Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Good morning, Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. You've tuned into the Mac city morning show. I'm your host, Elliot Pierre. And we're going to start the show off the same way we start every episode off with a moment of gratitude. I know you could be doing a million other things with your time. So the fact that you spend it with us truly does mean the world to me. So thank you on that note, Tanner hitting with the intro.
Speaker 1 00:00:20 Oh, she caught me loves and you're listening to the next city morning show.
Speaker 0 00:00:28 All right. And we're back. All right. We have a very exciting guest. Uh, this individual is running for council, so, uh, she's going to tell us all about that and everything else she does, which we've been talking for the last five minutes and it's pretty exciting stuff. So as you guys know, I do not introduce my guests. I let them do that themselves. So on that note, can you please tell everybody at home who you are and what your,
Speaker 3 00:00:49 Yeah, so interestingly enough, as I kind of mentioned, I've watched the episodes, so I have a pretty good idea for the flow. And I had the whole like canned response who I am. And about 15 minutes before I parked, I called my best friend and said like, I don't want to deliver this. Like, this feels really an authentic, like, it is obviously who I am, but it's so boring. That's right. Like, yes. I've been in the community for a long time. Yes. I raised my son here and yes, I work at the oil sands, but like, I think, I think there's so much other stuff that people would describe about me. So I'm going to try and tap into some of those things here. Um, what do people
Speaker 0 00:01:27 Need to know your
Speaker 3 00:01:28 Name? I am Michelle and Seattle.
Speaker 0 00:01:30 And what are you running for? I'm
Speaker 3 00:01:31 Running for ward one.
Speaker 0 00:01:34 Well council. So now people know now let's find out more about you as an individual, because that's my favorite part of the show is finding out about individuals
Speaker 4 00:01:41 Don't feel bad, mean Ellie don't prep for any episodes of the fact that you haven't prepped you'll fit right
Speaker 0 00:01:46 In you'll fit right in.
Speaker 3 00:01:47 Um, I tried really hard to prep, but then it just felt really that we can. So, um, okay. Things that you need to know about me, um, I can generally be found if I'm not working, which is rare. Um, if I'm not working, you'll generally find me anywhere that there is a sporting event. So as long as it's in season, if I fell the CFL, the NHL, uh, you'll typically find me with a pint in hand at the back bar of, or the front bar of my favorite local with my three best friends. Uh, so it's been back and forth a little bit. Um, we're pretty well known at the brew house. We've been hanging out there for a really long time. Um, more recently we've started really kind of hanging out at short change and just getting to know that like smaller guys, really enjoying it as well.
Speaker 0 00:02:27 You live, uh, don't tell me where you live. I was just going to ask you if you would. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:02:31 Okay.
Speaker 0 00:02:33 I haven't been to shortchange since they changed it from Jaguar lounge yet.
Speaker 3 00:02:36 Yeah, no, pat and Marie are doing a really, really great job with that space. So we're really enjoying it. We had some live music there last week, Maddie Parley was playing. It was a good time.
Speaker 0 00:02:45 Check it out. Um, I grew up in Dickens field and so I love Dick field and I spent a lot of time in Jaguars lounge as a youth legal youth. So I think the new name is pretty cool though. Short change. That
Speaker 3 00:02:59 Makes sense for me. You have to get him to tell you the story behind it. Definitely not my story to tell, but it's a good little venue. So that that's kind of the nitty gritty of my non-working life. Um, I would say, uh, my three best friends and I travel a lot. So, um, one of those best friends happens to be my husband. Okay. So sweet. We're very romantic. Yeah. Said no one ever. Yeah, we travel a lot or at least we did prior to what everybody else is experiencing, but generally we traveled because of sporting events. So we will travel to be at a game somewhere or we will travel to see our teams play. Um, cool. Yeah. So that's, that's big part of our lives. Uh, I own four senior dogs, so, um, my youngest is 11 and my oldest is 16 and they are, uh, Rico, Mars, Cadbury, and Solei.
Speaker 3 00:03:55 I love them all. Yes. I also love them all. They're pretty much the joy of my life at this point. Um, my son is 19, so he lives his own life. Now he's got a beautiful girlfriend. They've been together for three years. She's actually running my social media. Um, just super dynamic, um, pretty connected. I've been here a long time. So, uh, unfortunately a lot of my closest friends have left the community, but a lot of them are still here. So I'm out and about quite a bit. Um, that's kind of who I am. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:04:28 Well, I asked all the candidates this, cause I think you're all lunatics for doing it. Why are you running? What, what brought you to,
Speaker 3 00:04:34 To this point? Yeah. Um, I also think we're all in a text just to be clear. Um, so I don't think that there's a right time to get involved in politics and you know, you hear people say like, oh, like just now is the right time. Or I feel like, um, I feel like it's a really big commitment. It, it has to be something that you feel compelled to do. Um, I have sort of been thinking about it for probably the last 10 years. Not necessarily running, but supporting somebody who is running and the last couple of years have just been so tough on the community. So tough on the counselors, social fund administration. Um, and I just feel like we've really kind of, we we've stalled a lot of great ideas. We installed a lot of things that should be moving forward and I completely appreciate that there has been so much handed at the current seated council that it it's tough to be able to move those things forward.
Speaker 3 00:05:32 So zero criticism here on most fronts, um, but a couple of people that announced early on that they weren't going to run. I felt would leave a pretty significant gap in, in representation and just the kind of objectivity that I think we need at the council table. Right. Um, and there's never been a better time in my life in terms of just the things that I have on my plate. Um, my routines are pretty simple nowadays. My son, as I discussed, he's got his own life. He doesn't need me these days. Yeah. Um, yes he does.
Speaker 4 00:06:09 I am 22 years old. I still need my mother and I always want,
Speaker 3 00:06:13 I hope that's true. Parker, are you listening? Yeah. So, uh, you know, I've, I've had a lot of encouragement, I think from my closest friends. Um, my husband really got on board early on and, and said, you know, I think this is probably something that you should do. There we go. Um, and here we are.
Speaker 0 00:06:33 Yeah. Okay. Those are all great reasons to do it. Now you were saying, when we were trying to book this at you're being deployed and I'm just like, I don't understand what that means. So what does being deployed?
Speaker 3 00:06:45 Uh, so one of the things that I do in, in all of my free time is I'm an emergency response supervisor for the red cross. Um, so I led the field operations team during the 2020 flood. Um, got to know some really amazing people down in the lower town sites. Uh, I was on that response for like six weeks. Um, it was probably the hardest, most draining, most like emotionally torturous thing I've ever done in my life. Uh, you just never know. Right. You just never know if, if the experience that you're giving somebody in that moment is, is helping them is making their day, um, less terrible. And so that's a pretty heavy burden to bear, but, um, I have a niche for emergency response and for, uh, I think in the, today I had mentioned, um, you know, crisis leadership and leadership in crisis. Yeah. So, uh, recently my team reached out the red cross has been on response in Manitoba for a period of time and they need some relief in the fire response that they're providing. And so I'll be deployed out there as an operations manager for 10 days, which is super tricky timing because the campaign goes live basically on the 20th and I leave on the 23rd. So, um, but it is what it is. And I think this community understands better than probably most why I feel compelled to, to answer that call that's right.
Speaker 0 00:08:14 When it comes to crisis management. I think that could be a huge benefit for you running for council or getting on council dif different mindset of how to deal with problems that may arise. How did you get that skillset?
Speaker 3 00:08:26 I don't know. Um, maybe just variances being the mother to a very dynamic child, um, but just generally a lot of it. So I would say probably a lot of it comes from, um, my career. Like I, I do work in a very dynamic, very responsive industry. Um, um, I work on site and I work in an upgrader, which is a very ever-changing environment that requires you to have the capacity to just step up and step into it and just be in that space regardless of what's happening around you. Um, and I think for me, it definitely became apparent that I had a skill set there, um, a real skill set there during the fire. Okay. Um, during the fire, I supported on the leadership team on nights or, uh, for my company for the entire duration and went through that whole process with them, um, and just, and just really felt comfortable in the capacity to compartmentalize my own needs versus what everybody else needed. So I will say, I genuinely hope that this seated counsel, whoever gets in, whoever holds those next 10 and 11th seat, um, I genuinely hope that they have a four year term without crisis. Yeah. I, I think this community really needs it, but you know, in the event that they don't, yeah. I'm here, I'm around. And if I'm, if I'm supported enough to get a seat, that's definitely something I would bring to the table or we go,
Speaker 0 00:10:00 So your site life, what brought you to the career that you chose? Are you from Fort McMurray or
Speaker 3 00:10:05 No, no. I was born and raised in medicine hat, Alberta. So I am an Alberta kid. There's like 10 of us here, I think. Yeah. Um, and I came up when I was 20. Okay. So I've been here for almost as long now. I'm 36 now. So I've been here in this community almost as long as I was in my original communities. Um, it's definitely home. Yeah. But I originally came up, so I went to school for criminal justice. Okay. Um, and in that line of study was the concept of due diligence, which led me to a career. I had this phenomenal opportunity with a smaller general contractor in medicine, high in residential and commercial construction to step into a health and safety role. Yeah. Um, that health and safety role gave me a seat on the regional, uh, Alberta safety committee that regional Alberta cell safety committee gave me contacts in the north that gave me an offer to come up on a three week contract to do an audit out at CNRL. Um, that turned into a job, uh, that turned into an offer to move into maintenance, which turned into an offer to move into operations and gave me the career that I have today. So very cool. The short summary of it all.
Speaker 0 00:11:14 Very good at giving short summaries. That's amazing. That's really neat. That's like a really interesting path of how you got here.
Speaker 3 00:11:21 Yeah. It's been a, it's definitely been a journey. I can say. I've, um, I've had the great fortune of having a lot of really incredible people around me. Just be willing to invest in me and give me opportunities to do things that I am definitely not qualified to do and, and to, to fail fast and to fail often and to keep going. So
Speaker 0 00:11:39 I think that's the most important thing is to fail often, because if you're failing often, you're putting yourself out there and you can learn from those mistakes. God, I must be the best at everything. Fail all the
Speaker 3 00:11:51 Time. Imagine the growth in that space. That's it.
Speaker 0 00:11:54 That's where you grow. That's where you accomplish new things and you get outside of your comfort zone, but that's how you develop new skillsets and how cool new things happen if you just play it safe all the time. Well, yeah,
Speaker 3 00:12:06 I, um, in, in all of this career process, I got the phenomenal opportunity to take an educational sabbatical. Okay. So in 2017, uh, I went back to school for a year. Full-time moved back to medicine, hat, lived with my parents, um, best experience of my life, just to be clear, like, oh, the opportunity to be mothered by my mother was we all love our most amazing. Um, but that experience like I, I chased my bachelor of arts. I pursued primarily philosophy, um, which I think was probably the best thing I've ever done because it definitely taught me that it's, it's okay to not be married to an idea. And that, you know, critical thinking and the ability to apply logic and the principles of logic to concepts is really important. Um, but it also gave me a chance to move to Africa. Oh, cool. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:12:58 So in the end of my term, I still had this like space of time before I could come back to work before my employer, uh, long-term leave of absence was up from a contract perspective, but I didn't need the additional semester. I was able to finish everything that I needed to finish in the first two. Right. So I had this like time and I had a friend of mine, Ken Chapman connect me to a company or an organization out of Ottawa who was looking for people to do organizational development and capacity building in Tanzania. So I got to go over there. I worked with a university of fledgling university, um, to help them build out like their strategic plan, um, was able to set up a relationship between there. Um, they don't have unions, but like their organization, teachers' organization and an organization in Saskatchewan to do, um, like teacher exchanges, um, just super rewarding experience, super terrifying. I went completely on my own. Uh, had to learn the language super fast. Don't ask me to speak it today, but I can say thank you please. And order a beer. Um, and, uh, yeah. Had to, had to figure out that whole experience before I came back to work. So
Speaker 0 00:14:14 Cool. Well, Tanner has hidden his phone a second ago, so that means it's time for the Mac city minute. That's the luck town. Just gonna hit you up with some questions. Tanner hit her with the Maxine a minute
Speaker 4 00:14:24 Question. Number one, having seen most of the max city mourning episodes. What has been your favorite?
Speaker 0 00:14:32 Ooh, that's a, that's a head scratcher.
Speaker 3 00:14:35 Okay. Um, wait to put me on the spot. First of all, second of all. I would say you guys did an episode on, oh, I'm going to make this so easy. You guys did an episode in Winnipeg recently, um, with a very dynamic young lady who had, first of all, an excellent method of describing what it is that she does that is not welded. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:15:01 That's
Speaker 3 00:15:01 Right. Um, but also has some, um, like very interesting life experiences. Um, so I would say the most recent one, and obviously I've been buried in, in other candidates, um, forums, but I would say that's probably my favorite to date. Not withstanding the ones that we talked about originally, which I am not going to mention. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:15:24 Question number two. What is your favorite part of traveling on your bike?
Speaker 3 00:15:30 Oh, just straight freedom. It's just a completely, uh, completely disconnected, completely isolated, and yet completely connected experience.
Speaker 4 00:15:44 Question number three. What is one thing you think you could bring to council that is unique to you?
Speaker 3 00:15:52 I mean, I would say I'm one of the most objective people that I know. Um, and I think that that's a skill that a lot of people strive for and want to have, but maybe a lot of people don't necessarily have the experience in it. And haven't been as wrong as aggressively as I have been in my life to have to learn that lesson and how to apply it. So I would say that's definitely one of them.
Speaker 4 00:16:16 Question number four. What is one thing about being a mom that will help you in council?
Speaker 3 00:16:25 Uh, patients. I love it. I have a lot of patients for different opinions.
Speaker 4 00:16:31 And your final question, having such a love for coffee, where do you think serves the best cup in town?
Speaker 3 00:16:37 Oh, no. The people are going to judge me for this. Cause I have to give you the real answer. You know, I'm a circle K girl. Oh, I love coffee from circle K. And I think it's because I basically grew up, like my adult life has been on-site and up until a couple of years ago, our coffee brand was mother Parker's, which is, you know, not the average coffee cart, a source choice. And I just, I just developed a taste for it. And that's, that's my coffee choice. There you go.
Speaker 4 00:17:06 And has been your five questions,
Speaker 0 00:17:08 Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong. Like I'm not the only one for sir. That's right. I did a video series about burgers when I was in Vegas a year or two ago when we could travel. Um, and I got roasted because I ate some really nice burgers, fast food burgers, but like the cheeseburgers McDonald's cheeseburgers in America are like on another level and I got roasted. Cause we'd be like, that's not the best burger on my God, your palette, this, that, and the other. I'm like, Hey, listen, it's what I like.
Speaker 3 00:17:38 Yeah, no, I get the same thing with, oh, you're not, you don't really like beer. Cause I'm a domestic beer drinker. Like that's my beer by choice, but I don't typically chase the micro-brews particularly hard, but you know what you like, what you like language. Right.
Speaker 0 00:17:51 And I like what you like. Yeah. Okay. This has been great. I could talk to you for hours. I want to go down a rabbit hole with this whole Africa trip, but the shows are only 20 minutes long. So please, please, please come back again. Okay. Um, but before everybody leaves, they get a shameless shout out or plug. So the camera's on you, the Mike's yours. Let's see what you got to say.
Speaker 3 00:18:11 My general message or my shameless plug, um, to Fort MacMurray is kind of twofold. So the first one is, um, municipal council is one of the places in the space of politics that you genuinely genuinely can make a difference with your vote. And you can make a difference in your own life and the life of the people that are closest to you. So I really hope that the fact that there are 18 candidates today, likely more by by Monday indicates that there is a genuine buzz for municipal politics and a genuine buzz for people to step up and get involved and have their voices heard. Um, but if you're somebody who maybe wasn't even thinking about it or doesn't really know what the next steps are, find out like researcher, candidates, every single one of us has stepped up because this company or this company, this community really, really means something to us. And we genuinely want to be a part of taking it forward and moving it into the next space of what it can be. So my shameless plug is I believe that that might be me. Um, I believe that I definitely have the opportunity to contribute to who we can be and I would really love your vote. But if it's not me make it somebody,
Speaker 0 00:19:24 There we go. Now that was a good plug. Okay. Well thank you so much for coming. That was awesome. And I can't wait to have you come back again, so, and good luck, um, on your deployment. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Well Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo in the rest of the world, that's been another episode of the Mac city morning show. Thank you so much for tuning in. It does really mean the world to me. I hope you're having a great day. We'll see you tomorrow. Peace.
