EZRA LEVANT ｜ Rebel News has been on the road — and I've got an update
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Summary
Rebel News has been on the road for a few weeks covering the anti-vaccine protests in Canada, and in order to do so, they have been holding events across the country in churches and regular venues across the province of British Columbia, Canada. In this episode, we chat with Sheila Gunreed and Tamara Leach, who have been on tour with us covering the protests.
Transcript
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hello my friends today i have a special show for you heart to heart chats with sheila gunreed and
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tamara leach while on tour the both of them have been on tour i i want you to see not just hear
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today's show so please go to rebelnewsplus.com click subscribe it's only eight bucks a month
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which might not sound like a lot to you but it's a lot to us when enough people chips in chip in
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that really helps us pay the bill so go to rebelnewsplus.com for the video version of this
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tonight rebel news has been on the road i'll give you an update it's august 11th and this is the
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azure levant show shame on you you censorious bug
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well hi there i'm in beautiful british columbia oh it's such a pretty province um the reason i'm here
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is because rebel news is on tour we've been doing events maybe you've come to them the other day we
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were down in surrey which is a suburb of vancouver absolutely packed we had an event at the seventh
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day adventist church although it was not a religious event even though the pastor there was a very
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generous and warm host to us and i myself am not even christian as you know we have people of every
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religion at rebel news our commonality is that we believe in freedom including freedom of religion
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freedom of association the kind of things that were steamrolled during the lockdowns and the vaccine
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mandates so we met allies including brave churches that refused to close one of the things about our
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tour is that we have to beware of cancel culture some venues simply will not take anything controversial
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they're so afraid of being attacked either attacked in the press or physically attacked
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as you may know i was recently in portland oregon just for one day to cover the trial of andy no an
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independent citizen journalist who was brutally attacked by antifa he sued them and uh incredibly
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the jury acquitted and it's my belief that the jury acquitted him because they were terrified
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and terrorized by antifa one of the lawyers for antifa said i am antifa and i'm going to remember the
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face of you jurors it's like a mafia trial where the mafia boss looks at the jurors and say i hope
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nothing happens to you like it was absolutely terrifying my point of referring to this as you
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can see here in the footage of andy no literally being beaten on camera there is footage of him being
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beaten by antifa there's no doubt about it but yet a jury acquitted or dismissed the case against antifa
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that's extreme cancel culture i don't think we're that far down the road in canada but it's clear
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that policing in canada takes a different approach depending on your politics anyhow my point is even
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to do events for rebel news we face a little bit of cancel culture imagine how hard it would be to have
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a rebel news event in portland oregon we're not planning to we don't have a big support base there but
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my point is cancel culture at the end starts to look like portland oregon anyways so we've been
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doing events across canada sometimes in churches sometimes in regular venues we had a wonderful
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event in toronto recently sold out in the eglinton grand theater which is a a proper venue so it was
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very nice of them to host us my point is we're getting back into the events business because i believe
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the rebel news isn't just watching videos or podcasts or reading written articles it's also
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campaigns as you know we sometimes get involved we crowdfund a lawyer to fight a battle we we send
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people on a journalistic mission we like to go to davos to cover the world economic forum we like to go
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to global warming conferences as you know we even managed to scrum greta tunberg in january which was a
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very interesting thing and we only did that because that's how rebel works we put together the budget for
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that trip based on crowdfunding here's a flashback to that scrum that walking interview with greta
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tunberg greta who was filming your arrest in germany because it looked like you did that in several
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takes didn't you you were posing with the police
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he's answering for you he's he's answering for you he said you had an agency what sometimes i wish i had
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one it would be much simpler than well who was filming you then i don't know media you don't know
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who was filming you in germany he said he knows he says it was an agency
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yeah it's very likely that the german police and rwf fossil fuel company would stage
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how many how many times did you were you arrested because you posed for several times didn't you
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sure yeah i think that's part of what rebel does too we don't just do regular journalism
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we do adventurous travel journalism for special projects that our people really believe in
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uh but i think events is an important piece of the puzzle too oh i don't want to forget books
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which we've recently published a ton of books tamara leach's book on the amini's biography we published
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an illustrated version of 1984 we even have two more books in the pipeline so books is part of what we do
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merch merchandise is part of what we do i think we've got some really great clothes and i see them
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more and more some are very subtle like just the ball cap with the megaphone on them but some of them
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are are really audacious uh as you know our number one best-selling shirt is justin castro where the two
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faces are side by side people get a real kick out of that so we've got a lot going on but i think
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events are probably our most intensive thing and we've recently been on tour across canada and i
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mean from vancouver island on the west all the way out to the atlantic provinces i think the furthest
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north we went was edmonton and the furthest south well ottawa and toronto and vancouver
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i like doing events personally i like to get out of the studio and meet with real people and
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just look them in the eye and say thanks to people for their support and and people are sort of excited
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too because they see their rebel stars on the internet on tv on their phone whatever but to
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meet them in person i think people get a kick out of it and i do too it's a way of staying grounded
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when there's so much online twitter hate towards rebel it's good to be reminded that actually don't
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take twitter as real life we used to do more of these things we used to do big annual conventions
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called rebel live we started those again and we're going to do more of them we used to do annual
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cruises and we're going to start those again in fact we haven't announced it yet but i'll give you
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a sneak announcement right now in march of 2024 which is only about six months away just over six
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months away we're going to relaunch the rebel cruises we're going to cruise through the caribbean
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for one week so we start in florida cruise the caribbean fellow rebels and we'll have about half a
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dozen on air talent from rebel to be there spending time with you having panel discussions it is a
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fundraiser for rebel news as you know we have to you know the old saying you can't save the world if
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you can't pay the rent but i think it's super fun people like to spend time with like-minded people
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one of the ways they tried to get us during the lockdowns was to cut us off from our communities
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to say you couldn't go to church or synagogue to say you couldn't go to your gym which is a source of
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community for many people as well as a source of fitness and health they even said we couldn't have
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family over for christmas dinner they even said you had to limit the number of people going to weddings
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and even funerals they tried to cut us off from each other if you know anything about cults you know
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that one of the things cults do when they're trying to recruit a new member is to cut them off from their
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old friends and family so they have no ballast in their ship and i think that's what they tried to do
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to us on purpose they said oh no no just watch netflix just watch disney plus you can be atomized
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living at home consuming what the media industrial complex pumps to you so no i think having in-person
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meetups is so important and it's really the basis for social life so we're going to get back into that
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so today i'm going to have conversations with sheila gun reed who has been on tour event after event
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with our hit documentary church under fire and if i can pin her down tamara leach the trucker
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inspirer and leader and the author of the best-selling autobiography hold the line so that's today's show
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well i am feeling very serene because as you can see i'm in a very serene place namely the temperate
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rainforest between vancouver and whistler it's along the sea to sky highway which i just love saying
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that's one of the best parts of canada by the way and i say this is a torontonian many people think that
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toronto is the absolutely most scenic scenic part of the country but they may be i'm making a joke
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in fact i've never heard anyone say that i'm with my friend sheila gun reed our chief reporter great to
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see you hey edzer thanks for having me well um i'm here and you're here because we are on what's been
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going on for more than a month two tours of events that rebel news is involved with one of them
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the church under fire documentary series you're the host of that the narrator and host of that
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documentary we have been in many cities sold out crowds and then we started a second tour
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tamara leach and her book hold the line and tonight here in this beautiful part of the world we're having
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two joint events i just thought i'd take a second tell people about what we're doing and ask you to
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maybe summarize your thoughts because we've probably done a dozen events on the on the church
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under fire side tell me what you we're getting out into the field again after basically being on
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under house arrest like the rest of the country for two years during the pandemic how's it been
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you know our even just to collect the interviews for the documentary that was grueling but then taking
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the documentary on the road back to back crisscrossing the country and when i say crisscrossing i mean
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crisscrossing the country and i didn't do that as long with church under fire as tamara leach has
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done it with her book tour it was exhausting our first leg of the church under fire tour but it was
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then we got to go home for a little bit tamara leach has been just given her every night back to back
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she's as kind and happy and grateful and gracious as ever night after night after night as she takes
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her book signing tour on the road it's astounding for me to watch having experienced just a little bit
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of it yeah i saw that yesterday we were in surrey which is a suburb of vancouver she stayed later than
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i did she shook everyone's hand took selfie with everybody signed everyone's book and i think she's a
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very genuine person what you see is what you get she's very humble and she's quite an unlikely
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hero i mean i like to joke she's five foot nothing you know and she's a grandma and you wouldn't think
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what's going to be what will the demographics be of the woman who emerges to help break the fever
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of the lockdowns and the and the mandatory vaccines you wouldn't have chosen you wouldn't have guessed
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that but it it was actually perfect and her temperament her control of her emotions and her
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thoughts is incredible i always say and i always think of it and i always mean it 49 days in jail much
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of it's solitary confinement and to still be a positive force i think most people would be either
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broken or turned sour or bitter by such an unjust treatment at the hands of the law you know you say
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she's unlikely but when you sort of draw back and you look at it she's not all that unlikely because
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she's the perfect foil for justin trudeau who is erratic out of control of his emotions she reaches
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across the aisle to the other side she's ecumenical she's the opposite of justin trudeau that's why she was
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public enemy number one she was a strong-willed calm woman who spoke truth to power and we know
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how justin trudeau feels about people like that yeah and you know what uh it's not a big factor but
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she is a metis woman and by the way the media tried to they went obama birth certificate on her they
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tried to say no no she's not really indian because in canada uh that comes with a sort of moral authority
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and the left certainly plays that card and by the way tamera leach does not lead with that card
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not at all um but the the fact they tried to deracinate her to try and take away her identity
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and and justin trudeau has sort of a history of being a fake friend to first nations um you know he
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didn't do well when jody wilson raybold actually had an opinion uh an ethical opinion uh you know i one
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of my favorite little video clips in the last month was seeing trudeau speak and i think it was
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an indigenous games and just getting booed i don't know if you saw this video take a look
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hello my friends we have been waiting for this moment
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we've been waiting for this moment a long time after the 2020 edition of the north american
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indigenous games had to be postponed because of the pandemic you know he he's got that fake
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tattoo and i'm talking too much about it but there is something about the realness of tamera leach
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versus the the fakeness trudeau a fake feminist trudeau a fake egalitarian who wears blackface a fake
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friend of first nations he's fake in every way and i think he he panicked when he couldn't control
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the narrative he panicked and that little lady started this big fight back if i may you know one of
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the most amazing books i've ever read in my life sheila was called uncle tom's cabin life among the
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lowly it was an anti-slavery book uh written by harriet beecher stow and i recommend that book to
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everyone it's funny it's heartbreaking it's beautiful and it is a clever political book there
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was a while it was selling it was such a staggering bestseller was second only to the bible
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in america and when abraham lincoln finally met her he said so this is the little lady who started
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this big war that's what he said about the civil war and it's quite something he was remarking on
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the implausibility of it and tamera leach is this little lady who started this big uprising and there's
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something endlessly poetic about that we'll talk with her a little bit later in the interview but you
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have been on tour while you've been doing your full-time day job as the chief reporter rebel news
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yeah well as a mom too i mean i don't know how you do it you you run your household which is also
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happens to be a farm you're a mom including uh when your daughter's very very busy in in sports
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traveling everywhere plus you the narrator this documentary plus you were traveling cross country
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and then p.s on top of that just doing your day job being a chief reporter but you went to some
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interesting places was there a was there a place on your journey that stands out that maybe you
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hadn't been to before or that maybe surprised you or you just got a kick out of it because
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you explored some of canada yeah you know it's um all of the places that we travel to are very
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different and all of the pastors that we spoke to are also very different and i think that
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is was really the story of the documentary it did not matter your style your theology for example
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you could be like pastor art and fiery or you could be like pastor tobias tisson and gentle like
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a lamb it didn't matter because their crimes were standing up to the state and honoring god but for me
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one of the places i had never had the opportunity to go to was the church of god in aylmer
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the nicest kindest people you know they put on a big spread for the entire community when we went
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to show the documentary they had all the time in the world for us when we went to collect
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the uh interview from the pastor henry hildebrand there and to see these gentle kind people who sang
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hymns as the police barged into their church to have these people treated like public enemy number
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one it was so totalitarian and you know i'll never forget the images of the women singing peacefully
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as the police came in it it's one of those standout things from the crackdown on the churches that is
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akin to pastor tim stevens being ripped away from the clutches of his crying children by the calgary police
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you know i i don't want to overtax the analogy but seeing armed police with their sidearm walk into
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a church while the women and children are praying and singing i couldn't help but remember images from
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schindler's list when uh nazis came into jewish places schools synagogues homes whatever and i'm not
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saying that those police led to death camps and an extermination of people but it's pretty chilling
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in canada to see in color as opposed to in black and white the images of police walking in with guns
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you go in with guns because it's your way of saying and you send in such a large group it's your way of
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saying if you do not do what i say and eventually i will use this gun that's that's the implication there
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during a church service which by the way in my opinion violates the criminal code there's a criminal
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code provision that makes it a crime to quote disturb any religious gathering
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well the cops uh you know laws are for the little people very very frustrating uh yeah i i was there
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in aylmer when we showed the film church under fire and the church was amazing how about um in the
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atlantic because rebel news is we're strong in alberta uh in part due to your um efforts there
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you're a chief reporter you're based in alberta and i think alberta is a conservative place politically
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awake we're strong in ontario just because there's so much action there and there's so many people
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you're going to have a number of conservatives even if they're not proportionate as big but the
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atlantic i feel that for a variety of historic reasons we just haven't been strong on the ground there
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and i regret that um so you went out there uh to do the story and and with the tour what was it like
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in atlantic canada where we are not as strong when we were in atlantic canada you know we heard from
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the people who came to see the documentary and the reason we went to atlantic canada is because pastor
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phil hutchins uh previously of our tabernacle family church he spent seven days in solitary confinement
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ripped away from his family for the crime of not turning away his congregants he refused to vax pass
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the congregants at his church and they barged in and arrested him and his associate pastor cody butler
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they had guns and in fact if i recall they had a hand on a firearm so i mean it's one thing to wear a firearm
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but to put your hand on the gun you're touching your gun what why are you doing that are you afraid
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or are you trying to make them afraid that was the most infuriating part of the documentary to me i'm
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you know what and i said this to henry hildebrandt when i was in elmer i said you know christians talk
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about turning the other cheek love love uh your enemy forgive them pray for them you know that's new
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testament talk i mean i i'm not a particularly religious man but when i saw that footage of that cop going
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into the church with a hand on a gun it was not love it was not love your enemy and pray for them
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that came to mind it was fury and vengeance and that's a little bit old testimony
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you know i believe in forgiveness and redemption and people coming back to the path but first i think
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there has to be some sort of a recognition reconciliation truth and reconciliation as they
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would say and that's my fear is there were some political casualties from the lockdowns jason kenny
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erin o'toole and that's conservatives doing some internal political hygiene but i don't think any
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premier or the certainly not the prime minister was politically punished for what they did in fact
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trudeau ramped it up for the 2021 election that's when he went extra hard it was after his election
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that he felt confident to invoke the emergencies act i think that other than erin o'toole and jason kenny
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there has not been a comeuppance there has not been um a balancing of justice on this i think
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that there are loose ends there there should be no closure here because it's not closed
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i just want to go back for a second to our trip to new brunswick uh because one of the most moving
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parts and uh kian's behind the camera so he can attest to this when we showed our documentary to
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pastor phil's family his littlest one was too young to remember greeting her father at the door when he got
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home from uh seven days in solitary confinement and as she watched it she understood and she
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experienced for the first time what happened to her family and her older sister started to cry
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because she realized that her her younger sister was experiencing this for the first time that's why
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our documentary is so important it details it chronicles the damage that these politicians who are
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as you say never been held accountable what they did to the canadian public and they there must
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be some sort of reckoning for this country to heal on your point with justin trudeau that ramping up
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of his out of control divisive rhetoric uh treating certain sections of the canadian population like
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dirty people that was actually focused grouped out of the privy council office they basically said
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let's pull the canadian public about how much of this garbage we can get away with and then let's
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do it as a campaign strategy so canadians paid for the liberal part for the liberal party's campaign
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strategy of demonizing at least six million canadian friends and neighbors
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you know i've watched the movie church under fire i think four times now and um if i'm
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sometimes i take a break from it because i've seen it now i don't need to watch the whole thing again
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if i am in the room in the theater when those police actions are underfoot
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i am angry for quite a while maybe that speaks to my own emotional state but i think i think you should
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be angry about things like that if you don't then you're numb and i don't want to go numb to that kind
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of stuff well um let me pull let me pull back a little bit because we were getting a little heavy
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there but it's on my mind i think the movie church under fire is one of the if not the best things
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rebel news has ever produced i think it's it touches on civil liberties which we believe in
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standing up for christians and many people don't um i i think it was uh we were helping to set the
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record straight it was sort of uh the the other side of the story we were making sure history was
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accurate but i also really like the fact that we've been out in the field because we were we used to do
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a lot more events and then like everyone we were shut down so it's good to be out there i i really
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enjoyed suri yesterday i tried to even just say hello to everybody again i feel that is part of
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rebel news's mission is to give people a place to go to see like-minded people uh a sense of
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community um a lot of our events are in churches not just because churches believe in freedom but
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also because those are places where we won't be canceled um i think it's important that rebel news
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build a sense of identity amongst our supporters because they're not just viewers so many of them are
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supporters when you're viewer funded like we are i mean someone introduced himself to me yesterday in
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suri and said i was your 25th supporter you told me that eight years ago i had sort of forgotten but
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he was really proud of that he was the 25th guy to chip in to help us get born and he's obviously
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carried that memory with him which is wonderful um i mean i hear that i hear that people people tell me
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what they sponsored i remember once someone said i crowdfunded a microphone for you or he there's some
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device and so it's good to be out amongst the people not just in our studio and i mean i'm trying
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to get out and about and do news out there too but i really like the fact that we're not just
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online i like doing real life events too this is just me reflecting on my own participation in some of
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these events um what what's what's ahead i mean you're you're going to be coming on our trip to
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israel and again we're inviting our supporters on that in the new year we're going to start up our
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seminar cruises again which is a way for people to hang out and get a sort of a weeks-long vacation but
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also to hang out with other rebels and it's a fundraiser it's not just for fun these things do put
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money in in our coffers to help us pay for our journalism do you have any thoughts on that or or what
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events you might want to do in the future or i mean it is time away from home and you've got a
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busy household what are your thoughts on the event side of rebel you know i look at the event side as
00:27:05.140
not only fundraisers for us but i look at them for selfish reasons you know when we are in sort of the
00:27:10.900
thick of things and we have all the arrows pointing at us on social media you can sort of get in a weird
00:27:16.700
headspace where you feel like well nobody likes us or whatever but then when you get out into the
00:27:23.300
field and you meet these people it really fills up your sort of moral tank when they say thank you
00:27:29.800
so much for telling our story when we we kian and i hear from the churches who say
00:27:37.100
you told our story properly and for some of the churches i wasn't there but to hear them say that
00:27:44.320
is exactly what happened thank you so much for getting it right because the mainstream media got it
00:27:48.880
wrong that gives me the energy to continue to fight and that's why i think selfishly for kian and i we
00:27:56.840
booked more documentary showings in alberta at the end of the month so if you'll allow me um and we're in
00:28:05.000
lethbridge on the 23rd august we're in red deer on the 24th we're back in edmonton at church in the
00:28:13.580
vine so they are not only featured in the documentary they are clients of the democracy fund
00:28:18.020
uh we're in mirror alberta the site of the whistle stop oh that's that's great you know i i finally
00:28:24.180
made it to the whistle stop and i had a delicious burger there i met some of the family and and
00:28:29.160
that's wonderful what's the date on that again wow and then uh from there we go to westlock alberta on
00:28:37.540
the 27th and then kian behind the camera we did we book grand prairie we did book grand prairie so
00:28:43.840
for that date time and location you can go to churchunderfiremovie.com all right well i'm really
00:28:52.400
glad you and i know it's tough to be on the road like that because you got a family and you've got
00:28:56.640
other stuff but um i think you're right it is encouraging to get that one-on-one feedback because
00:29:03.120
even though we know that twitter is not real life if you over over consume it like i do you can start
00:29:10.180
to believe the haters so it's good to talk to people in real life and ashila thank you again for
00:29:14.840
holding the uh the torch so high for taking the movie to the people for being the narrator and and the
00:29:21.320
the anchor of the movie but also for your role as chief editor which includes helping to bring our
00:29:26.940
citizen journalists along because there is sort of a way to do journalism even of the amateur you know
00:29:33.060
citizen variety and you know as we come up we're approaching our nine-year birthday and uh you've
00:29:39.860
you've certainly helped mold rebel news in your image as a journalist which is excellent i thank you
00:29:45.320
and i know our viewers do too oh thanks boss and i just wanted to take the opportunity to thank
00:29:50.000
everybody who comes out to our showings um because what an opportunity for us here at rebel news to be
00:29:56.500
able to thank our supporters and the people who cheer for us every day to continue on
00:30:03.580
as i mentioned we have two tours going on at once at rebel news sometimes we have joint events
00:30:21.360
sheila gun reed was the host of the movie church under fire and tamara leach is the author of the
00:30:29.000
number one best-selling book hold the line what a pleasure to catch up with her now tamara it's nice
00:30:33.640
to see you again here in such a gorgeous setting we're on tour for your book how's it going it's been
00:30:40.480
amazing the support has been almost overwhelming i never expected to see so many people coming out but
00:30:46.360
it's been unreal you know i find that heartening because it's been more than a year about a year
00:30:54.420
and a half and you think well maybe people have forgotten or maybe people have moved on or maybe
00:30:58.940
people were propagandized by the raising media but no like sold out credit last night you and i were in
00:31:06.600
surrey packed there was people in overfloor rooms there was upstairs is like it was they couldn't
00:31:14.420
shoehorn any more people into the venue to me that's very exciting it's very encouraging yes i
00:31:19.980
think i think with the evidence that came out at the poec and the more evidence that that's a
00:31:25.480
trucker commission of inquiry yes sorry thank you um i think more people are waking up and becoming
00:31:30.460
more aware as to what's really going on i love to to brag that your book went to number one on the
00:31:37.040
bestseller list the day it was released even though it wasn't we weren't even really ready for it
00:31:41.400
yet it just sort of popped up and we didn't even we weren't ready and it went to number one the reason
00:31:45.320
i mentioned that is that normally a book about the public interest i mean this was the number one
00:31:52.620
news story of the year the trucker convoy and the reverberations from it and trudeau invoking the
00:31:58.080
emergencies act that was the story of the generation and you were in the heart of it whether people love
00:32:03.780
you or hate you you have a story to tell i still can't believe that the cbc globe and mail toronto star
00:32:10.980
even the national post have not even mentioned your book even to criticize it like they have
00:32:16.640
book sections why won't they talk about your book even to disparage it well i don't think they want
00:32:23.620
to bring any attention to it primarily speaking if they talk about it they have to acknowledge the
00:32:29.000
existence not only of me and my book but of also the freedom convoy in general the counter narrative
00:32:35.940
i mean our model rebel news is telling the other side of the story and i i think that's really why
00:32:41.400
um the the pandemic and the lockdowns and the convoy was our time to shine
00:32:46.100
you don't people don't necessarily look for the contrary and take all the time on anything
00:32:51.200
but during that era of fake uniformity of fake unanimity people said no no no there's got to be another
00:32:59.240
side i think there's still sort of a blacklisting of any sources that counter the regime narrative i i
00:33:07.600
and i don't think that's paranoia on my part i think it's just an observation i think it's obvious
00:33:11.720
actually i mean i'm not on social media anymore obviously till my conditions are gone but um
00:33:19.240
you won't see that in the mainstream media they just won't they won't talk about it
00:33:23.780
your trial is coming up and i want to be very careful not to get you to weigh in because i don't
00:33:29.600
want you to prejudice your case and obviously we don't want to violate your bail conditions we were
00:33:34.580
careful with your book your book was lawyered in advance not that there was anything wrong with it but
00:33:39.460
we just didn't want to take the chance because the government i think they have a vendetta against
00:33:43.520
you and again we'll never be able to know all their motivations but i think the government
00:33:49.220
didn't like the fact that you challenged their narrative and they didn't if i may they didn't
00:33:54.600
like you personally because you you broke their caricature their caricature of the trucker convoy was
00:34:03.640
angry male shouting maybe a little verbally abusive you are i like to say a five foot nothing
00:34:11.560
metis grandma from alberta who answers hate with love in fact you turn the other cheek more than i ever
00:34:18.260
could i think that's why they had to go after you is because they said we can't let tamara leach be
00:34:24.820
the foil for justin trudeau and they wanted to punish you because you were effective that's my personal
00:34:33.060
theory you can call that paranoia but i don't think so i think it's just they they wanted to take you
00:34:40.020
out of the public conversation i think you're right and i think what really scared them the most was
00:34:46.020
the unity that happened across canada it was very obvious and still is to me that this they were
00:34:52.320
dividing people by every label they could think of for the last few years and i think that's what
00:34:57.620
really scared them the most was seeing canadians just drop those labels and just be so proud to be
00:35:02.540
canadian i want to ask you a personal question i i have never been to prison as a prisoner i've visited
00:35:09.160
people in prison and i can sense how stressful it is how uh it makes you feel completely helpless that
00:35:18.140
was the chief feeling i had when i would sometimes visit people in prison you were treated roughly
00:35:27.700
in my view you were you were put in isolation you were you were arrested in jail for ridiculous reasons
00:35:38.840
that judges later said but still 49 days i just want to ask you how how did you keep
00:35:48.120
your sanity when all around you were losing theirs it's like that poem by kipling if to keep your
00:35:56.840
wetswold all those around you how where did you reach into was it religion was it family was it
00:36:03.480
a code like a personal philosophical code i don't know if i could have held out and being as positive
00:36:14.240
as you are i think i might have cracked i think i might have turned bitter or sour can you tell me
00:36:21.920
where you went in your heart or your mind to survive what i think was an abusive detention
00:36:31.040
that's a great question um i often talk about how for me a lot of this has been like a divine journey
00:36:39.640
a divine adventure and i just recognized the things that were inadvertently exposed by products of the
00:36:48.780
convoy you know like the mainstream media the banking systems the corruption and corporations
00:36:53.420
like gofundme uh government all levels of government and i i just felt like that was
00:37:00.200
a divine you know and so when i got arrested i just felt like okay you have more work for me to do
00:37:06.700
and you know i i prayed a lot uh my mantra was thy will not my will and christian yeah i was raised
00:37:13.380
christian i also um have my native spirituality and yes and i've done energy healing and stuff like
00:37:20.560
that so i have a really nice hybrid of beliefs that that really work for me a kind of a combination of
00:37:26.340
all of them and and all at the core of all of them is love and i truly believe that that's how we win
00:37:32.380
you know in your book and i heard you tell this story the other day that some police officers some
00:37:40.040
prison guards were actually supportive of you and they said that it must be hard i mean for those
00:37:48.800
that would have felt like a secret friend but i think you were kind even to the cops who were not
00:37:56.780
nice even to the cops who were abusive i'm not i don't want to overstate their abuse but they were
00:38:02.060
cruel how how should anyone how do you meet hate with love like how do you do that how do you don't
00:38:12.780
people take advantage of you when you do that if you meet and and henry hildebrandt was the same way
00:38:17.760
he's he's the pastor in aylmer who who talked about loving and praying for the officers who shut
00:38:23.640
him down don't where do you come up with that like like i know that's what you're supposed to do i
00:38:29.620
know turn the other cheek that's jesus would say that but it's easy to read that but how do you do
00:38:35.440
that well fundamentally for me it just comes down to being respectful i i mean when you're being
00:38:41.900
disrespected how do you fight disrespect with respect well then i i guess because it's not taking
00:38:49.780
up space in my head and that's what's important for me is to stay focused and stay positive you know
00:38:56.520
of course there's been you know lots of terrible things written about me and i've been called
00:39:01.040
horrible horrible names and when we were coming across canada i remember a friend of mine kept
00:39:06.040
sending me these articles these terrible articles when they were calling me horrible names and
00:39:10.620
tweets and hate tweets and stuff like that and i just had to say to her one day you know please stop
00:39:16.400
i'm not going to read them i need to stay focused and i need to stay positive and this is not going
00:39:21.400
to help my mental health and so i just have to let that stuff fall away and if there's one thing i've
00:39:27.240
i've learned out of this whole thing is that i've developed very thick skin so you know i i to me it
00:39:35.280
just comes down to being respectful and even if they're not going to respect me in return i can say
00:39:40.380
that i've done my best in the book you quote a poem called invictus i remember reading that
00:39:46.780
in school and it's it's a very dramatic poem and it ends i am the captain of my fate i am the master
00:39:56.380
of my soul if i is that did i get that right or the other way i am the master of my fate i'm the
00:40:00.220
captain of my soul so part of that is you know being religious and thinking of god's plan but part of
00:40:07.980
that is like how it ends i am the captain of my fate maybe i got the wrong words but i mean when you are
00:40:16.340
in someone else's jail to still believe you're the captain of your fate that takes a confidence i
00:40:24.620
just i know i'm asking a lot of questions but i just don't i just don't know how you do that and
00:40:29.700
if there's a secret i want to learn it because uh i wouldn't think by looking at you that you are
00:40:37.480
so powerful you could make the prime minister of a country blink you don't look that powerful no
00:40:43.680
disrespect you look like a regular grandma you know a very young grandma i should say i mean i'm
00:40:49.000
i'm saying that because you're you're not i wouldn't think you're built for fighting but your
00:40:54.020
style of fighting made the the giants collapse how do you when you're in shackles still say i am the
00:41:01.420
captain of my fate well because i still i i still own me they can i mean and that's the whole thing with
00:41:09.160
all of this experience too you know how the narrative that against the convoy but i know what
00:41:16.120
it really was and they can never take that away from me you know that's inside of me and they can
00:41:21.580
put me in jail but they still don't own me and i and this is still belongs to me and god you know
00:41:27.760
i met once a soviet dissident uh named anatoly sharansky who was sent to the gulag for
00:41:37.040
contradicting the communist party of the soviet union and he was in prison for longer than you
00:41:43.600
obviously and i think his treatment was worse but i still found it miraculous that he within him like
00:41:51.520
he he did things just to keep his mind sane but i think it was just like what you said he always knew
00:41:58.000
he was the master of who he was there's a similarity between you and him and again i'm not comparing
00:42:03.500
the the soviet gulag era with canada but but you were jailed for a political crime you were
00:42:12.580
you were abused and and the way you responded reminds me of anatoly sharansky by the way
00:42:20.000
when he was finally let out of prison he made his way to israel and he ran for parliament and he was
00:42:28.740
elected to the israeli knesset so his moral example i think led the way let me close with this listen i
00:42:35.420
wanted to talk to you about the book tour but i just i'm just asking these questions that i've been
00:42:38.480
thinking about so let me ask you the sharansky question would you ever consider i'm not saying
00:42:44.720
make the decision now but would you ever consider once we're through the trial once god willing you're
00:42:52.580
acquitted once your life sort of goes back to normal and you're no longer being hunted would you
00:42:57.480
ever consider doing what sharansky did and seeking a public role in public office or something or do you
00:43:06.460
just want to go back to normal life normal life um you know what i i won't rule it out i definitely
00:43:15.780
won't rule it out it's never been something that i really wanted to do because i've i think that when
00:43:21.780
you get into politics there's so many rules and restrictions that you're so hobbled so but i
00:43:27.700
definitely won't rule it out i guess we'll see what happens in the next year or so and you know how
00:43:32.340
everything is after it shakes out but uh i certainly won't be afraid to if that's what's necessary
00:43:37.880
well for folks who who want to know how they can connect with tamara uh we have a website called
00:43:44.620
theconvoybook.com there's obviously a link there to the book itself but there's also a link there to
00:43:51.080
the democracy fund crowdfunding page which is covering tamara's uh legal fees for the battle that's
00:43:58.520
about to come in auto and we didn't talk at length about that but but but we will cover that very
00:44:02.660
intensively when it happens let me put one last idea on the table and you don't have to respond to it but
00:44:08.100
i just want to put an idea down and sort of memorialize it on camera every once in a while
00:44:15.840
alberta has a senate election where the whole province votes so it's not just medicine hat or calgary
00:44:21.940
it's the whole province so people with name recognition have a real bonus because you have to be known
00:44:27.860
in calgary and edmonton and the rural parts and medicine hat and you know trudeau does not respect
00:44:35.100
those senate elections but whenever a conservative prime minister is in office he typically appoints
00:44:40.860
those people for example stephen harper appointed elected senators from alberta into the senate
00:44:45.920
and i just want to float the idea there that tamara leach as a candidate for the canadian senate
00:44:53.600
running for the whole province of alberta would have a real chance of winning in my view
00:44:59.620
because it's every albertan so you're going to have name recognition you're going to have
00:45:06.540
touched people all across the province but the biggest reason i want to plant that seed of an idea
00:45:11.940
with you i just want the idea to germinate is because the things you just mentioned all the ways
00:45:18.620
the politicians are hobbled being a senator in our system you're not under the same strict party
00:45:25.160
discipline as the mps because you don't have to continuously suck up to the party leader
00:45:29.540
to be renominated because you're you're if you're in the senate you're there till you're 75
00:45:34.840
so i just want to put on the record now i have an idea and i'm going to try and you know let's see
00:45:41.740
how things go i think you're going to be acquitted god willing in ottawa i think i think the world is
00:45:49.440
not done with you you might say god is not done with you fate karma whatever people want to say
00:45:54.620
i think you there is more there are more chapters in your story to be written and i think that one way
00:46:03.380
to do it would be to go back to that city of ottawa the city where you were arrested and abused
00:46:11.740
to go back to that city not as a grandma from medicine had in a truck but to go back as the
00:46:18.260
honorable senator from alberta with a mandate for freedom and a and a democratic legitimate mandate
00:46:26.320
i just want to plant that idea i'll tell you one thing i would be a supporter and i think many
00:46:32.540
rebels would be so i just threw this at you i gave you no notice of this idea do you have any
00:46:38.300
reaction or you just want to cogitate on it i will definitely think about that that hadn't crossed my
00:46:43.500
mind before yeah well i i mean you've already served your country more than most um not in military
00:46:50.540
service which we have to give tremendous respect to those who actually serve but to serve in the in
00:46:56.320
in the public square and you've suffered uh for that and i and i think there's something christ-like
00:47:03.020
about suffering for your fellow man this is turning into a love and not even an interview
00:47:08.460
but i've but uh it's been fun hanging out with you a little bit i've attended some of your events and
00:47:14.100
it's a it's remarkable to see so thanks for working so hard on these tours you're you stay till the end
00:47:20.540
you sign everyone's books you pose for selfies that's hard work i know to be as friendly to the last
00:47:25.240
person as to the first person so thanks for doing it and thanks for working with rebel news and the
00:47:29.240
democracy fund it's i've got a real kick on hanging out with you lately it's been great and what it's
00:47:34.080
been a great experience for me and thank you guys so much for all your help and all your support and
00:47:38.840
you know as i said last night making the whole process with the book so seamless and easy and
00:47:44.620
therapeutic i'm glad you feel that way because uh you know we've got a whole whole team and i'm proud
00:47:50.500
of the work they've done well folks there you have it tamir leach one of my favorite people and
00:47:54.200
yeah i know i was a little bit i was a fan boy there but but that's how i honestly feel and i feel
00:48:01.360
like um sometimes people really do extraordinary things they rise to the occasion and maybe they're
00:48:08.040
not the central casting image of who you might think a freedom fighter would look like but that makes
00:48:13.200
it all the more wonderful and let me go on the record right now that if there is a senate campaign
00:48:18.020
for senator leach i'm going to be a volunteer and i'm going to break my rule against donations i never
00:48:23.040
make political donations but i would make a donation for a tamara for senate campaign i'm just having a
00:48:29.440
chuckle but let me tell you let me look you in the eye and tell you i mean it stay with us some final
00:48:35.680
thoughts are next well there you have it from all of us here at rebel news on the road to you at home
00:48:54.860
until next time good night and keep fighting for freedom