How I Got Started in the Outdoors and on YouTube | Interview by Swift Canoe and Kayak

All the axes are in. Well, I guess I'll just dive in, eh? Yeah. Hey everyone, Scott here from Swift Canoe & Kayak. We are here at the fabled cabin with Sean James from My Self Reliance. Sean has been generous enough to sit down with us. We're going to have a cup of coffee here. We're sitting by the fire with Callie here and we're going to talk about the outdoors, life, canoeing and some of his adventures and some of his stories. So, I'm going to dive right in. I know we've got a cup of coffee to have and a dog to play fetch with. And we need it. What is it, the first week of October and it's like 3 degrees or something like that. Yeah, it's a little chilly right now. I was just saying to these guys, you can see your breath right now. I think it's the first time this year. Yeah, it was 30 yesterday. Yeah, are we peak colors right now? I really think it is. Actually, I got some awesome drone footage this morning. Out here and over a couple of creeks and everything and it looks like it's peak. A lot of them are starting to drop, actually. Yeah, on the drive out here, we had the cameras out already because we're just driving by so much nice terrain with all that color and you only get it for a week or two every year up here. So, get it while you can. But let's dive right into it, Sean. I got a lot of questions that I want to ask you. I know all of Sean's followers are pretty devoted and want to hear more. And I'm privileged enough to know Sean and have the chance to come here and hear a little bit more about his story. So, for any of your viewers who don't know, I'm really curious to hear about even just the origin story for you. I mean, really, I know from having known you for a couple of years, you had kind of a previous life. You worked in business for a lot of years. What was the impetus for you to switch careers, if you will, and kind of transition into living this lifestyle? You know, before I answer that question, the chaga's ruined on the fire here and I see it boiling over, so I'm going to take that off quickly while we're talking here. So this is chaga fungus. We were talking about it. Get to harvest it from all the birch trees around here. I've got jars and jars of it in this form and it's really healthy, but I like adding it to the coffee, so if you don't mind that. Absolutely. I think it'll be pretty potent and that'll be good. It'll keep us warm this afternoon. Yeah, so, I mean, how far back do we want to go? Well, I'll tell you what. I think I met you originally. You were just starting out with the channel and you were a customer of Swift's and I believe I met you at a trade show, actually, and that was when you bought your first solo canoe from us and as I remember it then, I mean, you were just, I'm not even sure that you had this property yet. No, I wouldn't have. Sure, I think I bought a Swift canoe at least a year, maybe a year and a half before starting to buy this land. So at that time when you, you know, were in the market for buying a canoe and starting to do more of this type of thing, it sounds like you're in kind of the transition moving from your previous business work into this. So how did that all come to fruition? So I document, I'm a pretty open guy, so I've documented a lot of this on my channel where I talk openly about my years in business but also the business failure that I had which, you know, I know now that it's just a function of doing business and putting it all out there and putting it on the line. Ultimately, you're going to end up with some successes and some failures. So I had a significant business failure that put me way in debt personally as sort of a guarantor for the business. So that hurt, and I started looking at my life thinking, well, I got myself into that position. I could blame the market, which is bad. It was after the financial crisis in 2008 and all that stuff, but at the end of the day I put it, I got too close to the line. It's like playing Monopoly, just buying every property until you have no money left to keep running on somebody else's property. I did that. And the pressure... I had two young kids. My girls are 20 and 19 now, and a wife, and, you know, a lot of responsibility. So to be that bold and I think irresponsible, it just caught up to me and I realized this is not the life I want to live anymore. I want to get back to the simple life and back to the outdoors, spending way more time in the outdoors than I was. And I've raised my girls, taking them camping and doing all that stuff. Like most Canadians, I think. But, you know, I just wasn't as fully immersed into it. And I did have an office, even in Toronto, for a while there. Just so not me. And if you see some of the beginnings of one of my longest videos where I'm in the city and then I transition to this and you'll see, people see me in that suit. I was going to say, I remember the suit. Yeah. Looks so out of character. But that was me for 20 years. So to get back to this, you know, I tried, I built a cabin when I was younger and I canoed and fished and did all that outdoor stuff then before I got married and got away from it and I had to come back to it. So I had this opportunity to shut it all down, shut all the business life down and simplify. And, you know, I went from growing up paddling canoes and, you know, the cheapest, you know, basically... Cheapest, heaviest ones. Yeah. I wore the little, let's see, the little aluminum one with the foam pads on it. The grubbin'? No, the... It's really thin aluminum. Sports tile? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. And you just lean out the wrong way and it collapsed. It finally did. Snow collapsed. Yep. I went from that to going up to, like, a 15-foot boat with a 15-horsepower motor on it and then went up to a boat with a 90 on it and then I got a 35-foot thing, a boat with two 375-horsepower engines. And as I did that, trying to sort of keep up with the Jones and get out there and see more of bigger water, I was losing the connection to the water. And part of the simplification was getting rid of all that stuff and getting back to a canoe, getting back to, you know, hand tools and hand-building a cabin just got me right back into where I felt it naturally needed to be. Mm-hmm. Well, it sounds like, I mean, from what I know of you and then from having watched a lot of your videos as well, I mean, it sounds like, you know, this lifestyle was always part of your life. Yeah. And, you know, more so in the periphery, you know, for a lot of years. Yeah. And then you had the opportunity or took the opportunity to kind of bring it to the forefront. And from what I know of you, and it's very obvious in your videos, is that you seem to really feed on kind of the connection to nature. And that's something that you've talked about a lot as being something that's, I don't know, centers you is the right word. Yeah. But having, you know, built this cabin and all this stuff, it's something that's the lifestyle that you really wanted to come back to and looks like you feel most comfortable with. So the story of this property, you know, the short version being, I mean, as you're making that transition, I mean, I know you were looking for a particular, you know, type of land and type of area. You know, how did this, how did this property come to be? Well, it's interesting. So I had a first property I had, I actually bought when I was 17, just working hard doing construction for two summers, 16, 17, bought this property on Whitestone Lake just south of here for, you know, back between where I grew up and Newmarket in here, I guess, better description of it. And normal townships, you have to follow building codes and all that stuff. So built a little cabin back in the woods where nobody could see it and kind of got away with it for years. But when I went through that financial hardship, had to get rid of that property. So it was without for a number of years. And when we started looking again, I really want to build a cabin. I don't want to have to be restricted. So I looked into the building codes and realized you have to build a minimum square footage and you have to use all modern materials. Permits, permits, permits. Yeah, the cost of permits, I think it's like $10,000 development fee in the area. Yeah, so going back to simplifying and being more self-reliant also meant that because I'm going to do things sort of outside of society's norms and not follow building codes, for example, build a small structure instead of what's mandated as a bigger, more modern thing, I had to find an unorganized township. So I happened to be in an unorganized township that's still a reasonable distance to major centers because I'm still somewhat reliant on the system. I still have to buy a lot of my food and things like that. So this was a great central location to be able to do whatever I want without oversight by a municipal government, but also to be able to access the areas that I love so much with Algonquin Park nearby, Killarney, Georgian Bay, Muskoka, Parry Sound, Tomogamy. I just love this area of Ontario and I have traveled around doing other outdoor stuff around the world. Just came back from spending a couple weeks in Alaska this August and I love this area. I come back to this. Even when we were talking before the cameras were rolling, just what's on this property just in terms of wildlife and resources. Yeah, I don't know if the mics are picking that up right now. This is why I love it. Oh yeah, there they are. Oh, they're migrating already. Those aren't locals. Wow, that's a lot too. Yeah. So that's a reminder that winter's coming. I don't know, is that a good sign or a bad sign? Depending on how winter's going to be coming, it sounds like we're getting snow this winter. It's interesting watching that. That's part of what I love about this land is that geese, ducks. I've got a stream that runs around the property. It runs back behind the cabin where I get my drinking and bathing and cleaning water from, if it's not from the rainwater. I have deer and moose and bear on my trail camera this week. There's a wolf that's been hanging out even during the day down here. Yeah, right next to the cabin on this too. Yeah, literally you can sit on the porch. That's part of why we decided I built the porch on this side of the cabin because that's facing west. You get to watch the sundown and see the wildlife that come across this beaver dam down here. Very cool. That makes me think of something. Having talked about some of your business dealings, it sounds like there might have been a bit of almost a burnout involved in doing that. Do you feel a little bit rebellious in nature that part of seeking to do this is a little bit of a rebellion against having to abide by all those rules and the building codes and the bureaucracy? Is there some aspect of that that drives you a little bit? That being able to do that is always a motivator to keep living this lifestyle? I'm learning a lot about myself and about life doing this. It's been two and a half years since I broke down. While I do call it my self-reliance and I try to be as self-reliant as possible, I've realized that I have a much greater appreciation for our history, for the people that came before us, creating the opportunities that we have. I'm not anti-society. I am more of a loner by nature. I do like people, too, and I do spend a lot of time with friends and family. I think it's my responsibility, and I really think it's everybody's responsibility, to be the best person each of us can be and be as self-reliant as we possibly can so we're not a burden on everyone else around us. The more I learn about taking care of myself, the more I'm in a position to help others. That's what I love about YouTube. This was not a thing. This was not a thing. This is recent. I just started YouTube myself three and a half years ago. That's where I was going to be headed next with this conversation. One of the things I was fortunate enough to see, building the Longhouse, was something that I was privileged enough to come up here and participate in that a little bit. Like you said, the ability to build friendships and build relationships with people who support and endorse this lifestyle, that's something that I think comes through with you, that you're very passionate about spreading that good will and those skills. Then I was privileged to participate in that and learn along the way. Hanging out with guys like you and the Baird brothers especially and Doug. You can't help but learn. Absolutely. That's something that YouTube I think opens up the door for people to see things that they wouldn't see. To see what's possible out there when you're experiencing the outdoors. That brings me to the whole YouTube thing. Like I said, when I met you, you were just starting out. You didn't have this property. I probably had 4, 4,500 maybe subscribers at the time. Was that always the goal in doing this? How did becoming a quote unquote YouTuber develop? Yeah. YouTuber is a funny thing especially with teenage daughters looking on their father playing in the woods and filming himself doing it when I had 1,000 subscribers. I'm just the weird dad. They probably don't say that anymore. No. They're proud of that because that's the generation. They grew up with that. We didn't. It is a little odd for somebody like myself. I'm 49. I'm not a young person on YouTube. When I started the channel, I didn't know it was something you could first of all, it wasn't a career option. It was something you just do to share your experiences. It really goes back to the canoe actually. When I decided I wanted to get rid of my power boats and get back in the canoe, I did a lot of research and ended up on some forums including iCanadian Canoe Routes and Algonquin Adventures. Through reading other people's trip reports and saw some of them had videos associated with them, like Larry Hyatt was one I started watching back then and thought that's pretty cool. First of all, thank you for all your advice. I ended up buying a Swift canoe because I realized that they were the best and that's not endorsement. I appreciate that though. It's just the way it was. It was the perfect canoe for me. But just prior to buying that, I actually bought a canoe, a cedar and canvas canoe, this beautiful green one, because I wanted to have something that I could repair myself. I could go and I could literally split the cedar ribs from the forest from a tree and repair that thing. I think that's very understandable too. Given the skill set that you have and you've developed, that's self-reliance. Of course, it makes perfect sense for someone like you to have that and us having the opportunity to help you get some lighter weight boats and some things that also benefit your lifestyle as well. There's a balance there. I really can't imagine you not also having a cedar and canvas canoe. It's fitting, right? And eventually a birch bark canoe. That'll be probably one of my projects next year. So that's where it started. I'm going to start sharing video. I wrote a trip report and actually won that year's trip report thing on it. Algonquin Adventures Forum and won a $100 gift certificate from Algonquin Outfitters, which is pretty cool. Yeah, no kidding. That was my first thing, wow, this is cool. I can do this and I can actually get some gear to help cover my costs. And that's how it all began. Come here, you. Time for fetch. So yeah, I went from there. It was always just something I'm going to share with other people. And then it was like, okay, I'm starting to build up an audience. Does this mean that maybe I should not go back to work and I should try to find a way to monetize this lifestyle? People are interested in what I'm doing and I'm interested in doing it. It is my passion, so I can do it a lot. This isn't a whole time because business took a lot of my time. It wasn't my passion, so it's not something I wanted to stay up until midnight doing. Yeah, that's very interesting. I never knew that you becoming a YouTuber, that wasn't part of the plan. It just sort of developed into something like that. I didn't even know you could monetize a video. I did it for a year and a half before I met Joe. I was on YouTube and he's like, why don't you have ads on your videos? What do you mean? You can make money doing this? Yeah. So it wasn't intentional at all and still even until a year and a half, well, until I started the cabin probably six months later and started getting pretty big views and a lot of subscribers, all of a sudden that I realized it's a little bit of money coming in and I'm getting some gear, I could probably just focus on doing this and so I can do it fully, passionately and properly. It's like anything in life. You don't put all of your heart into it and you don't get to, typically you don't get success or you don't enjoy the full benefit of it. Well, that's something that I know you've mentioned in your videos and as part of who you are and I think that obviously resonates with people and I think that comes through in your videos, absolutely. I'm curious, you know, as YouTube was, you were kind of developing and it started to gain an audience, was there a particular moment or video or time when it started to gain traction? Was there a turning point in that where it was then decided that this is the thing, this is going to be the focus of my efforts here? Probably two years ago now, before, maybe right at the beginning when I bought the land, I actually had drawn up a little business so I had on there guiding, I had developing websites for other outdoor minded people because I learned quite a bit about making websites when I first started this, this brand and what else? A little bit, I think I thought I could make a little bit of money from YouTube and a couple of other things and that was the case actually. I got an opportunity to start writing articles for Ontario Tourism and selling photographs to some brands like Tilly, who I'm not doing anything with them right now, but they were paying for photographs, so between selling photographs, getting paid for articles for canoe magazines and some outdoor magazines, Ontario Tourism, that was the first monetization actually of the outdoor brand or whatever it is. What's the old saying, if you're doing what you love you never overdo your life sort of thing? And that was enough for me. So then, but honestly, until I started writing and started the cabin, the canoe stuff, the camping and the outdoor stuff, there was a lot of people doing that and doing it well and doing it better than me. And it took doing something unique like this for YouTube to actually pay attention or the audience on YouTube to start paying attention. Well, I've never ceased to be amazed, and I noticed that you saw it as well, that George Takai's Facebook page shared your cabin video via the time lapse, which has gone around so many times. Yeah. And you know, seeing that, I think probably for you and for me, from knowing you, seeing that when I'm just going about my life doing non-George related things, that it starts popping up. Yeah. And then you realize that that's something that so many people have resonated with. Now, backing up a little bit, you know, you've reached this level now. It's something that you are still doing a lot of. But obviously, I mean, a lot of your youth and your skill set, I mean, it started at a young age. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, you know, as when you were a kid, you know, was canoe tripping always something that you guys did as a family? No. Did that develop, you know, into adulthood? When did it all start? Yeah, well, that's what's probably a little unusual. And this kind of, to me, speaks to the innate, our natural drive to do the outdoor stuff. I grew up in New Market, a small town at the time, you know, 30, probably 50,000 by the time I was a teenager. But we lived right on the edge of town and there was farm fields at the end of the road. It was a small forest and farm fields. Yeah, I'll throw it again. So, really, my, one of my sisters in particular, we would go camping as a family, so it's not like we were, they were, I was raised totally not in the outdoors. Like, we did go camping and my grandparents had a trailer up on Georgian Bay and then on Pigeon Lake for a while. So we would visit them. But my, I don't know what fueled their passion I had for the outdoors other than the walk down to the forest at the end of the street after school every day and I was just learning about, I would catch snakes and keep them as pets in the terrarium in the house. Fishing little streams for chub and just getting out there. And then my mother bought me a book, Two Little Savages, by Ernest Thompson Seton, who was actually one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, with somebody down on the stage, Powell with him. So that's back in what, the 40s? Callie. This is what my day is comprised of. A little bit of building and a lot of throwing that to Callie. Yeah, so this book was, the guy happened to be North Toronto when Toronto was nothing, like this is almost like a town. But anyway, all these traditional First Nation skills and they were building little shanties too and sleeping in these shanties. The story was about two boys going out in the woods and doing that. So I would go out there and recreate these things and then my, another friend that was kind of like that too, started coming out with me. So we were building shelters and sleeping in them by like 10, 11 years old. Really? Even in the winter. That's young. And the parents led us to do that, yeah. That was a different time, right? Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm a few years younger than you, but same thing. I mean, when we grew up it was, you know, when you got home from school kind of it was, you know, you can just go be outdoors and come back when it's dark and we live next to forests and just conservation area and that's where you went and you did all those things and built tree forks and climbed trees and so on. Yeah. I can definitely relate to growing up that way. This skill set that you utilize here, I mean, not even just the hunting or the canoeing, you know, the building skills that you've acquired. Is that something that you've developed in your business ventures or have you kind of done like trial by fire and, you know, learned as you started building everything that's on this property? Well, people give me too much credit for my building skills. I do have a construction background so when I was 16, 17, 18, turned to summers I did commercial roofing which, again, is totally unrelated to this, but probably taught me a thing and taught me how to do simple things that I guess I took for granted like using measuring tape and a hammer. And then I went into a sheet metal trade. I was a sheet metal journeyman, well, an apprentice, actually. For eight years I ended up being in total, 21 to 29. So, again, nothing to do with woodworking, but I learned how to use tools and measure and I learned about building codes. And then I had a commercial roofing company for a number of years. I got into the office in the commercial roofing company, which has led to me owning one, and I've learned a lot of structural engineer waterproofing and how a building goes together. So, yeah, I definitely had that skill set, I guess, from that, but not hands-on. Yeah, well, it's interesting. It sounds like you've taken all of those skills, the outdoor skills and the building skills, and then really kind of found a perfect way to utilize them as a lifestyle, which is ideal. I mean, you took everything that you learned and you're using all of the natural materials Well, you can look back in your life, and I've done this, thinking, well, if I only had done this instead of that, how many ways would you change your life? But it all came together, in my case, and I think for most people, where you end up with these skills that you end up applying in different ways, or they come together. So it's life experiences that bring you. And I think my 50s are going to be the best decade of my life. When you're young, you think, I don't want to be 30 or 40 or 50, and you have this arbitrary number that seems to be so old that you're no longer part of it. You can't even envision it, yeah. Yeah. But what you realize as you get to this age, not only do you have this... You're actually looking really annoyed. So I realize getting to this age that all these decades of experience that you accumulate become very valuable, and if you take care of yourself and you get up and do something physical every day, you're actually going to be... I'm in better shape right now, for sure, than when I was 30 working at an office. I had back problems going to a chiropractor. I was always in pain. Since I started this, I haven't been to a chiropractor once, and I feel great all the time. You have to use it or lose it, you know? Yeah, what do you think the key is to that? There's probably a psychological element to that, but the physical aspect of it. Do you think just being active more than working in an office every day is something that keeps you feeling fresh and young? For sure. I see many people younger than me that are... well, myself. I was a good example. I was physically less strong and capable and fit as I am now, and I think I would say mentally more... well, for sure, more burnt out when I was younger working in an office. I see older people start to slow down, and as soon as they stop, as soon as they stop a physical job, for example, if they're a construction worker or tradesman, they immediately sort of seize up. So it's no question, but I think also the fresh air. It's very meditative, working in a forest all the time, and this is what you hear. Right now, it's the wind, and we have geese flying over. You probably got to get the fire going in the cabin. I got to ask you, we got some customer and some follower questions. Naturally, they're more about canoeing and stuff, but I have to ask you. The most popular question that people sent in to us, which I thought was interesting and maybe hard to answer, so we'll see how it comes across to you, but a lot of people said, what was your first paddling memory? Now, you mentioned some things that you done in childhood. Was there a first canoe trip, a first it doesn't even necessarily have to be canoeing. Was there a first outdoor trip that was the one that you remember from childhood that was kind of a trigger towards making this a bigger part of your life? So many little things in the outdoors, but I think canoeing, I think water is probably, it's been a central figure in my life. So, like I said, my grandparents had a trailer in Honey Harbor, southern Georgian Bay, and that's where I learned to fish off the dock there. And I've got a picture of my sister and I on board, and I'm maybe five, let's say, and she's three and a half or something, and we're both holding a bass. Very cool. Yeah, which is awesome. And my life has sort of revolved around Georgian Bay since that time. But the first, I went to day camps when I was a kid. When I was young, my mother, even though we weren't wealthy at all, had some tough times, my mother prioritized us kids and giving us experiences, so we often went to day camps, or overnight camps even. Hockey camp, I was big into sports, actually, not to see if it was worth hockey and soccer. And I learned how to canoe and kayak, and in fact, a cool experience when I was 12 is I actually gave Wayne Gretzky a demonstration on how to do an Eskimo roll on a canoe. Really? Or a kayak, sorry, kayak, yeah. How did that come about? Halliburton Hockey Haven, yeah, I went there two years, and my mother, Gretzky had only been in the league for a year, I guess, and up and comer, but already breaking records, and she made sure I was at Halliburton Hockey Haven for that week that he was going to be visiting. And sure enough, he arrived and he came down to the water just as I was learning how to do an Eskimo roll, so he said, that's awesome, I've never done that, can you show me how to do that? So did the Gretz master the Eskimo roll because of you? No, we got called to something else, and we went and started playing soccer, and we were playing soccer with him, and a kid broke his leg right in front of him. Really? Yeah. It wasn't a Gretz that did it, I think. No, it wasn't. That's pretty cool. That's a cool, memorable experience about being on the water. And then after, you know, just dabbling canoeing and kayaking, when I was 16, my three buddies and I canoed from Six Mile Lake to the Gibson Macdonald, and we took our time, but we thought we could live off the land, so we barely brought any food. And what we did bring was these boil-in-the- bag magic pantry, I think they were, foil, like a full lasagna, so it weighed like two pounds each meal. And then we were like fighting over like catching a sunfish and who's going to eat it kind of thing at the end of the trip, eating duck eggs. Oh really? Oh yeah. How long was this trip for? Six or seven days. And you made it right to the end? Yeah, we had to. It was a loop, and we didn't have our driver's license, or we didn't have vehicles, so we got dropped off. I think we might have been 15, actually. And then the following year, we did the French River, a seven-day trip, and had an awesome time doing that. I imagine everyone lost a few pounds on both of those trips. Oh yeah. And then we lost all of our gear the last, second-last day on the French River trip, lining up rapids, swamp boat canoes, and everything went, all our, all the camp, two little cameras, and all our frying pan, food, everything. Well, I was going to ask you, I was going to get to the best canoe-tripping story or event, but that leads me to, what was the worst one? I mean, if you're 15 years old, and you lose a canoe on the French River, and all of your gear, you know, as an adult man, I've been on solo trips, and I had a couple close calls, and you know, I carried that memory home with me. Yeah. You know, that's, when you're doing that, that's before cell phones, that's before GPS, that's, you know, helps not necessarily around the corner, sort of thing. You know, what was, was that the worst canoe-tripping experience you had, or the scariest one? We didn't think of it as, as bad, like it was, yeah, you have your moments, but when you're with a bunch of guys, three good friends, like we're still friends with them, actually. Yeah, there, there isn't a bad one. I, I don't, I don't know, like I, it's always been about, I don't know, I don't know, I've got, I was so used to, like I said, like by twelve I was sleeping in, with no property here, sleeping in winter shelters that we built, like literally pieces of split rail fence that we tore apart from the farmer's field and made a little shelter out of it and slept in it when I was twenty. So there's no, hardship is never an issue for me, I never felt like it was hard. Yeah. So, I don't even think I have a, like that was probably the worst event that happened on a canoe trip, but like I said, when I was seventeen I bought a property and had a little tin aluminum boat and had a couple of canoes I would stash on back lakes and I'd have to portage to and go up little creeks and stuff and we were back there hunting and fishing and kind of living, a lot of time it was me alone living sort of off the land even back then so. So you started young, you know, with those experiences and it's interesting you know, there's always some like youthful naivety about, you know, you're, you're impervious to, to getting hurt when you do these things, you know, and it's funny, I hear stories from like my father and grandfather about mishaps in the bush, you know, hunting trips that went to rye and gear breaking down and being really far away from a resolution and I've always, I always ask the question is, you know, was it scary or was that a bad experience and the answer is almost always no it wasn't because we didn't think that it was a big deal, you know, we didn't think that it was that dangerous and looking back on it, yeah it was, you know, but at the time if you're with your two best buddies and you tip a canoe or what have you, that's just a, that's a reason to have more adventure, you know what I mean? Well, there's some things that stand out when I was 18, winter camping, brought my girlfriend's younger brother, so he's probably like 14 and we went out to Whitestone Lake because I had the island property and we went back in the woods, I brought a compound bowl, it was literally minus 32 or something and I decided we're going to build a Quinzee beside a lake and we're going to catch fish and shoot rabbits with this bowl for food, which of course none of that happened, I spent like an hour with a hatchet knocking, chipping a hole in the ice, didn't know because I'm young that you can't chip like this, so the last ax went through, filled the hole up with water. Yeah, and then you couldn't get a line through? Yeah, it was 36 inches of ice, so I did a hole in another hole, spent an hour doing that, brought it down properly and knocked it out with a stick, it was a foot and a half of water underneath. No cheating. Couldn't fish. We were soaking wet from building this Quinzee and all I had was a canvas overalls on, which is totally, totally wet, but from emptying out the snow out of the Quinzee, so then we would go to bed in there and I had this little thin tarp that was so cold it shattered into little pieces, so we were sleeping on the snow. No fire? Fire, we kept, I built it on top of snow that was that deep so it just kept putting itself out as it melted down. Was it wet? I actually could have died that night, this kid could have died, but that was for sure the closest I've ever come to. So you guys, you didn't know in that moment that it was pretty bad? Oh yeah, I was starting, yeah. That leads me to my next question and there's probably, this is almost, depends on the season here, I mean that was a winter camping story, but there's always critical pieces of gear that everyone, you know, you can't leave without it. The common one you hear is an axe. You know, let's start with winter. What are the key pieces of gear that you gotta bring? I have a pretty popular video from before I started the cabin called Camping in a Cold November Rain or something like that and I go out with a canoe, a scenery canvas canoe, shotgun and dry pants and I'm not sure what I had on for a jacket. I slept under the canoe, it poured rain, it was November, it was probably close to five o'clock in the freezing and just slept under that and had a fire and it was completely fine so it ends up, and I knew that it's going into it, it came, it was going to come down to the clothing that was on my body and I've found that more than anything in any season, summer, winter, whatever, especially the shoulder seasons, is that having the proper gear on your body, clothing wise, more important than anything. You need to be able to start a fire, because I have had dumps, I've had actually I've never spilled a canoe, I've never had a, well, yeah, never solo I've ever flipped a canoe, I'm trying to think if I did even as a teenager, I don't think so. Anyway, I've never had, yeah, so I've never had that issue but I've always been prepared for it, so I always, you'll see me all summer long here working in long sleeve, which looks completely unnatural and then fall came over the last month and I'm wearing short sleeves, even though it's way colder than it was in the summer, so I've that time of year, most of the summer, I'm wearing full clothing. I never wear shorts anymore in the woods, even on a canoe trip because I don't want to get burnt, I don't want to get bitten, I don't want to get scratched, so it comes down to the clothing and then if you do dump you need to be able to start a fire in the case of a canoe trip or in the winter you need to be able to start a fire to keep yourself warm. So my coldest overnight winter camping, no tent is like minus 40, that minus 42 night we had in Algonquin a couple years ago, I was out in that with just a fire and a sleeping bag. So it's clothing first, fire starting ability with probably, if you can, multiple ways of starting a fire, you can see me use a flint here lately, a fire steel and then matches them later, I would have all of those in different parts of my body and then the knife axe thing, there's been lots of times that I don't open up and I don't take a knife or an axe on a trip or a saw even, because take a look around, even starting this fire right now, even though I've been here for two and a half years, I'm still getting twigs and branches from right around the cabin, never mind back in the woods, there's always firewood here. So wood processing is low on the list here in Ontario. Well, it's funny, I've learned something just from us sitting here because you're dressed well and I'm sitting here shivering. I'm not shivering, I'm not the only one who's cold, because yeah, I'm learning and you're going to have to get some of your gear. As far as with canoe tripping goes, obviously yes, fire starting is key, being able to source wood, staying dry if you're going to get wet, all those things. You're a little bit more of a traditional gear kind of guy. A lot of people getting into canoe tripping and especially solo tripping has seen a big trend in people who are just starting it and don't know. As far as gear, packing gear, are you the traditional, like the canvas bag? Are you the one bag, two bags? You know, I don't see you, I don't envision you with a blue barrel for food. It's just that doesn't seem like your style. So what's your normal gear setup when you're solo canoe tripping? I'm really into distance typically because I like to get back to where the fishing game is. It's always been my thing. Before Google, before satellite imagery, I used to go to the Ministry of Natural Resources offices and pore over the maps with a sketch of a thing and I would mark out where the crown land spots were on my own map. I'd order the satellite photos or aerial photos when they became available. So I was always looking for those places way off the beaten track. You can't carry a lot of gear into those. So I've been fairly traditional in my gear but more than that I try to go minimal. Now with this lightweight equipment, I've got my beautiful cedar and canvas canoe. I've got my canvas bag. But honestly, if I'm going to go distance, I want to have my 34 pound carbon canoe. I want to have one pack, never have two packs. I've only gone on one canoe trip probably in the last 10 years that I've had more than one pack. And I single carry everything. And that's the secret. I can't... The Bairds came out with me and if you've seen their canoe trips they're like... I don't know how they do it. They're like triple portage. Yeah, they can get more in a canoe than anyone I've ever seen. Yeah, the dog's like sitting on top of the gunnels on top of the Always, always. Now, that all comes from experience, you know, and as someone who canoe trips and stuff, I'm always guilty of bringing too much. Out of risk of always telling myself it's better to have it than not need it. It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Is there any particular piece of gear or moment that you remember that taught you to pare down to that single pack or those single carries? You know, I've been guilty of carrying, you know, too big of an axe and realizing I had lugged this thing around and I didn't have to. Did that ever happen to you? It must have. Some gear, yeah, it starts... Well, what always happens is that the gear that you're not using ends up on the bottom of the pack. Whether it started there or not, it ends up by the end of the week at the bottom of that pack. I have this little blue towel, one of those micro towels, full size, that has been sitting at the bottom of my pack forever and finally I just used it to protect the bottom of the canoe the other day and that was the first time it's been out. It's a funny thing, you'd think a towel would be fairly common, but if it's warm enough to swim it's typically warm enough to dry off without a towel. Yeah, true enough though. So things like that have slowly just been eliminated from my pack and an axe was never something I thought was necessary. First of all, they are dangerous. In fact, all the experience I have, I actually cut myself when the guys were here the next morning after a long night of carousing with the guys. Coffee only? Yeah. And I ended up putting an axe in my finger here and it's still not healed properly. That was back when the guys came up the first time. I'm not sure if you were here, then you had left the night before. The April one, anyway. Yeah, I think I might have come the second one, I believe. Okay, yeah. So you're just splitting kettles? Yeah, just to get the kettle going in the morning. So it can happen to anybody. And an axe is one of the more dangerous things to use. And the knife is not far behind it. So unless you're experienced with it, on a solo trip, I try to find a way to avoid using those things as much as possible. But certainly don't carry an axe. If anything, fire is important, so if you don't know the area that you're going into, a little folding saw and maybe a knife if you know how to split kindling and stuff but that isn't enough. My next question was do you carry a saw? Because depending on where you go, and you're the type to go deeper into crown land where all the firewood within 100 meters of every campsite has been totally barren, you know what I mean? And you're looking at tundra when you get to a campsite in some places, you know what I mean? So yeah, it sounds like the saw is worth having, you know, especially these lightweight ones. Well, for getting into, or even portages. I always start off the year with the canoe trip rated at ISO essentially. So a lot of the portages, even in Algonquin, I'm on there first. And there's trees down. So a saw is almost essential at that time either to cut your way through the portages or to be respectful of the people following you so you can kind of clear a path. But some things you have to, if you're solo, you have to accept the fact that you have to take less risks than a party. So a lot of times I don't clear the portages because I can get hurt doing that. And I'm alone. I'll wait for the group that's coming in behind me to do that. Well, I'm sure that's a mindset, too, that's probably a little bit more refined with you because of your lifestyle. Even just being here. You can't risk doing something with a large piece of machinery or going up on a dangerous angle on the ladder because the consequences are too big. And that's one thing that we see a lot with people starting to get into canoe tripping and especially there being a big increase in solo trippers. Us having some responsibility making sure that they're prepared as well. And there are some lessons that you should learn about if you carry two packs and you realize how much it sucks to learn to pare down your gear but also just being safe. And that comes with time and experience. One of the things that we were talking about I think before the cameras were rolling is that you never get out in your canoe as much as you'd like to. Every fall I always say I wish I would have squeezed one more in here on this weekend or that weekend. We're getting to be in the fall. It sounds like you're going canoeing tomorrow. Maybe by the sounds of things you got a few more in this fall. Any big trips planned? I mean you went to Alaska. I know you managed to fit in some canoeing there. Are there any canoe tripping adventures lined up for you? I have nothing planned but as you mentioned I don't plan too far in advance much. For this year it'll just be day trips. I've probably got three or four at least left maybe more than that even because it is harvest season. And I like to get out on the water for that. Next year I'm looking at, I don't know, I did woodland caribou a couple years ago now and I've got my eye on some of the other big parks north. Is that the new trend, northern Ontario? I see a lot of guys obviously that we do business with and so on. There's a bit of a migration with the more seasoned trippers going up there. What's the appeal? Is it because it's a little bit more isolated, different terrain? I think Jim Baird and I talked about this. There's canoeists, this is what's a little bit different than me and I didn't realize this until I kind of started hanging around more of the Algonquin crowd, is that there's canoeists and then there's outdoorsmen and they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily the same people. So Jim said the same thing I do. The canoe has always been a tool to get people to come There's like a means to an end? Yeah, pretty much, yeah. The canoe is the ideal vessel for an Ontario sportsman to be able to access fishing game. So when I talked about, even when I had a property where I had my cabin when I was in my teens and my early 20s, it was the canoe on the back lake or the back stream or river that got me into those places where I could find the fishing game. But the canoe The point was to get to fishing game. Right. So that's the, and that canoe is the ideal vessel for that and that's still my mindset. So when you talk about going on remote trips, I'm looking for the fishing places. I'm not looking for the, I'm not looking for the hardship. For one thing, at this age I don't feel like I have anything to prove. Like people ask about the meanest link or the Brent run, Yep. I did have some drive to do that when I was younger. I did want to do that or regret not doing it. Now at this stage it's not about ego. It's not about trying to prove who I am. It's just being comfortable with who I am and my position and I don't want, I don't feel the need to test myself anymore I guess. That's a great piece of advice and I think that's something that a lot of people, you learn to keep in perspective but it's always something to be reminded of. We joke about it a lot at the office because you see a lot of trippers coming in, going out, people coming in looking for different boats for different needs and we often sometimes joke with those customers like how much punishment do you want to sign yourself up for? Really? Do you really want that heavy boat if you have visions of doing the meanest link? Yeah. Or if you're going to do the meanest link have you put in a consideration to paring down your gear or is that something that you should be doing solo and not that we're going to tell anyone how they should spend their time in the outdoors but just from an enjoyment perspective, I mean the objective is always to enjoy your time in the outdoors and it comes with experience but it's funny to hear you say that you're going to those fishing game spots but get there in the most efficient way possible for your own sake. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely and that brings up another point about being in shape to do that. So part of the gear is not to overburden yourself. Unless you're living, like I said, physically adapted to the outdoors more than the average person and more than I've been as an average person over the last 20 years prior to this. So expect to be able to go out on a weekend with, you know, 100 pounds of gear and an 80 pound canoe and not injure myself or at least not have a worse time than I could have had if I had lighter gear and less equipment to deal with. So that comes, so for if I'm doing a long weekend and I canoe trip, you're out of shape in the spring. Doesn't matter what I do around here, I can carry logs all day long. But you ask me to sprint across a portage or to carry a canoe on my back, it's a completely different thing. Or paddle all day long and you get joints that are sore. So you have to take care of those things. So I would, before a long canoe trip in the spring, I'll put a canoe pack like that on my back and I'll actually load it up, in this case, with logs or in the past I'd use weights. And I'd go for long walks. Training. Yeah. And then the gear, you've got to, I've got spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets on my computer for all my gear. I've got everything I own listed that I would take on a trip and I pair it down and match it up based on its weight. My food, I know how many calories per ounce I can get out of all these different food types. So I'll put together my meal plan so that on a ten day trip I've got that little earth sack that carries all my food. Wow. You get all into that just that minute. Wow. You know, those all come with experience and lessons learned and that's a very thoughtful way of having a spreadsheet and making sure that you go about it the right way because carrying all that gear, you know, one thing that I always joke about with is it doesn't matter how much time you go canoe tripping, we hear it from trippers all the time, it's like your first portage of the season, it can be 200 meters and you can have a light boat. Yeah. That 200 meters, that 200 meters is an eternity and you're huffing and puffing when you get there and I get reminded of that every time, we're about to go out this weekend and I know I have a 250 meter uphill portage through a river bed that's all rocks and I call it an ankle breaker because it can be, you know, and we did a bunch of times this summer and I was reminded like, okay, you know, you've got to get five or ten more pounds out of this pack when you come back here, you know, make sure you're wearing good footwear if you're going through this river bed, you know, be smart, be safe, but, you know, the more you do it, and someone who's done it as much as you have, obviously, then you end up with a spreadsheet. Yeah. That allows you to do that efficiently. Yeah, and you can do your research if you don't have the experience and people have asked me for it and I've shared that spreadsheet and, you know, it's researching the gear, you can find the gear reviews on YouTube or anywhere else. Well, even the, you know, videos that guys like you do. Yeah. It's a great resource and we get, we hear feedback about that just for people, you know, what do I need when I go out there? What do other people use? What are good tricks, little things that I can learn from these guys? And that all helps, right? You know, the objective is for everyone to have fun outside. Yeah. One of the soul things is I get a lot of questions, you see it on the forums a lot about how do you deal with the being alone for that amount of time and feel comfortable and all that stuff. And like experience with those canoe trips and your gears, just getting out and doing it and slowly introducing yourself to it so you get used to it before you embark on a ten day solo trip to somewhere that you don't know. You've got to get comfortable in the woods. You have to, you can't be afraid of every noise, you can't be afraid of bears and wolves and everything else. You need to learn about those animals, about all the threats. Where are the snakes in Ontario that are venomous? Where are the threats? And then you start, then you educate yourself about those threats to the point where you're so comfortable with them that it's no longer on the forefront. Well, I completely agree. I think it's the beauty of having so much information available to everyone now is that it is really quick to figure that stuff out. If you're going to go and experience the outdoors or go canoe tripping, and obviously I recommend everyone should and you probably do too, is just it doesn't take a lot of time to go on those forums or to go and find those videos and learn those little tricks so that on your first time in Algonquin there isn't a big surprise when you hear the wolves howl at night. Or maybe some of the fishing lures that you should bring or not bring depending on where you're going and what fish are in the lake. All that stuff comes full circle. Speaking of full circle, I know you've got work to do before the end of the day. The sun's going to set here. I've got a couple more questions for you. Okay. You've done a lot in the two and a half years that you've had this. I know you've talked a little bit about your future with this and with YouTube and all that stuff. What's next for you? What's my self-reliance going to be in two years or five years' time? Yeah. I have to expect that YouTube is not a forever thing. I'm enjoying the content creation. I'm enjoying sharing this world with people and I think going back to why people are attracted to this is that there is that want for self-reliance. There's the want to return to nature. There's therefore then the protection of nature as more and more people want to experience it or just as the population continues to increase. So there's a conservation aspect perspective that I haven't shared enough of I think. So I want to start talking more about that, preserving these places, using the resources responsibly. As far as the monetization of my lifestyle, I think there could be courses at some point if I feel like the security issue can be managed. I would like to have people here and then have demonstration courses or workshops or something, some educational component that's not the different platforms to share. I'll keep researching and maybe there's another platform I can do this again. I want to share this one. So there's that opportunity. There's the, you know, I could create movies of the life. So there's a lot of ... There's no shortage of things for you to do in the future. Guiding, writing, like people are asking for cookbooks, which I will probably have out in 2020 by the looks of it. Honestly, I wish we had more time to talk about that because I had all sorts of questions about your cooking. Hot sauce. I think the people envision themselves living in a cabin in the woods to escape from society and that's forever more where they're going to be if they can do that thing and be satisfied with that. I don't think it's just me or some people. I think everybody would get restless. There's very few people that would be totally content, given opportunities to do otherwise, but be content to sit in one place and just stay at this cabin, for example. Do nothing but explore what's around here on foot. To me, I've always considered this a cheap base camp to live life from. So I see the world as, especially the outdoor world, has a blank canvas for me. I want to explore more of nature. Going to Alaska this year, specifically to film wildlife and scenery, was the first trip I've done of significance, a big trip specifically for those things. In the past, it's always been family trips to the Disney World and stuff like that, right? So I see this as a place to live cheaply, live closer to nature and understand this, but also it's really just a foundation for an outdoor lifestyle that's more adventurous.