The Independence Petition - The Story Of The Most Unlikely Location
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Summary
On this episode of the final weekend of the petition signing, we have a special guest, Mike Schnell. Mike is the man who took the Alberta flag to Egypt and signed the petition to have it flown at the pyramids of Giza.
Transcript
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in just a moment we're going to have a special guest here and this is
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this is a fun one i have to say you know we're at the final weekend of the petition signing and god
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love all of the canvassers that have been out there for the last four months through some
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pretty nasty weather and you know i do the independence calendar on sundays i've done it
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for this is the 21st week in a row and i've received some amazing pictures i remember when
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everybody was fascinated when we saw people down in Yuma, Arizona. And then we started seeing
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people in California and everybody was amazed. We've seen pictures of people on mountaintops
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signing the petition. There's a helicopter in the background in this picture you're looking at right
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now. But I have to say, and I bet you most people would say they never thought they would see
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something like this we never thought we would see the alberta flag in egypt at the pyramids and
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the man you see on the screen right now is the guy signing the petition and there's the shirt
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i'd like to welcome mike schnell mike thank you so much for talking to me today i appreciate it
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it's good to see you great to be here thanks for having me john you know we get we get a real
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thrill out of this one. I've had people comment on this. Can you imagine that there's the Alberta
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flag in Egypt, and there's a pyramid in behind, and there's you signing this petition. How did
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this all come about? Tell me what your thought process was, obviously leaving Alberta to go to
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Egypt. So we had some friends that moved in down the street from us here. I live in Cougar Ridge
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in Calgary, and they had moved here from Egypt, and they just had little kids, and so we took
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over a plate of cookies you know welcome wagon thing and and uh welcome to the neighborhood and
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we became pretty good friends in fact uh my wife taught their children a boy and a girl
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they were just little at the time taught them piano for a few years and uh you know we got
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invited to their graduations and so on and and uh we weren't close close friends but you know
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good enough friends right sure and uh they regarded us as their best friends in canada and
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that's great. And anyway, back in, oh shucks, December, January, we get this phone call from
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them and they say, hey, our son's getting married in Egypt. Would you like to come to Egypt for the
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wedding? And I mean, I'll be honest with you, Egypt wasn't really on my bucket list. And I
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thought, yeah, why not? In our church, we're studying the Old Testament. So of course, you've
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got Egypt is a big part of the Old Testament. So I thought, well, why wouldn't we want to go to
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Egypt? So let's go. So we made all the arrangements and showed up there for the wedding. And along
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the way, I was scheming and dreaming in my back of my mind. And I thought, well, I'm going to take
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an Alberta flag and I'm going to take a couple of pages from my canvasser book and my little badge.
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and uh because i can throw that all in a backpack pretty easy and anyway we the day came we went to
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the the uh pyramids and uh i said okay there this is it this is this is where we're doing this
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and i uh i got my wife and another young girl uh to you know hold the hold the alberta flag up
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behind me and and i signed the petition and and i got five signatures on that petition
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from alberta if you can imagine so it worked out really well and then our guide said whoa whoa whoa
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you got to take that down they said they don't like anybody uh using the pyramids for any kind
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of promotion for anything doesn't matter if it's political or sports team or anything you can't do
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that and so the flag was probably only flying for about a minute and a half and we folded it up and
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put it away that's amazing it's just amazing picture uh just looking at it right now put it
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up on the screen again so people can see it and there you are wearing the exact shirt that now
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are you a canadian citizen are you an alberta citizen are you old enough to vote i'm just
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wondering mike you got that information right while you were there 100 yeah 100 i got that i
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got their driver's licenses i got all the all the proper stuff i'm a proper canvasser i've got over
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hundred signatures good for you that I personally uh uh signed up and then uh and then I'm with a
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small team uh about six or seven of us and we've got about another eight or nine hundred signatures
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on our little team so well done to you now I want to ask you this um you took this became
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kind of a phenomenon here in Alberta I remember seeing this and it was sent in to me by Terry I
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believe he had this picture and he sent it to me and I remember putting it on the calendar and just
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thinking this was unbelievable and then there was a lot of buzz about this one people would talk to
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me about this did you hear about it uh becoming kind of a phenomenon in Alberta it was kind of
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funny because there was a few people that approached me and said hey we saw you and uh anyway
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I you know I watched it two or three times on Facebook and wherever and and then I saw the
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video that you and uh jeff roth did and and jeff was just giggling away on that one he says man he
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says i want to meet that guy and shake his hand well you got to go out and meet jeff he's a great
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guy go out and meet him wear the shirt you know you know what you should do is you should get it
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framed to put it up on your wall because i think it's just terrific now uh well done and it's really
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nice to talk to you hope to meet you as well um i'm just wondering how do you think things are
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going now we've got the final weekend we're in the final weekend right now of the petition campaign
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you've been you've been doing this yourself with over 100 signatures nobody can say they got five
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from egypt but how do you think things are going right now well i think things are going pretty
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well i don't know that we're uh i don't know i mean we've got a kind of a internal goal to get
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a million or a million and a half signatures i don't know if we'll get that i don't even i don't
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know if we'll get that all the way there but i'll i will say this uh this is my own personal
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observation i've done lots of flag waving standing on the sidewalk waving flags and you know i got a
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small team behind me uh that are uh got the desk set up and they're signing people up and uh you
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know i'll say this my own personal poll says i we get one finger wagger you know what i mean by that
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and 10 thumbs up horn honkers right yes and uh it's it's a 10 to one and that's consistent
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Every time I go out, everywhere I go, and most everybody I talk to is getting a very similar reaction.
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Yeah, I was out, I think a week and a half ago, riding my bike.
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I found some canvassers sitting at the side of Acadia Drive, and they said the same thing to me.
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And let me just say this to you, and I'll ask you this, but I'm sure you're going to say the same thing.
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I have met some of the nicest people and made some friends during this that I don't think I'd have ever made before.
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hundred percent you know what i've met a whole new people a whole new raft of people that i
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never previously knew at all and i want to say this of all the different when i first stood in
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that lineup that first calgary uh petition signing event that you set up over there in the southeast
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you know queensland you were there queensland that's it yeah i was over there at that and and
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i'm driving over there and i'm thinking why the heck is all this traffic coming because it was
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it was always right in front of me you know like everybody's turning left here and everybody's
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turning left there and everybody's going up the same street then it dawned on me oh my goodness
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these are people are all heading for this petition signing right yeah and so we couldn't park in that
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community parking lot it was jam-packed so we went a couple blocks away and just parked in a
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residential and so was there a bunch of other people doing the same thing and so as I'm walking
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towards the community hall as i'm standing in the lineup waiting to be able to sign the petition
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and i believe that was the first one in calgary if i'm not mistaken yeah and uh uh you know what
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i'll say this every single person in that line was ordinary average every day go to work alberta
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people they're family men they've got jobs to go to they've got mortgages to pay they've got
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kids to raise they got hockey games to attend and soccer games to attend and all that same stuff
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right these are not radical people as much as anybody wants to label us some kind of traitors
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or rabble rousers or whatever no siri but these are ordinary average everyday albertans that are
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calm quiet and confident that we're going to change this system it sucks and we're going to
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change it. Mike, you said it so well. And you know, it's funny, I remember that night, Heather
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Field and Jeevan Mangat were really responsible for putting that night together on January the
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10th. And I remember people asking me because I was the emcee that night. Dennis Kalman was there,
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Eva Chipiak, Corey Morgan spoke, they were fantastic. And I remember people getting in
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touch with me saying, will there be canvassers there? Because it was only a few days after
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this all started up and very few people had the badges and they broke their arms off that night
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we had more than a thousand people in line that night and it was crazy so it was a fun night and
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then we started seeing that everywhere and it happened already across the province well first
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off thank you very much for doing what you've done getting getting signatures working with
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the group that you've been working with people say to me john thanks for all you do i i do a little
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bit you've done a bit too mike everybody's done their bit right it becomes a big thing right and
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You know what? You know what, John? We're just ordinary, average, everyday people. None of us
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are brilliant. None of us are connected. None of us have special status in the community.
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We're just ordinary, average, everyday people. Well, we like to call it grassroots, you know,
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and that's what this whole movement's been about. And you know what, Mike? We've been part of
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something that's pretty historic here. This has really never been done before. And I appreciate
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it. We'll put the picture up at the end again, because it's worth seeing again. But this was
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one of the highlight moments, I think, of this petition campaign.
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I think people saw this and said, if somebody could go to Egypt and
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You look great for 70 and that's a damn good looking shirt you're wearing, Mike.
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Mike Schnell, we appreciate him being here on the channel and the independence calendar.