Evan Birch (911 Dispatching, Ultra Running and Breathwork) - Episode 1046

This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you that are in the military, first responder or medical professions. In an effort to give back, Thorne is now offering you an ongoing 35% off each and every one of your purchases of their incredible nutritional solutions. Now Thorne is the official supplement of CrossFit, the UFC, the Mayo Clinic, the Human Performance Project and multiple special operations organizations.

I myself have used them for several years and that is why I brought them on as a sponsor. Some of my favorite products they have are their Multivitamin Elite, their Whey Protein, the Super EPA and their most recently, Cynaquil. As a firefighter, a stuntman and a martial artist, I've had my share of brain trauma and sleep deprivation and Cynaquil is their latest brain health supplement. Now to qualify for the 35% off, go to thorn.com, T-H-O-R-N-E dot com.

Click on sign in and then create a new account. You will see the opportunity to register as a first responder or member of military. When you click on that, it will take you through verification with GovX. You'll simply choose a profession, provide one piece of documentation and then you are verified for life. From that point onwards, you will continue to receive 35% off through Thorn.

Now for those of you who don't qualify, there is still the 10% off using the code BTS10, Behind the Shield 10, for a one time purchase. Now to learn more about Thorn, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with Joel Titoro and Wes Barnett. This episode is sponsored by TeamBuildr, yet another company that's doing great things for the first responder community.

As a strength and conditioning coach myself, who also trains tactical athletes, dissemination of wellness information is one of the biggest challenges. Now TeamBuildr is the premier strength and conditioning software for tactical athletes. And there are several features that really impress me. Firstly, there is a full exercise library so you, the personal trainer, does not have to create that within your own department. Secondly, you can send out programming but also individualize, which I love.

So you blanket program for everyone. Now you can tweak based on someone's injury, someone's need to maybe drop some body composition rather than having to write a program for every single person on their own. Team Builder also allows you to build custom questionnaires to collate health and wellness data. It integrates with wearables. And I think one of the most important things is obviously it tracks.

To me, it's imperative that we as a profession start tracking our people from day one and then over the full span of their career. Therefore catching potential wellness issues and injuries before they happen. Now, if you want to try TeamBuildr, they are offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a free 14 day trial to experience all of the features. And if you want to take a deeper dive into Team Builder, listen to episode 1032 with Melissa Mercado or go to teambuilder.com.

I'm going to spell that to you because it's not as you think. TEAMBUILDR.com I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast and that is Rescue 1 CBD. For any of you who have listened to this podcast for the last eight years, you will have heard my own personal journey from using prescription pills after a knee surgery to finding CBD and having incredible success with that.

I then saw my son's wheezing diminish, my wife's anxiety and so many more kind of success stories. The problem is, though, I've also seen the stigma and misunderstanding about this incredibly powerful plant medicine. When it comes to workplace drug testing, it's THC that they are looking for. The concentration is higher marijuana, but there is a small amount in most CBD products.

And with John being a veteran firefighter paramedic himself, he was determined to find a product that was pure that would ensure there was nothing in there that would put someone's career at risk. So he developed a three tier system. The third party testing facility tests to parts per billion, which is the most minute amount I have ever heard of in all the time I've worked with CBD.

The results of every batch are posted on their website so you can literally see the same results that they see from the batch that you are ordering. Secondly, they include workplace drug test kits in the order when you order it. So if you have any fears, you get to do it just to appease it, even though this is a pure and safe product.

Thirdly, they've just finished a year long study with the University of Maryland and Arcadia University and firefighters from all over the country sent in their urine samples and not a single person failed a drug test. So you have three different tiers of trust with this particular product. Now they have different flavors for their CBD. For anyone that's had it, that's just the CBD oil. It does not taste good, so they found a way of making it more palatable.

They have a sleep remedy that has terpenes in, again completely safe. That one's called out of service and then topical CBD, obviously for aches and pains on the outside. Now, on top of all that, Rescue One is offering you, the listener of the Behind the Shield podcast, 15% off your order if you use the code BTS, as in Behind the Shield.

And you can find all of their products, you can find all of the testing and understand why this truly is a product that you can trust by going to rescue1cbd.com. And you can listen to my conversation with John on episode 1011 of the Behind the Shield podcast. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing. And this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show, dispatcher and ultra endurance athlete, Evan Birch.

Now, I would argue that one of the least recognized members of the first responder community is our dispatcher. And Evan has a very powerful perspective, having worked in air ambulance dispatch and 911. So we discuss a host of topics from his journey into that profession, the under recognized elements of trauma and stress to our dispatchers, ultra running, breath work and so much more. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.

Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of well over 1000 episodes now. So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said, I introduce to you Evan Birch. Enjoy.

Well, Evan, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Thanks for having me, James. I'm excited to see where the conversation goes. I intentionally didn't do much in the way of research about the podcast a little bit just to see where things, yeah, I just want to see where it goes. Good. That's exactly the right strategy. Yeah, people ask me sometimes, oh, can you send me questions? I'm like, no.

I don't know what I'm going to ask it. So you're the expert in your own life, so you should be fine. All right. Well, then very first question, where on planet Earth are we finding you today? So I am located in Canada, in Calgary, Alberta. Brilliant. Well, I would love to start at the very beginning of your story. So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings?

Yeah, so I am one of the very few Calgarians that have stayed in Calgary or are from Calgary, I will say. It seems to be a very mixed of the population of people. So I was born in Calgary and I have an older brother and mom, dad. And yeah, it was a pretty, I will say, a very privileged upbringing in the sense of I never didn't have what I needed. And that's that's the best way to put it. What did your parents do as a profession? Yeah, so my dad owned the business.

He worked as an aircraft avionics and instrument in the aviation world. And my mom was a bookkeeper for the company as well, too. So it was a kind of a family run business. And mom was there at lunches all the time for when we came home from school. And dad worked and provided for the family. Brilliant. What about sports? Obviously, we're going to get to the incredible athleticism that you have these days. But when you were in the school age, what were you playing and doing?

So soccer was my sport of choice and my only sport of choice. I started playing soccer house league, which is kind of the community league when I was five. And I played soccer all the way up until about age 30, about as competitively as you could get here in Canada. Kind of a little bit of a slow, slow burn. When I was a kid, there was a few Academy teams and things like that. But now it's much bigger. But it it definitely turned into a love over the years.

I didn't want to play any other sport. I played dabbled in other things. But soccer was my was my sport. What made you stop playing at 30? I wanted to do a sport that didn't involve a team. I had always done team sports. I never really did anything for myself. I did a little bit of track in junior high, high school, but nothing. Nothing that was just for me. So I wanted to dive into something that was I was responsible for myself and only myself and whether or not I got to the finish line.

Gotcha. We'll get into that in a moment. What about, again, school age career aspirations? What were you dreaming of becoming back then? Yeah, physiotherapist was the the goal. I mean, I came through and did a bunch of sports med programs and things in high school. And I really just loved the anatomy, human body, physiology, all of those pieces of the puzzle that really fit together.

And if you ask me today, I could still probably name almost every bone in the human body, even though I haven't done it since high school, which is, again, I think just a testament to how much I loved it and enjoyed it. So walk me through how you'll you have this kind of desire to be in a P.T. field. How did that transition into becoming a dispatcher? Yeah, so a little bit of a little bit of a, I guess, two sided coin here. I didn't have the grades to get into physiotherapy.

I was so focused on sports through high school that I maybe didn't apply myself as much as I could, which I think some people can relate to or will relate to. And I really kind of looked around and thought to myself, what what could I do that's along those lines that I could get into and work my way through without having to go back and do a bunch of upgrading or anything? And I really fell on emergency medicine. So with regards to I guess there's three levels in Canada.

There's EMR, EMTA and then EMTP. So emergency medical responder, emergency medical technician, advanced and then emergency medical technician, paramedic. And that was that was kind of the track that I set myself on was a minute ago to get my EMR, get some experience and then transition through those through those tiers. But in my EMR class, my two instructors happened to be paramedics for Stars Air Ambulance, which is our local nonprofit air ambulance organization here in Western Canada.

And they really encouraged us to go and get some volunteer experience to put it on our resumes because we're young, trying to come into the industry. It always helps. So I ended up going and started volunteering at the Stars Air Ambulance organization where I consequently fell in love with seeing what the dispatchers were doing. And I said to myself, like, I want to do that.

I was reading actually Stars website or stars LinkedIn page, excuse me, talk to me about the origin story, because again, it's it's one person realizing that something has to be done. I'm sure they were waiting for some large governing body to take care of it and didn't. So what was the genesis of the Star Air Ambulance program?

Well, I think that was the one that started the organization and he really had this vision to take what was happening during wars and utilizing helicopters to move patients more efficiently to get them to the care faster. And essentially, as soon as you can get people somewhere faster, you increase their likelihood of survival. And that was really the goal.

I started with a very rag tag bunch of guys. I mean, funny enough, like some of those pilots had just retired over the last few years and it started in 1985, the year I was born. So it's held with time and it's only grown. And, you know, like you said, organizations and the government finally kind of came into it and decided like, hey, this is something you actually want to support. And it's turned into an incredible organization across three provinces, seven bases.

I was there when it was just two bases when it first started when I was only 18. So I've been able to see the growth of it when throughout my career and then as I've left as well. Well, I saw it mentioned about he lost a woman, I think, during childbirth to blood loss. And I think that I'm sure transportation was the issue and that was the thing.

And it's something that I'm kind of calling out more so this year than ever that, you know, whether it's something like that, whether it's a chief or a union leader in a fire department is losing their members. You know, that's that kind of event should shake you. It should drive you to go find the solution. If you can't find the solution, create the solution.

So I really resonated with that origin story that he was so disgusted by the loss of this woman that he basically created this solution himself. Yeah, it's pretty incredible to see how far it's come from one helicopter that was literally donated. And the only reason the helicopter is painted red is because that is the can of paint that they had available to paint it.

And that's like it's so funny to say, but that was literally why it got painted red when it got painted red, because that's all that they had. That's amazing. Well, then walk me through your entry into dispatch, because obviously it's a unique dispatch. And you go and you ended up in the kind of municipal 911 dispatch later. But what was the kind of environment as far as the types of calls and who you were speaking to in that role?

And then talk to me about the age of, you know, in this case, dispatcher, because this is also an important conversation. You know, at what age should our young people enter these professions? Yeah, so I started volunteering, came in, started a low level position, asked if there was something more, and I ended up got hired on as a site oil and gas site registration.

So we registered very remote sites. So if they did have an accident or something happened on their site, they could phone in and request air evacuation. And really our role as a communication specialist is what our title was rather than dispatcher. Our job was to the idea was one call does it all in the sense that we brought every decision maker and party onto the line, whether that be our transport physician who's making the decision if it goes air ground or a fixed swing aircraft, airplane.

And we would have the sending physicians, we would have specialists in the city, everybody would be getting the story once. So we'd have sometimes six or seven people on the phone line at once. And our job was to essentially quarterback that call and make sure things are rolling in the background, pre alerting the aircraft tracking the aircraft once they get dispatched.

So there's a lot of there's a lot of pieces in there. And when I did first start at the organization, we did have a contract for 911 at that time for a little municipality north of Calgary here called Mountview County. So I was dispatching fire and EMS very early on in my career as well. When it was still the dispatcher and call taker was the exact same person you dispatch and you were on the radio and call taking at the same time, which is pretty unique.

I think there's very few organizations that do it that way. Now, I'm sure there's still some small ones but yeah, it was a very interesting foray into it. I was asked by the manager at the time I was I think I was just about to turn 19 and he said, Hey, do you want to train for the communication specialist position.

And you know, being 19 and somebody asking you to do something like that and see what everybody's doing like the responsibility that comes with that is like a, it's a big responsibility. I mean, your life is like people's lives are literally in your hands about how fast you can move and how quickly you can process things and the multitasking and all the other things like calls don't stop coming in, we were as the phone rings, we answer it.

Sometimes I would have two phones in my ears and dispatching somebody on the radio it was, it was heavy and fast and stars really deals with the, I will say, you know, the 90% of the sickest of the sick people are what our calls were.

And we would also get calls from the local ambulance organizations for accidents, you know, on the highway and those types of things so we were mainly dealing with doctors and dispatch agencies directly there was the odd time that we would get a call from those oil and gas sites for calls in the field, but it was very rare so our exposure to the public wasn't as high as municipal 911 or fire police. What about the staffing and the hours that you're working back then for STAR?

Yeah, so staffing was unique when I first started it was they had just switched over to having two people at night. Originally there used to be one person at night and if you had to go to the washroom, there was literally a telephone in the bathroom, in case the phone rang while you were in the washroom like because there was only one person so I had just come on to that position so there was two people during the day and two people at night, and the schedule was two days,

two nights, four on four off seven o'clock starts seven o'clock finishes, and I worked that schedule for. Yeah, pretty much my entire career there minus a few changes that they tried to try different couple different things but that was my main schedule was two days two nights four on four off and swapping your body that often on that schedule.

And then the dispatch center is you're awake, you don't you don't get opportunity to sleep unless it's on your one hour break. So it's a, it's you're on all the time and you have to be prepared. Otherwise, again, you're four in the morning and somebody phones 911 or somebody phones for the helicopter and you're not on.

So you could literally kill somebody with how you process that event and if you're ready for it so yeah the shifts were long and you know my body so used to the shift work now but yeah it was, it was a tough schedule, I'll just say that I mean when I was young it was great didn't have kids didn't have a family of course I loved it. It was so easy to do when you don't have other responsibilities tied to you.

What about the, the element of being in the room because we've talked about this quite a bit now. When I think about a firefighter paramedic you know we get dispatched to a horrendous car crash for example extrication is needed. So we're operating the tools and maybe we transition to patient care, we go to the hospital, and then we offload the patient.

We've had this physical offload this physical exertion that went along with the stress of the call. And sometimes we've even seen the conclusion of the call did they make it did they not make it. What I hear a lot from the dispatch community is not knowing the outcome of a lot of these calls, and also the lack of physical offload you're getting this high stress but you're sitting in a chair.

Sometimes with two phones in your hand, and you're not able to have any sort of release like we would have a structure fire or an extrication.

Yeah, closure is a big one. That one. I will say working in the environment at stars was very unique because we did. We did get to hear a little bit more of the stories when the crew came back they would call the hospitals and then they would come tell us if it was, you know what the outcomes were so we did get a little bit more information in that regard. But definitely when it comes to municipal nine one fire dispatchers are very removed and I've trained and coached.

I mean I don't even want to for numbers but I would say close to 100 people over my career, if not more. I think that was the one thing that was probably the most difficult for people coming through training who obviously are coming from different backgrounds in different situations, not having that closure was like really hard on people, it was, you know,

you have to put time and effort into it to you know give CPR instructions or, you know, help somebody deliver a baby. And you don't know what happens at the end, and then you're hanging up that call. And literally the phone rings again and now you're on to another one. And I think that's the unique thing about the dispatch environment is if I take a call. I get upwards of 40 to 50 calls on an average day, whereas you know if you're, if you're out on a fire truck or an ambulance you might hit.

Okay, five to 10 calls a day at the most but when you're out on a call it's one call, you're, you're on one call at a time, you're not expected to have to monitor three other people going to three separate calls and try to keep it all square in your mind.

It's, you know, we talked about multitasking and no human is actually capable of multitasking because you can't do that many things really well. You can do them, but all mediocre in the sense of being able to keep it all together like somebody's going to drop the ball eventually. So when you reflect back at the time in stars what was some of the, what we call career calls some of the, you know, the events that really stick out when you reflect.

Yeah, I, you know the number of times that I'm sure you get asked this. I'm sure everybody gets asked this in emergency services what's the worst call you've ever taken so I like the way you asked that question, because it's not that it's what, what do I take from these calls. Well, I'll share one story because it's, it's absolutely incredible. Having done the coordination for it so we not only set the helicopters but we would also arrange for these oil and gas sites if they had an emergency.

We would try to figure out other means of transport if somebody needed something. So we got a call up in the middle of nowhere, it was a site that was only accessible via plane in the wintertime because the runway was basically ice, ice runway. So we were about two to three hours away from darkness they're literally in the middle of nowhere. The only way to get them in and out is going to be a fixed wing aircraft to land and take them out and there's a gentleman who was having a heart attack.

And my partner and I at the time who was a night shift and gearing towards darkness and we were working tandem together he was managing the call with all the doctors and everybody and I'm in the background trying to find all these possible ways of transporting this person out who's having a heart attack.

And I'm finding a company who had a fixed wing your ambulance up in the Northwest Territories which is like north of Alberta, kind of in the middle of nowhere, I will say, very large province in Canada, and they were able to land fly in but the stabilization of the patient took longer than they thought, and it was nearing dark and they weren't going to be able to get out.

And the pilot jumps on the phone onto the call and he goes, I have a way. Can anybody find me some rolls of paper towel or toilet paper or something. So they banded all together they managed to roll out all these paper towels and toilet papers pitch darkness, they lit them up with a lighter, and the guy took off on the runway with lit paper towel and toilet paper lining the runway to be able to see where the edges

were before he could take off, it was, it was probably one of it was one of those calls that will never happen again in my entire life, but being able to help coordinate something like that and save somebody's life with that type of response is, it was pretty cool to be a part of something like that. That's amazing. I love that when you talk about all these people being on the phone at one time, I mean anytime you hear any really good system.

It's usually the communication that they've solved, and bringing all these together and having, having the ability to think outside the box and critically think as this pilot did. You know I mean what an incredible story that would have resulted in tragedy if they hadn't come up with that.

Yeah, so that one, that one definitely sticks with me from that, that really kind of good perspective. I mean, there's, there's so many more that did end obviously in tragedy when you're dealing with the 90% of the sickest of the SEC there are calls that will will

stick with you, without a doubt and I mean that's, that's obviously why I'm speaking with you today because I calls did stick with me throughout my career and you know we can only carry so many in our bag at a time and you know I now I had this phrase pop into my mind a little while ago it was observed don't absorb.

And that's a very hard thing for anybody with an emergency services not to do because we're so service service oriented a lot of us move into this profession, I will say because we're people pleasers we want to help people more than we, we ask for help ourselves.

I think we're empaths to, I would argue all the good ones are empaths and does you know obviously you've got to be careful where those guardrails are but if you care enough to be a first responder than you care enough, and that way you are going to absorb some of this is just the nature of who you are. The difficult part is absorbing it to the point where you don't feel anymore because I taught myself how not to feel. I, I literally treated people like robots on the phone because if I didn't.

I don't know if I would have been able to do the job as long as I had done it for because there's only so much you can't you can absorb before I mean just like a sponge right. A sponge can't take on any more water and sometimes you got to wring yourself out a little bit but it's. There's so many avenues and aspects to the career, and I know you like you mentioned, you know, at what point should somebody consider going into a career

like this and I, you know I, I couldn't sit here in good conscience today and say that for my kids. I would want them to move into any career with an emergency services, the way the system is currently running. And that's, that's a hard thing to say because that was my life for 20 years. So it's, yeah, it's not a, it's not a good time for anybody within emergency services.

I was having this conversation this morning with someone and this is something I've heard a few people mention and it's it's spot on. Our biggest recruitment tool is a happy workforce. Because when you and I, you know if we're in uniform and things are going really well and you're supported by your organization and the work week is designed for you to be able to thrive.

You're going to be beating your chest and telling your friends and family, oh my god, this is an amazing job and you got to do this, which is what happened a lot, you know, in previous generations, but the military is saying the same thing. They're not getting that from this next generation. You know, if you were, you know, in the military and you served in Afghanistan and you saw the withdrawal unfold the way it did, you know, and you're left with, you know, what was that?

Do you want your children going into that same thing? We see, you know, the cancers from the burn pits and the mental health problems. And it's the same in our professions. The job hasn't changed. But if the environment around it isn't set up to support people doing, you know, superhuman things, regular people being asked to do superhuman things and really having an environment that's even worse than the shopkeeper in the high street.

You know, there's a certain point where, yeah, we're not going to tell young people, hey, you need to go do this. The job is incredible. But until they fix the things that are broken, it's not going to be healthy for you to enter this profession. So this is one of the reasons why I have a recruitment crisis at the moment is because the people in uniform at the moment, they see, you know, that they're living this reality.

And they, you know, we're seeing the divorces and the alcoholism and, you know, all the other things. And it's not doom and gloom. It's just a case of we cannot work human beings in this way without them breaking.

So it's a beautiful opportunity for us to change. But we ask why is there a recruitment crisis? It's because people aren't going around saying you should be a firefighter, you should be a dispatcher because the environment that they're in at the moment is not healthy for a young person. Yeah, I know you've probably heard of this quote, the Desmond Tutu quote. We need to stop just pulling people out of the river and go upstream to figure out why they're falling in the first place.

Yeah, I love that quote. It's like I heard that quote during my first part of my mental health journey myself of asking for help and that that's where it needs to go. We, in order to have any change in what any profession with an emergency services going through, we have to go upstream. It cannot be reactionary anymore. That's great that we have mental health supports after something happens.

But where is it before? There are organizations and I will say this, there are organizations that are doing it really well. But that's the one percenters. Yeah, and the question is why are other departments not having the humility to go into the departments that are doing it well and say can you show me how you did that?

Because one thing I've seen with like in Florida, the departments have gone to the 24 72. Every single person I know from those departments will bend over backwards to help other departments learn how they did it, learn what the challenges were, how they funded it, what they've seen as far as success. I just did a Q&A at a conference with three of them just a few weeks ago.

So just simply saying, OK, the way we're doing it isn't working and finding those departments and just asking them what did you do? How did you make it work? That in itself would be amazing, but that requires courage and humility. And, you know, that's that's the rub, as they say. I've heard the phrase. If they knew better, they would do better. I used to believe it for a very long time. And now my argument is. But they're not even choosing to try to do better.

And that's that's the issue. If you if you have somebody and you say constantly, you know, if you need help, if you need anything, if you've had a bad call and they're very upfront and vocal about it to the membership and the employees up front and saying, you know, if you have a bad call, let us know. And you're like, we're here to help you. My experience, as soon as you ask for help, you're immediately questioned and you're immediately like put on this like.

Trial as to whether or not your trauma is bad enough to warrant what you're asking for the help. And my argument for that is because. And the reason why those leaders take it so personally in those organizations, I will say that are I like to call an evolved management versus an uninvolved management like those evolved management and leadership styles are really asking, you know, what can we do to help?

But the uninvolved I find are a result and a product of the system over the last number of decades because they've agreed as leaders that, you know, this is the way we've always done it. And what is the like? I'm not going to change this. So why don't we just keep doing it the way we saw it? We've always done it. And they get so bent out of shape themselves and take it on personally because they've I'll say like drank the juice or they've they've really bought into this.

Like this, you have to be hard. Like there's no just because they had a bad call doesn't mean they can't be off. And I just I just see such a like like horse with blinders on for them. They just they don't understand because they're not willing to like put themselves in that position. Because I will argue most of the time they were brought up in the system. So they don't they they don't know any better, but they're also not choosing to do better.

Even locally, I mean, I've been vocal about this where I live, the county that protects me, they do know better. We've even had studies done for them where they've been presented the information and they still choose not to. So now we're at a point like, OK, well, this is just cowardice and leadership. Then that's all this left. If you've got everything in front of you and you have a crisis and you're losing multiple members of your department.

And, you know, the money is being pissed out, the drain with overtime and lack of retention and you still refuse to do anything. There's only one thing left. You literally don't have the balls to do your job, you know, in which case it's time for you to step aside and let someone else do it. And it sounds rough. But when you've literally given everyone all the information, like you said, if they know it, oh, they know it.

And you're still putting your head back in the sand and you go home at five o'clock every night and the people paying the price for your shitty leadership and now being forced to work mandatory over times, eight weeks away from their family. You know, to me, now we're at the point where I'm just calling it, you know, calling a spade a spade. If you didn't know, if you're at some remote fire department, you've never heard about sleep deprivation or anything like that.

Then I've got all the information for you. Then you can make a decision. But if you already know and you're refusing to change and the same with the mental health thing, you've had numerous, numerous suicides and yet you still got this rub some dirt in it mentality in your culture. Then you're the wrong person for the job. This is that simple. You should never be there in the first place.

Yeah, it is gaslighting gatekeeping, whatever you want to call it to say you're going to help. And then when somebody asks for help to like literally stomp on them in the dirt when they're already down and out, because that's the thing. You're I argue that you for every, let's say, 5% of people that do cheat the system because there are going to be people that are going to book off and do all these things and take advantage of the system.

No doubt in my in my career and the companies I've worked for without a shadow of a doubt that has happened. I'm sure you can relate with that as well, too. And so many other listeners are going to be able to relate to that.

But at what cost is it to you for you to then begin to question every single other person who actually is going through it because you're going to question to them them to the point of not wanting to be here anymore because they're just so tired and they have nothing left to give. So why be here? And that's that's such a hard place for them to do like there's such risk involved with questioning people who literally have an injury that you cannot see.

And you have professionals telling you that this person is injured. Why would you continue questioning it? It doesn't make any sense at all to worry about this 5% of people like that's a write off like just write write that off as we're willing to accept the 5 to 10% like people that are just going to cheat the system.

But the people that actually have been in the industry and have been helpers who now need help themselves like let's put those people first and show show them that we actually care. It's amazing how many people lean into that to disregard something that actually would work. And for example, you know, a true drug prohibition initiative. Oh, well, you know that those those guys are still addicts.

We have that was like you said 5%. You just help 95% food stamps, you know, the unemployment benefits. You always focus at that one family that's got the two escalates on the front of the house. You never talk about all the people that got back on their feet because of a little government help, you know, so we'd love to point at this one little area go see it doesn't work.

Rather than acknowledge all the areas where it did and I agree with you 100% there will be people abusing the system. But to put it in a physical injury, for example, I've got one of my best friends had a back injury terrified that there was going to be some dude in a bush with a camera.

Trying to catch him out in case he picked up something heavy and he's had multiple surgeries. There is no question his back is fucked and yet he still is so scared until it was all done and dusted that he'd be kind of called out for a scam. So now you've got people whether it's a physical or a mental injury.

That are afraid to even do the work to get better because someone's going to jump out of a bush and see are you you know you were lying this whole time we're going to strip you of your benefits rather than let's help you get better. I would love to see it where you know you can get disability to a certain point, and then a huge amount of support and then if you want then you go back in the profession.

We transition to something else, but this black and white all or nothing mentality that we have oh you see it didn't work in in the northwest because you know they've got more addiction now after decriminalization or whatever it is but no you didn't even do it properly. You just you do piecemeal that you give it a half ass attempt and then you say look see it doesn't work. And this is again to me the fodder of the coward is to to just try and justify that doing nothing is the best option.

Yeah, you know they're just putting their hands up going like who am I I'm not going to be able to fix this by myself and it's true. You're one individual in any organization, unless they are the leader of everybody else is going to be able to fix this it's going to take so many more people and that's why I have you heard of the term the Peter principle.

I have I'm struggling to remember exactly what it was but I have heard of it before. So it's where you're promoted to your highest level of incompetence. And obviously being in unionized environments that happens more often than private areas because why do you most people get promotions in a lot of areas. It's because they've been there the longest, not necessarily because they're the best candidate to do it.

And then they get in that position, and they're not qualified to manage it or lead, but then they stay in that position until they retire and holding everybody else captive below them because they're, they literally cannot be promoted any higher because they're not smart enough to move forward. And I see a very, very large number of organizations that have done just that like they have people in positions that are there just because of time. That is not how you hire for leadership.

Time doesn't matter. Yeah, I would argue even pieces of paper they do matter, but they shouldn't be held as a beyond and I will I got my officer 123 and four. Okay, but can you lead people.

What about actual leadership and I see a huge disconnect with that. And as you touched on, there are some phenomenal leaders all the way from, you know, probie through to chief and beyond. But the impact of a poor leader, especially in this profession in 2025 can be so so detrimental and it truly is taking lives, our own people and the people that we serve. Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, and I keep I've asked myself several times during my time off.

What, like, how could it have been different. What what could have been different in my career. Now obviously dating back 20 years, people didn't talk about mental health back then they might have been like oh you had a bad call.

Okay, you can talk to somebody and then let's carry on to the next one. It's definitely become more and more at the higher level talked about now. But if I had to think back to the tools and things that would have been beneficial to me then, like I argue that every single

person coming into the profession should have a psychologist that literally follows them their entire profession or their entire time with that organization, you should have to have a mandatory three month check in, because these problems don't just happen from one call or overnight

and I will argue there's some bad calls that do happen that shakes people, but it's an accumulation over time let's be honest that this is not. There's very few people that come into the industry after a year and then get PTSD after a year. It's just not. It's usually the people that will leave because they know the job is not for them because it is way too much on their system, and they can't be in fight or flight all the time and live that way.

Like most of us have in the past, in order to keep doing the job and always be switched on all the time because you never know what call you're going to get. But we need to have more supports up front and more tools. We were talking before we started the show about Patrick McCown and breath work.

I can imagine if you walked into a dispatch center tomorrow, and between calls dispatchers were doing box breathing or breath holds, or any of these things that we know that can regulate the nervous system in a profound way. If those tools were given to everybody off the start and they were trained how to do them. It would be so different.

It's actually mirrors something that I've talked about. I've worked for four different departments are tested for four different departments that was memory serves me right three polygraphs and for MMP eyes so the MMP eyes and Minnesota multiphasic personality interview. And it's the one with hundreds sometimes thousands of questions and it's you know like do you like plants do you like puppies do you like, you know, playing football do you like touching kids do you like, what was that last one.

And it's, and it was never meant to be a standalone test certainly not to determine if someone was going to be a good dispatcher firefighter cop. And so, and then you've got the polygraph which is all smoke and mirrors, you know, there's a puppet show basically and if you can if you confess then you taking yourself out of the process is basically it.

So again, this is kind of pushing also that you have to lie to be a firefighter because most of us have done some things when we were younger that may or may not have left a blemish on our record or tried some things that now we're discovering are actually therapeutic for mental health, but at the time was a hard elimination. So we have all these like ridiculous things at the front door.

Why not take all the money that we were wasting on those, and instead invest just like you said, you know six sessions in your first probationary year, because we do bring stuff into the profession that's what makes us good at this job as we've been through

struggles, and that absolutely can be a strength, if it's not buried down and just not addressed. So by allowing these young people to start talking about the things that they brought into the profession and and as you said through the career, then offloading the death by

the amounts that we all get and processing that really bad call the other kids the multi multi casualty events seem to be the ones that really you know really like haunt us. Then you're looking at the same way as PT in the academy is just PT for the mind.

So I agree with you 100% if you're going to ask us to do this and even from a performance point of view, forget trauma. If you want to get in a flow state in a primary search or, you know, a pediatric cardiac arrest, you need that calm mind as well so there is no downside performance and mental longevity, or benefit from counseling breath work and all the other tools. This resiliency is probably one of the number one factors that I found in my career with people that I've trained in the job.

I could tell somebody within two days I could tell my leadership, if this person would be trained and set be able to be signed off and do the job. There's just certain cues and certain things you see in people about, again, can, can you regulate your own nervous system and again, I argue that if you're given the right tools anybody can do it. It's, it's one of those, again, the.

You have to practice it it's like this you know 1000 hours practice those types of things like if you're not practicing that mental muscle, because that's what it is, I mean, obviously the way the way I look at it now is, you know, our brains are just, they're not even parts of us

our brain is a supercomputer that's attached to our flesh sack that we live in and walk around in me, and, you know, all of these thoughts and things that happened to us and the, you know, we're just a collection of our choices not a result of our circumstance. We're given choices throughout the day constantly.

When you actually think about the brain like neuroplasticity all these other things. It takes eight seconds for your brain to actually act on the thought and put it somewhere that it can actually do it whether it's problem solving, or whether it's your primal primitive brain

takes eight seconds. So it's like, there's, there's a time that we get to choose things, and then there's a time that we just react. So if you're making a decision that eight seconds you're just reacting all the time, you're not even making a decision you're actually just reacting to everything

but if we can teach people how to harness their, their breath and their brain and treat these things like they are and make super computers me superpowers, like, we could have people that could do this profession for their entire career without a doubt with no trauma.

I would argue, if they have the tools given to them up front, before something happens because that's the trick you have you have to have something in a baseline to start from, to understand and perhaps some people who maybe went through childhood trauma this might

have fleshed out that this isn't the career for you because you are bringing things into it that are going to leave you more susceptible to being traumatized because of your past. So that's that's kind of a little bit of an aside there but that's just where my brain has gone over the last few years with everything that I've experienced. Yeah, no I think I love these asides. These are these are great conversations. So talk to me then what made you transition from stars to city 911.

So having worked at stars being a nonprofit, not a very large dispatch center at the peak when we had staffing we were 16 people that were trained to do the job. That's how slim of a staffing we had with for the position so very few people could go on vacation at a time and we had enough people to just like get by.

And I had done the leadership thing I had been a supervisor within the center I had done some outreach stuff with some of the large organizations that we kind of entered intersect with us. And there wasn't anything else I could really do there and I was really looking at it from a career perspective of growth and understanding that I didn't want to just take calls anymore.

I wanted to do something more I wanted to be a leader in a bigger way. So that's when I decided to move over to our municipal 911 center and being utilized, even though I had 12 years of experience from another dispatch center I started at the bottom, I was a call taker I was very patient and helped everybody in my class get signed off and did what I could to help my trainers and everybody and really my whole goal moving there was career progression, I wanted to climb the ladder.

So what was different when you entered that I mean as you mentioned you had a percentage that was 911 before. What was that shift even from the call takers position at the bottom. You were dealing with the public, every single call day in and day out. You were getting the first visceral reactions of people going through their worst day.

And you had to listen, like, put your heart out there for them and help them on their literally worst day probably the only time they phone 911. And that's on you now. 30 to 50 times a day. So what about the day itself? Were you, I mean if you were to day shift I would imagine that most parts of the year, they're entering the building when it's dark, they're in a dark room all day and then they leave when it's dark as well.

So what about someone who spends a lot of time outside which we'll get to in nature. What about that impact, the disconnection from what would be a normal human experience and their interaction with the world. So the schedule for 911 was two days two nights, 6am to 6pm starts. So obviously living in northern hemisphere in Canada.

It, like you said, we're going to work in the dark. We're working in a dispatch center that is dimly lit with lights flashing around us all day radios going off the windows are tinted because nobody can see in because of privacy. Blinds are down all day you're living under fluorescent lights all day. There's, it, it's a prison. I will say like I mean it's, it's organized. Like, it's, yeah, I mean you go through like double locked doors to get into it it's you're on lockdown.

And the environment is, you know, you go in, you start answering the calls, you get your one hour for lunch and I would, I religiously would go and work out, because I during the daytime, and then at nighttime knowing that I had to be on. I start to figure out my sleep and figured you know what a 20 minute nap is perfect for me at nighttime between, let's say, 12 and three in the morning when whenever we get our break because everybody cycled through the break list.

And that was really what I did was two days two nights, 12 hour shifts worked out, went for a half an hour run on the treadmill during the day at lunch, eight came back. And that was my life for at least I guess it would have been for about to, what was that 2016 so about four years.

So I had this conversation with our correctional officers to you know they are literally in prison with the prisoners, they don't see daylight much if they're in certain areas of the prison you know they their ratio of prisoners to guards is this horrendous so you know we, we kind of have that you know thank you for your service kind of tip the hat a little bit but when you take a step back and think about the conditions that some of these people work in I think dispatches is one of them.

The question is not just to say oh everything's terrible but it's like all right how can we improve this the same way as you know there's a thing called ICU psychosis, where there's lights and flashing you know, you know alarms and blood pressures being taken all the time in the medical world. Do you have to have a you know a set of vital signs every X amount of time, or can you let this person just sleep. That's what they need more anything else.

So, you know it's interesting with the dispatch. When we understand how important it is to have daylight on the eyes to have vitamins D from from sun on the skin. You know how can we improve the dispatches environment so they're able to thrive and operate at a high level because the way that they're being worked I know there's a big recruitment crisis in dispatch to.

So now you've got dispatches working even more time. Just as you touched on earlier, you know, a lapse in concentration could result in making a mistake and cost of life. Where are the areas that we could improve in the dispatch world. Oh, that's a big question. Yeah, there's so many from environment to shifts to staffing. I mean, I've been in the industry for 20 years, and I'm sure any other dispatcher would echo what I'm about to say the number of times I was told.

We've just hired a class we're going to be at full staffing in three months, or we're going to be at full staffing by the summertime summertime comes six other people left the class finishes 40% of the class passes, and we're back at zero again.

And that recurred and continued for my entire career. We were we were always understaffed always habitually understaffed the entire time, no matter what there were between stars and 911, there were times that I would work so much over time in a year that you could have literally hired another person and paid them what you were paying me and overtime as a salary. And we could add another body.

And I'm not the only one like that we're talking people that were doing double their salary and overtime in a year.

And it's multiple people. It's like and it's maddening because what are you doing, you're just burning your people out that you have that are there because they want to help, and they feel bad because you have overtime shifts available and nobody to fill them and then you're thinking about the other co workers that are going to be sitting there, not having a lunch break, because you aren't there to help them answer calls and God forbid you asked for vacation.

And it's like, you know, shift transfers and all these other things you know I there was a dispatch center in a province over from us that I happen to be on a few phone calls and they were literally bribing their call takers with gift cards to come in and work overtime. Like, you don't like shake your head and think to yourself like something is broken if we have to start offering gift cards to people to come into work. Something is severely broken.

See that absolutely mirrors what I've been talking about with this recruitment crisis. Young people want to work and I just shared a New York Times article recently where the Gen Z, you know, group are leaning into the trades, because they, they have this so good at

working these days because they've grown up in this this, you know, electronic world that for example they're seeing oh I go to college I spent four years I get a degree that may not even guarantee me a job and I'm left with a debt of $50,000. That sounds a bit shit, but I can go learn to be a welder, and then become a welder. That's, that sounds amazing that's that makes sense to me.

There's a lot of young people that actually are leaning into the trades and you know fire police dispatch rural trades, you know, obviously kind of blue slash white collar but we're still trades, you know you take a class and then you get a job. And so this insanity of exactly what you've underlined just then people say oh well how can we hire, we don't have enough money. It's like you do.

But just like we said with Desmond Tutu's quote, it's downriver, you know the bodies are floating past you. And, you know, for example locally where I'm here just the overtime and the lack of retention so the people that they paid a train that then walk out the back door, two, three, four years later. That together is $7 million.

So just those two things. You're telling me you can't hire you know 100 firefighters for $7 million. You can. That's I'm no mathematician but you can. So and that's then after that you're saving that money, that's $7 million or close to it that you are not losing anymore, you know just the salaries of the extra body so.

And but the problem is, it's that I just want to look good in a budget year, rather than I'm going to invest and you know, and the phrase which always butcher but plant the seed of the tree under which the shade I'll never know. So I'll make it right even though I'll be gone before we start reaping the benefits. But the people that pay the cost of this mismanagement are the responders, the dispatchers, the corrections officers, the firefighters, the police officers.

The ones that be told you can't go home and for my profession. That's 24 hours. That's calling my son and say hey I was supposed to go for donuts for dad. But now I can't go through no fault of my own, through a mismanagement of the organization that I work for. My son has to pay the cost.

And by the way, the one that was making the decision he went home at five. He's already with his family. You know so this is, this is why there needs to be a call for action because the money is there, and the demand is there, but we have to fix the conditions that make a young man or woman go this 911 dispatch thing sounds amazing, and looking at all the benefits and the salary it looks like they take really good care of their people.

And I'm like, I'm going to go before I'm going to go. So, that was a huge kind of preamble monologue but if you are king for the day to get this recruitment back to where it should be where people are vying for one position as a dispatcher. What needs to change in your profession. First, they need to think about the human costs, not the financial costs.

You, I do believe I come from the efficiency world in the background that's what I ended up doing we can talk a little bit more about that once we go further here. I ended up taking on a position that was for operational effectiveness team that was really looking at efficiencies within how the center ran policies procedures those types of things. So, at a certain point you have to stop throwing people at a problem.

At a certain point, but you also can't be blind to the things that are staring you directly in the face just because somebody tells you no. So for me it would be more people more ability for the dispatchers and the call takers to take that downtime and put themselves.

I'll say essentially out of service similar to what fire and police do if they've had a really bad call, they get the opportunity to go out of service and start treating them like people like we're not robots like people phone 911 to get a person.

I don't know how far away we are from AI and those types of things being able to manage a human on the other end of the line because I don't think it's fully possible. You still are always going to need somebody talking to somebody out there in the line given the human emotions attached to this. But really it's changing the shifts. They're talking to starting to talk about changing the shift patterns and going eight hour shifts rather than 12. They're still doing that today.

Nine years later, still talking about it no changes have been made whatsoever. They've had six committees, trying to figure it out on and off for nine years. And they still haven't been able to figure it out because the unions blocking it there's people blocking it. At a certain point, like there there just needs to be a I don't want to say a destruction of the union.

But I think there's just a lot of back and forth and a lot of politics and a lot of bureaucratic garbage within the municipalities that is blocking a lot of the decisions from being made that if you remove those barriers to making those decisions you know we have to wait for the union contract to come up in three years before we can make a change. Like, everybody needs to put their swords down and start looking at this from the human cost.

That's ultimately what it is you have to start treating people like human beings. Like full stop that that is the answer, in my mind, you people can't. Can't continue this way, and not have that be the primary focus. There are some great unions out there but there are some absolutely terrible ones as well, you know, just to illustrate it and I've said this many times, there are areas that have a black union and Hispanic Union and a female union, what the term union means all of us together.

So if you're already segmented then I'd say that was a huge red flag of your organization. But the, you know, where I see for example in opposition to fitness standards. There is no downside to a fitness standard especially when you have a profession where we're supposed to be, you know, a certain level of fitness to even pass the fire Academy so you walk through the door fit.

But you're opposing a standard that allows you to deliver a high level of service as a first responder and creates a much higher probability that you'll have a long and fruitful retirement. But the number of unions that oppose punitive fitness standards. You know it blows my mind that we don't have that as a professional gold standard throughout the entire country. So we have unions that directly and even with these work weeks that work against a better work week for a firefighter.

And a lot of times it's based on their complete ignorance because they haven't taken the time to actually look into it. But if your people are dying as a result of your opposition to, you know, change, then the blood is on your hands, and I see this all the time this kind of, you know, dick measuring narcissism that we see in some of these you know chiefs and unions and and other areas.

And meanwhile people are being lowered into the ground, and they just seem almost unmoved by it and I just I don't understand. Like you said we got to wait three years no you don't if you all get together, you could fix it today. You could say you know what January 16 2025. We're changing this to consider this day one with the ball is in motion now. So this all we need to wait says who who made it you know what I mean, if enough of you get together and say this needs to change.

You can make it change as I pointed out, when everyone said oh this virus going across the planet we need to shut everything down you got to stay in your house. How long did that take to go in overnight. So if you can shut down the entire planet Earth overnight, you sure as shit can change the working environment in a fire department or dispatch center. Yeah, and in the dispatch centers I will argue when you talk about the fitness side of things.

I don't want to paint a broad brush on this but there is a large number within dispatch that tend to be unhealthy, whether it be weight diet like the number of snack tables that happen at nighttime like it's there, it exists. And you don't think that that's contributing to people also you know the shift work the sleep deprivation. We know that you gain more weight if you don't get proper sleep at night there's cortisol levels like there's so many other factors that come into this.

That if that isn't a primary thing like I want my dispatchers to be healthy like I want them to take care of their bodies and I want to give them time to do that so maybe you tack on an extra you can have an extra half an hour for lunch. If you're doing something physical in that half an hour.

Like there's so there's so many things that could be changed it's, you know, we could talk about our, we could talk literal hours on this topic right it's. Yeah, there's just so many parallels between all the agencies and the services and.

And I think the problem is a lot of it does get siloed because of the unions as well too. Can you imagine if every single company and organization in emergency services that worked four on four offer rotating night schedules all stood up and said, No, and nobody went to work. Exactly, what would happen what would happen if everybody just said no, people would pay attention extremely imagine in California, they're like we're not going to those fires.

You know, and this is the problem no one's talking I've actually been putting it out no one's explaining how understaffed the wildland fire community is how lafd Los Angeles County. So all those men and women are on the mountains, which means that there's even fewer left because they're already understaffed that are protecting LA County LA city.

That means that even more families are now not having mom and dad coming home. You know that's not being discussed it's just well let's clap for them we'll give them a free subway sandwich and we'll call it good.

But and then you know when it's gone out the new cycle no one's going to be talking about it again. So, you know, I think this is a good opportunity to be having these conversations when everyone's kind of heralding the 911 in a response in general, while all these true heroes are out there. I mean in some of these conditions you see on the videos are insane. But how quickly will that be forgotten.

So, I want to just hit one thing and then we'll go to the kind of mental health side of the conversation. I had a company on the AMR, you know the the ambulance company their parent companies GMR. They have a thing called nurse navigation, which again I think is another incredible solution to part of the problem which is, you know, for the longest time, you know we have told people

call 911 for basically everything, and then people started call 911 for basically everything. And so the way they describe it is, is it being a three tier EMS system, you have your ALS calls your BLS calls, and then your, you know, arguably pseudo non emergent calls.

So they integrate into a 911 dispatch system. When the call comes in, the person if it's a low acuity can then say well you know we've got a nurse or nurse practitioner would you like to speak to them and they give them obviously all the options and if they say yeah that sounds great because it's just a worried parent about their kid having a fever and throwing up once then it goes to them.

So they, they can set up urgent care clinic appointments dentists you know optometrists all the things that you wouldn't be able to handle an ER anyway, they can advise on literally medicating at home or just take you know your your infants close off you know give them Tylenol or whatever the, you know the advice would be.

And so they can take you know 10 20% of the calls and siphon them off because as you know, a lot of calls that come through are just not emergencies, they're not so really, you know the EMS should never have been called in the first place.

And now you have this third tier that will take care of it they'll they'll schedule Ubers if the person doesn't have transportation if they need actual telehealth and they can do a teleconference with a doctor and get prescriptions. So, and then obviously you've got even the low low acuity

medical stuff you can you know speak to a counselor. I think that's a phenomenal system because it's a lot cheaper for the patient. The, the fire EMS whoever is not getting the call or dispatcher is not spending, you know, 1020 minutes on the call, and an ER bed stays open for a true emergency. So, what's your exposure if any about that kind of philosophy and taking away some of these calls that you guys shouldn't be spending time on in the first place.

Yeah, I just want to quickly touch on the wildfires that you mentioned, because I'm glad you brought it up briefly there because I think with the one factor that a lot of people aren't understanding is there are dispatchers right now today that likely lost their home,

and they're taking calls helping other people losing their homes, and they're where they're like there, and I think that's the one thing that a lot of people don't realize is like we're helping when everything else is literally burning down. And I think I haven't heard much talk about the dispatchers I heard a lot about the firefighters and everybody that is doing incredible work in that way. But think about everybody who's going to those fires.

And I've heard people taking calls from somebody about something, and where are those calls going it's going to those dispatchers so I just want to recognize them just because I think it's an important topic to bring up so.

But to get to the nursing aspect so stars. When I first started there was actually pioneering something and that's how I kind of jumped positions very quickly when I was there and it was a rapid access and referral, and I literally taught 25 year emerged nurses, and I had to go to the city of New York to take care of their homes to conference doctors in together to help give advice and try to keep patients in their home hospitals, so they didn't have to come into the city to take up a bed.

And this is back, what 2006 is when this was first started so I was, it was called the right it was rapid access and referral and placement, something on those lines I can't remember is a very long acronym. And I think that's what we're working with nurses in that capacity, and seeing that potential I know they're doing it in the UK already.

I have heard about that and using it in that way and I think it's such a great way to offload the. I mean the crisis that we have with and I don't know if it's very similar in the States because obviously your health care systems are slightly different between Canada and the United States where it's being, you know, everybody who needs an ambulance gets an ambulance you don't have to pay for it like there's covered with Alberta healthcare and like low income supplement those types of things, but

have being able to reduce the percentage of calls that these ambulances are going to means that those resources are available for people who like truly need those resources. And then a couple of years ago with our government municipal government they ended up cutting some funding, and the fire department had these SUVs that would go out as first response before ambulances because they were ambulances were short and hard to come by for a while.

And the funding got cut and the fire department said like we were offering this as a service at first we can't afford to keep doing this, sending these SUVs out so they remove the SUVs and they started sending a full engine to these calls.

So it's a wear and tear on a fire engine to go to a call that didn't even need an ambulance or a fire truck in the first place but because whoever gets there first if it's above a certain level and I won't go into all the call stuff for everybody but there's certain levels that say a fire truck needs to go first versus just an ambulance. And all those calls can sometimes be false alarms and somebody who's having anxiety or I always joke around that it's a stuck fart call is the other one.

And you just don't know right so you have to risk and liability, you err on the side of caution. But to be sending all of that when you have the option of these highly trained individuals that can guide people over the phone or telehealth and now I don't know if many people are familiar but with next generation 911, which essentially means you'll have the ability to

dispatch a video of what is going on and have real time live video feeds with an ambulance responding with somebody on scene who can show you what's going on. That's happening right now and they're getting all the in Canada at least they're getting all of the municipalities and everybody switched over to this and eventually we're going to have like live video feed 911 calls. Can you imagine what that's going to do to dispatchers trauma at that point?

There's so many things that can come from that but that's another piece that's coming into this as well too is that those video chats and being able to bring somebody on and be like oh that's you know this or you know somebody has something else going on and be like oh you can just go see a doctor

or they said you can book an urgent care appointment. So I've had a lot of exposure to it and I think it's a great step towards reducing the load on the system with hospital weights and all these other things that are

across every country. I think everybody's going through something similar but different but I'm all for it. I think it's a fantastic way to move forward to change a system that's always done it the way it's always done it. I mean you used to just throw people in the back of an ambulance and drive them to the hospital. They didn't get care in the back. They literally just tossed them in the back.

Yeah, exactly. It has evolved to a point where I like the guys from GMR were talking about you know I use the term 911 abuse and they were like we don't look at it as abuse. We've been telling them to call 911. Every doctor's office when they're closed if it's an emergency call 911 and we obviously haven't done a good job of defining what an emergency is but I love that. Well let's just create another tier. That person needs to go to an urgent care. Let's create an avenue for them to go to an urgent care clinic because I mean like

when COVID happened one of the most angering things to me it was absolutely a real disease. It pissed me off that no one was talking about making Americans healthier during that process but one of the real abuse of media was oh look there's people in the hallways.

Where are the cameras the rest of the time when there's people in the hallways? None of you seem to care then. As a medic I held the wall my entire career. The only place that I ever didn't was the last place and that was outside Disney. There was a hospital that really was well funded and well run and we usually waited a short time there but in the inner cities I was waiting on average 30 minutes if not an hour per patient just to get a bed.

So like you said now you remove all the people that really or majority that just didn't need an ER specifically. It benefits everyone including the patient. You know an ER visit as we all know is like a couple of grand just to walk through the door before they've even done anything versus a telehealth conversation which might cost them 500 bucks.

So there is no downside to me on this particular thing and it's another layer into what can we do to turn it around and get it back to where emergency medical professionals respond to emergencies. Yeah there's so many ways to again do things better if we're willing to let go of that this is the way we've always done it.

Absolutely. Well you know we kind of mentioned you playing football, soccer up to 30. Walk me through whatever kind of interaction there is between when you started to have your own struggles mentally and did that kind of intersect when you started ultra running.

Yeah so ultra running that's my new game. So the sport that I went into right after soccer wasn't just ultra running it was off road triathlons. So it was mountain bike, open water swim and a trail run. That was the combination and I signed up for six in my first year. Some were half distance some were full distance and I realized very quickly absolutely hated the swimming my legs sink. It is not even in a wetsuit. I'm like how does this happen in a wetsuit like they should be floating.

And I really just started doing really well at the runs I was you know top five top three on every run leg I'm like okay there's something here I've been trail running for about you know 10 years before that just short distances for fun from one of our local organizations and

it really kind of made me think go like oh maybe I could run further so I just started signing up for some slightly longer races and that would have been I guess around 2016 2017 and that was 2016 was right when I started at 911. And it was right after my first daughter was born like there was a lot of there's a lot of things that were happening during that time that were changing how I lived my life, I wasn't the single guy anymore you know with my then wife at the time.

I was, you know I had a family to take care of now, and I had to take care of myself in a different way. So, I threw myself into these longer distances. And if you were to put everything in a line of my progression that 911 and my increase in distance

as things unconsciously because I can't say I even knew what was going on at that point until I asked for help. Three years ago. I didn't know what was going on with me. It was just I was starting to run further and like, I didn't think anything of it then I think of something

about it now because I can put it on the timeline and be like okay I had to really do really bad calls then. And, oh, I started running longer distances the next year after that and I just started like throwing myself into the mountains away from everybody away from everything

for hours on end. No phone contact I didn't even have a satellite device at that time I would just literally say I'm going to be back at this time. If you don't hear from me, then maybe phone somebody but other than that I was out in the bush for six hours seven hours, maybe with a friend or two here or there, but I was putting myself into those areas because it was. It was the only way to quiet everything down.

So talk to me about the, you know, the, when you reflect now what was that noise what was that that thing because it's interesting when you hear about either people working like choosing to work more and more overtime. We realize now that that obviously is a negative coping mechanism why would you not go home to your family, but you know when you're at the station you're staying busy.

You don't have time to reflect you don't have time to think about it and even some of our people that dive into exercise a lot of times you do see the same thing it becomes an addiction so it's a lot of over training or leaning too much into that. So when you look back now kind of what was the beginning and can you even think about what you were trying to not think about if that makes sense.

I was running away from everything, literally running away from everything that's that's what I was doing. I unconsciously was putting myself in positions where I could run from my problems. And the problems being events and calls that I buried so deeply. Because, you know, I said this a few times to a few people about, you know, I don't think we're in an epidemic of loneliness I think we're in an epidemic of not feeling like I taught myself how not to feel throughout my career.

As I mentioned before and not feeling is what put me in that position I didn't know how to feel anymore I literally couldn't be empathetic for other people. I would be cold even to my wife at that time like there's, there's a lot of things that were happening during that period that were reflective of the distances that I was putting myself through.

And I argue I was swapping the pain of running that far, because it's let's be clear it's it's hard on the body, there's no doubt. So I was swapping that pain to deal with the other pain. And like you said, an addiction, it was I was getting these dopamine hits just like I would when I answer the phone at nine one and, oh, I get to help somebody today like I get to forget about all my problems I don't have to worry about anything that's going on in my life.

And then I would just do the when I did have the time to go and deal with my problems. I wouldn't deal with them I would run from them, literally run in the mountains away from them all. So where was the lowest place that you found yourself. Well, I will say that I went through a subsequent divorce with my then wife and mother of my kids. During that kind of 2019 period, and then kind of went through a little bit there.

I didn't really realize what was going on and then I ended up getting a promotion to a position that I had applied for that effectiveness position that I was telling you about before that put me into a different arena. And I ended up then moving to a Monday to Friday, eight to eight to 430 position from home, I was I was now working from home in a role that was helping them run the dispatch center but not being in the dispatch center.

And it was the first time in my entire career that I began to understand what a true baseline was where I was out of the sights and the sounds and the dark rooms and the 12 hour shifts and the sleep deprivation and all these things. And when your body starts to feel those things it starts to act differently. It starts to show you where you're not free.

And I went through that I was in that position for, I guess, would have been about a year and over over a year and a half, and things. I didn't really notice anything I'll be honest like I was at home, starting to, you know, get better sleeps and get better things and then it was really when I was asked to go back to the environment.

I drove back into that parking lot and had a panic attack in my car, being outside of the office, frozen in my car, not knowing what was going on was when I knew something was drastically wrong with what I was feeling. I had never experienced that in my entire life. And I tried for, I'll say, at least two months, I stopped running during that time.

I gave up everything that I cared about I hid everything and during this period of time I had met somebody and I was living with my then girlfriend at the time, and she was in the dark about everything. I didn't, I didn't tell her anything. Because I was so ashamed and so afraid to admit that there was something wrong after, you know, 18 years of holding it together. And I tried taking vacation time.

I was in a hole, like, I was sleeping two to three hours a night, I would try to go into the office I would fall asleep at my desk. I just was not functioning at any sort of capacity and as soon as I gave up my running I knew something was wrong. Because even that wasn't helping me anymore. I couldn't run from my problems anymore. So I remember it was Boxing Day on December 26 of 2021.

I finally came clean with my girlfriend and said, I can't do this alone anymore. She's like, What do you mean, and I spilled everything. She said, I'm done, I can't do this. And that's when I asked for help. That was, those were my, I guess, lowest periods of time where that was that kind of three months prior to making that decision where I fell to pieces. So what were some of the tools that started working for you?

So I immediately started therapy. And I told my family physician at the time who obviously put in the letters that it takes me off work for that period of time, that I wasn't going to take medication. It was something obviously, you know, I came from the era of like drugs are bad. That's, that's the line that we were told. I mean, the videos and PSA's that we had as a kid, like, you shouldn't touch drugs and all these things.

I was like, I don't want any of that. So I was very steadfast in that. And he's like, well, you got to do something. I said, well, I want to start running again. And it had been probably I run on and off maybe a few times in three months. And I said, look, like, I'm going to hire my friend as my coach. I'm going to have him hold me accountable. And I'm going to start running more to try to see if this is if that'll help because I know exercise is huge for depression and all those other pieces.

And I was quickly diagnosed depression, anxiety and PTSD within a couple of weeks of seeing a therapist. And I started into therapy right away. It was one of the number one things that helped me along the way. It was called accelerated resolution therapy, which is similar to E and D.R. So it's short for A.R.T. It's all about like eye hand movement.

And it's really about reconnecting your neural pathways and not necessarily forgetting the incidents or the events, but reframing them in a way that your body doesn't react the same way or believe it happened in that in that same manner for the traumas that I didn't experience with the calls and things that I went through. I did acupuncture. I did.

I had a sleep behaviorist for about a year and a half. And as soon as he found out I ran altruism, I got shifted to like a guy who works with pro athletes because he's like, we can't have you running 80 to 100 kilometer weeks and not factor that in. He's like, I can't help you. So he redirected me to somebody. So sleep behaviorist, acupuncture, massage, meditation.

I pretty much did everything. I was that like model patient, I will say. Like anytime somebody offered me something, I was like, great, let's do it. Sign me up. And what changed? I quickly realized in the first three months of therapy that I was not letting go. I wasn't surrendering to the process. I was trying to win at therapy. I'm a very competitive person. I was trying to do so well and be like, oh, I'm so good at this.

I'm doing such a good job because I come from a competitive background and you can't win at therapy. Let's be honest. There's no winning at therapy. There's either like doing it or not doing it. And I wasn't doing it. I was showing up, but I wasn't doing it. And then I ended up getting questioned by my organization as to why I was off during that period of time, those first few months.

And I ended up having to go through a psych assessment to prove why I was saying that I was often that it was legitimate. And I remember I had a little exercise that I did that somebody had passed on to me before going into that psych assessment. I mean, you're literally sitting with somebody that you don't know, hasn't been following any of your journey whatsoever, hasn't been your psychologist.

You have to do a two hour interview with him or her and like a thousand multiple choice questions to see if you're actually experiencing what you're experiencing based on all these tests and assessments. And I was so afraid. I am not afraid because I was lying, but afraid because I wasn't sure if I was ready to like fully surrender. And if I didn't, was I going to get the help that I needed if I wasn't able to do that? And even my psychologist at the time said, I know you're holding back.

And if you don't break yourself completely open, you're not going to get the help that you need. And I did a little exercise where I wrote down everything I was afraid of, like we're talking to the point of like worst case scenario, like the world is going to blow up and I'm going to be the last person standing in the rubble. And I started crossing things out that the things that are not in my control.

I started crossing them off and I was left with I think three or four things that were actually in my control that I could go into that assessment with. And I that was probably the hardest day I've had in my entire life was when you admit to yourself that something is actually wrong and you start trusting and believing that you are like that is like your truth. As soon as you can do that, like nothing can stop you after that. Nothing can stop you.

So you have this kind of surrender to what is actually going on. Talk to me about the upward swing. Yeah, so I had to ask myself, do I want to keep running? Because I was running from that place of fear. I was running away from everything.

Could I actually run from a place of self love, joy and not be worried about outcomes or running away from the things that I'm now dealing with in therapy and like honestly doing really well with it and moving through it and you know crossing off some of these things that have been with me for a long time.

And I came to the conclusion that I wanted to try to run from that place of joy like I really felt strongly that it's something I want to keep doing, but it was I was good at it. I really love being out in the mountains. It wasn't about the escape. It was about the pursuit of doing something really hard and proving to yourself that I can do hard things like nothing.

Everything that I've gone through has had a purpose. And there's a quote that I wrote it down, but only because I want to read it because I think it's important because it really kind of tells me, it told me everything that I need to know about everything that was going on. So the quote reads in every moment, you and all things are in the right place at the right time. Everything is patterned. Nothing is random.

So I really take that and understand that it's like I wouldn't be talking to you today James, had I not gone through what I went through. And I really turned that pain that I like that visceral like deep down pain that I went through and turned it into purpose.

So we can talk more about some of the events and other things that I have done and when we get into this, the running phase of things, but I, I took that and I ran with it. I went, what can I do within running that could give me not the same fulfillment because I don't think I'll ever find a career or job that gives me the same fulfillment and I don't want that.

I've done that. But how can I be of service to the people within my community and the running community that have supported me through my journey. And I started working with our organization called bigger than the trail. And they provide mental health supports free of charge to anybody who is connected to anybody within the endurance community with running cycling any of that free access to online mental health care supports for people that may not be able to access it.

And it gave me a place to like raise money and run for a reason now, not just a way. So that was really the turning point for that and really just getting stuck in with all of the therapy and just really beginning to trust myself again that I, you know, I'm not broken. I don't have to keep shaming myself or shitting myself or saying I need to do this or I need to do that and really just being present that that was the biggest one is just being present with myself in those moments.

I've said this a lot recently. As we progress through the last arguably eight years, you know, there was this constant thing about let's smash the stigma. And as I've alluded to a lot recently, I feel like in some circles, we got stuck on that stigma conversation, which doesn't resolve anything. It's just being aware of the problem where I think that we need to go now.

And the messaging is that hope of post-traumatic growth. There is a better, more resilient version of yourself on the other side of the work. When you reflect back now, what have you seen as far as that element about, you know, the Evan that we're talking to today in 25 versus 21?

I would not have ran any of the distances or races that I've done over the last three years. Had I not experienced what I experienced, I wouldn't. I just know I wouldn't have because I wouldn't have had a reason to do it. I wouldn't have had a driver purpose to, you know, ultras are weird. And my wife says it all the time. She goes, I don't know of anybody that would run 200 miles to maybe not finish. Like, what purpose does that serve?

Like what, like, because she comes from a very competitive sports background with Team Canada. She was a skeleton athlete. So, I mean, she's she has high performance written all over. So she doesn't understand the world of like doing hard things for the sake of just like trying, which, you know, that was where I first started. Now I'm a little bit more competitive in that sense as I'm going through this. But, you know, she's right.

Like how many people this day and age put themselves into places that are uncomfortable, that aren't going to challenge them in a way like an ultra marathon can. There's very few places in this world that you can put yourself for four to five days with no phone contact with your own thoughts, moving your body and challenging yourself to do something that quite likely is, you know, in some people's eyes, like next to impossible to finish.

But they're putting themselves out there to see if it's possible, which I think is such a beautiful place. And why I love ultra running so much because that's what it is. It's it's you get to choose something that's really hard. Like I get to choose that nobody's telling me to go out and run 200 miles.

I get to choose that because if I choose that now and I show myself and I create this body of evidence that I'm capable of that when those things that come along in my life now that challenge me and that are really hard, whether it be a death in the family or, you know, losing a job or, you know, in the case of, you know, the wildfires are going to lose a house like anything that could happen to you.

You now have this like body of evidence you can go back to and be like, but I did that hard thing last year. Like I ran 200 miles. I can do this thing now. Like you have this like confidence that you create for yourself through it. So talk to me about the divide 200 then I mean I've had people on here that have done ultras. I actually was training for a marathon, not too long ago and I had to actually pull out more from kind of logistics and anything but I'll be completely honest.

I think I got to six miles and that was where I was struggling. And I'm not an endurance runner. It's not really something that drives me specifically. But as far as just simply ramping up, whether it's to get to six or to 200, you know, it is that little voice in your head even at six miles is there, yabbering away. So what was it? What was the kind of step by step escalation to 200 and then let's talk about that event because obviously you did the short documentary on that process.

For sure. So yeah, I started 30 kilometer distance in 2017, 2018, sorry, 2017. I had my second daughter. So I had done a few runs 2018. I ran a little bit further. I did like two days of that event and then 2019 I ran my first 60 K. 2020 I went up to I just started doubling. I went to 125 K that in 2021 and then 2022 there wasn't any there wasn't really much going on in the racing world.

I then ran 100 miler and then from there that's that was the same year that I ended up doing. So I did divide 200 the first first time I've done it twice now. But yeah, the first time moving up to that 200 mile distance. It's funny you would think that you like standing on the start line of something like that, knowing that it's like your biggest race you've ever done. You would be probably the most anxious nervous like. But it was the calmest I've ever been at the start of any start line.

And you touch on the documentary piece so I had a really good friend of mine Dylan leader, who does all my photography as well to who agreed to do a documentary for me of a few of the events that I was doing that year leading up to the divide 200. And it was really to tell my story about that.

Rather than running away. The documentaries entitled running towards now. So it's, it really showed me what I was capable of that year like 2023 was a massive growth year for me like taking on that registering for that 200 miler was, and I didn't even get in at first. I was like, I wrote it off, then they invited 20 more people didn't get in and I went you know what, I'm not even gonna try. And I was one of the last two people drawn to get into it.

I was like, okay, like, I was able to like surrender and let it go and now it's coming to me, like I meant to do this sign up for it. Just, yeah, it was crazy you can think that I signed up for 200 miler. But yeah, running that race and having my friend there documented and being able to share that with everybody.

We had a screening for it locally and it really just showed me that there's like you talk about that post traumatic growth like there is so much light. If you're just willing to look for it, like, there's. I mean, I have a few colleagues of mine that are going through some stuff right now personally as well too and to see what they're experiencing going through. And to know that I was there at one point as well too it's really hard to watch. And to know that that that's where I was.

And to see the growth now. Like I'm an example of there is there is indeed post traumatic growth. If you're willing to look for it and trust that it's there. Absolutely. I think this is what needs to be heard. I mean, for all these stories of people that have come out the other end and their beacons of hope for other people and other people are coming to them saying actually I'm going through this and how did you do that.

This is what we need because then there's an element of excitement. Like on the other side of this is worth it. And I think this is where we've got to be careful with some of these kind of mental health messaging. I live with my PTSD every day and I've got my dog and again I don't mean to belittle people but I don't think you've gone far enough yet. I think on the other side is where you're thriving. And again, like as you talked about, life happens.

And I think a lot of people have said now that they've gone through this when there is loss that you said you taught yourself not to feel now when there's loss you're going to feel it viscerally because you're supposed to. That's the emotion that's supposed to happen. So it's not that you're living some Disney life on the other end.

But the same tools that you're using to overcome the mental health challenges are also in so many areas improving your life whether it's the ability to run a 200-mile or whether it's to be able to publicly speak in front of a thousand people now about your story and help even more first responders. So I love hearing this because it really does ignite that fire of hope. And I think if there's one thing we need in society right now it's simply hope.

It's optimism that there is something worth living for, worth doing the work for. Yeah, it's really coming from a place of worth rather than a place of wounding now. I was running from that place of being hurt and pain. And now I'm like, you know what, I'm worth something to me. If I'm going to put myself through something like this, I'm going to give it everything I got.

There's so many different ways to put yourself in difficult positions. Like running a 200-miler, it isn't for everybody. Like you said, you ran six miles and you're like, I don't want to do this. It's having that awareness, it creates those choices and availabilities for us. But really it comes in that practice. Practice creates capacity for us to be able to do those things.

Becoming from worth versus wounding has been a big one for me. I can't remember where I think it was. It was another breathwork instructor that I came across. His name is Pat Davilli. That's where I ended up bringing it from.

As soon as I heard it, I was like, that's it. To boil it down, that is what it is. It's coming from a place of worth, not a place of wounding. And if you can bring yourself to that place, it's such a cool place to be, to know that you're at the top of the hill and running down the other side now.

I know it's always going to be with me. There's no doubt in my mind. I don't like using the phrasing of I'm a survivor of PTSD because I believe it's always with me. It's going to be a part of my life forever. And it's up to me to how I'm going to manage that and move through it. And running is definitely a big piece of that for me now. And again, running towards not running away.

Yeah. Well, I think as well, when you see the word survivor, whether it's cancer, whether it's PTSD, you're still then in a way creating an identity of that disorder, disease, whatever you want to label it. Whereas, if you're able to shrug off what was, you overcame cancer or you had these struggles and you were an addict or whatever it is.

I think Brian McKenzie, one of the other breath coaches, he stopped going to AA because he said, I felt like I'd moved on, like I was recovered. I didn't want to keep being reminded that I was an addict. I wanted to move forward. And again, everyone's, you know, there's a lot of people that go to meetings until the day they die and that's the right fit for them. But there is a danger of that PTSD diagnosis becoming your identity.

And like I said, you've got your dog and it's kind of your thing now. And we've heard it, you know, as medics and so many times I've got this, I've got this disease. It's the moobah dooba hooba disease and only one in a hundred thousand people have it.

And it's like you, you're proud of this disease, you know, and it's probably because you're 150 pounds overweight that maybe that's, you know, the underlying reason. And again, I'm not saying this to be a dick, but you see this becomes the identity. And they wear that disease or disorder as a badge of honor. So by not using the word survivor, because I would argue that, you know, attached to that as victim, I was a victim and I survived.

You know, no, you just, you've, you've had this, um, this metamorphosis you've grown, you know, you, the chrysalis has become the butterfly. If you want to be really airy fairy about it. So discarding that previous identity, I think is important. But yeah, of course, there's calls are still going to be with you. They don't just magically disappear. Yeah. You touch on identity. And I think, I think it's such a beautiful spot because for the longest time I lost mine.

It was gone because I tied myself too closely to what I did. And that was my identity. If somebody asked me the typical question of the party, what do you do? I wear, I'm a, I'm a dispatcher at stars or I'm a dispatcher at 911. Like there was, there was never a question of like who I, who am I as a person?

That didn't matter. I didn't know who I was until it was gone. And then I'm like, Oh, who am I? Right. And we talk about identity and I struggled with it for a very long time. I mean, there's only so many books you can read before you finally just sort of like, I don't want any more books.

But for me, really rebuilding my identity has been and this, this might help some people, I hope, because it was really predicated on the idea of value hunting. I don't know if you've heard that phrase or not. I haven't actually. So value hunting is about really looking for what it is that you define yourself by. Like what are your values? Like I, you know, I believe that I am a good friend. I care about people. I, you know, this, that, and the other.

And you really have to think about what your values are as a person and all of your decisions are going to now be based off of those values that you now define yourself by, because that's how you rebuild your identity. You really have to like dig in and go like, who am I?

And it's such a tough question when you're completely lost and you, I don't even like to say lost because it's like you were never lost. Like you're always there. You just haven't taken the time to notice what those things are in yourself that you really do with everybody or how you make your decisions. And if you can come from that place in life and start making your decisions based on your values, you know, right now for me, it's like, if it's not a hell yes, then it's a hell no.

I realized in myself that if I'm not lit up about it, I'm not going to give it the energy and attention and care that it deserves. Because I mean, like the truth is too, like if you're, what's the best way to describe it? If you're only interested in something, you're not going to really do it. But if you're committed, you're going to be all in.

And for me, like that's, that's what it is now. If I'm not all in or I'm not a hell yes, like I don't want anything to do with it because it's not aligned with where I'm going. And that might push people away like it did in my case, like the, the amount of things that I lost and the things that it took for me to acquire the piece of my life right now has been immense.

I lost time with my kids. Like, to me, like that is like the quintessential like I lost so much time with them going through what I was going through that I won't, I'm not, I'm never going to put myself in that position ever again to take time away from that. Like my values are my guiding light now and I will not stray from that.

I love it. Just as it mirrors something that I've talked about a lot when, when you ask a firefighter about the leather helmet, which you can see over my shoulder, I've got these kind of blueprints. One of them is that helmet, which goes, I think it's 1937.

And they say, Oh, but that's tradition. And I'm like, no, it's not. It's a hat tradition. As you said, you know, that's your identity. I want to look like Kurt Russell. The tradition of a firefighter is camaraderie and selflessness and service and teamwork and courage.

That's a helmet and we get lost in that, you know, I want to grow my mustache and you know, all the things that make you look like a firefighter. I'm not, if you've got a mustache, I'm not making fun of you, but I'm just saying that if that's how you see yourself, I need to be that quintessential firefighter.

You're missing the point. That's not your identity. Your identity is that selfless servant that had the courage to step up and say, I'm going to possibly risk my life for complete strangers, you know, but that doesn't require a uniform.

You're that same person as a parent, as a member of your community, as you transition out of the fire service into whatever, you know, service position that you take next. So I think that's, you know, it's a kind of metaphor, but clinging to that, what an American firefighter used to wear identity isn't actually, you know, it's a two dimensional facade of what a firefighter is, you know, who we are is not how we look. Absolutely.

So, all right. Well, I want to hit one more area and then we'll go to some closing questions. I listened to you on the Oxygen Advantage podcast and I had Patrick McCowen on the show. Talk to me about breath work, nasal breathing, because I know that you ended up getting certified. So what was it that you loved so much about that system that you applied not only to your own training, but ultimately became a teacher or a coach yourself?

Yeah, so I'm, I will say that I'm just waiting to finish up my case study. So I haven't quite finished the certification. I will be honest about that. It's been a little bit of a trial and error with a few things going on in life that has put me on a hold, but it is a one percent on my list for finishing this year.

So, but I have been doing it myself for the last three years. So it started with my running coach who is a fairly well known ultra runner, adventure explorer here in Canada. His name is Reza Hab. And he really taught me about it just initially. And I had read a little bit of literature on it. And then I just went full deep into it because I was noticing so many benefits on my runs.

And really the idea of the breath work is about, you know, we, we talk about other breath work with regards to like people talk about like ice baths and these types of things and the hyperventilation and all these other things that really kind of puts your body in a state of like hyper arousal or fight or flight.

And the idea of the oxygen advantage breath work training is about regulation. It's about low and slow. It's about understanding that you can harness your breath in such an incredible way, not just for performance in sport, but we're talking about like flow state and focus for people who are, you know, going into war or going into, you know, a board meeting or going into a speaking engagement or going into a fire.

Like they've proven, for instance, with firefighters that if they can help them manage their breath in a better way, their draw on their oxygen tanks is like exponentially lower, which means they can be doing their job in fighting the fire for a longer period of time.

So there's, there's so many benefits to it. And really it's about that down regulation of getting yourself to that calm place. And without going too deep into the science of it. The idea is to train your body to manage the carbon dioxide in your body to increase your tolerance to it, which then helps your lungs create more oxygen, which then sends more oxygenated blood to the rest of your body, which allows you to be more efficient.

And for me as an athlete, there's very few other things you can do to become more efficient as an athlete. And I think breath work is one of those pieces that is such a big deal that I don't think has been talked about enough. And Patrick will say it all the time.

He's like, in five years, you're going to see like, this is just going to be like exponentially more important to people because there's, there's only so many biohacks and things you can do. Now people are lactate testing and doing all this other stuff within the sports world, but nobody's talking about the breath. Everybody breathes every single person on this entire planet breathes. There's very few things that every single person in the world does. And that's why I just find it so incredible.

Because there's, there's so many areas you can go with it. I've said this, I said it to Patrick as well. What's crazy is we are one of the only professions where the only air accessible in an ideal age environment, the middle of a fire, the only air on planet earth that we have access to is strapped to our back.

Yet there's so little discussion on breath and mental state. And I got into, I forget, I think it was Brian McKenzie originally that got me into the nasal breathing and then Patrick as well. And I did CrossFit for a long time. And at first, you know, it was extremely uncomfortable, but I was patient and worked with it and obviously trying to use it when it wasn't, you know, full on exertion.

And it's incredible how well it works. And I was cognizant of it as I heard you talking to Patrick about, well, what are you doing? You're not exercising. And again, I'm, I don't know if I always was, but I certainly am now a nasal breather most of the day as well.

And I think that night sleep obviously is harder to control. I did try the mouth taping and I hated it. The worst night sleep I've ever had. So I think that's a person to person thing. Maybe it's all those years in a bunk room. I don't know. But, but that being said, like Jiu Jitsu is one of the things that I do now. The ability to relax and be efficient when you're nasal breathing, when you got someone on, you know, on top of you that might weigh another 50, 80 pounds more than you.

And to be able to down regulate then and wait for that moment where their body is slightly past center. So you can actually make that sweep. I mean, it's absolutely game changing. And even in the fire service, the very end of my career, same thing. You know, you're doing, you're doing training with a tank and you're able to just be extremely efficient. So whether you're climbing stairs before you even get to the fire to actually go to work, you can conserve as much of your tank.

And when it's time to work, yeah, you're going to probably mouth breathe because you're, you know, dragging a 200 pound person out of a fire. But up until that point, you've able to be efficient.

And then let's say you get to the hallway. Now, again, you're down regulating, try and make that tank last long enough so you can get that person down to the ground floor. So the application for the fire service specifically, not to mention just on the way to a pediatric cardiac arrest, which I always did. Using that breath to down regulate so you don't get into that, that kind of panic state. There's so many different applications for this profession, especially.

Yeah, without a doubt. And that's, that's one of the directions that I'm looking at going with the certification is to kind of branch out into that emergency services side of things. Cause I know like, again, it's just, it's not talked about enough and the breath is so powerful. It's a tool that again, if used properly can be so beneficial.

Not just, I mean, most people don't know that the nose has like 30 different functions and like there's so many different things that people don't realize because we're not taught how to breathe.

Like we just expect like our bodies and our brains are just going to do it for us. And you know, the one, the one that I was, that I was taught, which kind of blew my mind right off the bat was so many people think about when you're breathing that you, like if you were to just ask everybody to do it now and just take a breath in. Most people are going to think about breathing up.

But if you think about like breathing into the back of your throat first, just that alone, you'll get more air in right away. And it's just like, it's such a, like a little cue and a little hint. And that's just like the, like we're talking like the 0.001% of what's capable, what's possible within this realm.

And yeah, I love that the fire service is getting into it. I've seen lots of stuff. The UK seems to be ahead of the game. Obviously, I'm sure with Patrick's help and a few other instructors out there. But I think it's, it's, it's coming and I think it's going to be much more prevalent over the next few years. Absolutely.

Well, I want to throw some quick closing questions at you before I let you go. The first one I love to ask, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend? It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated. Yeah, so there's, there's two books. So the, I'm going to have to look it up now. I'll say the first one. So the first one is Matt Walker, Why We Sleep.

I'm not sure if you've heard that one or familiar with that one. So that one was probably one of the most important books for me to get my sleep back on track along with the sleep behavior is to really understand. Like even in my alter running, I've used it from just understanding how caffeine affects the sleep cycles and all these other pieces that tie into it.

The most comprehensive book on sleep that I've come across, and I am going to find the other one. Oh, the other one is called Letting Go by Dr. David Hawkins. And that one is a book that I read right in that timeframe that I told you about before of doing that psychological assessment. And it's about surrender and letting go.

And again, another profound book that I have shared with multiple people. Even my psychologist has shared it with some of her clients and she didn't know about it and I shared it with her and she's like, I've had such great feedback from that book, which is, yeah, it's incredible to find those books and be able to share those with people, especially people going through similar journeys that can relate to it and pull something from it for themselves.

Beautiful. I think Letting Go I've had mentioned a couple of times recently, so I'm going to have to get it myself. So thank you for that. And what about films or documentaries? Oh, like I want to say mine, but that would be selfish. But I will say mine. I'll say as well. That's not selfish. That's promotion.

So running towards you'll find it on my YouTube or channel or send me a DM on Instagram. That's probably the easiest way to get access if you don't know where to go for it. And other documentaries and running films. Man, you stumped me with that one. I mean, it doesn't have to be on that topic. It can be anything. Anything at all.

Yeah, I would say the most recent documentary on what's the individual he's a tri Ironman athlete who just came back from they thought he was done and he came back and he started. He's a UK guy Cavendish Mark Cavendish. That's what it is. Amazing documentary really shows you again, somebody who everybody thought was done and literally came back and was like top of the podium at Tour de France, like just incredible athlete. So I would say that one would be mine that I've watched recently.

Brilliant. All right. Well, the next question, is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders military and associated professions of the world. I would say nobody specific that I think is like that I would probably name right now but I would challenge leaders who are in this profession that say that they're behind their people.

I want to hear from more leaders in the dispatch centers and these types of areas. Come on shows like this and be willing to put themselves in an arena where their opinion might differ from somebody else's. Great answer. I appreciate that. All right, well then the last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you. What do you do to decompress. I mean running would be the simple answer here but I would say that just slowing down.

Like that that like we are all so fast paced now everything comes at us at 100 miles an hour. And that ability to take a beat and really just be present with yourself. I'm trying to remember. Okay. So, slowness, create safety and safety create space. So especially individuals who might be going through their own mental health journey or discovering what they're moving through.

You can just like slow it down like that's going to create that space for you just like I had when I was able to come out of the dispatch center and work from home. It created this like safe space for my body to finally let go. So presence and space. That's what's going to create the safety for people. Brilliant. All right, well for people listening, they want to learn more about you reach out where the best places online and social media.

So Instagram is usually the best so it's just at ultra birch website is the same thing. Triple w ultra birch calm. My documentary running for running forward. And then I have a new documentary that's going to be coming out next year I will just say now that it's based on mental health and endurance sports and it tracks from my 300 mile run that I did from LA to Vegas. In the beginning of 2024 as well too so it it goes much more in depth and it's going to be raw real.

Yeah, it's going to be an incredible film. I'm really excited about being able to share that with everybody. When are you anticipating that released. I wish I could pin down a date but it's, I'll say this year is definitely going to be sometime this year, we're just trying to figure out if we're going to release it through film festivals or if it's going to just be online we're trying to sort all that out right now so all the filming is 95% done so it's a matter of putting it together now so

Amazing. Well I can't wait to see it. So, well I want to thank you so so much. It's been such an amazing conversation we've gone all over the place and yet again you know very powerful, yet hope filled mental health conversation so thank you for your courageous vulnerability and thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the behind the shield podcast today.

I really appreciate your time James and I, I hope some of what I've said resonates with other listeners and I'm confident that, again, if you can just find that little bit of light and move towards it. There's nothing that you choose to do that's hard in your life you're going to be able to figure it out.