A Coffee with Shane Getson, MLA for Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland

Grab a coffee and join us for a fascinating conversation with Shane Getson, MLA for Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland. Shane’s journey is anything but typical, and in this episode, we trace his roots from a family farm near Wildwood—where he learned the grit of manual labor and heavy machinery—to playing high school sports in a tiny K-12 school of just 300 students.

Shane takes us behind the scenes of his career as a Civil Engineer, including the high-stakes world of fly-in diamond mines and the massive undertaking of laying fiber optics across Canada. You’ll hear the story of how Canadian diamonds were first discovered by a geologist from Kelowna, and why Alberta gophers were once sold as "exotic pets" in Japan.

Finally, Shane shares the hilarious, "engineer-approved" way he met his wife: by building a spreadsheet of exactly what he was looking for. From running a successful consulting firm to choosing a life of public service to be closer to his family, Shane’s story is a testament to hard work and local roots.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments and leave us a review!

Follow Coffee in the Park with Jennifer and Cam on our social medias

Instagram: https://instagram.com/coffeeintheparkwithjenandcam

Website: https://www.coffeeinthepark.com

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@coffeeintheparkwithjenandcam?si=8Fvb8swofNc1s_GL

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-in-the-park-podcast/

Transcript

0:02

Hi, I'm Shane Getson and you are listening to Coffee In The Park with Jennifer and Cam. Cam, I'm really liking our new website. I know, Jennifer, me too. And if you haven't checked out our new website, you gotta do it. It's www.coffeeinthepark.com. I'm getting great comments. I know, me too. And I'm really excited because it's a great website that has a lot of stuff on it. And you can listen to this podcast directly from that website. That's right, so if you don't have a podcast platform that you're familiar with, you can go to our website and download it off of there. Absolutely. And I think this is a good time to tell everybody that we are coming live from the Wall Coffee Roaster in the heart of beautiful downtown Acheson. That's right. So if you hear some noise in the background, coffee machines whirring, people talking. You know, it's busy in here today. It is. It's because we're live. Sometimes there's kids screaming, but there's no kids today. So we're good with that. So anyway, that's just so you know. So if you hear some noise in the background, that's what it's all about. And we want to tell everybody that Coffee In The Park is brought to you by... Wingsnob. Wingsnob. That's right. Ten locations in the city of Edmonton, expanding Grand Prairie, Calgary, all throughout the province, and then across Canada. If you love wings and even if you don't, this is the place for wings. Cam, these are truly some of the best wings I have ever had. I agree. I have been there many times. They have what? 16 flavors of wings. Four different rubs. The parmesan fries are to die for. Cam, they even have cornbread. Cornbread. It's amazing. And so, listen, you got to check out Wing Snob. Like we say, 10 locations. If you don't know where they are, go to www.wingsnob.ca. And you know why they are the best wings? Why? Because they are fresh, never frozen. Fresh, never frozen. You can get the traditional wings or you can get the boneless wings. Absolutely. Whatever you like. And wherever you live in the city of Edmonton or now throughout the province, you can get Wing Snob. You got to check it out. You do. Because it really is the best wings I have ever had. And Cam, if you can't make it to a Wing Snob tonight or sometime soon, you can order them on skip. That's right. Skip the dishes. Get your wings brought right to your door. And you're going to have some great wings. That's all I got to say. So check out Wing Snob wherever you are. It's awesome. Also, Coffee In The Park is brought to you by our friends at Mprint Sign and Print Solutions here in Acheson. That's right. So whatever you need printed. Business cards, if you need brochures, if you need signs printed, they do it all. Cam, they even rap. And not the musical rap. Not that rap. No. They actually rap. They rap. I know. I was in their bay not long ago, and they were like rapping this gigantic motor home. It was unbelievable. Last week, they rapped a bus for an organization. A bus. A bus. So hey, Mprint, all your printing needs, whatever you need. Matter of fact, if you go to the University of Alberta in one of their new buildings, they have done this amazing rap in the Rotunda area of the University of Alberta. And so they are phenomenal. They do amazing work. They work with nonprofits. They work with businesses. Whatever your printing needs are, Mprint. Unique solutions for you. They're the people. So check them out at www.mprint.ca. And we want to thank both our sponsors for helping us make Coffee In The Park with Jennifer and Cam a reality. Thank you all for listening. Hey, Jennifer, I'm excited about our guest today. I know you're excited! Why don't you introduce him? Ready? Yeah. You're ready to kick it off? I am. OK. Our guest today is none other than Shane Getson, who is, as we are in downtown Acheson. That's right. The MLA for our area, Lac Ste. Anne - Parkland. So welcome, Shane. Hey, good to have you. It's great to be on. And I'm just watching this. I mean, folks aren't seeing this, but you guys are so animated. Well, while you're doing these intros, like they're not faking this, folks. If you're hearing the excitement from their voices, you should see the visuals. Like, this is great. So thanks for having me here. This is why we don't do video. Because people would never watch. Anyway, we should explain what an MLA is for those. Because there's people listening in like all over the world. You're like, what's an MLA? An MLA is a member of the Legislative Assembly. Yeah, correct. And for our US colleagues that are down there, listeners in there as well. So it's basically the equivalent of a state senator. Right. You're like a state senator. That's correct. That's right. And so you're an elected official. Yep. And you, like Jennifer said, you are elected in our riding, Lac Ste. Anne - Parkland, which we're located in Parkland. So you're our MLA. That's correct. And I shamelessly call it God's Country nonstop. It is God's Country. Oh it is! There's no doubt about that. So whenever we have a beef, like roads are bumpy or like things aren't being done, we phone you. Yeah. There's, you know, the civics lesson is if you're calling about your magpie problem, I'm not your guy. I'll probably tell you just to shoot the damn thing. Although you probably do get magpie calls. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a few. And I think, you know, again, I'm wearing a belt buckle today about the Second Amendment rights, we kind of take that serious over here as well. Even though we don't have it, but we should. We have some gopher issues. I'm going to call you about the gopher. I have a solution. You give them a little lead poisoning, whether 22 caliber or more. So, if you're missing and you're part of PETA or PETA or whatever you are, just turn us off now because it could get worse. Yeah, you got the wrong guest on for that. We do have a gopher issue here in Acheson. But anyway, I know where to even go from that. We take care of transportation, we take care of health care. There's a number of items that we deal with. The environment is kind of a joint thing. And how long have you been an MLA? Six years, four months, 22 hours and 15 minutes and counting. Elected in 2019. And you even held the position of what they call the House Whip. Yeah. Can you explain? Because when I first heard about a house, I actually thought you and your office had a whip. And if people were being bad, you just took it out on them big time. Well, there's... corporal punishment for MLAs. Yeah. So that system is similar with the states and also the Westminster system. But I guess one of the biggest things, so Ken Kowalski, he was a long-standing speaker of the house. Yes, for many years. And also a mentor. He was also from the area, so I had some pretty big shoes to fill. What he described to me as being a speaker for a number of years was every administration and every whip had a different relationship with the Premier. So basically between Premier Smith and I, we established what my role would be. Everyone else's role that may or may not have been a whip is subtly different. So essentially, the way I boiled it down to folks was that it's like a project superintendent or a project manager is how I came at it from my background. And essentially, you try to manage the organization, you make sure that folks are kind of pulling the same way, you deal with any interface issues. And the other thing I really stressed the importance of was developing the team, so making sure that we had that planning and that succession planning in place. So you didn't have a whip, an actual whip? Well, there was folks that gave me one, I didn't have to use it. There were probably days, right? Well, it's, you know, when you're electing people, so I'll put this back in the electorate, you want to make the whip's job easy, get really good, high quality people. Yeah, that's right. And then you're going to be... sort of like anything, like business, like anything, right? For some things, it must be like herding cats. Yeah. Really. It is, but it's a bit different because, you know, when you think about the party system itself, like it's a franchise when you look at it, right? Every MLA, and I stress this highly with them, you represent your constituents whether they elected you or not, whether they are the same party you happen to be in line with. So when folks are bringing that to a caucus meeting, as an example, they're speaking on behalf of 45, 50, 60,000 people. So their voices have to be heard. There was only a few times where you had to, you know, quote unquote in air brackets here, whip a vote. Other than that, we believe strongly in free voting, but also believe in using the caucus room as a board room to make sure all those addressed concerns are brought forward there. Beauty of democracy. But hey, we're not really here to talk a lot about politics. Thank goodness! So. No. Okay, we're going to go back to the very beginning. Wait, not way back, but back. Well, way back. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to say how old he is. We're just going to go back. Okay, we'll go back. I'm 52 and closing in on 53. How come all our guests are like 50? Like, I just would need to say that. But don't they all look great? I know they do. He looks like he's like 42. Yeah, thank goodness there's no video feed on us now. Anyway, okay. Okay. So, Shane, tell us, where were you born? Where did you grow up? So, born at the University of Alberta, which is phenomenal, was raised out by Wildwood. So, it's out by Chip Lake. And for those that are following along here with a string. Yeah. If you look west of Edmonton by about an hour, hour and a half, that's where the family farm was. Okay. And was raised out there. So, your dad was a farmer? Yup. So, we had a mixed farming operation. We also did logging. We did custom cow pasture. All that stuff grew up in the 80s. So, as an 80s kid, you bought from Peter to pay Paul, and you did whatever you could. You didn't throw anything away. So, very industrious in that regard. So, you had to work on the farm as a kid? Oh absolutely, yeah. Now, we had mixed cattle, mixed commercial operation, had herfords as well. And then we would do the cattle, all that type of thing. So, as a farm kid, you're learning to run equipment and work with animals and doing that. And then we had a custom saw mill. Dad had that built and then we would go around and we'd saw lumber up for other folks. And at the time, there was a big push for getting a bunch of the Alberta timber. Lumber was really good price. So, then we had logged as well, had our own logging. Wow! That's incredible. Doing everything, a little bit of everything. So, siblings? Oh yeah, three younger, or two younger brothers, I should say. There were three of us. Wow, all boys? All boys. Man, your mom and dad hit the jackpot on the farm with that, eh? I'm not saying girls can't be on the farm, because you grew up on the farm. But man, three boys on the farm, that's bonus. Yeah, we were all spaced four years apart. And yeah, we just took care of each other. Any of them still farmers? No, no, no. All left the farm, eh? All left the farm, yeah. Well, it was, well, my folks lost the farm. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that's the only reason why we weren't there. So they, obviously they did the best they could, but they ran into financial problems, and financial literacy wasn't that big of a deal back then for them. Farming, it's a tough, yeah, tough business. Tough business. And especially in the 80s. The 80s in Canada were tough times. And Alberta, no matter what, it was still tough times. So it was a lot of businesses didn't survive and make it through. So they left the farm. Then where did they go? Well, they kind of scattered. They got divorced. Okay. So very tumultuous at the time. Right. And kind of lost touch with both of them, to be quite honest. It was just one of those decisions. My brothers and I were really close. My parents, they had a very tumultuous relationship, a lot of things going on. And my brothers and I just decided to stay close to each other and make sure that we didn't repeat the mistakes of our parents. Right. Where did you end up going? I ended up coming to the city, is what I ended up doing. So took a couple of years off. Basically, growing up on the farm, it was funny. About 16, 17 years old, and I went to my dad and said, you know, I got to get some other experience other than just working for you. So he goes, well, what are you thinking of doing? I'm going, I want to go to the city. I'm going to go work construction. So that's what I did. Took off that summer. Had a relative, well, shirt tail relative, that had some trucks with a paving company and went and shoveled asphalt and learned how to do that. And the company kept inviting me back every year. And so when I graduated, I literally just went in and jumped in with Aubro services and went working for them. And then they took a liking to me and decided that being on the end of the shovel wasn't where I wanted to be or running equipment all the time on the crews. And then I signed up to go for the civil engineering program over at NAIT. At NAIT? Yep. Wow, a lot of our guests went to NAIT. I know. Yeah, Josh went to NAIT. A lot did go to NAIT. How long did you spend at NAIT? It was two years. Two years, yep. So it's pretty quick. And basically what I wanted to do was take a test run in engineering. And then the folks over at Aubro, they invited me back. So I went from the back end and went into the front end office right with them. Okay. And you were an engineer? Well, a civil engineer, a civil engineering technologist. And how long were you with them? I was with them for about, I guess from about seven years from the start to finish there. And then where I went from there was a buddy of mine that I met at NAIT. So I got in with this "little" company called Ledcor. And he said, you got to know, he says that in stickers because Ledcor is this massive giant worldwide country. It's like just a little company, but no, it's pretty big. Pretty big. So it's the cool thing with construction and engineering and all those things, if you're on the construction side, it's a pretty tight-knit community. Yeah. And you get a really good mix of working hands, trades people and technical folks. And the secret sauce no different than PCL or CANA or anybody else that does really well, is what you do is you take your technical people and you line them up with your salty old superintendents and that was the model that I fell into. So Andy Ellis was the guy's name I went to school with. He said he was on this project in the middle of the territories, up on a diamond mine, 350 kilometers northeast of Yellowknife, Otundra. And I was running around bidding parking lots and road crack filling and stuff for highways. I thought, that's got to be kind of cool. Yeah, it was phenomenal. Guess you can't sneak in and, anyway, for a diamond or two. No, and I can tell you about that. Like there's, yeah, there's some interesting stuff. So, you know, go through a little bit of that. So remote locations are, are, are neat. There's no question. You only get a certain cut. They're way up north. Yeah, 350 kilometers fly in. Oh, that was it. No driving. No driving. There was ice roads. So you don't get there except for two months in the year. Right. That's it. Yeah. So you're literally flying in. We had jumped on a 737 at the Edmonton International. It was festival seating back in those days, folks. You didn't even, if you're going to a diamond mine, you got the wrong plane. No assigned seats. No, no, seriously. So it was CP at the time. Oh, yes. Yeah, it was CP. That's right. So you'd literally go downstairs in the terminal. Yeah. There was a downstairs before. I remember that. Yeah. So you go down there and you have, it says, a caddy diamond mine or whatever. And you jumped on the plane and three hours later, you're sitting up in the middle of the tundra. Man, oh man. And how long did you stay up there before you came back? We were up there. 2 on 2 off? Well, I was on a 11 and 3. 11 and 3. 11 days on, 3 days off. Ended up working on night shift. And I'll tell you, as a young guy, it was tough. As an old guy now, though, she'd be in the middle. Well, up north during the winter, it's all night shift because there's not much day. There's not much daylight. No, where we were at was just above the tree line, so you'd get about half an hour of twilight during the summer time, and it was all daylight in the winter time. It was just you get a half hour of twilight and it was dark. Like diamonds. I actually didn't know we had diamond mines around here. We had some of the best diamonds. This is a great story. So this geologist from Kelowna says, guaranteed up and down, we have to have diamonds in Canada. We have to have them in the north because we have these kimberlite pipes. So the kimberlite is a softer material. It's volcanic by nature. So you've got these pipes. They're little baby volcanoes. Basically, think of it that way. What happens is you have these eruptions and it starts moving the magma. The kimberlite comes up and traps all the diamonds that are made down there. What happens is the kimberlite cools and then the diamonds are suspended in the kimberlite. So what you see is this, it's almost like a soapstone type idea. So what you see is this striation when the glaciers were going back and forth and you see these marks. And if you're looking at aerial views, they're too perfect of lakes. They're too round, so all of a sudden you've got these round lakes and you've got these striations. So this guy leveraged everything. He literally was selling shares in his company to get bread when he was back home and then spent his time. Finds these pipes, sells it off to BHB for a ton of cash, still stays into it, and then lo and behold, we go up there. And these are some of the absolute best diamonds in the world. I remember a time here in Alberta where they were marketing big-time Northern diamonds. I remember that. Jewelry stores, it was a big deal. And I had some friends, I won't say who they are, that were in the jewelry business, big time, and they bought in to Northern diamonds. They thought that was, and people were buying them because it was high-quality diamonds. They are, they're not the industrial type. These are high-end diamonds. And the territories put some of the diamond cutting and everything in yellow knife, so they spooled that up. And my wife, actually, I bought her, for her engagement ring has an caddy diamond. Did you sneak in to the mine and not mine it? The five finger discount? Here's how this works. So here's how that works. It was really neat because he had a ton of consultants from South Africa that were talking about how he would set it up. Well, having a fence around the compound doesn't work. You could. So we put up these specs, right? You'd have these fences. So it was basically based on what a six foot six guy could grab a bag and throw it how far before it could reach over the fence. And you look around at him, you're going, where is he going? Right? There's no roads. There's nothing here. He's like just wandering into the tundra and you'll never see him again. To get here, you know, you either had to dog sled it or whatever. And up there, there's above the tree line. It's like literally, you can't take four or five paces forward with a boulder and having to change direction. So like, you're going there. So you're not having to worry about security a lot. But they still put it in place. Yeah. So we put that in place. But the really interesting thing with diamonds is that every diamond has its own unique X-ray signature. It's literally like a fingerprint anywhere in the world. I did not know this. Neither did I. So basically what we would have is every diamond that would come out of the coursework crusher, you would have it run through the system. You would hit it with a bunch of acid. You would kind of wash that away. It's also attracted, because it's carbon, it would be attracted to grease. So you had this grease table. You had to do this wash off of it. Everyone went through an X-ray. So literally, you have a unique signature, a serial number, if you work for every single diamond. So even if the person happened to smuggle it, swallow it, whatever, anyone who's going on in or off shift is running through an X-ray. So you're already getting sorted anyway. Is that every diamond in the world has that? Really? Yeah, so every diamond has an individual little, I did not know that. So if those... That's fascinating. Yeah, if those places were... This is worth Coffee In The Park right here. I'm telling you. Now all these husbands are asking their wives, can I see your diamond? I got to go check it out. That's pretty cool. Zirconia I'm not sure about. No individuality in Zirconia. That's like just that. That is really cool. And how long did you spend up there? Yeah, we were up there for about two years on that project. And the cool thing with that is, you know, Don Ellis and Brian Knitz and Lorne Mopaty and a bunch of these guys. You know, you end up, and Wayne Huddleston. He's passed, unfortunately, since then. But as a young engineer, where they made his field engineers, and you were strapped up, like I said, with these salty old guys. So if you made the cut, you were part of the group. And what happens is, regardless of the stickers on your hard hat, it's the same group that goes around building different projects. So I got scooped up, did that project, made the cut, got scooped up, went back to the office, deployed to the next project, and it was over at Ledcor Firm. So just as a little side note, because I've always wondered about this, what's it like living three hours by air from civilization for 11 days? It's not like you could just go to the movies or go to a restaurant. I would imagine long days. Long days. Yeah. Long hours. If you're a workaholic, you love it. Yeah. Because literally that's what we would do. We would do your shift. Do you ever feel there was an isolationist type of? No. Not at the time. No. I mean, maybe now. Yeah. No, not at the time. I mean, if you needed to get out somewhere, you basically you were stuck. There was no place to go. No Uber. Hence the idea of, Uber Dog Sled. No. And, you know, anything that you worked on was on that on that site. So you ran into people, it became a community, so to speak, and part of that, right? I want to go back just a little bit back to your school days. Did you play sports? In high school, I did. What did you play? Well, we were such a small school. There's 300 people from kindergarten to grade 12. So it's the same farm kids. Yeah, seriously, my graduating class was a big one. It was 32 people. 32. Biggest one they had in a long time. Wow. First class in 10 years, I think to take physics, to have enough people that want to take physics. Yeah. Okay. So pretty small, but what that did, you always had a work ethic and you had a bunch of tough farm kids. Yeah. And the coaches may not have been the best coaches, but they just stress discipline and morals and work ethic. So we played volleyball. Yes. That was a warm up for basketball. Basketball, we took really serious. Right. And we had a principal by the name of Bob Thompson, and he was center at Saskatchewan, and he was biggest dude I've ever seen growing up at the time. And literally Cam and Jen, he didn't cut people from his team. Right. If you made it through the first five practices, you deserved it. He literally, he would bring in, like literally, this is how tryouts went, right? You would, literally, he brought in five gallon pails and put them in the gym, and you ran until somebody puked. Yeah. Like that was it. So you have aggression drills, you would have all these types of things, and then he would work you so you're dead dog tired, and then you would work on your skills. Could you imagine today, that would never happen today? Oh, no, you would have a sensitivity report. Exactly. You'd have lining up lawyers suing the coach. I love it though. That's so farm school. That's just so awesome. I love it. It was good, but that's how it was back in the day. And we played, one of the highlights was playing this Christian school at Commonwealth Stadium. Oh, Commonwealth. So Commonwealth Stadium gym. So we went there, and Yewan Murray was our coach at the time, and he had just inherited the team. So we go in there and he sets this thing up. We did fundraising, raising up money for the bus ride. Yeah, kids, we used to do that. We'd raise money ourselves to get money for the bus to go there. I love it. Got to raise money for the bus. So we raised money for the bus, got the cash up so we could take us in there, and we walk in, we're all looking at this big gym and everything else. And it was close for about the first five minutes, and then we ended up beating them 120 to 19. Wow. So we had a solid group of kids that knew each other, that had played sports since junior high together all the way through to graduate. That's awesome. That's pretty cool. We didn't have enough folks for hockey and didn't have enough people for football. Otherwise, those would have been my preferences. Wow. Yeah. No, I mean, that's fantastic, actually. That's pretty cool. I know. So sports taught me a lot of skills that translated both into current roles and also into the construction world. Like when you're running big teams, project teams, that's what it is. You need to know who has which position. You have to have a common goal. It translates well. You know what, Cam, you and I have talked about this so much about sports and what it teaches kids growing up, to be functioning adults in today's society and learning to work together, like you said, as a team, discipline, leadership. Not only work together as a team, but learning to win and to lose. Big time. Because that's huge nowadays. Life you don't always win. I hear now these reports of nobody is a loser. No, I'm sorry. You win or you lose. I'm sorry. But it's okay, because you learn in losing. It's not a terrible thing. Oh, you learn way more from losing. Right? Yeah. Yeah. You do. That's the truth. You learn way more from losing than you do from winning. And it builds character and wisdom. Yes. So yeah. Cool. Okay. So the diamond mine, where did you go from there? Sorry. I just, see, I thought you played football because you're like, like again, we're not on video. If you saw Shane, like he's big. Like when I stand next to him, I'm like little and he's big. So I thought like you were like a linebacker or something like that. No, it's, I guess, just blessed with really good genetics. If things don't work out in politics, maybe you could try that. I'm just saying. The wind isn't there like it used to be. The knees might give out. But anyway, sorry. Well, did martial arts as well, which was also another good thing. So did a lot of that. And then some of these projects, like we would bounce around, it went from the diamond mine down to southern Alberta. And then we ended up pipelining, that actually came from fiber optics. So worked in fiber optics right across Canada. Right. But the martial arts was really interesting. That was kind of got an interest in that when I was younger. And a lot of that, quite honestly, folks are ever thinking about, you know, your kids are going to become more violent or any of those things. It's quite the opposite. It really actually cools you down. So what would you say it taught you more than anything else? Oh, to think. To think? Yeah, to think and control your breathing and to assess the situation, find out what the threat is, what's relative, what's what's... What particular brand of martial arts did you do? I did Taekwondo, Judo and Kung Fu. Okay. So a little bit of it. And then in school, a little bit of wrestling as well. Yeah. Oh, you'd be a good wrestler. Yeah, I did okay, but... No, seriously, you'd like just squash people. I didn't train enough on it. Yeah. It was one of those things that was a fly by. But yeah, with that, that was probably the biggest thing for threat assessment. And that lent itself really well in controlling where your headspace is at. And then that lent itself also to that project life. So the foundational things up there, you know, between the farming, you understand where you're going to stretch things, what the meaning of work really is. Even though you have schooling, you're not above the folks that are picking rocks, because we've all done that. And to get to those parts, through those small companies and organizations, you have to be a little bit of everything to do that. You have to learn to pitch on things, and they don't have a ton of cash to be able to just take risks. So if you're proposing things like I did with the guys at Aubro, you've got to make sure you run out your value proposition to it. Companies like Ledcor that have multiple divisions, they can pick people from different groups. And if you're willing to work within different divisions, you can do that. But it's a different day to day. You worked hard, you started at the bottom, you were picking rocks. Kids today don't want to pick rocks. Just tell them it's training, and they're saving the environment. I know, but you know. Saving the environment one rock at a time. They all want to have the rocks picked for them, and then they do their thing. Well, I'm going to put that back. It's not the kids' problem, it's the parents' problem. Okay, well, yeah. That's a different podcast. I shouldn't have brought that up. You're right, though. Parents out there get your kids doing something. No, you're right. I agree. No bad kids, just bad parents. Did I say that out loud? I shouldn't have said that. Part of that is, and I hate to say that, you can't wipe off an entire generation with one stroke either. No, you're right. But there's definitely a difference. I think it's the first time in our civilization we've seen more folks that live in an urban setting than in a rural. So that's where we're at. That is true. You're right about that. Yeah, well, Jennifer grew up on the farm. You were a farm girl. Well, just I think rural versus urban, it's just different, right? Yeah, I was raised in the center of the city. That's a big difference. There was no cows or anything. You don't even need cows. No, in the farm, we were talking about gophers, how to solve those gopher problems. So on the farm, we didn't call anybody, we just took care of the problem. Yeah, we had gophers out at the lake, and I can't say what we did, but yeah, we eliminated it. Did you Bill Murray the heck out of it, Cam? We sorta did. We sorta did. Caddy shacked it right? But I need people to listen to the podcast, so I can't go into that. No, you can't. And we don't do that here, out here in Acheson. Out here in Acheson, they just run onto the road, and the semis just squish em, like. Well, it's the circle of life, like I can tell you for sure. Circle of Life, Canoona Matata, canoona... Hakuna Matata. With the semi on a gopher, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, you know, that's part of it, right? It's when you're raising cattle and you have crops and everything else and you get them in there. The gophers, I would say, arguably help with soil penetration, all those things. But I can tell you full well when you're dispatching gophers that not a lick of that gopher doesn't go to use by the hawks and coyotes and everything else around it. Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah, no, you're right. Because when they're flat on the road out here, there's like 15 ravens around them having... Buffet. Hakuna Matata. Hakuna Matata right on the road right there. Then the raven get... Anyway, we won't go through that. Okay. So, just saying. Because there's like urban kids listening to this have no idea. They don't even know what a gopher is. They have never seen a gopher. It's a Richardson's ground squirrel. Yeah. We're talking about those, look them up online. Maybe they need to do tours in beautiful downtown. We should. To hunt the wild ones. Here's the gopher. Now, you want to hear something was wild. I love the entrepreneurial spirit. Back in the day, there was a bunch of really entrepreneurial folks. So over in Japan, they were all cuckoo for cocoa puffs over different types of pets. There were some dudes out there running around with like Hydro Vacs, modified Hydro Vacs, sucking up gopher. Oh my goodness. And selling them over Japan as exotic pets. Like I mean, there's always a silver lining. That's crazy because a gopher would not be a good pet. Like he would. Just ask those Aussies what the rabbits are. Yeah, exactly. Can you train a gopher? Here boy, here boy, here boy. Like, I don't know if you can do that. No, I don't know. But there have been reports that they had a colony near Fukushima, but I'm not sure. I'm sorry, a colony of gophers? I got nothing to say about that. So folks, you got to see this Cam is turning about a thousand shades of red. I just want to know if they're still in business. That business plan didn't work out so well. You can Google it. Go Google it after. Google it after. But I don't think they are. There was a number of things that we're kind of there. Okay. So that one took us down a trail. All right. So now you're, I don't know where we left off. I'm not sure what you're doing now. He's done the diamond mine and then he was doing other projects. Pipeline and fiber optics. The fiber optics was really cool because we literally did the backbone across Canada. So it's part of that project. And we found it was really great. So Fonarola was the first company that was doing that. The guys at Ontario from our division down there kind of looked at this. They were trying to find a corridor that you could literally get across Canada to tie this in. Fiber optic. Back in the day, we did not have a fiber optic grid. So what they ended up doing was they saw, well, the train tracks. So lo and behold, back to the old day of Johnny McDonald, there's one contiguous corridor. And then they modified. So I love blue collar folks that figure stuff out. So they modified a couple of 980 cat loaders. We plowed this stuff and you had a tow cat and literally a ripper shank that goes four feet down the ground, plowed in fiber optics across the entire country. Obviously, it didn't come through Acheson. Yeah, you did. What? And then the Super Net in Alberta, for those out there listening, we're taking this conversation offline. Every public library you have in every school was pumped in, plowed in with fiber, like the high-speed fiber. That's brilliant, the way the rail line. Yeah. Because yeah, it does, it goes everywhere. It does. And then we use the main highways, the other corridors, right? To plow it in along the ditch lines. Okay. Yep. So, you're married. Yes, sir. Your wife is a? Dentist. Boy, that's pretty cool. Don't you think? Well it is. How do you, no, I didn't mean it that way. I'm not like, how did you get a dentist? But I like, you know, how did you go? Where did you meet your wife? Back in the day, it was a taboo. So I'll tell you a bit of a story. So bounce around all these projects, doing fiber optics and pipeline and everything else. And never being at home. Yeah. I mean, literally, I had a house here. My brother rented it. I had an apartment in my own house because I was always on the road. So shout out to my brother for holding down the fort and having a normal life. And anyway, I'm out in Vancouver on this job. And the buddy I'd met up in the territories, we shared a room basically up in the camp for just about two years, became pretty close after two years. Either you kill the guy in his sleep or you become buddies. There's no middle ground there, when you're in camp jobs. So we became pretty close. A good guy. So I met this house party out in Abbotsford. Him and his wife were recently married. She's looking at me going, you seem kind of sad. I said, I think I hate women. And she goes, well, what do you mean? I said, and I'm again, this is me not as a politician, this is me as a young man. How old were you? I was mid-20s at most. And Paula goes, well, why is that? I said, well, I'm dating all these ladies, and I'm meeting all these people. But I said, I don't really like any of them. Like, I'm not, there's no substance there. And I'm sure a lot of folks out there, whether you're male or female, kind of run into that, like you keep getting duds, right? Yeah. And Paula gave me some of the, it's not that they're duds, but it's just that non-compatibility. There's just no connection. No, there's no, well. Some of them were duds. Let's be honest. So there was this point where it's, she goes, well, why don't you stop dating Barbies? I'm like, what do you mean? Yeah. So that was her analysis of what I was doing. She goes, well, why don't you think of somebody that when you're 80 and toothless, that you'd be sitting on a rocking chair beside of who you want to be with. So like any other technical person, and those of you out there with slide rulers or engineering calculators get it. I'm going to say nerds. Yeah. Well, technical. They're not nerds. They're big bang theory people. Technical people. Yeah. Yeah. Technical people. So I put a spreadsheet together. So I put a spreadsheet together of- I did. I put a spreadsheet together of what attributes I wanted, what really made sense to me, and I did that. This is pre-online dating. Oh, no. This is right at the start of online. Yeah. Yeah. So then I took that spreadsheet and I put in the attributes into an online dating thing. And lo and behold, I had about 30 candidates. My wife was shortlisted. Listen, my wife was shortlisted. I love it. My wife. Laura, if you're listing, she probably knows it. Oh, she knows the story. She knows you were shortlisted. That's pretty cool. We've been married 23 years. Yeah. No. Yeah. So, and it was taboo at the time, right? So, that's what I did. And I ended up meeting her and we've been best friends ever since. Like, there's, I could count on two hands maybe in 23 years that we haven't spoken every day. Right. And on her side, young, professional woman, practitioner, she had a number of contracts that she was never meeting people, couldn't do this either, not meeting one that she was compatible with. Where was she dentistry? Oh, shoot. She had a contract in Edmonton. She had one in Northern Alberta and she had one in Southern Alberta. So, she was literally on the road between the three of these. Yeah. So, a friend of hers had met her husband online, and gave her the same advice. They'd just be really picky. So, one of the things that jumped out at me is my wife was almost standoffish online in her profile. She wasn't welcoming. She was like, you guys are all losers. I hate every one of you. You got to reach to this bar to rise up. He's got a spreadsheet. I mean, seriously. Yeah. So, for me, right off the start, she was a challenge. Yeah. You like the challenge. I like the challenge. I like strong people. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And so how long did you date? Well, so folks out there that are running any calendars, it wasn't from one of the biological reasons, but we dated for basically nine months, and then we decided to get married. Yeah. So it was really quick. And it wasn't because we had a child out of wedlock. No, no. Yeah. Literally, it was just that compatibility. We really hit it off, and she told me we were getting married. So I told her. I like that. I like that. I ran the spreadsheet, and I ran right to the end. You ran the spreadsheet. And figured, the sum of everything on the spreadsheet said get married. Yeah, it penciled out. Yeah, it penciled out. We did that. And then here's the funny part. So when we picked the wedding date. Where did you get married? We had two weddings. Okay. Yeah, one we kind of eloped because we were doing wedding parties. Anybody out there who lets their family get involved and start hijacking them. I know, I know, I know. So that was starting to happen. I'm literally down in a job site in Cold Lake. There's family stuff going on back home. My wife calls me up and said, hey, my wedding dress came in early. We were heading to this conference down in Punta Cana. I was going to be her arm candy and go down there with this and get off the job site. And she said, hey, the wedding dress came in early. And she says, you know, I'm tired of all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, let's just, you can line it up. Let's do it. Good move. So we did. We got married for ourselves. And then we got married back here. Okay, we got back in July. Yeah. Cool. That's awesome. 23 years Cam. That's amazing. 23 years. It's awesome. It is. And how many children? Four. Four. Yeah, I've got the older boy, and then I've got a hat trick of girls, and they're all spaced about two years apart. So when we got married, coming back to that, we looked at our calendar. So this is how young professionals used to work in our days. She had her assistants go through her day timer. Had her assistants go through her day timer, and I basically plotted around the shift that we were off, and invited probably half of that team that I talked about when I first started, I was working with that same team, and we did it on a turnaround. So didn't have a honeymoon, we just basically got married, worked it on a turnaround, a 10 and four shift, it works. Wow. And how old are the kids now? I should know that. Twenty, 21, 19, 17, and 15. Okay. 21, 19, 17, and 15. Yep. Okay. So the 15 and the 17 is still in high school? Yes. All right. And two in University. I know the 21. Is Leif the 21? Yes. Yeah. So we know Leif. Yep. Yeah. He's awesome. He's like you, he's big. He's massive. We loved having him work, he worked for us. We loved having him work right here because he wore his cowboy hat, and he was just like, it was like Texas, and it was awesome. Well, we are Texas. Yeah. No, it was just awesome. Okay. So four kids. Yep. Wow. So then the question has to come in. Yeah. You've been doing all of this. You've been married. You're in the private world. Yeah. Why politics? Yeah. I keep asking myself that. So yeah, I ran a consulting company. I had 33 people that were working for me. So I contracted out services, whether it was engineering, project management, inspection, cost controls, all those things. Worked for a number of large projects with some big, the big midstream guys. And what I saw happening was there was a change in the political environment. Well, actually, there was a couple of things that led up to it. So the first one is I was bouncing, because I worked for those companies and had folks deployed in Canada and the US, I was all over the place except home. And my wife told me if I wanted my keys to work at home, I'd better figure out why being home for maybe three to four days a month was a good idea. The next time I came home, because I was literally on the road with all these projects, that I'd better figure out what the priority was. So I really had to have a gut check. And again, those folks that mentored me over the years that told me that, you know, everybody goes through that, at that point you've got a decision to make, whether it's your family or whether it's the job. And the ones that were the happiest with their decisions were the ones that chose family. So I had to do that. Cash was good, everything was really good. So I throttled that back and then took projects that were closer to home on that point. And then there was an electoral cycle that swung and it was like through the looking glass. All of a sudden projects were coming offline. We had a hostile federal government, provincially, it went socialist, like everything just went wacko. And we saw a flight of capital and 180,000 job losses, right, in the sectors that I was in. So with my wife being the dentist in the community, she had a lot of line of sight to what was going on. I answered an email of all things while I was running a project, small and locally, and they asked if people had like mind and interest if they could help out. So I thought I'd go down and see what this is about. Ended up thinking I could help out on a few things. And it was somewhat shameless or selfish, because I wanted things to go back to the way they were. And then being local, you start running into folks, because now I'm home more, and they're telling me all of their challenges and issues. And then lo and behold, it was people from the community and from that board that tapped me on the shoulder and said, could you help us? And in our area, the gentleman from the Opposition Now Party, but the Socialist Party, he was a minister of forestry and agriculture. So, being rural-ish, a lot of folks, not only where I grew up, across the province, people I worked with and then locally were struggling in those areas. And I've never, both of my grandfathers served, I've got family members that served in the military. And I thought if this was what I could do to help out without, you know, chucking lead down range, I'd better do something. Like the province was good to me, the country was good to me. I've seen a lot of people work a lot of places. And it was worth stepping up. So I thought the worst case scenario, if I put my hat in the ring and talk to folks and find out what mattered to them and right. And then got on stage and got a chance to rip a strip off that guy that messed things up. Price of admission was paid. And lo and behold, you won. Yeah, there was enough people that felt the same way. Yeah. So that's that's what it was. And the interesting part with that is there's a lot of likeminded folks out there. You may not have met yet. But when you have a crisis or a circumstance, good folks come together and rise to the occasion. Well, I can tell the folks who are listening, you are very much loved and liked in this constituency. You've done an amazing job and the people love you and they like you. The sad part is, I guess we can say it, it's public, I guess, that you're not running in the next election. Yeah. No, I'm not a career politician. Yeah. So the way I treated it was very much all of those other things that I'd been through in my career and personal life. When I went into communities, it was no different than coming in here. It would be a little coffee shop. You sit in the corner and you listen to what people are going on and talking about. Yeah. And I've had lots of critiques out there too, but one that really sticks with me well, and I like this as a badge of honor, it's when folks will say, I may not agree with what you have to say, and I may not like what you have to say, but I respect it because I know when you're doing it. Yeah. And what I did on the front end is, I'm not the smartest guy, and I always treat it like that. You go in a room of 300, 400 people, guaranteed I'm not the smartest person in the room. So when you go into that, and again, former life, like you're a young, smart guy coming out of university or college, you better listen a little bit to the guys that have been working for a long time. So taking that same mindset into there was, find out what matters to people, find out what's going on, get those ideas out there. But the other thing I did was I warned folks, I treated this like a job interview. You're hiring me to do a job. I'm going to go do it. So I'm going to make decisions on your behalf because that's how our system works. I'm going to consult with you, but I may not just do what you told me to. And there's too many politicians that just tell people to their face, oh yeah, I'll do that. I'll never do that. No, and I'll never do that. And you never have. No. And so full transparency folks, I happen to sit on Shane's constituency board. And the reason I do that is because you are, in my estimation, you are not a career politician. You do what you say, and you say what you do. And that's what it is. And you don't see that in politics. So you have done a fabulous job in this constituency, and filling your shoes will be extremely tough. I know we're talking about that already, and that's going to be very difficult, but you really have. You've been just a down to earth. You care about people. You care about our province. You care about our country. And that comes through. And I've seen you many times in front of three, 400 people. And you say you're not the smartest guy in the room, but it's pretty impressive to watch you in action. So it's pretty cool. I appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely. I know. So. We're at the end. We're at the end. I know. Can you believe it? I can't. Because we could go on for, I mean. We always can. I know. We could go on for a long time here. We always have so many. We gotta end. We gotta come to a close. If one thing I can leave folks with, if we wear a wrap in the south. Well, we're gonna have you leave us with two things then. Oh, no kidding. You go ahead. Well, I was gonna say that firstly, in our country, and I know there's desperate times out there, and part of it too with me not being a career politician, I treated this like a project. There's only so much you can do. You can't boil the ocean. But don't get overwhelmed with all of the stuff, because quite frankly, I believe the media, not this, and that's why I really enjoy podcasts in long form. I believe the media has been hijacked to a certain degree. I ask the media guys, why do you print all the worst news stories? And they simply say if it bleeds, it reads. That's how it works. And then also when it's fully funded by politics, that never works. But literally what's happening is, in my belief, farm kid logic, you've got basically a laser pointer, and you're pointing it at the ground and they've got all the cats chasing after the laser pointer where they've got their other hand doing something else. Folks gotta realize that you have to step away from that. You have to focus in on the things that you can in your community, step up and do what you can. If there isn't a grown up in the room doing the right thing, then you're it. And then concentrate on those little things and the bigger things will take care of themselves. That could be the advice. We'll see. Well, let's see. It was so good. OK, so Shane, the final question we ask all of our guests, what is the best piece of advice you've been given either personally or professionally that you carry with you to this day? Be yourself, be humble and try it my way first before you change it. So there was a project manager I worked for, Mr. Hanson out there. If you're listening, Keith, if you're still around, I haven't talked to you for a number of years. Really smart dude from from Britain. He had a handshake, Cam like he's my size, but just a firm grip, right? And he was a quantity surveyor, so trained in the classic method. So I had an opportunity to work for Keith on a couple of projects. And as a young guy full of spit and vinegar, coming in with that, he basically kind of gave you that idea. Like you get an idea from what it is, you sit in the room and then also try it his way first. Because again, there's all that experience that comes up to it. That's it right there. Yeah. But totally open for modifying and changing it and enhancing it and improving on it. But try it my way first. So if you can go into the room with that, you can take a look at it. And then the other one was, I can't remember who told me it, but don't be afraid to ask stupid questions. Yeah, I love that one. There's been so many rooms I've gone into where you ask the silly bugger question. And again, I'm not the smartest guy, but if I'm not getting it, I'm gonna ask a question. For sure. And guaranteed there's a bunch of other people that are too. And if you've got the experts that can't use anything but technical jargon to explain something, they probably don't know very much. And you know, at the end of the day, when you think you're asking a stupid question, it's the question everybody's thinking about, but nobody wants to ask. That's really what it is. And so when you ask it, everybody goes, yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Excellent advice. I've watched you. You live that advice. I think that's phenomenal. Thank you so much for being on our podcast, Shane. It's an honor for me and for us to be able to call you, most of all, our friend. And I mean that sincerely. You are an amazing guy. And I love working with you. I love hanging out with you. I love what you do. And I hope I've made a friend for life because that's one of those friends I want to keep for life. So you're one of those friends. Well, that's how it works. Literally with me. Unfortunately, you're stuck with me. All it is, is we're moving on to the next project, and you gather good people, and you try to connect good people together because when that happens, then amazing, outstanding things happen. We're going to miss you in this constituency. We're going to miss you in politics because you are one of the true, genuine guys. You've done a marvelous job, a marvelous job. And so, yeah, it's been great. So thank you for... I just want to say, yeah, say thank you for serving. Because it's not easy. It's a lot of work and it's hard on the family. And we've talked to lots of people like that because you're giving yourself to your constituents. So thank you for all that you've done. You've done a great job. And like Cam said, we'll certainly miss you in this riding. Well, thank you. And for folks out there, maybe it's different elsewhere, but it isn't for the money. Like, I took a 60% haircut. It hurt my business to do all this. So part of that is as well as being realistic of what needs to be done. Great podcast. So take care. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Hey, don't forget Wing Snob. If you're looking for dinner tonight, www.wingsnob.ca. Best wings you'll ever have. Or if you need something printed, Mprint, the people to do it for you, www.mprint.ca. Make sure you tell everybody about the podcast. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your enemies, tell the people you work with. If you don't have a friend, make one just so you can tell them about the podcast, because that's how you make a friend. And Cam, subscribe. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. I can't even say it. Can you say that three times? No, I practiced and I can't do it. I know. And anywhere you get your podcast, you'll get ours. And if you don't know how to do that, just go to www.coffeeinthepark.com. And not only will you get our podcast, but you'll get to see me and Jen. And that's worth the trip to the, well, Jen, anyway, that's worth the trip. You'll be like, oh, that's what he looks like. I knew it was kind of, anyway. So yeah, so hey, thanks everybody. And see you next time. See you next week.