Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 All right. Good morning, Fort McMurray and wood, Buffalo, and everybody else tuning in from wherever you're watching. We start the show off the same way. My name is Elliot Pierre. I'm your host. This is the Mac city morning show and we kick it off with some gratitude. I want to thank you so much for tuning in, cause I know you could be doing a million other things with your time. So the fact that you choose to spend with us really does mean the world to me. So on that note, Tanner hit him with the intro.
Speaker 1 00:00:29 Welcome to the max anymore.
Speaker 0 00:00:37 All right. And we're back. So I'm really pumped about today's guest, uh, because I have known this woman, my whole life. Um, I'm going to actually introduce her. I'm going to break script a little bit and I'm going to give her a little bit of an intro. So her name is Jillian MacDonald, but I know her as Jillian Macintosh and everybody else calls her. Jill, I've never called her Jill. She will always be Julian to me. So now we'll throw it over to her. Jillian, how are you doing today? Please introduce yourself to the world and tell them who you are.
Speaker 2 00:01:08 Uh, I'm doing well. Thanks Elliot. Yeah. It's funny that you said that because then it just clicked. You really have only ever called me Jillian. Yeah. Which is funny. Cause maybe I should have been calling you, Louie.
Speaker 1 00:01:25 This is live and awesome.
Speaker 0 00:01:29 Okay. For now the cat's out of the bag now we got to address it. Oh, that stings. Okay. So for everybody at home, I guess you got to talk about it now. Um, you all know me as Elliot, Pierre. However, my legal name is Louie Elliott, Pierre. Um, my parents never called me Louis Elliot a day in my life. I didn't know I was Louis Elliott until I think you and I were in grade one and a substitute teacher came in and was like Louis, Pierre, Louis, Pierre. And I didn't respond. And then I got sent to the office and then my parents has like a seven or eight year old had to explain to me like, Oh yeah, by the way, your first name is Louis. So there is a very small fraction of human beings up until this point. Um, that knew that. Yes, my, my first name is Louie. Thank you. No, that's awesome. I'm glad you brought up. That's funny. I know you've probably been like waiting for it, but yeah, I've never called you a never called you Jill. No, always Julian. Nope.
Speaker 2 00:02:36 Uh, actually I think your sister pretty much predominantly calls me Jillian too. So it's, it's kind of funny that maybe it's just a family tree.
Speaker 0 00:02:44 I know, like, it's funny that my parents told us like, whatever your name, that's your name. So like, they don't really like nicknames very much. So they're just funny enough, Louie. They never told me, but yeah, whatever your name you're supposed to call the person their name. No nickname. So like I met you, it was Jillian. So it's Jillian. That's her name? Her, if her parents wanted her to be called Jill, they would have named her Jill. And that's what my that's my parents kind of thought process back when we were kids. So awesome. So we're going to talk a little bit about where we grew up. So I grew up like yourself here in Fort McMurray, but where in town did you grow up?
Speaker 2 00:03:19 Uh, Dickins field. Yep. Yep. I grew up on Lee Crescent. Um, and oddly enough, I still live in Dickins field now. Just one street over I'm on McLaren. So yeah, I loved growing up in Dickins field. It's the best.
Speaker 0 00:03:33 Yeah. Like I no longer live in Dickens' field. I live in Timberly and I miss Dickins field tremendously. Um, yeah, I grew up on McConaughy Crescent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:03:42 It was just such a small community, obviously in the bigger community. But uh, all of our friends lived there. Like everyone we went to school with, so it was just, yeah, it was a great neighborhood to grow up in with the Birchwood trails right there and yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:03:55 Yeah. How do you find now as an adult living on Dickens field or in Dickinson?
Speaker 2 00:03:59 Um, well, I mean, now that the trees are gone, we back onto the Greenbelt, so that part stings, but um, yeah, I find it very much the same actually very community minded. Uh, we know all of our neighbors and to the point where if we go out of town somewhere, we know that somebody is looking out for our house. We never have to worry about any of that stuff. So
Speaker 0 00:04:20 That's awesome. Yeah. I've been fortunate enough to live in a few different places in Fort McMurray, from Addison to thick wood Timberly beacon Hill before the fire was awesome. I love my beacon Hill home, but yeah, there's the, I feel the older communities in town just have, like, they still have that sense of small Fort McMurray
Speaker 2 00:04:44 And so much charm. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, like I said, you know, kind of everybody in your neighborhood and we, we lived in Timberly for a little while and we didn't know any of our neighbors.
Speaker 0 00:04:55 No, I'm the same way. Like I've lived in my house in Timberly right now, new Timberly, um, in particular to like not old school Timberly because I think old school Timberly's a little different. Um, but yeah, I live in new school. Timberly, I've lived there for seven and a half years now and I literally, I know my next door neighbors and I think I know maybe two other couples on the block, which is absurd.
Speaker 2 00:05:21 Yeah. It's definitely different from how we grew up. And I don't know if it's just people wanting to have their own privacy or having their own group of friends, but it was so it was very different growing up here. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:33 Yeah. But I feel when you go back to like a Dickens field or like a beacon Hill or <inaudible> that you get, you still get that. I don't know if it's how the houses are designed. Like maybe, I don't know because yeah, my house, like it doesn't have a lot, a big front area. It has a big backyard and then defenses are huge. True. So maybe it's designed a little bit like that.
Speaker 2 00:05:54 Well, and a lot of my neighbors don't even have fences on the back of their property because it does back onto the Birchwood trails. Right. So, yeah. It's definitely more of a community communal. Yeah. I, I mean our houses aren't butt up against each other, but I can still see my neighbor. So yeah. It's definitely different. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:12 It is like, the community is still awesome. Don't get me wrong. And people come in and like, we have a resilient community, but because of costs, there was like nobody living, like let's maybe that's a bit of the component. There was nobody living here back when we were here, like I'm going to age myself. Like we were born in the eighties, early eighties. It was a very different community in the eighties than it is now.
Speaker 2 00:06:33 Oh my God. The development that we've seen. Yeah. Yeah. Like where people are living now in, Timberly used to be fully on woods and right. And you know, like swamp plan.
Speaker 0 00:06:45 I have a buddy who just he's new to the community and he bought a house, um, in a certain part of Timberly and he told me where it was and I was just like, Oh, you live in the dead roads. And he was just like, you got offended. He was like, you mean, I live in the dead roads. And I'm like, Oh no, it's not a bad thing. It's just like, back in the day, it wasn't developed. Like they literally like built all the roads, but nothing was developed. So it was like swamps and trees and stuff. And we used to go like catch frogs. You could bike through the roads and then just like dip into the woods. Um, and for everybody watching at home, the dead roads are the neighbor in Timberly across the street from St. Anne's.
Speaker 2 00:07:22 Yes, the Timberly bees, but the second phase of the BS, right.
Speaker 0 00:07:27 They were nothing was there for over a decade.
Speaker 2 00:07:30 Whenever I'd missed the bus, I'd cut a cut through all the dead streets to hurry my butt, to get to say,
Speaker 0 00:07:36 That's it. So, yeah. I'm old school in regards. And it's funny because I say things like, everybody grew up here, like I say, like, Oh yeah. W where are you going? I'm like, Oh, just maybe not where the old, uh, Canadian tire used to be and people like, what, what are you talking about? I'm just like, Oh yeah, like old Canadian tire. Hasn't been here since like 1994. So a bunch of my reference points that I try to give directions to fall flat more often.
Speaker 2 00:08:06 It's funny actually that you say that because I think Peter pond mall posted an old aerial photo. It was either today or yesterday, um, posted an old aerial photo of the mall and you could see Zellers on the front of it and where the BoomTown casino is. I don't know if you remember Mark's work warehouse was in half of it. So you could see that too. And people would never even know that there was a grocery store on the other
Speaker 0 00:08:29 Side. That's right.
Speaker 2 00:08:32 And then Superstore used to be a school and like it's. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:08:35 It's crazy. Remember Zellers and Zeti the bear or even very little meat or the restaurant they have is just going to say that that was like the biggest treat when my mom would be like, we'd be at Zellers and she's like, Hey, do you guys want to like go to the restaurant in Zellers it was like a 1950s, like cafe. I know what it was called. That was on the second level, right? Yes, it was. And, Oh my Lord. And we were never, my mom never let us eat out. We would get like an ice cream. Yeah. But still it was, yeah. Zeller's what a throwback restaurant, even further back when it was the Bay and my mom worked in the hair salon in there. Right? Yeah. That mall has seen tons of change. Even the other one that we have in town. I know it's called and I'm going to butcher this and I'm sorry.
Speaker 0 00:09:23 I think it's called the river city center. Correct. But we know it as Plaza two, exactly. Plaza two. And we'll always be pleased that you're always positive. Even like people call I'm not even call this anymore. The Kasmin center. Yeah. Centerfire what is it called? A center fire center. Fire. Like that's just thick wood arena to me. Oh yeah. I never called it. The Kasmin center. I will never call it. No, whatever you just call me. That's where we had our safe grad. Yeah. They don't even do safe grads anymore. No. Yeah. So Tanner did tenors wait 10 or on an earlier episode this week when I started to attend piano college with you? Yeah, he was three. Oh my God. So here's a question for Tanner. Cause obviously graduated very late after us. Do you know what safe grad is?
Speaker 3 00:10:13 I do know what safe grad is. And there was a safe grad for Merck and Trinity and uh, the rest of the schools competent really have one. We were invited to the other people's safe, Brad, but we just had grad, we didn't really roll safe. So.
Speaker 0 00:10:29 Oh, very interesting. Yeah. Comp has had a, a different, we talk about the schools all the time when people come over for the show. But do you remember, and maybe because you were part of like student council and all this things, for whatever reason, I don't know. I think we were in grade 11. We used to have tri high dancers and a tri high dance. Cause back in the day, not anymore, there was only three high schools comp Westwood Merck. And for whatever reason, comp got uninvited and was not allowed to come to any of our tri highs. We still call them tri highs, but comp wasn't allowed to come anymore. Yeah. I think there was an incident during a sports game if I remember correctly, but my God that's too far. Yeah. We'll try eyes. Yeah. Comp, there you go. We are graduated 20 years this year.
Speaker 0 00:11:19 I know. I know. And you know what? I'm really sad about that. Not in regards to that as 20 years, but uh, I, and I don't want to, like, I obviously like Facebook that show's being aired on Facebook. Like I've made a nice career out of like posting things on Facebook. It pays the bills. However, what Facebook has ruined is the, uh, grad reunion, because you would go to a reunion because you never saw people. You wanted to like keep up with them. Um, because like we didn't have the internet or anything back in the day, but now because of social media, you know what everybody's, so you don't have that poll to show up for certain data, like,
Speaker 2 00:11:58 Well, and I think everybody's so spread out now too, that it's really hard to try to plan something like that. We tried to do the ten-year one and it epically failed. So yeah. It's just trying to get everybody in one place and getting them to come back to Fort McMurray is kind of the tough one. I think, because if they have left here, a lot of them have left here and still have their family. So they have no real desire to go
Speaker 0 00:12:20 Yeah. To come back. Yeah. And now, because of COVID obviously it's going to be, yeah. I was just going to say like, we should do it and I'm like, wait a second. COVID can allow any of us to travel, have a virtual reunion. And I'm not, I'm not into it.
Speaker 2 00:12:32 Hey, I mean, you have all the gear so you can just, uh, we could orchestrate that.
Speaker 0 00:12:37 Yeah. Like, uh, no, I want to see people and have a few of those with them, but yeah. 20 years crazy. I'm old. We're both old. Yeah. I don't feel old.
Speaker 2 00:12:50 I don't either at all. Like I actually feel better in my thirties I think, than I did in my twenties. So yeah. I don't feel old. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:12:59 Saying the same thing in regards to like Tanner knows. And we shared it on a episode a while ago. Like I have a pretty, like, I have a routine, a workout routine in the morning. Um, and I run all the time in the evenings and I still run the same pace as I did in my twenties. Like I don't have any like aches and pains knock on wood for the most part. Like I don't feel 38. Yeah. Yeah. Recently
Speaker 2 00:13:26 38. Happy birthday.
Speaker 0 00:13:28 Thank you very much. February 25th. That's when I turned 38. Yeah. So it is it's crazy. Cause I remember when my dad turned 40 Gregory Pierre, AKA uncle silky, um, when he turned 40, like the neighbors and his friends put a flamingos on the front yard. Yeah. And I remember thinking like man, 40 years old and he like, I, and I just remember my head cause I was young. I was like my, I had my kid the same time my dad had me. And so Keegan's probably going to have this like memory too. I was like, man, I got to really hug my dad and tell him, I love him because he might not be around much longer when he was 40. And I'm like, geez, I'm only two years away from being that old.
Speaker 2 00:14:13 It's crazy. Crazy. Yeah. It's funny for me because my husband's 10 years older than me. So we always joke about that because I mean, I'm on the verge of 40 he's on the verge of 50. Right. And it's, it's crazy to have to start thinking about like the rest of our lives,
Speaker 0 00:14:27 Right? Yeah. No, no. I'm not ready for that. No, no. You guys had a really cool experience that like you and I don't know how we've never spoken about this, but uh, we spoke about it online and I was really proud of you when you did it. And I was messaging you, but you were on HGTV. Yeah. How it like, it's one of those things. Cause I love HGTV. I got to say it's slow. It's hard. Yeah. But I love it. I'm addicted to it. I love, I love that channel. It's the only reason I still have cable.
Speaker 4 00:14:58 Hi, I'm on the same page Elliot. It runs on my TV, exclusively housing. I don't normally hear that for male. Oh my God, dude. I'm addicted. I will watch those shows over and over again. House hunters, international lot about it on the big property brothers.
Speaker 0 00:15:16 That'd be brothers. Good show too. So like I watch these shows, love it and listed all the shows we like. And I've always been like, man, I should go on this show. I'd love to get on the show. How do you get on shows? I've been to the websites before and they're like, Oh yeah. They only mess with like Toronto and Vancouver. And somehow all of a sudden I see this commercial on HGTV that Gillian MacDonald, AKA Julian Macintosh is on one of these shows. Yeah. How did you find dangle that?
Speaker 2 00:15:42 Um, so we were obviously evacuated due to the wildfire and I pretty much watched HDTV study and right around the same time that we were evacuated, they were putting out posts saying that they were looking for people to compete, to win a home. Um, so the day after we were evacuated, after driving 18 hours down to get to my sister's place in Fort Saskatchewan, I was exhausted emotionally drained and stupidly recorded a video and submitted it to see if maybe there was a shot. They called me like eight hours later really called me eight hours later. And they were just like, yes, like we want to go through a couple of interviews with you just to see more about your story, blah, blah, blah. And sure enough, within a week I was on a flight to go and start filming to compete.
Speaker 0 00:16:34 That's awesome. And so what was the show called a home to win home to him. That's right. And honestly like you and it's aired, somebody else got the house already. You guys really won all of those. And I know you don't want to say, but I'm watching at home being like, Oh yeah, she won. She won, you crushed the competition.
Speaker 2 00:16:54 Yeah. Well I won all of the many challenges.
Speaker 0 00:16:58 Right. And then the other family got the home, but you know, like they different scenario.
Speaker 2 00:17:02 They, at the end of the day they needed it more than we did. And you know, we were very fortunate obviously that we didn't lose our home. Right. So it went to the right family in the end.
Speaker 0 00:17:12 So my question is, and you are going to have to answer it because I'm asking if you were to win that house. Cause it was like a Nova Scotia or something. It was in Ontario, Ontario, like okay. Ontario. And in the, in the sticks though,
Speaker 2 00:17:25 Uh, it was in like Lake country.
Speaker 0 00:17:27 Okay. What would you have done?
Speaker 2 00:17:30 Uh, we were talking about potentially turning it into a wedding venue. Um, the house came with 70 acres of land. So we were talking about developing like little cabins and like a place where they could actually hold like the, uh, an actual wedding event. Right. Right. So we were, that was the plan. Okay. We weren't going to live there. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:17:53 Because I was just like born and raised. I know like your husband had very like good jobs, very successful careers. I'm like, how are they going to make this work? Yeah. So, okay.
Speaker 2 00:18:03 That was the plan. We were never planning on leaving. It was a beautiful house, an amazing experience. Everybody at HDTV were so good to all of us. Um, it was definitely interesting filming though, because people don't understand what goes into actually producing a show like that. Um, we were there for a week and during the filming, you had to fake it as if three days of filming was just one day. So we were in the same clothes for three days in plus 35 degrees and no dry cleaning. So I had a bottle of Febreeze that basically just saved us all for three days.
Speaker 0 00:18:39 Yeah. It's funny when you, uh, see productions, like there's so there's, it's so fake. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I was going to say ours is like, people think like we've had people write in to be like, is that your real living room? And I'm just like, nah, this is not my real living room. No, no, there's not guys at the set. It looks like a living room and I'm glad like people think it's real, but that, that was the trick. But one of these days we're going to post what it looks like behind. And then it's it's official.
Speaker 2 00:19:09 Well, and I think I obviously I have a background in video, so I kind of get all of this stuff, but the regular Joe wouldn't even be able to fathom what goes into creating something like that.
Speaker 0 00:19:20 Yeah. A lot of work and a lot of mistakes. So you did some segments on HGTV. We're going to do our segment right now. It's called the Mac city minute. Okay. Tanner is going to ask you five questions. Answer them as honestly as you can. Tanner hit her with the max city minute.
Speaker 5 00:19:35 All right. Question number one. What is your favorite childhood memory you have with Elliot? Oh my God. That's a hard one.
Speaker 2 00:19:47 Oh my God. I honestly, I would have to think about that one.
Speaker 0 00:19:50 Okay. We'll come back to that. I'm going to share. I know mine.
Speaker 5 00:19:54 All right, we'll get it. After question number two. What is your favorite Dickens field memory?
Speaker 2 00:20:00 Um, Oh God, I don't know if this is appropriate. Um, I would say sneaking into the Birchwood trails and having bonfires, uh, down in the ravine area.
Speaker 0 00:20:13 Bush parties.
Speaker 5 00:20:16 Question number three. What is your favorite past event that has come to Fort McMurray?
Speaker 2 00:20:25 My God, these are such hard questions because I have to go back through my brain. Oh actually honestly the 92, um, Alberta, winter games.
Speaker 5 00:20:35 Good answer. What school? What toppings do you get when you order a pizza?
Speaker 2 00:20:41 I'm kind of a gourmet kind of pizza girl. So it's like chicken, spinach, feta, onion mushroom.
Speaker 5 00:20:51 Okay. And last question. What do you think is the most underrated restaurant in town? Under
Speaker 2 00:20:57 Rated duties.
Speaker 5 00:21:00 Oh geez.
Speaker 0 00:21:02 Yeah. So Jesus. So good Vince. You're
Speaker 5 00:21:05 The man. We should get
Speaker 0 00:21:08 Vincent on the show. Yeah. He is just talk about a guy who's just like loves life, everyone that you meet
Speaker 5 00:21:15 And everything he does. Yeah. Fantastic.
Speaker 0 00:21:18 How will you never talk about food? Use the show. You're welcome. Yeah. Lots of things you haven't talked about. No, we're only a few weeks in, so we'll get there. All right. Based on that Mac city minute and everybody looking, listen at home, we're, we're blown away time today. So we're going over the 20 minutes. Cause you said some things that, okay. My favorite memory of Jillian Macintosh and I'm going to get in trouble by my mother and father for this, but I am a horrible artist. Oh, I'm the worst artist in the world. And so when we were in school, um, elementary school, um, we used to have to do book reports and we have to do a cover page. And Jillian was nice enough to pretty much do all of my cover pages.
Speaker 2 00:21:57 I still don't understand how you convinced me to do them.
Speaker 0 00:22:00 I don't know either because it wasn't like a quid pro quo. I wasn't like doing your book reports. Like yeah.
Speaker 2 00:22:05 I have a picture of us on my phone of me literally doing your cover pages,
Speaker 0 00:22:11 Please like send us that we need to put that into the show. But yeah, like I try, like, my memory is pretty sharp, but I'd like, try to think back, especially when you were coming on the show, I'm like, what did I say to convince her? Not to do one, but all of them, but all of them. Yeah. Like
Speaker 2 00:22:28 How did we get in trouble for Mr. Madden for me doing them
Speaker 0 00:22:31 That's right. Cause he knew everything like, so that was one. Uh, yeah. Now here's the nut based on Tanner's questions. Where do you get your pizza from? If you're getting gourmet, gourmet pizza like that.
Speaker 2 00:22:43 So there's a lot of actually quite a few places in town that do gluten-free pizza. I'm celiac for all those people wondering, um, Domino's um, banquet, uh, Canadian brew house. Pretty much any of the big chains now we'll do a gluten-free crust. Oh cool. You just have to be careful obviously with cross-contamination but yeah.
Speaker 0 00:23:02 Right. Interesting. Okay. Well, yeah. So that's my favorite memory with you is you doing my homework assignments for me, Matt and I forgot it was in that class.
Speaker 2 00:23:11 I do have a favorite memory and I can't remember if it was you or who did this grade 12. We were on our grad retreat and I'm pretty sure it was you and your boys put saran wrap all over the freaking toilet,
Speaker 0 00:23:28 Guilty, guilty. Not only did we put saran wrap saran wrap over the toilets, we turned off all of the water to the sinks as well. And so, and then we put Vaseline on handles.
Speaker 2 00:23:41 I'm making sure everybody gets a real good understanding of who right. And we stole
Speaker 0 00:23:46 Your mattresses. We took, we went into the girl's rooms and we hijacked every mattress. I still have pictures of that. Oh that, yeah. You know what? We were talking about it before the show. Thank goodness. Social media did not exist when we were of that age. Yeah. Yeah. There would be a lot of things we would have to explain. That's right. Graduate tree. Yeah. I forgot that. Um, who did I do that with? I know Steve longer fee was a proponent of that and I don't know who else. There was three of us who were in cahoots. Martha chin ski. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So. I feel like I remember Jason, big brunt of it. I don't know if he was a part of it or if he got the brunt of it. But I remember him being involved. Listen some bigger man, AKA biggie. I'm telling you God take some bullets for the team.
Speaker 0 00:24:32 I think he just took the bullets. Like he, he owned up to it. You never will. So on that note, Jillian, listen, we've already gone over. I want you to come back. We have way more stories to talk about. There was a bunch of individuals that we wanted to talk about in regards to childhood friends that have disappeared. Um, so you need to come back and we need to talk about those people. Okay. Well before, cause I'm going to give two of them a shout out because I've reconnected with them because of what we do. What I do online. Anyways, Rob Eagan and Kaylin young. These two guys, I grew up with Kaylin, even younger. Caitlin was Dickins field with us back in the day. Um, I've lost touch with them since we graduated. But because of the videos that I put out, those two guys have, uh, reconnected with me and we chat online from time to time.
Speaker 0 00:25:17 And uh, they're big supporters. And I really appreciate those two guys. There's lots of guys that I appreciate, but those are two guys from back in the past that like reconnected, Rob Eagan and Kaylin young, big shout outs. Thanks for reconnecting with me. I love both of you on that. No gel factor coming. Really appreciate it. Uh, and I hope you come back again. Five videos to be able to get through the amount of history that we have. That's right. Jillian will be back. So come back five times then there you go. So for everybody tuning in at home today, thank you very much. Hope you enjoyed its episode. It went a little bit over. Sorry, not sorry. Hope you're having a great day. Thanks for spending the time with us and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.
Speaker 1 00:26:00 <inaudible> talk about quenching your ugly thirst.
