Off The Clock Toolbox Talk

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 alcohol use. Remy left school early ...

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 real dudes naming their experience.

-   ...

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 his life back, and some of the peace ...

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, grief and hope tell the story of every worker...

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, breaking and tearing multiple hard and s...

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 substance use then fell on worksit...

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 how seemingly average humans get to ...

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 mentors around him. He and co-host Tr...

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 a loved one’s overdose factually, but...

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 Anthony’s cowboy lifestyle cemented in....

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 To...

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 ongoing complex medical diagnoses. W...

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 adult. While Aeris’s description of...

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 ends have to be balanced to produc...

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 substance use. Shane’s unconscious tr...

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 stopped traffic in the middle of the T...

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 last 6 years. Julie talks...

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 discuss how, on average, most people ...

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, Karen Janzen

3.      Psychedelic Surprise – ...