Latest / The Splitting Atoms Podcast / Ep 12 | The Value of Serving with Carl Marcotte

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Ep 12 | The Value of Serving with Carl Marcotte · The Splitting Atoms Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Just find something you're passionate about, do well at it, learn something from it, and it'll open another door.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's just hard to predict where the door will open, but it'll work.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: What can a career look like when we let service lead the way?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the title changes, sometimes the organization.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the purpose behind our work stays remarkably consistent.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout his career, Carl Marcotte has found different ways to serve, from finance to communications to Canada's nuclear industry.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, he reminds us that meaningful careers are often built around something much bigger than ourselves.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Join me now as I split atoms with Carl Marcotte.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, Carl, welcome to the Splitting Adams Podcast Studio.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Caitlin.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: It is great to be here.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: What a great setup you have.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you're here today, despite once saying something truly hurtful and mean-spirited, I would say to a gal like me.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: You once told me that Universal is better than Disney.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: If I had only known what a Disney princess you are.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I went three times to Disney with my kids when they were little, medium, big.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: The last time I took them, they were all in their 30s.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: And we went two Christmases ago, and we ended up spending two days at Universal and two days at Disney.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: And we all all five of us said no, we like Universal better.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh I'm so sorry.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're just digging the whole thing.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: The trench is just becoming deeper.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was the Harry Potter.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: So they're all Harry Potter fans, so that's what made it.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But Universal's fine.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I know.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you're here despite that.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just know it's a it's a fine line you're walking through.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for accommodating.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to be inclusive, you know, even for people who are wrong, we try to invite them in.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: We can learn from people who are wrong.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: But once you told me what you do at Disney running around the parks in the middle of the night, earning medals, I thought maybe I'll get the girls to try that and we'll do five Ks.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Do the 5K.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: We can all do 5Ks.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not timed.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you go and you you are, as you say, in the middle of the night.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like 5 a.m.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: they send you out.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: But so it's beautiful because you're in pitch dark and for the 5K in Disney World, you walk through Epcot theme park in the countries.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you're quite literally at 5 in the morning walking from, you know, Norway to China into Mexico.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's beautiful.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there's still hope, is what we're saying.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: We can continue then.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The podcast will continue then.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: She's not going to kick me out.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You've survived the first round.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And before we jump in on our conversation, I'm I'm really excited for a lot of the talking points that we're going to get to, but would you give me a high-level overview, 60 seconds of Candu Energy and of course the parent company Atkins Realis that you work for?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: I it can do there's so much to say.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: 60 seconds.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard 60 seconds.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't do it justice.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: It is it's the OEM of the great Candu nuclear power stations that have been uh in operation since the late 60s and uh giving Ontario today half of its electricity.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it it's a real joy of a place to work in because everyone feels this amazing sense of purpose that we're keeping the lights on, uh not only in Canada but in five other countries where we're helping them do the things they need to do to fight climate change, to to to support people and to actually produce medical isotopes on top of that.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Can does are unique in the world and that they produce vast quantities of isotopes that really help people.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: So you feel like you're doing important work no matter what you do, it can do.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a fantastic place to work.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's we're gonna get to your story where you served and how a lot of your career, whether you um have served for your country or in other ways, uh it's been a part of your story.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when we talk about um your time in the military and and your background there, it's funny to me because I think I said to you once the work that you do with Atkins and especially our can do reactors, it's kind of like you're still serving the country.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about what they've provided, our nation, that's right.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're kind of still in service, you know?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone at Can Do React.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: You feel that way, yeah.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: It used to be a Crown Corporation, so you were literally a government employee.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're it's a private sector firm, but we are operating as if we are serving the nation.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so speaking of that, you just got back from a march that you have done four years.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: This was your fourth year in the Netherlands.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh I thought it was longer ago because the weeks are flying by, it feels like very quick, but you just did this in July.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me about this march that you do and and the purpose of this march, because it's fascinating.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's um it's something that is is near and dear to the Canada Netherlands relationship, quite frankly, and especially if you have any kind of a military background.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's called the Nijmegen marches, and it's or the Four Days Marches.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it start and stops every day for four days in a little town called Nijmegen in Eastern Netherlands, right up near the German border.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And some people, those of their movie buffs or or history buffs, would know of the story of Arnhem and a bridge too far and the efforts in 1944 to try and shorten the war and get across the Rhine, which was the last major physical barrier to get into Germany.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: The Allies tried hard to get across the Rhine early.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that was one of their ideas was to take a series of bridges with airborne drops and get in through Arnhem.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Nijmegen was the last bridge that was successfully taken.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: But the march actually has nothing to do with that entire event in World War Two.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: It actually dates all the way back to the First World War, to before the war, as a matter of fact.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a um an event that was created to demonstrate the marching prowess of Dutch troops and to celebrate the Dutch military.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: So people would line the route and cheer cheer on the soldiers.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: And over the course of time they opened it up to civilians.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: And today uh all NATO countries send a contingent of troops.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you'll have about 7,000 military marchers and about 40,000 civilians, 47,000 people altogether.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Walk for four days, 40 or 50 kilometers a day for four days straight.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I gotta say, you know, you can do forty kilometers in a day once.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: But you'll get a blister, you'll get a hot spot, you'll get something go wrong, you get a hip flexor, gets out of whack.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so to have to keep doing it a second day, a third day, and a fourth day, there's no there's no break.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: So you're walking 10 or 12 hours a day for four days in a row.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh there's a sweeper truck at the end that kind of pulls just like a Disney.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the non celebration.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We call them the balloon ladies.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just Google anyone listening, the balloon ladies.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You've got your own version.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: You've got your own version.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: So but you want to finish, you desperately want to finish because it's uh it's a celebration of the military.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's really what it's about.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the crowds that line the road are incredible.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: And everyone's got a little flag on their backpack or something like that.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And when they see the Canadian flag, it means a little something extra.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, we know the the you know the history of Canada and the Netherlands from the Second World War and and how much they revere the what we did in liberating uh the Holl um liberating Holland.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: So it's um it's a really special feeling, and as much so because my grandfather was there.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually relate to that as well.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you showed me a store um a photo that you had taken at one point in the march, and there's this beautiful building with two turrets behind you.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you showed me the exact same photo of your grandfather in the same spot.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the type of moments where it's gotta give you a little bit of goosebumps.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's incredible because now you're you're building on this legacy of something that was obviously your your grandfather marched in that same place, very different reason.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why he was you know, literally on the very same roads.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I I'm really really lucky.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up listening to my grandfather's stories, and we were incredibly close.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I had him in my life until I was about 38.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: And um and he served uh as a as an as an infantryman in the war.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: He crossed Juneau Beach about six weeks after D-Day as a replacement and then fought all the way through the end.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh his company suffered 200% casualties.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: He was insane.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: He was a North Nova Scotia Highlander.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh although we were from Montreal, he got shanghaied into the North Novas uh rather than the Black Watch when he got there.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he fought with them all the way through the end, and every day he watched people die and he had to decide whether he was gonna take a life.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was something that he struggled with the rest of his life, is what he knew he had done right every day.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: But he walked those very same roads.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: So that picture is one where um it right at the end of the war, he got some leave, and he was standing in front of this medieval gate that uh surrounds a moat in this little town.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went to the exact same spot and the same storefronts are are are right beside us.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was incredible.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I and the the funny thing was I was by myself on a business trip that for that particular time.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: And as I stood there, I looked around for someone to take the photo, and I bumped into a young woman, maybe 30 years old, and I said, Excuse me, do you speak English?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Stupid question.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: In Holland, everybody speaks English.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: And she looked at me, she goes, Yes, of course.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I'm trying to recreate this photo.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: And she looked at my phone, looked at the photo, saw where we were standing, and said, Oh my god, and tears came to her eyes.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like she doesn't know me from a hole in the wall.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: But right away she said, Oh, thank you for your grandfather's service.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so happy.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, of course.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: And she worked so hard to get the picture just perfect.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: She did a very good job.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: She positioned me in the same spot, you know, literally in the same footsteps of where he was standing to get the exact same photo.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it just kind of goes to show the the connection that the Dutch feel, and Canadians feel the same, right?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: We if you know your history, you know how important that was.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: My grandfather was was saving starving children at the end of the war.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that's that's what Canadian infantrymen, that's what Canadian Army personnel did.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So do you ever find uh in life, like I'm a history major.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think back to those those times, and my question to you is do you ever find it grounding even on our hardest days?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're not waking up and having to make those decisions or know that's exactly not only take a life, but also we could lose a life or the people around us.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like we don't really know hard days.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: We really don't.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: We are we are the most privileged and lucky gener a couple of generations.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, anyone born from the war onwards has in the in the Western world has lived a privileged life in the history of mankind.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you think about it, there's been no generation in the last 10,000 years that has has had this, has what we have today.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, you really have to put it in perspective.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: And uh in fact, I uh I teach in schools.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I I joined up as a as a um as a volunteer with the memory project, which is run by Historica Canada.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you um you can volunteer to go speak in schools during the fall, during remembrance period.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so I get four or five gigs, so so to speak, every year where I'll go speak in high schools or elementary schools, and um actually dressed as my grandfather.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I recreated his World War II uniform.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm about six inches taller than him, so I can't wear his own.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I recreated one in my size, all original components, and I bring out all the kit.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a huge collector.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay so I bring everything out to the schools and I tell his stories the way he told them.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: He wrote them all down in his autobiography when he retired.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a treasure trove of stories.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them really brutally hard, and some funny army stories, and everything in between.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: So depending on the age, I I pick and choose the stories.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I tell those stories as him.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I asked the very question, you know, in the way you asked it, as I say, okay, who uh woke up uh sleeping in a pool of water two feet underground uh this morning?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: And they look at me like I'm crazy.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Anybody have breakfast?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course you did.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, today, you know, eighty years ago or pick a pick a year, my grandfather pulled himself out of a hole in the ground, uh wet w half filled with full a hole half full with water, didn't have breakfast, picked up a rifle and started shooting at people.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine the trauma.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: He came home.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: My grandfather my grandmother used to say that he when he came home, he slept on the couch for three years.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Three full years, because he just screamed all night.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, imagine the PTSD they had.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: They had no concept of how to support or or or do anything for those soldiers.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: A million Canadians wore that uniform.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: 50,000 women included, nurses and and uh administrative volunteers.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: They all wore that uniform, and more than 600,000 were in combat.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: They all came home with nothing.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: A pat on the back, a little pamphlet saying, here's how to adjust a civilian life, and off you go.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was such a um just get on with your life mentality.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And not just that.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we if we look at it a lot of times in history, whether it was um plagues that that broke out through the world or times of war or depression, there was such a don't talk about it, just keep going.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I think there's something to be admired in that in terms of really appreciating the the strength of those people.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's obviously something to be said about us appreciating now that we do talk about things and we're so much more open with um struggles and and trying to understand one another and ourselves.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And not without diminishing that there are many people today that do struggle and are born.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was very fortunate into the circumstances I was born into.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not that people over here don't have struggle and we don't want to trivialize that the relevancy of what we all deal with, but it's just not the same.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's I can't even imagine.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can't imagine.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people do struggle with horrible things that happen to them, but you can get some help, uh odds are, right?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: And back then you just had to you had to just suck it up.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And there was something and of course the i it took a toll on people, right?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: They took a toll physically and mentally.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was just sort of hidden away.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one thing you realize is we don't hide it away as much today.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we still do in certain corners.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: But we we are mostly open about it as a society, and that's really important.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell We have the choice to be open in most scenarios.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I like I even think I don't know how I would comprehend even saying goodbye to my father, my husband, my son.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: That not even going and fighting, just knowing you're sending someone off, that that might be it.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny you say um the women's roles.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: My my brother-in-law, his grandmother was in Churchill's war room.
• 14:41
  unknown: Really?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: She moved the you know how they had the big map, sure, sure.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they would have the sticks that would quite literally move the pieces on the board.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was her role.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Phenomenal insight.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and um so my my father, his girlfriend, has Dutch heritage.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they have members of their family that were hiding during that time of the uh war.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And she still to this day has a monopoly game that her her her great grandfather or her grandfather, I can't recall, had created for his family while they were hiding.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's just this handmade little monopoly set that they had.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think for me as a history major, it's those moments and those little mementos and things like that that really transport us back into a different level of understanding.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about knowing what happened, but it's really appreciating that legacy of what came before us and allowing us to have a different perspective or a different understanding of where we may be and how we're growing upon that.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you've got to personalize it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, history is meaningless unless you can understand it in the shoes of the, you know, try to understand it in the shoes of the people that lifted.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: A quick example, when I when I give those presentations in schools, I'll um I'll bring on all the equipment and I bring ration books.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So my grandmother would tell me the story and she'd show me I have her original ration books with some stamps left over.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And she would tell me the story that it was never enough food.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: You never really felt like you could have a full meal because you didn't know for sure if you were gonna get a ration booklet next month or the same level.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so you had to even ration what your rations were.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'd look at the book and there'd still be stamps in it when I was a kid.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd say, Grandma, why if there was not enough food, wouldn't you have used every single stamp?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: And she says, No, you had to keep extra just in case you didn't get a book next month.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: And when you try to explain that to a a 12-year-old today and say, You you can go to the store, but you couldn't buy bread or eggs or milk, even if you had the money, which often you didn't, but you couldn't buy it without these coupons.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I show them the ration books and they look at it and they say, Well, but how did they survive?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: I said, they were hungry all the time.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: That was at the home front here in Canada, you know, safe, but with very little food, very little heat, very little money.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: My grandmother just barely existed for the the two years my grandfather was overseas.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was a hard struggle at home.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: And kids today you don't you don't realize it, but when you can personalize it and give it, put it in that in that context, they learned a lot from the experience, from that story.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I think there's something to be said to holding on to mementos like that from our time because of the physical reminder.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's and when John McCoy was in with me, he's also a history um nerd, you know, like like all of us in nuclear are somehow.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, in some way.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the way we're we're wired.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we really talked about it from a leader per leadership perspective of how understanding history and the struggles through time, big picture, that that really nothing that we're going through is new.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's been times of chaos and uncertainty before, can almost be grounding and reassuring.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're leading teams, it they can be stories that can be told to say we'll get through this just like we got through the rest.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And on an individual level, you think well, you know, they look what they had to deal with.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I can get out of bed at 5 a.m.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: and go for a run in a nice, you know, clean park as I deal with my my anxiety or whatever it might be.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And again, not to trivialize what we're going through today, but it can be such a tool that we can pull to help remind us that we probably will get through this as well.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Absolutely.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great example.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now, not only um were your grandfather and you similar in where you stood once to take a photo.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: You also served in the military or or um Canadian services just like he did.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: So walk me through that.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know this about your story.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell Yeah, it's not something I I tell a lot of people these days.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Too late now.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, too late now.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Although it was late in life as well.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was only recently.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: I just released from uh the reserves uh seven, you know, seven and a half, eight years ago.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I joined very late in life.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: So listening to my grandfather's stories growing up, I always wanted to join the military.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: But my mother was in banking, and I took a turn when I was 16, she got me into the working at T D Bank and got a great great summer job.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I discovered I really liked, I eventually got trained as a lender and I really enjoyed that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and it so it I went down a business career.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: I went to, you know, got a business degree, went back, got my MBA, worked at the bank for a while, and then launched an an international lending career.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: And all the time I was doing that, part of my brain was going, Yeah, yeah, kinda maybe you should have taken a right turn instead of a left turn.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was calling to me always.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was calling to me always and my grandfather's stories, and again, I I had them until I was thirty-eight.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so I we talk about it all the time, and I thought, eh, I miss m you kinda miss my chance.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: But it never went away.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm such a history buff and such a military historian, a collector, and all kinds of things.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it never went away, and then I got to have a lot of friends in the military for one reason or another, some hobbies in common and so forth.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then at 44 I decided, you know what, I'm not too old and decrepit just yet.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was a marathon runner, I was in shape.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: And my kids were just old enough that if I wasn't around on weekends, it's not gonna be the end of the world.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: I had gotta have a window.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think I can do this.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: So at 44 I started applying.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it so happened to coordinate to coincide with the 2008 economic crisis.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so the reserves, like everything else in government, was all shutting down, they were losing their positions or fund funding and budgets were being cut.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the recruiting office in Ottawa sort of sent me away and said, no, buddy, it's not gonna happen.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Bad times.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: No no open positions.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I kept bugging them and bugging them for almost a year.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: And finally this chief petty officer of second class took pity on me and he looked at me and says, Sir, I promise I will call you if anything opens up.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, All right, fine.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I put it on my mind for two or three months.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then he calls me one day and says, The intelligence unit in town in Ottawa, uh reserve uh uh platoon, is getting some funding, getting some positions back.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: Go to their info night and see if it's for you.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it turned out to be a great thing.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: So my international business experience over 20 odd years at that point was was well received.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was a good fit as a civilian to come in and then learn the military trade and learn what the intelligence trade was all about.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did that for seven years.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Went through basic training at 45, 46.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was hilarious.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone looked at me, you know, I was with 55, 60, 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, and they thought I was the old I I had the same gray hair when I was forty-five, and they thought I was some weird old dude, and who is this guy, you know, hanging out with us.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: But when I ran faster than them, that's right.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: I listened better and I performed better because, you know, you're professional, you're listening.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's taught at a grade 10 level.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's not terribly hard, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um but kids at 19, eh, they don't listen so well.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have the life experience that prepares them for.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So I listened the best, let's say, to the course instruction.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I got through it super easy.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was fun, actually.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I feel like there's a movie script uh in there somewhere.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like this has been uh It's like the rookie, but in the in the military.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in the Canadian military.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and I want to grab something you mentioned there.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Your mom influenced the way your career went.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's f I love the fact that you were able to still live out that goal and do something that is is following in the footsteps of legacy.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's a really fortunate thing for me because I worked at Export Development Canada when I joined the military and they were super supportive.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you need a very supportive employer if you're gonna be a reservist that actually does something with that.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can, you know, do r do stuff part-time and one night a week you go to you go to your unit and one weekend a month you go do something on an exercise.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: But you need to invest at least half a year full-time in training, in your initial training.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's that long.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then you gotta keep investing.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: So you need a lot of time off from your day job, or you give up every single weekend in the year, one or the other, sometimes both.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And EDC was great for that.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: They really appreciated the the aspect of service.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a Crown Corporation, everyone there is serving the country in one way or another, just as you talked about at the opening.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and they really, really supported me.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was great.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: I was able to go through two years where I, you know, showed up bleary-eyed Monday mornings because I'd spent the whole weekend running around in the bush or something.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know it was that long.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like that it I I really am quite ignorant in the yeah.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: In the reserves, you do the same thing as as Reg Force.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: You go through the same 13 weeks full-time basic training.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: You have to, of course, and then you go through two years of trade training to learn whatever your trade is, whether you're an artillery or you're an intelligence officer, you've got to go through about two years of trade training.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I was in seven years, but uh yeah, I only felt really well trained after about five years.
• 23:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so going back to your mother's influence there, she directed you over into the finance world.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: She did.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you your first job was it with TD?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was at T D cleaning storerooms as a kid at fifteen or sixteen years.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: In finance.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: So not really in finance, but in the base in the basement of a bank, right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: You're in the room.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: In the room somewhere.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then I was so lucky she was she was a senior uh exec at in uh T D bank in the Quebec division.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, once you get in, you're in, and then they're always looking for part-time folks, right?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so they trained me on every single job you can picture in a bank branch.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I started in the storeroom, next thing I know I'm being trained as a teller when I was seventeen.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then every job every job, the counter officers, you know, the old bank branches when you had twenty people standing behind a counter and it was all kinds of things you did in person, not like today where it's all online.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I I got trained in every job, including doing mortgages and loans, and so I was able to replace bank managers.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: So the branch manager would go on his or her two or three week vacation.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Someone has to sub in, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so here I am, this 21-year-old kid coming in and and you know, acting as if the bank man I'm the bank manager for two or three weeks.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I probably look twelve years old, you know.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: I show off in my nice little suit, all spiffy and all excited, you know, and the little the the tellers were all fifty-five-year-old Portuguese or Italian women in Montreal, Quebec division.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And they look at me and go, Who the hell is this kid?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what's this kid doing?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: He's he's he's a manager, whatever.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: A reserve of a different kind.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: But then they say, Oh, he's Diane's son.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: They all knew my mother.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, he's all right then.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: So they'd give me a pass.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: But it was great training for a young person.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot of professional experience and responsibility at a very really young age.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it set me up really well in life.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: It uh it got me down a path of business mindset and and how to support customers and how to listen to customers, how to listen to their stories and uh and try and help them out with loans, mortgages, you know, whatever I could do in a small way.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because that would be very interesting, because you you eventually went into lending, of course.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um and we'll walk through that because I feel like banking is one of those industries where it's not so much about what you're doing, but the fact that you are helping people with their money and their finances, something so vital to opportunity, to stability, to security.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: That has to be cool to be in that kind of an environment where every day you're you're watching people's lives move in and out of bank accounts.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well that's what uh I didn't realize at the time, you know, 21 years old and being trained on on credit or on mortgages and loans.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize how important it was, but you very quickly started to see it because you'd have people coming into your office saying, I just need a car loan, okay, it takes two seconds, very simple, transactional, and off they go.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next person is telling you their whole life story.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: And they're going through struggles because they've got to sell the house and downsize because somebody died and they've got to remortgage something or whatever it is.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the stories were pretty complex and very br and very personal.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so you really at a young age started to realize how important this job was, how important people's finances were.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and just the the act of listening and trying to help them out in a small way, whatever it is I was doing, uh it really was very um impactful and meaningful for me.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so it really it set me up really well for my career.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: It it taught you how to be professional at a young age.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, 21, you know, today you look at the average 21-year-old and they go, how much do they know about the other.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: The decorum's a little different.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little different, right?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, that was 40 years ago, it's hard to believe now.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: But uh but it really set you up and it set me down a path of um of listening to people, trying to understand them.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that probably served me the best.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was the most important thing I took away from that, because I'm sure that served me in every part of my career ever since.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, even I mean, as you said, when you went into the reserves and how listening very well served you, right?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And gave you an advantage.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think there's two things that are fascinating about that.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Early on in your career, you started to realize the importance of your role in the impact, because that's something we think a lot about in our industry today in nuclear.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: But also, yes, being in an environment that demanded, especially at the time.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think we're in an old bank sitting here, we're in the old bank vault um is filming this podcast studio.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you think of the level of professionalism that was around banks, even the beauty of banks.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: They were built to be these these beautiful things, these highly polished things.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the same of the environment of those that worked in them.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of professionalism that was called out of you.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So to be a young individual, getting your your first taste of career in that kind of a setting, I think probably set you up very well to be able to move into different rooms and always carry yourself in a certain way as you progress through your career.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think it did, and it um it it gave you it gave you a perspective on people, not just doing a job.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you learn the by rote whatever it is their j the job was, but it gave me a perspective on on people and how to communicate more most importantly, and that's one thing I I think I've throughout my career, and it's not not a surprise to me that I spent the first 20 years in lending, structured lending all around the world, doing all kinds of great things and having a great time doing it.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: But what I really took from it was people, working with people and communicating, listening to ideas, communicating, passing that information on to others, being a bit of a central connector for lots of different people.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: That was something that ended up being um a hallmark of how I worked day to day, what my what my impact was in the in the case of the course of a day.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so I ended up in business development and marketing communications roles, not a big surprise, because the part I really enjoyed about doing that work for customers was talking to customers.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: My wife would always say she she knew when I was having a bad day, it meant I was stuck at my desk crunching numbers all day and not getting out and talking to people.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: And when I came home really energized and happy, even at, you know, seven or eight o'clock at night after a long, long day, she'd say, Yeah, you were out in the road today, weren't you?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Yeah.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's cause so it made all the difference in how I'd come home and how I could either be energized by work or lose energy through a boring kind of day.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was about connecting with other people and telling stories and and sharing information and making sure other people had the information they needed to do something.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever it is, that was the part that would define how I'd go to work every day.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting because it it really it becomes less and less about the loan and more and more about the dream or the opportunity or the circumstance behind the loan that allowed you to to really serve people and understand and be an ambassador for them.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the loan industry, as you said, you're often turning to your lenders and saying, well, here's the situation why I would make a case for this, or you know, that's how I imagine it, never being a Exactly.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to go through credit, you've got to go through the process, what's the risks, how will I get my money back?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: All that all the analysis that goes into it.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that's all really important.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's really complex.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it's something you can learn.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: But what you can't always learn, or you I guess maybe you can improve it, is how to connect with people.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got to have that kernel in you, and you've got to find a way to enhance that.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's where most of my learning really came from was how to do that.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's how we ended up in a completely different industry.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say, so you went around, you traveled the world with um the EDC and you you did that for a while, and then someone came calling.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: You had a headhunter come track you down.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: 2013, I had uh that by that point I had spent twenty-four years doing structured finance, lending money all around the world, uh it w either through EDC or at Nortel, which is a whole other story.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: When I hear about the telecom industry and the rise and fall of Nortel, that's that's something else.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I was there for at the front row seat for all of that.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: But all of that 24 years was about lending money one way or another.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden the nuclear industry comes along and says, Would you go to Chalk River and be part of the last executive team to help run the labs and get them ready to be taken over by this GOCO thing.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: What's a GOCO?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Government-owned contractor-operated model to run the national labs.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: So in 2015, we we we made the switch over to the the rest of ACL, not part of Candy, but the rest of ACL, which was the lab laboratories at uh Chalk River and uh in uh in Winnipeg, outside Winnipeg.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: They uh they needed to be run and managed in a totally different way, no longer as a Crown Corporation.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're moving from being public into private.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Into privately run.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So still public assets.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's still assets, yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's still publicly owned assets, but run by the private sector to be more efficient and to be more innovative, to do things differently.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's the it's an importation of an American model.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's 17 nuclear labs in the U.S.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: and they run that.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: The U.S.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Department of Energy runs those labs in this model where they take public assets and they put them in the hands of private sector contractors on a five or ten year contract, and for a fee, have them run it.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: So if they if they perform well, they get more fee.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: If they don't perform well, they don't get a fee.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a more efficient model.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's an American model, you can imagine.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And we Canada decided to try this.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: So we sold off the commercial reactor division to then SNC, that became Can Do Energy, where I work today.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: But in 2011, they said, okay, now what are we going to do with the rest of this?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is an amazing asset.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: 3,000 phenomenal scientists working up at Chalk River, two hours outside of Ottawa.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: And how are we managing it?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: How are we supporting them?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: How are we investing in the next generation of technologies or ideas?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: We need to find a better way to do it.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: So they turned to this model.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh because they had broken up the company, what was left at Chalk River was really just the science.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: There was no infrastructure, there was no marketing or communications or IP management.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: There was so many aspects of a modern corporation that were missing.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it couldn't really run on its own because those those support functions had been in Mississauga where the CanDo Energy ended up being created.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so they created a whole new executive team to run the place for three years and get it ready for this American model to come into place.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: So beginning of 2013, they recruited me in to create marketing comms, uh, business development, and actually find a way to help the scientists see where they could earn real revenues with their scientific abilities.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was the guy in a suit running around with 3,000 scientists and dirty lab coats, and I didn't know a thing about nuclear.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: But so I had learned all from scratch.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: And and I just dove right into it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well that and that was the beauty of it, is because 3,000 people were in, I don't know, a hundred different labs all across the site.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: There was 150 buildings across that site.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: And every day I'd go to different labs and I'd just hang out with them and say, okay, tell me about what you do.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: But talk to me like I'm a five-year-old because you know the science is going right over my head.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: But over time I got into it and really understood.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: I did a lot of homework to understand the science.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: And once I figured it out, uh, I mean, they were so excited because nobody from corporate, nobody from you know, nobody in the suit had ever shown up to ask them questions.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: And they were so excited to tell you about all the cool ideas they had to earn money, to earn new revenues, to do new kinds of things.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was a transformational experience for me, three years there.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, what I discovered is the industry is unique.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: I had supported almost every industry through financing work, but I'd never touched nuclear.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: And what I discovered how unique the people were in the industry, how generous they are with their time, how open-minded they are, how it's truly a learning culture.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you hear about that, but nuclear.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just talk.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Nuclear is really a learning culture.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: And people try to help everybody else to be safer, to do things better, to innovate.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's really a very unique business culture, uh, a unique culture within the industry compared to every other industry I've ever seen.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so I it it's just enthralled that I, you know, I I really wanted to stay in the industry.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: So after that mandate was over for three years, I found a way to stay and just try some different things since then.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And don't you think, because um you told me once, and I didn't even really think of this until you told me, but back in the 50s, the way Canadian nuclear was designed, developed, and kind of implemented, that's when you really learned about that.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you being again someone who who likes to, I think, know where we come from, you naturally looked into what makes us different.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and I hadn't known.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe walk me through that, what you learned and kind of the appreciation for that group amended in the 50s.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: Being a history buff really helped me prepare for this job.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I had about a month off before I started.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: And all I did that whole month was just dig in deep into the whole history of nuclear science in Canada, trying to understand the science and trying to understand the history.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: And Chalk River, the site was cleared in 1944, it was in the middle of nowhere.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: There was not nothing for 200 miles in every direction, just trees and moose.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a great site.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: And they purposefully chose what happened to the moose car?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're still there.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you've got to really be careful when you drive down Plant Road on the way to the parking lot.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's moose walking across the road.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's dangerous.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: Three times I saw a moose and almost hit one once.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I gotta tell you, it's really dangerous.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: But uh it was a really unique place.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so Chalk River was created at the moment of the Manhattan Project.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: Most people don't know this, but Canada contributed to the Manhattan Project in a whole host of ways in sharing the science.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of British scientists that were working there.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: So American, British, Canadian scientists worked together.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh people know the first sustained chain reaction happened in Chicago while they were d working on the Manhattan Project to develop the first two bombs.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the second sustained chain reaction ever to occur in history was at Chalk River in September 5th.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: September 5, 45.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: So as a history buff, it's a it's a date you can.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's time to wrote it down.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: Tuck it away and say that's when really Canada came into its own.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: But what all of that background taught us, and in the 50s, when they were really invigorating the lab and expanding it and building all sorts of new sources, they had new new and neutron sources, they put up a research reactor, they did all kinds of great things.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: But then Diefenbaker, it was a Diefenbaker government, I think, that said, we will not be part of any weapons programs.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: So there's no way we want to have anything to do with that.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want any enrichment of uranium here in Canada, and we don't want to be part of any weapons programs.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: So we looked at the scientists and said, your mandate is to figure out how to use all this really cool, wild new science for peaceful civil purposes.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Figure it out.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so they came up with a whole host of things, including medical isotopes.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Just about everything we know today about nuclear medicine, writ large, was developed at Chalk River.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's so cool to me.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, in the production of electricity.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: So the very first um uh reactor to produce electricity from the heat that's generated by the nuclear chain reaction, by that sustained chain reaction, one of the things it produces, of course, is tremendous amounts of heat.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, what can you do with heat?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you boil water, make steam, steam turns to turbine, you've got electricity.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a thermal plant like anything else.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: A nuclear plant is just a big tea kettle.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's the easiest way to understand it.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Easiest way to understand it.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so in the 50s they started developing it, but the mandate was let's build a reactor that uses natural uranium, because we don't have enrichment here, so we have to use natural uranium.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: That meant using heavy water to moderate the reaction.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it meant uh they they needed to be able to build a reactor where the components could be built in Canada.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't want to be importing it, and that's still as important today as it was then.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: So smart energy sovereignty, energy self-security, where you can build all the components, you have your own source of natural uranium in the country, you have your own electricity, and you're not beholden to anybody else.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that was really important in the 50s and 60s as they perfected the technology.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just as important today for the reasons we know so well.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: Look at the trade war we're in the middle of, look what the Prime Minister is having to deal with today.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's for the exact same reasons energy sovereignty is critical to our survival.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Never mind whatever else is going on.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's a great history to the place, and the can do technology evolved from there and got bigger and bigger and better every every decade.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: They they enhanced it and changed it.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_02: And today we're getting ready to build a whole new fleet of can-duos.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's an amazing arc of history.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: The same reasons that things were important 70 years ago is the same reason today.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that lesson about history repeating itself in such a um in such an obvious way or such a tangible way.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: But also I think we don't think about it sometimes in terms of um technology.
• 40:39
  unknown: Right.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right, the importance of it then and importance of it now, even if it's changing, just even the the story of that technology.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the story remains the same and its significance and importance and why you know it wears a superhero cape at different times of of history.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I just love that tie of of once again appreciating where we came from and how it influences today and how we we build on it really.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I think sometimes we've lost that a little bit in society.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're so focused on the new and the shiny and what's next, and um, maybe because we're at capacity with everything we have to absorb these days.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: But maybe.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, young younger folks today seem to just have their heads down, doing their thing, lost in their devices.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but yeah, I I tease my kids all the time, they're all in their 20s and 30s, uh, and we have this conversation, probably ad nauseum, right?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: So they would tell you it's a little too much sometimes.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we all have our things that we go a little too deep on.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm my family's probably sick of hearing about uh Formula One or the audience here for splitting items, they're probably like, if she mentions Disney one more time, you know, Disney and the cats.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: There you go, you did it again.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well the thing I don't care.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's your podcast.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so if if we look back at that kind of future and maybe take a pivot here and look towards today, you're in the marketing and communication kind of space like I am.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: You spend a lot of time talking to audiences and bringing nuclear around the world.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: How important do you think it is that we keep sharing our story as an industry and educating and it's so important.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's the most important time to be doing that because the the hist the wonderful 75-year history, if you want to look at it that way, is is is fantastic.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: But so what?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: So unless you're continuing to do something with it, it's just history.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: So we're continuing to use those reactors today.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're rebuilding them, refurbishing them, planning for new ones, all that's wonderful.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we keep improving and changing things.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's only 31 countries in the world out of nearly 200 that produce electricity from nuclear power.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: And 30 to 40 other countries are credibly trying to join that club.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: They're absolutely making huge efforts and investments to try and learn how they can be part of that because they see the benefits.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they there's only six different countries in the world that have their own native nuclear technology.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're going to start a nuclear power program in your country and you don't have one today, you have to partner with one of those six countries.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: You really can't do it on your own.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so all those 30, 40 countries and others are looking at those six countries and saying, Who's my best partner?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: How can I take this on?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: And they're all coming to Canada, they're all coming to Darlington and talking to OPG and Bruce Power about how amazing these reactors are we have here in Canada, how they produce power at such a great price, how they work so well, how they have these huge capacity factors, they're always on, they're always doing their thing.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: And they produce these vast quantities of medical isotopes, which is really attractive to a lot of countries.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the beauty of our system, because it's natural uranium, it means you don't have to worry about whether you're going to get your fuel from America.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Or France on one side or Russia-China on the other.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's your choice, right?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: When you have to buy enriched fuel, there's only a couple of places it comes from, and those are the countries it comes from.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you a lot of countries are are worried about the geopolitics of aligning, if you make a mistake and you align with Russia-China on one side, then you're an enemy to the West.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: And if you align with the West, well then China's gonna be all over you.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: These these are really hard issues for a country like the Philippines or Indonesia that always feel like they're in the middle.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: And they're trying to join this club and they're trying to help their people, and they'd love access to vast quantities of medical isotopes at a reasonable price.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have that today.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: People don't have the cancer treatments and all those things that we take for granted here.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so all these countries are trying to do the right thing and trying to figure out what country to partner with, and there's a pro and a con to each of the six countries.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: We're not perfect, but we think I think we have more of the right tools, right?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: We're a great partner in so many ways as a country.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: The Prime Minister's Davos speech in January is a great example of it, right?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: We welcome partnership with like-minded middle powers.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's so much to be built in the future.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much that's really meaningful for humanity in many ways, because this is tackling climate change.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's a cleaner source of power than just about anything else, uh, neck and neck with hydro in terms of carbon emissions.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Much easier and much less land use than hydro.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: And in many ways, it's going to be the future for the whole planet, or we're not going to produce the power we need.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so you really feel like you're part of something that's important as an industry.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's time to tell that story.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's time to shout it loud.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody wants to hear our stories.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone's coming here benchmarking, and everybody wants to know what Canada thinks about this and how we can help them.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's uh it's actually absolutely the most fascinating of time, I think, to be part of this industry.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: The the young people that we're hiring today, I look at them and I talk to them and say, you've got a 40-year career ahead of you.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're gonna interview someone soon that that is just a lot of people.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: One of your colleagues is coming.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so exciting to look at their faces and listen to them and say, you could be doing anything for the next 40 years.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna be fun and it's gonna be meaningful, and it's gonna be something that really helps people.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing gets much better than that, right?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: No matter what you're doing.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So Agreed.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I love that you put the global perspective on it.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: But even if we look locally, there are so many Canadians that don't know this little asset that we have in our backyard.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't I I mean, uh so much of it, it's so hard on this podcast because we don't talk a lot about nuclear, but you can tell we're all passionate about nuclear because it all kind of circles back.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but you told me once a story of a highly educated, intelligent woman.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who she had a funny story about what she thought you did, because she again, even here in Canada, our story needs to be stronger, in my opinion.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: It really does.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have not yet transcended where people know and understand.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to know the ins and outs of everything that happens.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: They can know that it's just a teapot.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um but even the fact that our reactors are so incredibly safe.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that, right?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: If if something else happens in the other in another um side of the world, are we at risk because we haven't done a good enough job as as an industry in educating Canadians about why our reactors are so safe?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, that that's the critical piece, is the social license.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'll I'll tell that story.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the story of my youngest daughter is 22 and it's her best friend.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: She's 23, and she's finished medical school and she's starting her residency, and she's she's hilarious.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: The two of them, when they're in the house, the house is just jumping off its foundations because they're they're so loud and funny and hilarious.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: And they're doing all kinds of one wonderful, crazy things.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, smart is all get out, right?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, really smart young people.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: I don't say that with any bias, but yeah, really smart young people.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: And they look at me and like all kids do, they go, I don't know what my parents do.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they have some kind of job, whatever.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: You never know what your parents really do, right?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and they look at me and go, oh, he works in nuclear.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that sounds dangerous.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: And of course they think of nuclear weapons or bombs or something, right?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so this this this woman is Erin, she's 23, she's a doctor, she's doing a residency now.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh she finished medical school really young, super smart kid.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: And she looks at me, she goes, You make bombs.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, No, Erin, you know I don't do that.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I explained the tea kettle analogy, and she looks at me, she goes, Oh, that makes sense, I finally get it.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next time I see her, she goes, You make bombs.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, Erin, we've been over this.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: And every time we have this conversation, she laughs.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: And but of course, she's finally gotten it.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Now she tells all her other friends what nuclear technology is all about and where electricity comes from and how we do it, and how important it is, because climate change really matters to 22-year-olds.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: They think about it more than my generation ever did, and they know the imp the impacts.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: They know what's going to happen if we don't get a handle on this, and they think about it a lot, right?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's very serious from that, you know, it's funny at points, but then it's got become very serious, and she's really telling the story to other young people that she meets.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: She knows, you know, what it's really all about.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: But you're right, is we don't broadly as a society, if you're, you know, if you live in Ontario near a reactor, you probably have a high acceptance of it because you understand it and you hear a lot more about it.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: You see the economic impact, you see that it's been operating safely for 60 years, so it must be safe.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, good.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: And aging like a fine wine, getting stronger.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing some reactors.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: And is constantly seeking improvements.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: But if you live in a province that doesn't have nuclear, you don't hear these stories.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so every province in Canada is trying to double, or even more than that, double the size of their electricity grid over the next 25 years so that we can decarbonize the economy further.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Where will the electricity come from if not nuclear?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: There's not an there's not enough from wind and solar.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to have other baseload options.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so every province is looking at this.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: And society needs to have this conversation a lot more.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I spent a lot of time talking to people and trying to get this conversation going in places where it's not, because otherwise we're just not gonna have the social acceptance.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna have the societal view that this might be something we really have to dig into.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we we need to get to that point because you hear stories like that with Erin, who wonderful, smart, intellectual woman, clearly very capable, right, to become a doctor.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: And for her to have this misconception tells me we're not quite yet doing a good enough job.
• 50:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not even about provinces sometimes that don't know.
• 50:46
  unknown: Right?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's there's people here in Kitchener Waterloo, again, another highly intellectual, tech industry-driven kind of place, and they don't really know about nuclear.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of our problems is we call it the hydro bill.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: It should be an electric bill, but we'll well, that's a story for another day.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um then you hear these stories like the one with Aaron, where it just takes that moment, that one-on-one of you very simply explaining, you know, essentially it's a teapot, here's how it works, here's what I do, here's here's what it can do for the world.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: We need that on a mass scale.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: With that where our industry, I feel like we're kind of we're at that at the base of the hill of how to really market our story and and and share our narratives.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're still in that loose footing where we haven't had to do it because for a long time we just had to kind of keep our heads down and do the work without talking about it.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of politicians wouldn't talk about it.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of a scary word.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want us as an industry to passively be waiting for another part of the world to dictate our nation's understanding of what we have here.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so you I know you and I we've we've kind of chatted about that of where does that begin?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh of course, for me, the very simple the the simplest thing that I could do was this podcast was to start talking to leaders.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And well, you know, it's yeah, it's been a fun time.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm learning a lot.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I I just feel we're we're kind of like I said, in the foothills still.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this mountain in front of us of climb of to to climb to really get great at telling our stories because the narratives are there.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's just we have not collectively as an industry kind of gotten really great at putting them out into the world with emphasis, right?
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's it.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think you're right.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I often think my daughter Hannah and and Aaron they they lay they they say they don't get it just to tease me.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, yeah.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're just teasing.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: But they uh so they really get it.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: They're super smart.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: And everybody who hears the story gets it.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: And everyone who's thinking about climate change or who's thinking about or who's thinking about energy independence and security, you know, imagine you know, if any anybody remembers the O three blackout.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there was no power for two or three days, almost no power at all.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't take long.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: Three days is about the limit where you've not sure where your next meal is coming from.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: You feel insecure, especially at night.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's roving gangs of people might threaten you.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't take long, three days, and society starts to break down.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: We become desperate, really.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: We are based on that electricity grid, right?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: We are we are we are tied to it, our lives revolve around it.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it wouldn't take very much for societal breakdown.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that sounds kind of scary when you think about it.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we have an obligation to say, how are we working on climate change?
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: How are we working on energy security as a nation and helping other nations do the same?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the the conversation couldn't be more important, and and I I so we have it everywhere we can, but I think as an industry we can still do more.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're we're actually supporting a new, uh it's gonna get announced in the next couple of weeks, a new youth nuclear education center uh in the eastern part of the GTA.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna hear all about it.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's really very exciting.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: The whole industry is supporting it and sponsoring it.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: I can't tell you all the details yet.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's coming soon.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we don't want to breach anything.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great example of this is gonna be how we get high school kids, elementary school kids to learn about, think about, to understand it at a different age, change the curricula in different provinces to to allow young people to really learn about it more and and to and to make choices, because it's not perfect either.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: Nuclear is not perfect, it's just different than hydro or wind and solar.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you need a bit of everything, and you need to decide for yourself what choices you want to make and how it's gonna turn out.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: But as an industry, we can we can talk up what we what values and benefits we bring to a much greater extent.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: We uh we really don't do that nearly enough.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just love that.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: I know I digress because you and I could probably talk all day about the narratives and the storyline and what we could be doing and and all of these things.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think also we're we're at a place where we're really learning as an industry, how do we I'll use the the F1 analogy.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know Atkins Realis sponsor of Alpines F1 team.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: I see you on the halo, I get excited, you know.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's us, that's us, even though I'm not.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, you're part of the I use the analogy of every week those teams go out on track and they battle it out for the team.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it gets heated and it gets all the things.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: But then they all turn together as an organization and they say, how do we now move the sport forward?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right with things like a documentary.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that look like and how do we work collaboratively?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: And our industry, I feel like we're still figuring that side of it out of we compete, of course, and we want that because it it makes us stronger.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: It makes, right, the the new back and forths that are happening now with technologies and things.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: We know all about the fact that the competition makes us stronger and it forces us to be at our best.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: But now as an industry, how do we turn and start showing up at things as a collective industry to say, look at what we do?
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm excited for that because I think it's coming and I think it's coming really, really quickly.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: But that excites me because in my opinion, at that moment is is when we will unlock our potential to really be telling our story.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you feel like right now as an industry, we are at the cusp of a new beginning.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what a cool thing, because if you think a lot of people, how much money would they give to go back in time and get in at the beginning of tech or Microsoft or Google or right?
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: How many people would would have loved to uh have gotten ahead of you know the industrial revolution or whatever.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever it is, yeah.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we're here telling people we're at the beginning.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like the get in now.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're the the ground floor is is we're about to take off.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's the next generation, it's uh people talk about a renaissance in the industry.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the 70s and 80s was all about building this huge nuclear infrastructure, and then the the no-nukes and the weapons issues and the cold war and all kinds of other and cost overruns and all kinds of different issues took it apart.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, we built something and then people ran it, and we ran it really, really well.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: But then nobody wanted to talk about investing in the next generation of it.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're at that new inflection point.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_02: It it really is a massive inflection point because at the same time we're talking about climate change and energy sovereignty and energy security for people, or isotopes, or all the other benefits of what nuclear gives you.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now you're also talking about AI data centers that nobody was talking about five years ago.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's a hyperscaler?
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, these are all new words that we didn't have in our lexicon even just five years ago, which is hard to believe when you think about it.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_02: Where will all the power come from?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: Our lives are changing, our societal structure changes, is changing more and more rapidly.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the the way we build new power stations has to change, the way we support all of that.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so people are having these conversations and they're not really sure where to go.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you need a lot more information to make good choices.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_02: So policymakers, and we spend a ton of time with government officials, with policymakers at provincial and federal level and all around the world in in new jurisdictions.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's really that what you need to do is get that message out.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: They're looking for information, and then they're looking for ways to talk to their people about it.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever the jurisdiction is, whether it's Saskatchewan, Alberta, wanting to join the nuclear family in Canada, maybe Quebec will get back into it again, you never know.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I hope so.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I know we need the power.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then new places like Poland or Turkey that are all really excited that we're working in right now.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: All of these places are having that societal conversation.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and we've it's it's the moment to to really bring it home because we've got to invest and it's big dollars, and you've got to do it well.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: And the part I'd say the last piece, I think in Canada, we haven't talked about this yet, but it's it's a fantastic opportunity to really achieve reconciliation with indigenous peoples.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it's something I spend an enormous amount of my time in with First Nations communities, with Metis communities.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was just at the Back to Batosh uh three, four weeks ago uh in um in north of Saskatoon, an hour north of Saskatoon, and it was a fence, an annual Metis festival.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's a really important cultural and heritage moment for people of Metis heritage.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's a fantastic opportunity to partner and work together, and they're really keen to be building the next generation of big projects in Canada.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: Same with First Nations communities, same with Inuit communities.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody needs more power, needs secure power.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this is because we're building big projects, and the duty to consult is is so critical, not just consult, but actually have uh indigenous communities shape the projects, design the projects the way they want to see them.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: That all is going to help us get to a different place.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a different, that's another aspect again of changing the conversation, bringing in new voices, and making sure everybody's voice is heard.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_02: So the industry I think has been doing a pretty good job of working closely with Indigenous communities.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_02: But it's only the tip of the iceberg.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: We're still just scratching the surface.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_02: But as these projects really get going, we start announcing things, it's gonna be unbelievable how that helps bring people together.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's that's the sort of thing I talk to young people about, new employees.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: We hire like eight, nine hundred people a year at our place the last three years.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you're talking to them and say, your career for the next 40 years is gonna be nothing but fascinating.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really know what it's gonna look like, but I guarantee you it's gonna be fascinating because there's so much happening and so much changing at once.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: And who we work with is just changing so fast.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: So and I think you you touch on something there just about the significance of you may not know what the career is gonna look like, but find something that can give you the passion of like even of you talking, right, and understanding how you're um serving communities and how the work you're doing, what it's really delivering out into the world.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you told me a funny story once.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: You were you were speaking, I think, at a school.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: You and a pharmaceutical gentleman from the pharmaceutical industry, and you both kind of landed at the same point of find something that you see the need and that you you're having fun with and enjoying.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: But his story was something about hot dogs.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it's and I love the story because it shows how you can take the most meaningless thing and build something amazing as long as you're enjoying it.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a career day.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: So my daughter Hannah, it was her her boyfriend George, uh, he's graduating from Bishops University.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he's the head of the uh of the uh Commerce Students Association.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was about 50 or 60 graduating BCOM, B Admin students at at uh at Bishops.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: And they had the two of us speaking, but it's kind of a little mini career fair, and just to talk about you know how your career can evolve, because you know how it is at 21, 22, you're coming out of school and you're like, God help me, I don't know what to do.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: Where do I go next?
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now what?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: How will I get my neck my first job?
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_02: And these you know, these I'll say kids, these kids are all kind of nervous, right?
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: So they were looking to us, hopefully we had some ideas for them, and we both said the same sort of thing, which was your career's gonna go in so many different places, it's hard to predict.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_02: But just focus on something you like that you're good at and learn from something.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_02: Learn from everything you do.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so he gave the first example, his very first job while he was still in school, this fellow I was I was standing beside had been the bishops.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_02: And second or third year, he was running out of money, he couldn't support himself, and he saw that there was nobody su doing the hot dogs and and drinks at the local football games.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so he begged, borrowed, and stole a bunch of equipment and set up tables and got all the got a bit of money to to source all the hot dog ingredients, the barbecue drinks and all that stuff.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: And and he ended up becoming the the master of the concessions for all the football games, and he made a ton of money at it.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_02: And he realized that he could turn it into some other things, so it helped him evolve his his business.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then when he graduated, he actually did something similar.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then he a year later he was in the pharmaceutical business.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: He was applying for a job.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: And he told the story of this entrepreneurial thing he had done to get him to get through school.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that really turned the crank of the of the person interviewing him and said, I like an entrepreneurial sp spirit.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: Great, I'll hire you.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, what does he know about pharmaceuticals?
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_02: But he ended up starting in the industry as a junior marketing analyst or some such thing, right?
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: As a brand junior brand manager kind of thing.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: And but but it was because he had tried something and he told the story and he communicated it well, and he he he took something from that experience and he built on it and he built on it and he built on it.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the message we were both trying to give these these young folks was just find something you're passionate about, do well at it, learn something from it, and it'll open another door.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's just hard to predict where the door will open, but it'll work.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it was a great it was a great story, and thank God we said the same thing, otherwise we would have confused these kids.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_02: But we're not gonna be able to do that.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, conflicting advice.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_02: But we had very similar advice.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: So no, it was a great example though.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just I yeah, I I loved it just because it's um I think even f know your passion, but don't think your passion is going to present itself to you in a pretty little package.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: First maybe see a need and think, well, I could do that.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what would that look like if it was fun?
• 1:04:25
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: And dive in because really the theory.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_02: Take a chance a little bit.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and embrace it and and find the things you're good, and as you've said, take something from everything.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: What did I like about that?
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: What did I not like about that?
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: What was I good at?
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: What was I not so good at?
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually the path is gonna just start kind of uh being built, you know, brick by brick.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I I just love the the hot dogs and and concession stand story.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's just such a simple way to to say just.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um no, I I really like that.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so through your story, I know we're we're wrapping up here, I've kept you over a little bit.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just through all the different parts of it, whether it is your military service or um the way you approached banking and lending and finance, and now especially in nuclear, um, so much of our conversation was not about nuclear, but actually about the outputs and the impact.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: It seems you have really built this career appreciating the value of serving.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: That what you do is a tool, like our technology, nuclear, is really just a tool, exactly, an incredible tool that helps us deliver security and health and well being and reconciliation and a brighter tomorrow, as you know, yeah, as as easy as that sounds.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great way to put it all together, by the way.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: There you that's what I'm here for.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's what I'm paid the big bucks for.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so my question to you is this looking back, how important was it for you through your career?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: To ground yourself in that idea of serving and of what the big picture is and what you're really delivering?
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it would it's probably everything.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_02: When I think about it, being close to my grandfather in a very unique way and learning from him, he had um despite what he went through and the terrors that he saw, I knew him only as a sweet, kind, very soft-spoken man.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_02: He never raised his voice.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: He was always happy, he was always positive, he was always looking for the bright side of things, and he was always so encouraging.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: And he was very unique.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_02: He was a unique person in my life that way.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: And what I learned from him is is that is to look at things, you know, and try and see how you can do better, how you can listen to people.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I've always wasn't always successful at it.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you ask my family and they'll tell you some days you're you're too hard-nosed, you're too type A, you're you know, you're too get into the weeds.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: But every once in a while you bring yourself back and you listen, and you won't wow, I said that's where I'm really adding value.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so little by little through the my whole career, that that's where uh that's where you can really see the impact you're having on other people.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you get reminded of that every day in some way, shape, or form.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that keeps you going for the next day and keeps you investing in a different way the next time, and so on and so forth.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a it was really important learning, but that's really what it can comes down to for me, is that and that that shows in your leadership.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_02: I've been lucky to lead dozens of different kinds of teams, small, medium, and large, and um and a whole corporation at one point in my career, and uh everywhere you you under when you understand what's trying to motivate people and what brings them together, what excites them, what gets them to want to come to work every day.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_02: Generally speaking, all you have to do is ask a couple of questions, give them the tools, choose good people to do something, and then get out of their way.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's a leadership lesson that most of us learn one way or another, sometimes the hard way.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_02: But you've you've got to find the right people, give them the tools they need, give them a great mandate, and and listen to how they interpret it and let them run with it.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when you have success.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it's uh it's it's you know, it's it's funny to me in 37 odd years I've been working full-time after school, and I think, wow, it's just I'm just now starting to really get it.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I could start my career all over again.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know hindsight.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's unbelievable.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_02: But that's that's the the thing that I I talk to young folks about is you've got to invest and you've got to learn.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much to do, so much to learn, and and so much you can you can so much you can have impact with, so much you can add to other people's stories.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that's uh that's the key.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I've learned after all this time.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_00: And now very quickly, what is exciting you the most at this moment in nuclear as we look forward?
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know we've touched on it, so we'll we'll do this very high level, but if you had to pick one thing that you're just excited about, what would it be?
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_02: What excites me the most is working with people that are new to nuclear, a new jurisdiction, whether it's meeting with the government in Saskatchewan or First Nations leaders in Saskatchewan or people in in the Philippines.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_02: I've had the pleasure and the privilege in the last couple of years of meeting with a whole wide range of people that are new to nuclear.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_02: And they're looking at it, they're seeing the benefits, and then they're trying to build a roadmap to how to get there for themselves.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_02: And whether it's again Saskatchewan or the Philippines, it doesn't matter.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_02: People are excited and they see the benefit, and it's so uh rewarding to feel like you're on the ground floor of helping someone do something so monumental.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna take any any new jurisdiction will take 20 years to get all the way where they want to get.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_02: It takes a dozen, fourteen, fifteen years to build a nuclear power station from scratch.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_02: It takes a long time.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how good we get at it.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: No matter how good you get at, there's all kinds of steps.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you've got to do it right.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you've got to consult and you've got to build the the the the you've got to shape the project.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_02: But what really excites me is just seeing when people are trying to build something from scratch and they see the benefits, and you can help them and bring some tools to bear that will support what they're trying to achieve.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's the the single most important thing that gets me out of bed every day.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because that's really worth doing.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's yeah, a pretty good reason to wake up and you know, start it off.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm so glad I gave you a second chance, even after your horrific remarks about Disney.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still not going to be able to do that.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Promise to go again.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do a 5K.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna bring, you know.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go do a 5K again.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Can you do it in January when it's not a million degrees?
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can do it in January.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So in January, um I thought I was crazy for doing I go in January and I do their it's called the Dopey Challenge.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So January and Disney is their marathon weekend.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only run Disney weekend that has the marathon included.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I do Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a five, a ten, a half, and a full marathon.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's really ridiculous.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you just walked four days, 40 kilometers.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds a lot easier than running.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no, no.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a run walk.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna pretend I'm you know Kipchoge.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: But uh there's a chance that you could come and learn, but because I thought I was crazy.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: But so don't don't tempt me, because there is an opportunity.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Can I get a discount on staying in the park or something?
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because of my 58 times.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk to Mickey.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see what we'll see what he has to say.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: But he's usually pretty tight on the budget.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we'll we'll all take a turn at we'll be running walking with you.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and with that, I just want to thank you for coming in and splitting atoms with me.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for the opportunity.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_02: This is fantastic.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_02: I love what you're doing here, and I'm I'm really appreciative of the opportunity.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great experience for me.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this conversation.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Splitting Addoms podcast is produced by Splitting Addoms Media, a division of the Carolyn Corporation.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: All of our conversations are made possible through the support of our founding partner, the Nuclear Innovation Institute.