Episode 3.1: Turtle Island, Interrupted (REDUX): Director Champlain's Cut

Episode 3.1 – Turtle Island, Interrupted (Redux): Director Champlain’s Cut
🔥 The Dawn of Modern Canada

Before there was Canada, there was Turtle Island — a name, a memory, a map of stories passed from one generation to the next. But what happens when those stories are interrupted?

In this cinematic redux of Episode 3.1, host Jamie Jackson pulls back the curtain on the director’s cut of Canada’s founding — with no colonial filter. From the origin stories of Sky Woman and the Haudenosaunee to Samuel de Champlain’s dream of something more than empire, we voyage deep into the human spirit behind our nation’s founding myths.

This isn’t just history. It’s a confrontation. A reckoning. 

A remix.

From Adam Shoalts’ wild solitude—including passages from his brand new book, Where the Falcon Flies: A 3,400 Kilometre Journey from my Doorstep to the Arctic, to daredevils launching off Niagara Falls — this episode explores what drives explorers, rebels, and revolutionaries to risk everything for something unseen. Featuring reflections on Thomas King’s The Back of the Turtle, the erasure of Indigenous languages, and the tension between old world ambition and new world connection, this is an episode that doesn’t just teach — it challenges.

If Episode 1 was the spark, and Episode 2 was the tinder, this is the moment the fire catches. Grab a log, and have a seat. 

You'll be happy you did.

🚨 Listener Prompt:
When was the last time you believed in something so much… you were willing to leap into the unknown?

Keywords: Indigenous Ways of Knowing; Colonialism; Immersive; History; Continuity and Change; Challenge; Popular History; Culture; Community; Leadership; Martin Luther King Jr.; Reality TV; Hybrid Reality Theory (Jackson, 2025).

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey, welcome back to Canadian Grit, North of Ordinary. I'm your host, Jamie Jackson. Let's just say that I am pumped you've joined me today. It means so much that you like what we're building here together. I want to shout out the City of Toronto for tuning in. I've already got just north of 250 downloads from the six already. Thank you. I'm flattered and I'm committed to creating even more content and more podcast episodes and I'm so very humbled and grateful. You're confirming what I already knew from experiences and in my heart. Canadians and people do care and we are hardworking. We are dedicated and ready to get down to building our community in the present moment. You're the best, and I am blessed. Let's get at it. Last time on Canadian Grit North of Ordinary, we traced the footsteps of those who came before Champlain. Explorers who dreamed, mapped, and imagined, but never stayed. We explored the first maps, not just ink on hide or parchment, but the stories and songs of those who walked before us. We ended with a question. What does it mean to truly begin something? And within the context of this episode, a bridge episode where we're introducing someone who tried to answer that question, I'm going to double down and ask you, what does it mean to truly build something new or unique? or something lasting. When we study history like this, I mean, external to us and as we jump through time, I think we're lulled into a passivity of believing that history only happened to people of the past. And actually, when we look through our own stories and lived experiences, that we will find answers to our own questions in the present moment. We don't give ourselves enough credit, you, me, However long you've been here, while you are the exact sum and final result of every decision or every thought you've ever had, every opportunity or missed opportunity, for better or for worse, it makes you exactly who you are here, now, with me, in this present moment. And that's pretty darn special. Where in your life have you succeeded before? When have you started new or headed out on what was ultimately a quest that turned out harder or even more fruitful than you had initially thought would occur? Do you think that you could access that same level of confidence again and to lean on your own experience to better live in this present moment? Collectively, that's what we're doing. And we're playing with the ideas of individuality versus collectivity. And when we're here at Canadian Grit, we're talking about our history, which is some or conglomeration of every single person's actions in the past that led here. And that we and how we act is going to have an impact on the future. And that we will be studied one day for how we are living and how we think. What were the boxes of our time? And when we look through history, what are the catalysts or sparks of change? And I mean real change. The stuff we talk about with the Renaissance. Periods of vast learning or uncovering of the histories of the past that moved the world forward from things that are called the Dark Ages. Well, we're in that period right now. So strap in because today we're talking about daredevils.

UNKNOWN: 3:49

Roger, zero.

SPEAKER_00: 3:49

And we're taking a little time aside before we head to France in our following episode to meet Samuel de Champlain, Samuel de Champlain. And we're going to discuss how Samuel de Champlain didn't just arrive. He remained, and what he created was the very foundation of modern Canada. Last time on Canadian Grit, North of Ordinary, we traced the footsteps of those who came before Champlain. explorers who dreamed, mapped, and imagined, but never stayed. We explored the first maps, not just ink on hide or parchment, but the stories and songs of those who walked before us. We ended with a question. What does it mean to truly begin something? Today, we meet a man who tried to answer that. Samuel de Champlain, or as I'll call him now, Champlain, he didn't just arrive. He settled, he remained. He imagined a colony where others saw only cold forests and failure. He charted not just rivers and coastlines, but the human terrain, alliances, trust, and pain. As you may or may not already be aware, Dr. Adam Schultz is a local explorer who has been dubbed Canada's Indiana Jones by the Toronto Star. And very recently, he had a new book come out, and it's called Where the Falcon Flies, a 3,400-kilometer odyssey from my doorstep to the Arctic. It's published by Allen Lane, which is an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Mr. Schultz is also the author of a number of other amazing books, if you haven't heard. Alone Against the North, A History of Canada in Ten Maps, Beyond the Trees, The Whisper on the Night Wind, and now Where the Falcon Flies. the following is a direct excerpt from mr schultz's new book where the falcon flies on page 134. um i will present to you uh various paragraphs that demonstrate his own experiences and how he blends nature together uh with history and his own amazing voyages while also bringing in and explaining to you how his stories have also influenced mine uh in this layered depth that he creates much like the rivers and lakes and oceans that he paddles page 134 may 18th dawned very cold but the wind had slackened and there wasn't any rain I crawled outside my tent at 4.30 a.m. into the frosty air and began packing. As the bird flies, the great city of Montreal was only 20 kilometers away, but to reach it, I'd have to paddle 35. The reason for this was twofold. First, I had to avoid the busy commercial shipping lanes where the big freighters roared along the southeastern shore. which would mean having to take the long way around the opposite side. Second, before I'd even finished packing, the wind had already begun rising. At more than 10 kilometers wide, Lac Saint-Louis is one of the widest points of the Upper St. Lawrence, meaning there was no way to cut straight across in a canoe, at least not safely. From my campsite at Pointe des Cascades, I crossed first to Perrault Island, It sits right at the mouth of where the Ottawa River joins the St. Lawrence and is a mix of farms, forests, and suburban communities. As I was paddling around this large island, paddling what had turned into stiff headwinds, I admired several grand old churches as well as traditional New France-style houses with steep, gabled roofs. To a traveler, it's not hard to appreciate how in Quebec, even the houses often have a unique style that reflects the province's rich heritage. Toward the eastern end of Perot Island, curiosity induced me to land on shore to inspect an ancient stone windmill overlooking the water. It turned out that it was over three centuries old, built in 1707 to 1708. Near it stood a similarly aged stone farmhouse amid woods that made it easy to imagine stepping back in time. Montreal is itself an island in the St. Lawrence River, and one with a rich history. After the French explorer Jacques Cartier crossed the Atlantic in 1535, he ventured up the great river, which he called the River of Canada, La Rivière du Canada, until he reached an island with a mountain crowned with three distinct summits. He named this alluring-looking mountain Mount Royal, which eventually became Montréal. Fierce rapids around the islands prevented Cartier from traveling any farther. Cartier hoped the river might flow straight to China. But this, it turned out, was not quite accurate. In the island's old growth forests, Cartier and his crew encountered a palisaded Iroquoian village supported by farms producing corn, squash, and beans. Although language barriers prevented easy communications, the villagers informed Cartier that there were rich cities just to the west. Such tales whetted Cartier's avarice, but unwilling to leave the safety of his ship, In the end, he never ventured any farther than the island he had named Mount Royal. Not for almost a hundred years would any explorer make it past this mythical-seeming island with its three-peaked mountain and raging rapids. It was in the extraordinary sailor, Samuel de Champlain, who finally did in 1611. Champlain succeeded by doing what Cartier would not, forgiving the safety of his ship at Mount Royal and instead traveling as the locals did, by birchbark canoe. However, these locals, it turned out, were not the same people Cautier had encountered. The Iroquoian villagers had since been driven out and replaced by their traditional enemies, the more northern tribes of Wendat and Algonquins, who now had their own villages on the island. Champlain forged an alliance with these peoples, bound in blood, that was to have momentous consequences. The alliance committed Champlain and his French colonists to abetting the northern tribes in their long-running wars, with the mighty Iroquois Confederacy to the south, which nearly spelled the doom of New France. A century of brutal warfare followed, with up to 10% of the colony's population perishing in the wars. I've been obsessed with gripping stories of survival, stories of people alone, stranded or working together to overcome the challenges of surviving the elements and nature. I was obsessed with the story of the Titanic and the Hindenburg, histories that my uncle told me about while surrounded by the smoke-stained, ship-plastered wallpaper I discussed in episode one. I watched World War I and World War II documentaries on TV, and a childhood friend's grandmother was an Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp survivor who spoke to my grade 10 German class about her experiences when she was young. I was forever changed, and like I vowed to John McRae's spirit outside of his house in Guelph, I also vowed in my heart to keep her story and the story of her family, friends, and community alive. We need to look at the individual stories that affect history. These are the individual stories of heroes or certain events of a collection of small number of survivors. The type of thing that I began to amass in my own head as a child. It took on formation, an interconnected web of ideas and images in my head. It created an outlook on the world that made me think of my place and who I was in relation to those around me, the others. With access to movies in the 90s and old encyclopedias, even being from a small town in Muskoka in the 90s and early 2000s, Getting back to Adam Schultz's story, Alone Against the North, and my Algonquin Park adventure in 2016, I happened upon Alone Against the North near the front of the Chapters Indigo that I was in, and as I looked around, I saw a section highlighted for Canadian authors. I saw the cover of a haggard-looking guy pulling a canoe up some unknown set of rapids, and I wondered, why isn't he in the canoe? I picked it up, and from there, my life would be forever changed. As I read the back of the cover, the jacket, I realized that there were people like me who love to adventure and that this story was very recent. I became truly inspired by Mr. Schultz. He was someone who was writing and seeing the world the same way I was, where we are part of history. We are part and of nature. We are part of the ongoing heritage that I've been presenting to you in the first three episodes and today, built long before we were ever born into it or even thought of existing. Reading Schultz, I felt like I found the other kid in my childhood classroom who had the exact same passions as me. The following is from page 49 of Scholz's Where the Falcon Flies. Another 16 kilometers of paddling and I could hear a distant roar. Niagara Falls. The current had increased perceptibly, although the wind luckily had died away. My plan was to reach Navy Island, a thickly wooded, uninhabited island only four and a half kilometers from the brink of the Horseshoe Falls. I figured this lonely island would be the perfect spot to spend the night undisturbed. Continuing close to the Canadian shore, I spotted the island. It looked somewhat forbidding, a slice of forested wilderness with high banks in midstream. Nevertheless, I turned my canoe from the mainland and aimed toward it. The current, as one might guess, was strong and pushed my canoe downriver as I paddled across. It was an uneasy feeling knowing that just downstream was Niagara Falls. I could see a plume of mist rising from the drop. The swirls and eddies were everywhere in the middle of the river, and although I was paddling hard, the current was still sucking me in the fall's direction. If I broke paddle, let it slip out of my grasp, or suffered some muscle spasm or cramp, things would be bad indeed. Something like this actually happened in 1960 when a motorboat near here experienced engine trouble. On board were three people. Error-stricken, they were sucked inexorably toward the thundering brink. As they neared it, the boat overturned in the rapids and all three went into the surging water. Tourists on shore managed to pluck one of them to safety. Of the other two, a man and a boy plunged over the falls. The man drowned, but miraculously, the boy survived. The current drove me 300 meters downriver of where I'd originally aimed, but I managed to land on the island's steep shoreline and around its midway point. A high embankment cloaked in thorn bushes greeted me. I'd have to scale the thorny embankment to make camp. First, it seemed prudent to tie my canoe to a sturdy tree. Otherwise, if it slipped loose and got sucked over the falls, I'd be stranded. Afterward, I scampered up the bank to explore the woods. Isolated by the river's swift current and left undeveloped, the island felt like a sort of time capsule, or to my imagination, almost like some enchanted isle that offered a rare glimpse of what southern Ontario must have looked like centuries ago. There were grand old oak trees, shagbark hickories, creaking sugar maples, giant black walnuts, and towering dead ashes. Wandering alone among these ancient trees in the fading light, with the murmur of the river all around, my mind drifted over this storied place. Hopping back to 2016 in my paddling adventure in Algonquin Park, I found Alone Against the North, Adam Schultz's first book. The following is an overview from Penguin Random House Canada, who published Alone Against the North by Schultz. Quote, this non-fiction novel was the winner of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario's 2016 Young Authors Award and winner of the 2017 Louise de Quirillin Award for non-fiction. Adam Schultz was no stranger to the wilderness. He had hacked his way through jungles, stared down bears, and climbed mountains. But one spot on the map called out to him irresistibly. Cutting through the forbidding landscape of The Hudson Bay Lowlands is a river no hunter, no explorer has left any record of paddling. It was this river that Schultz was obsessively determined to explore. What Schultz discovered as he paddled downriver appeared in no satellite imagery or map. A series of waterfalls that could easily have killed him. Just as astonishing was the media reaction when he got back to civilization. He was crowned and I like this, Canada's Indiana Jones, and was feted, celebrated by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and congratulated by the Governor General. Schultz had proved that the world is much bigger than we think. Gripping and often poetic, Alone Against the North is a classic adventure story of single-minded obsession, physical hardship, and the restless sense of wonder that every explorer has in common. Schultz's story makes it clear that the world can become known only by setting out into the unfamiliar, where every step is different from the one before, and something you may never have imagined lies around the next curve in the river. Paddling in Algonquin in 2016, I sat next to the crackling campfire on Lake Manitou in the northern portion of Algonquin Park with my friend Sam. I felt as though Schultz was also there with us. And it reminded me of so many adventures I had loved as a kid in the park, at Arrowhead, camping in Vermont, even at Lake Champlain in a tent trailer with my parents where the door fell off the minivan. Things we remember. I used to love romping around my Uncle Gary's nearly 50-acre farm where he had animals, a hobby farm, or adventuring with my childhood friends nearby along the river. It was rural, and there were fields, and we would hike, snowmobile, GT. My friends Sean and Luke lived nearby, and we would often go out with my brother Jeremy exploring the wilderness, looking, adventuring, and seeing what was in our own neighborhood. A standout from my own childhood was when in grade five I read a book by Gary Paulson, an American, who wrote a famous short novel called Hatchet It's the story of a young boy named Brian whose parents are divorced and he's on his way to go visit his dad up in northern Canada from New York and it's his summer visit. He's really looking forward to it. His dad works as a mechanical engineer in a remote fly-in oil patch. Brian's story takes a dramatic turn for the worse when his trusty float plane pilot decides to have a massive heart attack without so much as taking the time to teach Brian how to safely land. Brian manages to fly the plane until he runs out of fuel and the rest is about his survival I don't know if it's embarrassing or not, but you know, at least... three times a year, I would say, is The Edge, a great 90s thriller with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. If you haven't seen it, it is a must-see. I believe it's currently on Disney+, if you have that to stream. However, the story of The Edge is very similar to that of Brian's in Hatchet, where a similar plane crash, a float plane, leads to an exhausting tale of survival in the mountains of Alaska, where three men walk in circles and try to light fires, and ultimately where a bear stalks the three gentlemen who have been presumed dead by searchers. I loved it. I still love it. And the love of these stories and of nature and survival and exploration, that's why I'm here doing Canadian Grit, North of Ordinary, as it's about our present moment and everything that we've been so lucky to inherit. And these stories, well, they all connect with each other so that we can realize potentially more of our collective ability and power or agency to positively affect and define this great nation of Canada to become active members in building something as opposed to more passive, hoping that someone or something will come along and, you know, make things better. If you like what you're hearing, why not take a second now to ensure that you're subscribed to this podcast and that you've given me a rating under the show on the podcast app from which you're listening. It only takes a second and it really means a lot to me and the community that we're building and forging together. It means so very much to me that so many of you have tuned in and that you continue to tune in. It's also the reason why I keep showing up and why I also keep bringing up Adam Schultz and his stories so often. I quite often feel like I was the only student in grade seven or grade eight history and even history courses beyond, even teaching history, who was completely gripped and enthralled by the stories of New France and Upper Canada. The incredible centuries of battles that came to define North America and Canada and to overtake the reality of Turtle Island that was sustained by indigenous populations and communities living here for millennia, thousands of years, before so many clashes with European colonizers, settlers, and expansionists would lead to the extinction or endangerment of so many indigenous bands, tribes, and languages. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, there were approximately 300 indigenous languages spoken in North America prior to European contact. Now, estimates put the numbers at about only 197 surviving Indigenous languages spoken in the United States, and only 81 in Canada. The majority, however, that remain are also considered endangered. Turtle Island is a name used by some indigenous peoples and refers to what we now refer to as North America. Turtle Island is rooted in indigenous stories of creation where the land is believed to have been formed on the back of a turtle. Turtle Island as a term is a way of recognizing and honoring the traditional indigenous perspectives in connection to the land we are on and how it and we came to be here. In 2014, I first deeply read about the history of Turtle Island and it was actually after reading a mind bending, post apocalyptic and spiritually altering Canadian novel. by another phenomenal Canadian author and Canadian grit legend. You may have heard of him, Thomas King. The novel is called The Back of the Turtle. The following synopsis or overview of the plot comes from Wikipedia for my own ease and in order to make my own recollection of the plot more concise and to the point. Quote, the central character of The Back of the Turtle is Gabriel Quinn, a successful scientist of First Nations descent working for the multinational chemical company Dimitrian. Gabriel returns to Samaritan Bay and Smoke River. the Indian Reserve in British Columbia, planning to commit suicide because he is distraught over his role in the community's destruction where Green Sweep, the defoliant product he helped to develop for the company, destroyed the local environment and killed or drove away the community's residents. Gabriel is drawn into a journey of spiritual redemption after jumping into the water to save a group of people from drowning while he is himself trying to drown in the Pacific Ocean. While in Samaritan Bay, he meets Mara, a young woman who lost her family in the, quote, ruin that Gabriel helped to create. While Gabriel meets the few people left in a seeming folktale-like ghost town, Domitian CEO Dorian Asher is drawn into a media frenzy as the company is implicated in another unfolding environmental disaster in the Athabasca oil sands, quote. Even though I felt as though I was pretty informed with regard to Canadian history and the ongoing relationship and history with the rich and diverse Indigenous cultures that exist here and have existed here for millennia, Thomas King's story shifted so much of what I thought I knew and I began digging more deeply into Indigenous ways of knowing and creation, which will again come up in a number of episodes as this is something I want to really get into and bring to you because these histories are so very special to me. For now, let's stick with Turtle Island, the context for the context of this story and where we're headed. The following is called Origin Stories Sky Woman, which is directly quoted, copied and pasted directly from the Canadian War Museum's website, www.warmuseum.ca. Quote, For the Haudenosaunee, the earth was created through the interplay of elements from the sky and waters. The different Iroquoian-speaking peoples tell slightly different versions of the creation story, which begins with Sky Woman falling from the sky. Long before the world was created, there was an island in the sky inhabited by sky people. One day, a pregnant sky woman drops through a hole created by an uprooted tree and begins to fall for what seems like an eternity. Coming out of darkness, she eventually sees oceans. The animals from this world congregate, trying to understand what they see in the sky. A flock of birds is sent to help her. The birds catch her and gently guide her down onto the back of the great turtle. The water animals like otter and beaver have prepared a place for her on turtle's back. They bring mud from the bottom of the ocean and place it on turtle's back until solid earth begins to form and increase in size. Turtle's Back becomes Sky Woman's home, and the plants she's brought down with her from Sky World, including tobacco and strawberries, are her medicine. She makes a life for herself and becomes the mother of the Haudenosaunee life as we know it today. That's from Shelley Nero, Keller George, and Alan Brandt. The importance here on Canadian Grit in episode three of sharing the creation story of Sky Woman is meant to create a human link to the wonder and sustainable way of living that existed between Indigenous peoples and nature. This isn't to say that All Indigenous peoples agreed with each other, got along. It's actually quite the opposite, as today's adventure in time will show you. Sky Woman and Turtle Island are not optional in this history. They are absolutely essential to our ongoing story and history and the voyages through temporal gaps that I've prepared, especially for you here as Canadian Grit VIPs, but also for the sustainable prosperity and, let's call it, glue of a united Canadian identity that could be strong in its pluralism and diversity and the importance of diversity being understanding that it creates strength in numbers and various perspectives based on so much lived history and potentially better ways or not even better because that implies judgment, but different ways of knowing and living in the world that we could potentially incorporate or meld into something new in the digital world of 2025. Remember, human nature hasn't changed very much anyway. This is a key point that I've returned to a number of times. History doesn't repeat itself. Sure, it's a mirror of itself, because it's the people at the center of its stories that continue to be the same. Evolutionarily, biologically, has taken thousands of years to occur. We're basically the same as the people hundreds of years ago that I'm bringing to you in the lands where we're currently sailing and exploring right now. When we open our hearts and we approach history with good faith and with humanity, we realize that we have the same fears, hopes, inspirations, feelings, desires, and even innate instincts to protect our families and that which we hold closest to our own hearts. What I've mentioned in former episodes and what I'll say again about continuity and change is that change is inevitable. And when we struggle to continue to keep alive things of the past that no longer serve the general or the best interest of a population, its physical and moral well-being, for example, then perhaps we too become swept away in the violent tide against which we struggle in vain if we don't realize the power of the force behind it. There's no purpose to struggle except to tire ourselves out. No, we can't do that. We're not born to run. We must do the work and we must become flexible in our minds. When we hold on to the past or we judge ourselves or others in the past at both an individual and collective level, we enter into a dream world that is basically as real as the historical voyages that we've gone on together. They seem real, maybe, but we're not actually there. We are using the power of our human minds and imagination, which are the two key central factors in getting us all here to Canada now in 2025, where perhaps we're inundated with social media and our proximity of care is overwhelmed. What we can physically care about in our physical proximity, meaning us at the center with our families next, followed by our communities physically. In our hybrid reality that I'm discussing, we are inundated on social media Hmm. Interesting. Going back to what I was saying, history doesn't repeat itself. It's the human condition, while the stuff, the tech, the gizmos around us continues to change and has always changed. Yet we're alive at the point after the 1990s dot-com boom, you know, Y2K. And more rapidly than ever, we, you know, in all the thousands of years of collective human history, we can now access all of this on what we call cell phones, which are actually supercomputers. Wow. But again, even though the stuff changes, it's the people who matter. All characters of people are there in the past. It's why we relate to shows like Friends or The Office, because people, while weird unique but personalities not so much we're kind of like iphones these days pretty similar except for the stuff that we choose to put on the outside of it to try to demonstrate our own individuality or perhaps an illusion of who we are to the world all of the world is a stage and what we realize is that we are history and this moment is merely a continuation of the previous moment and now and now and now Do not say how now, brown cow. Okay, I will not say how now, brown cow, after saying now. We start here today because I'm not so sure that so many people know the story before the story. The one of Turtle Island and Sky Woman. Indigenous peoples have lived in what is now Canada for millennia, thousands of years. And we're talking about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492. Quebec, the city of Quebec, was established in 1608, just over 400 years ago, while archaeological evidence and Indigenous creation stories suggests that human habitation in the area of North America has existed for, you know, around 12,000 years or potentially much longer. There are those who believe, you know, some believe that the first inhabitants arrived in North America around 14,000 years ago, migrating from Asia via a land bridge called the Beringia Land Bridge. So 14,000 years, and what, as individuals, we live perhaps 80, 90 years these days? Longer, maybe? We're all but dust in the wind. You're my boy, Blue! Let's get gritty with a couple of questions to pack into your steamer trunk as we sail for newfound lands. How badly have you wanted something? What have you had to overcome, endure, or risk to get it? To build something that could last. Because if there's one thing Champlain teaches us, it's this. Dreams alone aren't enough. You have to lay foundations, stone by stone, choice by choice, moment by moment, and often in the dark. Nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody's been here now or now. We're born into a Canada that's basically instant access, same day shipping, and endless content. But 400 years ago, to build something meant to last, you had to freeze, bleed, and bury the ones who couldn't hold on. So why did he stay? Why did Champlain, a soldier, spy, sailor, and dreamer, and probably tinkerer, why did he endure? Because, like me and you, he believed. Not in empire, not in conquest, but in possibility. Today we're following in his footsteps, or maybe in his wake would be more apropos. Through war, through winters. through moral trials and fragile alliances. We ask, what was the dream that gave birth to Canada? How do dreams and legends or myths become the stuff of reality? These are pointed questions meant to prompt reflection from our own lived experience in order to get us more emotionally and personally attached or connected to the human histories and the basic underlying point of the connection between it all. All that is our innate built-in desire to explore and to push the limits. Yesterday, while scrolling through some local history, I came upon a meme on Instagram about a man named Robert Overacker. And this is also mentioned in Where the Falcon Flies, Adam Schultz's new book. Probably the algorithm tracking what I'm thinking. Or saying out loud. However, the story in the meme on Instagram was about a man named Robert Overacker, who was a 39-year-old from Camarillo, California. Overacker decided he wanted to go soaring over the Canadian Horseshoe Falls on a jet ski on October 1st, 1995 at approximately 12.35 p.m. Overacker entered the Niagara River near the Canadian Niagara Power Plant and started jet skiing toward the falls. As he went over the brink of the falls, he attempted to discharge a rocket-propelled parachute, which he planned to save him. It was packed in on his back, and he had failed the discharge. His brother and a friend stood helplessly by and witnessed his stunt. At first, they thought their friend and brother had survived the misty plunge, but it turns out that surging rapids have a strange way of animating the arms of the corpse, often making it appear as though the person is still swimming. On the same channel, was the story of a man who snowboarded to his death down Mount Everest after an evidently exhausting hike to the summit. His Sherpa gave him advice that this was probably a bad idea, no doubt. Attached his oxygen tank and he eased his board over the edge. And of course, when I opened the comments, I saw the best of humanity. And I saw that this was not only the first time, but the second time that this man had done this and had survived the first time and talked about... You know, people in the comments talked about how he had cheated death the first time and that death would not let him go this time. Some said in the comments they felt bad for his parents because it was such a waste of his life and all they'd invested in him. What do you think about daredevils? What about rebels? Are daredevils simply confined to the realm of high-altitude, extreme living? I would say not. In Adam Schultz's Where the Falcon Flies, he also speaks in depth about the tightrope walkers who went over Niagara Falls and other daredevils. The tightrope walkers survived and put on quite a show carrying volunteers on their shoulders.

SPEAKER_02: 37:13

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 37:14

I would like to see that happen today. Um... And Schultz dissects certain human needs to push the limits, and also is himself pushing the limits. It's kind of funny and strange. We love when daredevils succeed. And there are generally crowds of thousands who come to watch or tune in online. There's so many daredevils. Evil Knievel, or, you know, when I was a kid, Robbie Knievel, his son, jumped part of the Grand Canyon on a dirt bike. We watched. Houdini was a daredevil. And for those older Canadians here, you probably remember the legendary Canadian Super Dave Osborne. And for the younger Canadians listening, trust me, do yourself a favor and look up older videos of Super Dave Osborne. That's a freebie. Although I've taken an interesting, or I hope an interesting and bit of facetious aside or to make a joke here in our story, it's definitely for a point because the stories are not only meant to take us seriously or into the way gone past of European voyagers, but also into recent history and popular culture to demonstrate examples of so many of the traits of the human condition that have developed through thousands of years of surviving in conditions that were incredibly harsh and violent and in most ways unimaginable by today's standards of living in Canada. Although many people will criticize daredevils who attempt massive attention-seeking stunts, these people actually probably represent a very small percentage of the population, yet my main point is that these daredevils are the personification of the most extreme part of the human spirit that longs for exploration and pushing the limits. In the last episode, I talked about exploring new lands. Leif Erikson and the Vikings and Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain. They were the daredevils of their day. They didn't know if they would literally sail off the end of the world or they didn't know what existed out there, including the Octobeasts and the Kraken. From our comfortable perspective, or I hope relatively comfortable perspective here in 2025, it may not seem like such a big deal, but could you imagine leaving everything behind today and getting on a boat for at least four weeks to get to a land that is incredibly harsh, inhospitable, and frigid with none of the amenities or comforts associated with a developed life where people get scurvy, don't know what it is, and their teeth fall out? Let's get back to that daredevil question for a second. Why do people love roller coasters? Why do people love crime thrillers or action movies that depict things like war, that desensitize us as humans to what we would never want to experience in real life? See, I think we're all just the same, but tuned a bit differently. We all long for knowing and connection in our own way. We take risks sometimes that perhaps others might consider crazy or irresponsible. Of course, we're not all going over Niagara Falls and walking on tightropes, but my point is that our own escapism is just like that of the Romans in the Colosseum when it comes to things like massive trials or public shaming. The O.J. Simpson trial, for example, stands out in my mind from grade three.

SPEAKER_01: 40:24

O.J. Simpson in a knit cap from two blocks away is still O.J. Simpson. It's no disguise. It makes no sense. It doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

SPEAKER_00: 40:34

It was huge. It was everywhere. And our ongoing obsession with celebrity shows or, quote, reality TV. You're fired. That has actually come, as Dr. Marshall McLuhan would argue, the medium is the message. It has reflected our reality and that reality reality TV no longer is reality, and wait for it, paradoxically, we have become reality TV or our expectations, perhaps? My point here, to boil it down more simply, is that our mind enjoys drama. It helped us survive through all the thousands of years of survival when things weren't perhaps so easily or readily available like food. We go into these human stories and try to live vicariously to experience things or events that we have been socially conditioned to avoid or to perhaps believe are no good for us. It's why we love the escapism of movies, novels, and even stories like these. It allows us some escapism, but it can also ground us in knowing that we are not all so different from each other. It's why we all love the same popular culture, yet we all act like we're so different. When it all comes down to it, we share more than what divides us. And for the majority of history, we've had to rely on each other in communities. And the fact that everybody was different or neurodivergent, quote, you know, is what made us strong because we needed these strengths in order to survive in and with nature. The explorers that I've discussed with you are not necessarily taking their ships over Niagara Falls, or they didn't yet. The threat and perceived danger of what they were doing in their time In the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, not in 2025, they would have been perceived by their contemporary people, the people who were alive at the same time, as being daredevils. By allowing me to take you through these mind-bending games and exercises of mental gymnastics, you are yourself building or exercising the power of your mind through exercises of imagination, goodwill and empathy, and imagining the experience of someone else. It's a big differentiator or principal differentiator of the human species from other species. And it's the fact that we can be self-reflective or metacognitive. And when I look in the mirror, I can say, hello, Jamie. And I know who I am, or at least, you know, some days. And yet when I put one of my four cats in front of the mirror, they generally look away. Just like dogs or any other animals. My cats will hiss at themselves in the light of the night in the sliding glass door at the back or... and perceive that another cat is outside, not realizing that they're actually hissing at themselves due to the lack of critical self-awareness that they and some other mammals, as long as we, you know, as far as we know, I'm not saying all mammals or animals lack this. However, what is true about our human experience is that we have the ability to critically reflect on our own experiences and to realize that the supercomputers that we all hold in our hands and call cell phones are actually our gateway to the entire history of human experience and wisdom. We're the first generation in all of history to live in a way that we can go to the grocery store and pick up and buy whatever we need without ever considering its provenance or where it comes from, who is involved in the supply chain, or in the exploitation of raw resources like animals, cattle, you name it, trees, forests, we just show up at the store, we tap the card, and that's it. It's a very passive, transactional engagement that we have with nature. For example, if I had to cut down all of the trees and make all of the bricks to build my house, I might think twice about making a smaller house. If I had to take care of finding and preparing all of my food, where it comes from, I might think more of sustainable ways of eating and sourcing foods. What I'm saying is that we don't need to reinvent the wheel here. Many people condemn technology and social media for any of the negative issues that we see in our modern world, and they're not wrong, as I agree with this quite strongly, yet I also believe that this same technology is new, and that we are, as a species, learning how to best hopefully utilize it for our own development and continued progress for the right reasons. And that takes diversity, it takes pluralism and multiple perspectives. We have nearly 40 million people living in Canada It can't be just some of us deciding what's going to happen when it comes to sustainable living and more humane ways of living in our shrinking and global village. By hopping aboard and deciding to participate in these types of exercises and stories here at Canadian Grit, you've joined the ranks of historians in a stage of the most rapid technological development and information sharing that has been denied to the very mass majority of 99.9% of those in history who came before us. Those who weren't the elite, the most elite and most enriched and powerful kings, they were the ones who had the gizmos, the stuff, the knowledge, and withheld it. We have to be very careful because perhaps this is happening again. This is also part of my mission at Canadian Grit is to democratize or render more information accessible and interesting. We live in an era of golden opportunity when we can recreate, create, reconnect, redefine our mind bodies as Candice Peart discusses in her book Molecules of Emotion which is also referenced by Dr. Gabor Maté. We can access history and our elders so that we can apply ways of knowing from the past that are human. that can help us reconnect with our minds, our bodies, our spirits, and emotions in a holistic way that could improve general social outlooks and perceived notions of such things as pessimism or optimism about the future and what we can accomplish both individually and collectively. This imaginative traveling back through time allows us to better see the struggle of what it took to get here and to remove the comforts of our present lives in 2025 and to use our imagination and to see what it took to build all of this. and to perhaps realize that our privilege is found in the fact that we may feel more isolated and inundated with busy work associated with late-stage capitalism, as discussed by Gabor Maté, Martin Wolf, and Morris Berman. Yet, we also have the ability in this age paradoxically, perhaps, to use this technology to learn how to better live together in a world that is surpassing the idea of nations, states, or countries. In this system that we know has existed for a couple of hundred years, but maps have changed through wars endlessly and continue to do so since the last six centuries and forever before. Being born in the present moment is like stepping into a movie as it's nearing its conclusion. And what I mean by that is... I'm referring to the colonial era of wars and going abroad to take resources and to exploit foreign countries in order to enrich one's own coffers or treasure chests. It's now harder to sustain it in an era where people have cellular technology and access to the internet like we do in the West, and they too can be educated and see differences in ways of living around the world. How long will these people wait before seeking the same types of life, freedoms, and liberties that we have here? This cellular technology has already liberated so many people in so many ways around the world that people in the West do not see or perceive it because we are the fish in water that David Foster Wallace discusses. We are inundated with these technologies or born into them and have had for some time. And these gadgets and gizmos that were not affordable for the majority of the 99.9% of the world through all of history was the case until very recently. We are currently living in the advent of a technological information revolution. It's unprecedented and we're just learning how to cope with all of this as nobody in history before us has ever experienced this exact context. However, The speed of which people now travel around the world or can connect digitally, can resettle or move en masse with a booming global population over the last hundred years and massive industrialization followed by more massive digital technological innovation such as the space race and many of the things I mentioned in the previous episode. Perhaps we are reaching the end of an era started by the ships that crossed the Atlantic from Europe that we've been talking about. So many of the systems that were established in early Canada remain to this day. My goal here at Canadian Grit is to connect you with some of those systems and to show you that we're not as far away from the explorers as we think. We can adapt their past attitudes of resilience, grit, and determination to figure out ways to work together in 2025. and to bring these ideas into the context of our present moment. History is not linear, nor is it aligned from point A to point B. It's complex, every single moment full of billions of people making billions of decisions. At an individual level, we do not maybe see the impact of our choices, yet at a national or global level, these choices add up massively. It's like sitting frustrated in traffic and Getting angry at the car in front of you without sort of realizing that the car behind you is thinking the same thing about you. When we're in traffic, we are part of the problem. It's like the fish parable from David Foster Wallace that I presented in the previous episode. I'd love to say I'm a dealer of perspectives. I'm not here to say what is truth or to challenge anyone's way of living. I'm here just to philosophize and to ask questions that I've developed through my own years of traveling and experience and education that I have been asked, both implicitly and explicitly, about myself and my identity. When have you longed for something different? Have you ever imagined just sailing away somewhere else? Would you give up everything right now if you knew that generations of your future family would survive based on your present actions? Well, that's what the men with Colonel John McRae did in the First World War, and it's from them. And today is the anniversary of D-Day. 14,000 Canadians landed at Juneau Beach. 300 died. For them we carry this torch along with all of the others in the stories that we will see along the way who have given everything as daredevils and sometimes these daredevils have been mandated or drafted by the government to do the things that are unimaginable for the quote greater good for the rest of us in order to move society forward. Right? Societies have always gone to war and colonized other countries and societies. So war, suspicion, and fraud, international diplomacy, all of these things are inevitable, right? I'm not so sure. All I know is that a dream remains a dream until it gets some legs under it. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, and he was famously quoted in his speech.

SPEAKER_02: 51:49

Yet, what

SPEAKER_00: 52:15

people forget is that people like Mr. King were actually rebels of their time and trouble. And that through time, as we move away from, quote, troublemakers like Mr. King, we can put them on a two-dimensional wall and say, I have a dream. This is a discount and gross misjustice or gross misunderstanding of what he and other heroes like him tried to do. Heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. or Terry Fox, they could have stayed... home or decided to keep their dream to themselves in a basement yelling at a tv about racism or the fact that one has cancer you know or problems going on in one's own country their dream was for the future it wasn't just for them it's the torch like neil armstrong the first man on the moon it was one small step for a man but it was actually for all mankind all of humanity If Mr. King had stayed home talking about his dream, he'd probably be alive. Maybe as a really old man, or at least he would have lived to a decent old age as opposed to becoming shot dead on the Memphis balcony where he died for standing up as a rebel against systems that did not make space for his people. If his dream had never left his home, we wouldn't know his name. It's just like Terry Fox. These heroes of history were daredevils and not always perfect. They didn't know the outcomes of what they set out to do. Just like the explorers Erickson, Cartier, Cabot, and Champlain, and Neil Armstrong. Mr. King had a dream and that dream was the same torch that Colonel McRae spoke about. It was to inspire others to care and to become aware of their power and their agency to move as individuals and collectively like traffic in time to block the status quo, to change things and to just not accept them as given because we've inherited them like the fish in the water in David Foster Wallace parable. If we want to see better days as Canadians and to establish a more solid dream of what it means to be Canadian, then we need to realize that a dream is something that exists within the future and not in our present moment, and that the dream needs legs now to get going in order to become a reality in the future. Like I said, when's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. When is the second best time? Now. So let's plant some more trees of knowledge by looking at the wisdom of the explorers and people who came before us, and who sacrificed so much so that we could be born into a world where we didn't even have to know so much suffering and hardship that doesn't mean or preclude the fact that we don't have hardships. The stuff around us has changed. Remember I've been talking about the continuity and change of society and time? What changes through history is not the people or the human condition, because that's evolutionary. Like I said, it comes from hunter-gatherers, our tribal background, and thousands of years of surviving in the wild and in our tribal camps. Yet, even though we live in houses and we have cell phones and you can listen to me right now, magic, and I can publish this podcast in miraculous fashion from my own home, it doesn't mean that we don't have the same basic fears and wonders about the universe and about what comes before life or after death. Why are we here? Who put us here? Is there a creator? God? Sky Woman? Is there a meaning to this life? Is it a simulation? Is the world flat? All right, perhaps we should leave the flat earth conversation back in the COVID days or even farther back in the days before Christopher Columbus. Because after 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, it was clear that people weren't going to just fall off the edge of the world. We don't need to reinvent history. We don't need to make things up because we're scared. All we've got to do now is look into the past on these supercomputers called cell phones to unpack this world container that we're currently holding. And we can ask any question and find any number of resources to figure out what happened and how we got here. And that's what I love to do because I love stories and I love people. The tide is in and the sails are taut. I like the cut of your jib. Long may your big jib draw. It's for my Newfie listeners. So we're going to take a shortcut here back to a fortified port in France in the late 1500s. You're going to want to hold on for this next episode while we draw our starboard back toward the small village of Brouage on France's majestic Atlantic coast. Ahoy me mateys, look alive there. Make ready to lower the dinghy, ashore we head aye. If me eyes don't forsake me, I would wager I see a young boy there ashore through me gritty telescope. It looks like him, but it can't be. I smell smoke in some French paysant dish. Is someone cooking? Let's head inside the childhood home of Samuel de Champlain right now and see how this young boy managed to become the leader of the first and permanently lasting settlement in the land misnamed Canada. Just like you or me, Sam de Champlain came from small roots, but he didn't know what he'd become, or that he'd have a dream that would one day need a rather sturdy set of sea legs under it to keep it afloat across his 27 journeys sailing across the windy and frigid Atlantic, sourcing every possible way to keep his dream of Canada alive. So stay tuned for part two of this episode. We're already back in the 1500s, no sense turning around now, and either way, there's no cell service for hundreds of years to come. So maybe think about what else you'd like to do out here along the way. Make sure you have an open mind and keep your outlook of exploration, grit, and resilience. Humans before us got us here. Time and time again, they showed up for us without ever even knowing who we would be. Are we honoring our own legacy in the hard work, grit, and determination of those who came before us? Those who set up our camp, got a fire going, and already had some hot steaming tea next to the tent, with extra firewood already piled for us to keep the fire stoked? Hey, speaking of that, can you just have a quick gander over there next to the fire pit? Looks like we, um, we may need to send some people out to find some more firewood, otherwise it could get dark, cold, and lonely out here before morning. Something Mr. Schultz knows about. Join our Canadian Grit community group on Facebook and follow me on Instagram and socials at Canadian Grit Media. I appreciate your dedication, Mr. Champlain, and I would be very grateful if you left a review found under this episode on whatever app you're currently using to tag along with us today. Here he goes, it's Canadian Grit.