle of summer, maybe it was going into the fall, but it doesn't matter the time um, we had a thunderstorm, um blow in that was. It was a ridiculous, probably in the top three for most powerful storms that I, I, I, uh I've seen up there in all of my time there. Like I had her in in one of the in the, the Georgia D, which was a 24 foot Lund boat and covered, and we were going this is a totally offside story, but I had her and her, her grandchildren, I was taking them out to the beach and we run into a storm and I really wanted to get them there. And I asked her I said do you want to go through the storm? I don't know, I don't think we're going to miss it. Like we're going to, I don't think we're going to miss it. And she said, oh well, let's try a little bit further and I said, okay.
Speaker 1:So we got to the point where I knew we weren't going to miss it and I looked over at her and I said ma'am, I think we're going to. We're not. This is a big storm, we probably should turn around. And she looked at me, prim and proper. She had her wee purse sitting on her on her lap and she was sitting in the the co-captain's chair. There was a captain's seat to the left and then the one with the steering wheel. She looked over at me, so prim and proper, and she looked at the storm and she said, yes, I think we might be. It might be wise to turn around at this point. And I said okay, so I started to crank it and then, you know, you get that gust of wind and it it blew a little bit and, and she looked over at me, she said and and calm, and and collected. She said, steve, you know what we call this back home. And I said no, she looked at me and she said this storm is a fucking doozy.
Speaker 5:A fucking doozy.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah and I started to laugh. But it was a hell of a storm, like I mean, we didn't drive into it, we kind of kept it. It pushed us all the way back to the lodge, but that was a big one. But this one storm in particular, um, that I'm talking about, it was a doozy like it was a straight into the dock, which is a totally it's a rare wind and all the cedar strips. We had them parked with the bow in and the stern facing out. So like I mean rarely, like probably three or four times in a decade, you get a wind that brings in, that picks up waves across the river at that point that are big enough that will go over the backs of the boats and then you know, they sink.
Speaker 1:So at about 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning, when this storm is blowing in, I decide, oh my God, I've got to spin all of these boats around. So I run down and I am in the middle of a freaking monsoon Sperry uh dock, uh, like the the um yacht shoes on, because I, I, I made all the guys um, buy those Sperry's cause they're good, like I mean, they're light, they're, they look, uh, they look good and and they uh, they're, they're meant for boats and grip. Anyway, I uh, I got all these Cedars turned around and there was one cedar that was on the main pier, the T dock and pier, and it's a big dock like it would be probably 12 feet wide, that's the width, and then I don't know, 30, 40 feet long. But I got out there and on the bow of the cedar strips there and on the bow of the cedar strips they're, they're kind of it's almost like it's covered, they're, they're covered and it's cedar and you know they, you varnish them, so it's a highly varnished wood.
Speaker 1:Well, in a monsoon, for whatever reason, I, I, I jumped on to the bow like the top of this boat and I was going to get into it to spin it around and I slipped and I come down on, I slipped right off the top of the hood of this cedar strip and I landed on the main dock but from the middle of my back down to my feet was on the dock and from the middle of my back to the top of my head was off of the edge and into the lake. My back to the top of my head was off of the edge and into the lake and I near, like I mean I could have broke my back. I you know I didn't, obviously, but I managed to not fall in, but I was very close to actually going over. But I thought to myself at that point like I mean it is just not worth doing stupid shit like this and I never thought of it being stupid.
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to fix, get the boat so that they're not, yeah, you're just trying to power through and just do it, to do it, and I didn't want to wake anybody up, but you know what, if I had have fallen just a little bit different, caught my head on a cleat on the side of that dock and rolled into the river I would have drowned I would have sunk to the bottom of the river and they would have.
Speaker 1:That did take them a month to find me. Yeah, you know, and um and and stuff like that happens and and. After that, uh, I went back to the drawing board and I had constantly an employee handbook and every time I had a situation I would call it a situation, I would analyze the situation, figure out how to prevent the situation and then I'd write about the situation and the protocol to avoid it in the employee handbook and that got a little mention as far as the employee handbook goes, and that was a crazy event, um, event, like I mean, that was one of those eye openers and that's one for sure and and the other thing is you're full of adrenaline, like I mean.
Speaker 1:It was a. It was a good storm man, like lightning like I've rarely seen, and thunder, oh my god, like an earthquake thunder. It was a good one, it was a really good one, you know oh, me too but, and then you know what there was.
Speaker 1:There was another time, um, this was a spring uh situation and it was with my buddy, scotty hamp, and uh, scotty um, he and and folks, if you've got a water access cottage or uh lodge, lodge or whatever, this is a story for you and to keep in the back of your mind if you ever get in this situation. But it would have been, oh, towards the end of my tenure, probably the second last year that I had it around 2017, 2018. Anyway, the spring was late, like winter was late, and the ice, because it's important for me, because my only window, like I said earlier in the podcast, to open the lodge and to do kind of any infrastructure improvement before the season, all of that stuff is finite. And not only is it finite, it's dependent on Mother Nature, because if Mother Nature decides to keep things cool and keep the ice in, decides to keep things cool and keep the ice in till May 9th, which on that year and that's the latest that I've ever like in my tenure there that was the latest Because we open on like the 15th.
Speaker 1:You know, we went out and we went up. One weekend it was frozen solid. The next weekend we went up and we were pretty sure we could get out because the Doakies Bay opened up and I brought my two girls, maddie and Violet, and Scotty brought his wee girl and his son, I think, timmy and Rebecca. So we had, and the kids were only maybe, I don't know, maddie was Maddie's the oldest, she might've been eight or nine, eight, maybe maybe seven, I don't know, they were young. And Timmy boy, he would only been maybe four. We strap on these life jackets and kids are all life jacketed up.
Speaker 1:We drive out of the Doquese Marina and out to Doquese Bay and hang a left in the main body of the river and where my island, the cottage island, is right now there's a channel that you go in behind to get to Chaudiere, while there was a sheet of ice there that there was no getting by and we had just driven, you know, four hours and it's like five o'clock in the afternoon, so we still got three, four hours of light, but I'm not going to turn around and go back home, right? So anyway, there was another way to get around. So we went. Basically we went out the river and then around the backside of the island but we got into ice and the way the ice breaks up, you know, depending on where current goes. And there was a wee channel that we kind of followed through the ice and we're doing pretty good, and then all of a sudden we look kind of behind us and the the the shift right, so we weren't going back.
Speaker 1:No, like we got to go and um, yeah, you're committed. Once you're committed, you're committed. Oh, yeah, we're, we're, we're committed. And, um, it took us like what would normally take us about 15 minutes to drive. It took us probably three hours to pick our way through this ice and a lot of the spots. I'd have to drive the Alaskan right up onto the ice and then all of us would go to the front of the Alaskan and jump on the bow to get the ice to break from underneath us. And then, you know, we got lucky. With the last stretch.
Speaker 1:The ice was really honeycombed and that's a pretty cool stage of melting that I don't ever hope to see that close again, hope to see that close again. But the ice was probably, I'm going to say, four inches thick at that spot. But just the way that it melted, it melted so that there was like holes through the ice, like tubes, almost Like little craters. Well, yeah, but straight through the ice, Like if you picked up a piece of honeycomb and looked through it. This is what the ice looked like and it just shattered Like with the boat. It was almost like there wasn't any resistance in the ice at all, but you could hear the ice was just shattering in front of us and that was very cool.
Speaker 1:But I'll tell you what. There were a few times where I thought, okay, well, we're going to have to, uh, and we had, uh, all of the all of our, um, um, warm gear and everything else and food in the boat. And you know, worst come to worst, we would have had to go, try and get to a shoreline somewhere and then get off and, you know, spend the night on an island somewhere. But we, we finally made it and, um, there was a couple of times I was worried we were going to spend the night. I said, holy shit, scotty, I think we might be spending the night.
Speaker 1:But, uh, we got over there. But again, you got to watch, it's those ice, uh, the ice place over there. But again, you gotta watch, it's those ice, uh, the ice place. We got stuck at the lodge, uh, uh, for for two days, one year, because, uh, we pulled into the lodge, everything was fine. There was a big sheet of ice floating around out in the middle of the river and you know, 20 minutes later we looked out and that whole sheet kind of slid right over to the main dock and locked us in, and and then decided not to move for a day.
Speaker 2:So, but, um, you know you see that, you see that lots up here. That's, that's a common, that's a real common. Myself I don't. When I was younger I'd play with that stuff, but I don't do it anymore. I just I'm not that hardcore anymore yeah yeah, I'll just wait the extra like four days. Five days, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:That one year though, man to try, and I always opened on time, and I always closed on Thanksgiving, Canadian Thanksgiving and that's just the way that I did it. Whether there were people there or not, I always closed on time and opened on time. So it was one of those things where I was pushing it because Mother Nature wasn't being kind and it all worked out. But you know, when you get yourself in those situations, you see how things may go a little sideways.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean you know what man, it gives you a fine respect for mother earth very fast. Oh yeah, so that kind of stuff like, oh man, like. So that probably brings us to our next topic here, before we get to the end. Here, you know, is is winter's coming right, like these shoulder seasons are one thing, but, like you know, when you I don't know if anybody's here like, there's been a lot of people, I'm sure, that are listening to this podcast that have gone in a creek or a river, you know whatever, to a minor extent, yeah, but when you go into a body of water, into your shoulders that's frozen, it sucks every time. It never gets better. Like it's not an ice bath in your buddy's garage down the road. It ain't that right, because you know that you have 15 pounds of clothing that's going to turn to 60 pounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see that's the thing, it's the clothing, right.
Speaker 2:And the issue of even if it's minus five. Right, like I told you that story when we flipped our boat right, like you heard that on my podcast with Tim. Right, when my best friend drowned. Right, like you heard that on my podcast with Tim right, when I, you know my best friend drowned. Right, yeah, you know he's. You know his mom and dad, jerry and Linda Smith. God bless them. They still live in Coburg, 1029 Fry Street. Yeah, you know they're that day. You know, like it was only a couple degrees above zero. Yeah, you know it wasn't freezing, but it was fucking freezing. When you're in that water and that wind and the temperature, it's a different story, right, and so be remindful of that, guys, this winter when you're coming into this, freeze up.
Speaker 2:You know guys like to get out early. I know our buddy, jamie bruce. You know he's coming on the podcast right away here. You guys need to hear from him. He's. He's down fishing some bass nation stuff, but, uh, he's coming on the podcast right away here. You guys need to hear from him. He's down fishing some bass nation stuff, but he's a good friend of ours, of the show and of Nordic and and but he is man, two and a half inches ice, he'll be out there really 100% like he'll spot his way out.
Speaker 2:You know you get your spot bar and he'll spot, spot, spot and he's. You know he's a six foot seven dude, you know big man, but like no, I couldn't do that myself, but I mean well like I don't any, I don't anymore. But the people that do, everyone be careful out there right. Make sure you have something close, make sure you have your ice picks. This time of the year, you know the early season can be some of the best fishing, but you got to be careful out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, ice picks and all of the gear, yeah. And then if you get in a situation, sometimes you know the one technique that I've heard somebody say if you fall through the ice and you don't have picks or anything and you're trying to get out is flop your arms right up on the ice and hold them there and if it's cold enough, they'll freeze to the top of the ice and you can pull yourself in that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's in that way yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, hey, I honestly truly hope that nobody out there listening ever has to try and employ that to get themselves safely out of the water. But if it ever does happen and that little pointer helped out, that's great too.
Speaker 2:You know what? One more, steve. Let me throw this one in, because I don't know if you might not know this one either, but this is one I learned in a defensive driving course.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Is. So when you're in your vehicle and this one doesn't pertain to this is going to your cabin or going to the lodge or just going up north to go for a fish or go for a walk in the woods with your, with your wife and your dog, be careful when you're around water driving. You know that's a that's a hazard too. That's forgotten lots. You know I'm constantly giving Krista grief about, you know, her corners when she's driving near water, because water is a different game in a vehicle, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:So I've actually been in a simulator in Nova Scotia where the simulator is to get out of a helicopter, okay, when it's crashed into the ocean, really. So subsea, yeah, subsea, upper training. So if you're because it's a difference, the pressure thing makes the whole thing different, right? So where I'm relating this is to so I took this training, I've taken it and in saying that, they've trained us to know that the best point of exit always and only is going to be an exit with an airlock, right? So like, where is the air going to be locked to last, if your car goes in the lake? Your car is designed to float and to bob. Your car is designed to float right and to bob. Your engine is the heaviest part, yeah, and your air is in the back yeah, in majority of them, correct?
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So majority of them are going to tip up or tip on like a 60, 70 degree angle and bob.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with the trunk in the air.
Speaker 2:Correct? Yeah, and most people. The initial reaction is to try and open your door. You ain't never going to open your door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with the pressure of the water.
Speaker 2:The pressure of the water. It's not just the water weight that you're forcing, okay, if you look at it in a velocity aspect, it's not that, it's also the hydrostatic pressure that's in the actual doorframe now, because you have pressure from the inside, pressure from the outside, and you have airlocks in that door Right. So, like, which is hydrostatic, which is basically downhole pressure on a drilling rig, which is hydrostatic pressure, right? That's what we would call it. So the last thing you should never open your door because you're wasting your time. You will spend all your time and resources doing that.
Speaker 1:And you don't have much time. In that situation, you need to make smart and very quick decisions.
Speaker 2:And that's why I'm telling you this Exactly right. So the door is your instant reaction. Don't do that Usually. Second, it's the front windshield or the side windshields or the side windows? Yeah, that also. Unless you have, they make these picks now, those tool picks. We used to carry them in our boots if you had to, to punch the window out quick. Right Now it's going to make a horrible sound like 12 shotguns going off in your head yeah and now you have jagged glass to deal with while the water's rushing in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a different story and people people don't think about that quick correct.
Speaker 2:It's going to sink quick, so. So that's usually that's the secondary aspect people go for. That's a no-no too. The best and real only exit point for you quickly to get out of your vehicle when you go into the water is through the back window, right? So when you're bobbing, you undo your seatbelt, one at a time, into the back seat, you punch the window out. Whether it be with your feet, you can just lay back and kick it right, they're designed to come out. So once you kick those windows out, it'll come out.
Speaker 2:If you have a spud in your hand, like I was saying, you spud it out. Wrap something around your hand to pull the rest of the glass off or punch it out if you need to. But that's the part of the vehicle that's going to go down last and while it's out of the water. So it's still maintaining the buoyancy, correct, correct? So when scott's, that's absolutely it. So then you can safely climb out of the vehicle um, hopefully and then stay at least out of the top of the water while it goes down. So that's just what I wanted to throw in there. That's something I've learned over the years. I wanted to make sure everyone heard that, because that saves someone's life.
Speaker 1:And on the movies and on all this bullshit and stuff, you see them beat out the driver's side window or try and open the door, or you know, and this makes sense obviously. So now, when you did this chopper course in the simulator, did you actually get in the water? Oh yeah, you went into the cab of this helicopter and they submerged you into water. Yep.
Speaker 2:Because they want you to understand the feeling of what it's like when you're filling.
Speaker 1:And what was the feeling?
Speaker 2:Because it's a mental aspect right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and was it the same thing? Was it bobbing and you had to go to the um, the, the back, or how? How did you get out of the helicopter?
Speaker 2:so that we went to the rear. There's there's two bubbles in the rear, yeah, uh, in this chopper. So that's where you would go, gotcha and out there. So same principle same principle yeah, so, but that's how they explained it. In theory would be of a car that way, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, that's pretty awesome and some tips that hopefully well, not hopefully, but little things that may save your life in the future. I know that I'll take that one to the bank and bury it in the vault at some point.
Speaker 2:I think we should do one of these a season. I really do. I think it's a big thing that I could talk safety for five hours on this podcast right now tonight and tell stories. I think it's something that every season we should probably do, Steve.
Speaker 2:If you guys think we should. Why don't you get on email and shoot Steve an email at steveatfishingcanadacom or will at nordicpointlodgecom and tell us what you think about doing these? Give us your input, guys, and give us your comments If anyone's got stories they want to share. We've got lots of people lined up here and in the bank that we want to share, but we also want to hear from our people Like what do you guys have? Tell us some stories, let's get some guests on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, for sure, Perfect. And listen, folks also go over to fishingcanadacom and get in on the action there. There's always awesome giveaways. You can subscribe right to the website and the giveaway portion so you don't ever miss any of them. Garmin is always on there. There's wonderful things, so head on over there and check it out. And you know, the other thing I'm excited about too is the new Fish and Canada season's coming up here just the other side of Christmas and, and you can see all of this past season on on the website. So go check that stuff out. And if anybody is out there and looking for a wonderful place to advertise, will and I are working on a great sales deck Reach out to us and talk to Willie.
Speaker 1:He's the man and listen folks. Thank you again for listening and getting to this point of the show, and I'm really looking forward to our next show and our next guest. Willie alluded to who it was, but you got to tune in for that, so thank you. You got to tune in for that, so thank you. And thus brings us to the conclusion of another episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner. Stories of the North. I'm a good old boy, never meanin' no harm. I'll be the only one you ever saw been railining in the hog Since the day I was born, bending my rock, stretching my line.
Speaker 2:Someday I might own a lodge, and that'd be fine. I'll be making my way, the only way.
Speaker 5:I know how, working hard and sharing the north With all of my pals.
Speaker 1:Boy, I'm a good old boy.
Speaker 5:I bought a lodge and lived my dream, and now I'm here talking about how life can be as good as it seems, yeah.
Speaker 5:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm, now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 4:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes, All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing To scientists.
Speaker 4:But now that we're reforesting and letting things breathe. It's the perfect transmission environment for life.
Speaker 3:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 5:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.