Off The Clock Toolbox Talk

Rodbuster, Peter White (aka Peter Notsowhite) tells us his story of healing through culture. Peter summarizes of series of heartbreaking tragedies in his early years, all related to inter-generational trauma of Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island (North America). Like many of our guests, Peter dropped out of school early when he got an opportunity to work in the trades. Alcohol use came hand in ha...

Remy & Trevor kick off Remy’s Story with the humor of what their first few days of treatment looked like together in 2019. Remy goes back to the origins of his story, an Indigenous kid growing up in a white family, his mother being a product of the The Sixties Scoop. Remy’s feelings of not belonging and disconnection from culture contributed to his troubles as a kid and ultimately led him to a...

Tyler’s Story - Part 2: The Aftershow picks up with Tyler finishing the very end of his story when the team relax a little and begin deconstructing some of the ideas that came up: -          How getting honest leads to finding ourselves again -          How patriarchy has f*cked men up in their ability to connect with their own bodies and emotions -          Men feeling joy in hope. (WTF?)  Just r...

Tyler’s been a labourer, plumber, stone fabricator, CSO, roofer, and a few other things. Tyler’s relationship with incarceration began early, shaped from his trauma, OCD and ADHD. Tyler shares parts of his journey through a life devastated by unregulated drug use and violence and how his work ethic was one thing he could still hold on to. We begin to hear about the finer steps Tyler took to get hi...

The Season 4 Sampler lets you get a bit of each episode: 1.      Anthony’s Story 2.     Constructive Coercion Pt 1 – Dr. Jeremy Milloy 3.     The New PPE (C. Michael Kinsella’s Story) 4.     100 Good-bye’s with Dr. Nicole Anders 5.     James’ Story (Pain BC) 6. Constructive Coercion Pt 2 – Jeremy Milloy While Season 4 spanned a wide variety of expertise and geography, the themes of pain, loss, gri...

James Boseley grew up in rough and tumble rural Alberta. Pain or having an IV plugged into his arm was no reason to stop working. Dealing with pain on a daily chronic basis, James’ mental health rapidly deteriorated to where he was considering suicide. Because of his severe pain, James left Alberta to haul disposal bins in BC for half of what he was making in AB. Here James was injured again, brea...

Dr. Jeremy Milloy tells us about constructive coercion: a concept created in the 1960's and 70's from concerns that Vietnam veterans would return from war unable to navigate the workplace due to opioid addiction. Industry leaders believed that people (primarily men) would be incentivized to get treatment through the workplace in order to keep their jobs. Assessment of who had problematic...

Constructive Coercion Is a Thing features scholar Dr. Jeremy Milloy who studies the history of how we got to have the kind of workplaces we have (good and bad). His work is motivated by the fact that our jobs have a such a huge effect on our lives, our identities, our health, and our life outcomes.    Jeremy’s original work started by studying the concept of violence in the workplace, specifically...

Season 4, Episode 3 In this episode, construction safety officer and carpenter C. Michael Kinsella, shares how he owes his whole life to his Red Seal. When school wasn’t working out so well in junior high, Michael went straight into construction at the ripe old age of 14. ​He loved it. After an overdose at 16, Michael found a father figure in the industry and formed a chosen "family" of...

When psychologist, Dr. Nicole Anders, lost her beloved brother Cody to overdose, she navigated her grief through writing daily love letters to Cody. Her book, One Hundred Goodbyes  is a collection of those love letters, bridging the personal and clinical dimensions of her grief. Nicole discusses that she frequently talks with her kids about their Uncle Cody. She suggests answering questions about...

Anthony shares his story of growing up in a family of tradesmen where hard work and thick money were at the center of their way of being. And with the hard work came hard substance use. As a teen, addicted to alcohol and cocaine, Anthony went to his parents to ask for help when he realized he was in more trouble than he could handle. His father’s solution was to send him to Fort McMurray where Ant...

The Season 3 Sampler lets you get a bite of each episode: 1. Shawn's Story 2. Aeris' Story Part 1 3. Jason's Story 4. Superintendent Summit 5. Losing Someone to Overdose 6. CSO Shane's Story 7. Aeris's Story Part 2 Covering lots of really tough stuff, and emerging with our humanity intact, this sampler is all about connecting to each others' stories. Off The Clock Too...

Aeris’s Story Part 2 picks up where Aeris is just coming back to reality after being in a coma for a month. His steadfast family helps him slowly recover from kidney, liver and brain damage. Advocating on his behalf, his family asks the doctors for a pain specialist as they believe Aeris consumed poisoned drug supply because he was attempting to self medicate his pain from multiple surgeries and o...

As rod buster Aeris Finch refers to partway through his story, his struggle really began at age 11, when he lost his older brother to an MDMA accident. But some of the effects of that trauma didn’t emerge until he began experimenting with substances himself as a teenager. Another layer of complexity emerged when Aeris developed painful and debilitating Crohn’s disease while working rebar as young...

Superintendent Summit features in-depth discussion about how to lead work sites in a day where all our crews are affected by mental health and overdose (drug poisoning). From their own experiences, Superintendents Duncan Jordan and Trevor Botkin together with CSO Shane Sewell discuss many of the factors that have to be juggled between the demands of the business and the wellness of the crews; both...

CSO Shane Sewell (different than Shayne’s Story) takes us on his heart’s journey from an 8-year-old with an invisible disability and an abusive parent, to an adult inner life that was continually erupting with low self esteem and feeling like he wasn’t good enough.  Shane relates to many with tales of public school failure, difficulty fitting in, and eventually living a life that centred around su...

Jason White, electrician and former rock star hopeful, shares his story of substance use, addiction, and the sharp turn that snatched him out of a sinking darkness, showing him a better way of being. Like many people’s stories contain powerful moments of change, Jason’s includes a moment of divine intervention, followed up by an unlikely confirmation days later that played out on a tour bus in sto...

If you've been looking for relatable, non-invasive support after losing someone to overdose (drug poisoning), you've found it. Holding heartbreak in one hand and inspiration to take action in the other, Kale Moth and Julie Cochrane explore life after losing their loved one to overdose. Kale talks about the increasing crisis in Saskatchewan where he works, having lost 23 co-workers in the...

Ironworker, Shawn Underhill, joins Daniel and Karen to talk about his journey through problematic substance use and addiction. From Shawn’s early days smoking pot as a teen in his first construction job, to navigating problematic substance use in camps up north, to using to get through pain, grief, and exhaustion, Shawn demonstrates how recovery is anything but a straight line. Daniel and Shawn di...

The Off the Clock Toolbox Talk Season 2 Sampler serves up select appetizers from Season 2 episodes, combined with house-style transitional music to keep your groove on throughout your day.   The Season 2 Sampler features (in order):   1.      Kayle’s Story - Kale Moth, Trevor Botkin 2.      Squishy Meat Bags (I Don’t Have Trauma. You Have Trauma) – Jason White, Jonas  Watkins, Sabine Sasakura, Kar...

The conversation continues as Trevor, Shayne and Karen discuss ‘safety is behavioral’; these life-wisdom conversations need to happen in-person, breathing and sharing energy together, preferred where apps, lectures, and protocols fall short. Karen and Trevor confirm this same thread from the Random Recovery Talk episode https://www.tradespodcast.com/s2-ep5 where it emerged that recovery is leaders...

Shayne Taylor, Corporate Director of HSE at The Gisborne Group joins Karen and guest co-host, Trevor Botkin, to talk about his personal experiences with mental health and substance use. Uniquely, Shayne’s adulthood career path fluctuated between the construction trades and psychological care supports in mental health and substance use services, while his own binge drinking, substance use and assoc...

Continuing the conversation from “Curious AF”, Daniel and Karen talk with Mike Mathers who demystifies psychedelic therapy and the incredible results of clinical trials ongoing amidst a grey psychedelic market in Canada. Mike warns against covertly accessing psychedelics without clinical supports as psychedelics release undigested emotions that can be terrifying and even damaging if the user has s...

Therapist Mike Mathers joins Daniel and Karen to talk about his new book coming out in 2024, Curious AF. Mike sets us up to understand how the human mind operates as a social entity that needs to belong to a group, and influences us to operate to avoid shame, particularly childhood shame that we can’t even remember, but that our subconscious still accesses to inform our daily thoughts & decisi...

Trevor, Kale and Karen drift through some random conversation on subtle aspects of the recovery journey. Kale discusses that recovery isn’t easy, but as you begin to feed yourself, you get strong AF. Trevor remembers how tied he was to his negative identities as a tradesman. Kale shares the energy that is brought to him when he opens his heart to the opportunities that recovery brings, even in the...