The Art of Manliness - #340： Life Lessons From an Adventurer

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast inside many men

00:00:19.740 is the call for adventure my guest today is one of those men and listening to that call has led

00:00:24.160 him to pursue a lifetime of amazing expeditions around the globe all while balancing a demanding

00:00:28.780 career as an airline pilot and family responsibilities his name is laval saint germain and today he shares

00:00:33.660 when he first heard the call for adventure on his grandparents farm in western canada and how he

00:00:38.140 started taking action on it we go through some of the adventures he's been on including being the

00:00:41.680 first canadian to summit mount everest without oxygen dodging landmines while climbing mount

00:00:45.880 damavon in iraq and rowing across the atlantic ocean by himself laval then shares how he tragically lost

00:00:52.140 his son in a canoeing accident and how the habit of making checklists that he developed as a pilot

00:00:57.360 helped lead his family through this very tragic time in the grieving process we then dig deeper

00:01:01.840 into how laval uses checklists as a pilot adventurer and family man to improve his life we end our

00:01:06.980 conversation talking about how regular joes go on the kind of adventures laval regularly undertakes

00:01:11.560 without breaking the bank while still attending to their families and careers after the show's over

00:01:16.080 make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash laval that's l-a-v-a-l where you find links

00:01:21.900 resources where we delve deeper into this topic laval saint germain welcome to the show thanks

00:01:30.000 brett they're really happy to be on so you reached out to me last week actually and i'm glad you did

00:01:35.860 because you are you're you're a contender for the real life most interesting man in the world

00:01:41.620 i don't drink dos equis though okay yeah okay you don't drink dos equis i hear it's not that great

00:01:48.780 of a beer anyways so can you tell us about your background because okay you're a pilot but besides

00:01:54.240 the pilot thing which is pretty manly as it is you've also created this life of yourself of

00:02:00.660 adventure so tell us just about what you do and kind of your mission in life sure sure yeah like

00:02:07.420 you said i'm an airline pilot but let's work backwards uh to my background so um if your american

00:02:12.920 listeners can't tell i'm a canadian by my accent but i'm from a small rural community in western

00:02:17.680 canada in the canadian province of alberta a small town of about 2 000 people surrounded by farmland

00:02:23.960 and the community i grew up with was largely a french canadian community surrounded by a lot of

00:02:30.180 german farmers around it so my dad's french canadian sort of a town boy from the town my mom's a german

00:02:35.260 farm girl from outside of that small town where um where i grew up and my parents had a real love of

00:02:41.860 the outdoors where we live there were no mountains it's it's a prairie area so it's farming country but

00:02:47.440 my dad was a big outdoorsman he was a hunter a fisherman a canoeist my mom was an athlete she

00:02:52.560 played volleyball she played basketball i remember going to her games when i was a small child so i

00:02:58.140 always had a love for the outdoors and it was something that was quite normal for me and then

00:03:01.860 also my dad had his private pilot's license so we always had a small cessna type aircraft kicking

00:03:07.440 around a four-seater or three-seater or two-seater aircraft depending we've had several different

00:03:11.560 airplanes so i was always exposed to aviation so these are normal things to me the outdoors and flying

00:03:16.600 well one of sort of the seminal points in my development i believe was uh the summers and the

00:03:23.180 christmas holidays that i spent on my grandparents farm where my mom grew up this was only about uh

00:03:29.300 eight kilometers or about four miles from where where we lived in this small town and my dad and

00:03:34.880 i used to walk to the farm along the railway tracks that went to this farm and back then of course there

00:03:40.960 were no plastic bottles we didn't have any algae or that type of thing so we would fill up a seven up

00:03:45.440 bottle what in canada we call a pop bottle a glass bottle with water we put it in a little backpack we'd

00:03:50.580 walk down these tracks and i would ask my dad about things that i'd read in national geographic or

00:03:55.380 things that i read in the encyclopedia this is of course before the time of the internet

00:03:58.980 and he would tell me stories about places all over the world these places that were so far away and so

00:04:05.240 removed from where i was that i always had this this real fascination for them and that fascination

00:04:11.180 started to really evolve when we got national geographic as a kid but back to uh going to the

00:04:16.640 farm the lessons that i learned on that farm were really being a free-range kid we had unsupervised

00:04:22.380 unstructured play my cousins and i and my sister who's a year older and we simply roamed around

00:04:28.240 on this farm we were involved in slaughtering the chickens milking the cows we're involved in bailing we're

00:04:33.740 involved in constructing things and as long as we were back on time for lunch and my grandma made lunch

00:04:39.320 her back in time for dinner and back when the lights or when the sun went down in the evening

00:04:43.680 which is quite late this far north everything was fine so it was this free-range lifestyle that i think

00:04:50.180 is so remote from what we have nowadays and even more so you know we're allowed to drive tractors

00:04:55.660 trucks combines as young kids and i'm talking below the age of 10 i was driving as standard so i had this

00:05:02.380 real comfort with machinery and the outdoors so for somebody who's evolved into the type of

00:05:08.640 activities that i've evolved into is a real natural setting to develop my love of uh of the outdoors

00:05:13.980 and confidence as well i was gonna say i mean okay so you you spend time outdoors in the farm that's

00:05:19.100 it's like you're doing now some crazy stuff we'll talk about some of these these adventures you've

00:05:23.940 gone and so like at what moment in your life did you decide i'm going to you know for example we'll

00:05:29.120 talk about your solo north atlantic ocean rowing trip right like how did what moment did you

00:05:35.580 decide like i'm going to be an adventurer like these guys i read about national geographic it was

00:05:41.140 right then i mean one story to sort of illustrate it was when i read tarzan as a young boy i don't know

00:05:48.340 i was probably nine years old i spent that summer not wearing shoes soon as the snow melted i didn't

00:05:54.540 wear shoes until the snow fell again literally running through the trees toughening my feet trying

00:05:59.840 to toughen my feet the way i read that tarzan did in the book so i decided that i wanted to be like

00:06:05.060 tarzan i read jack london books obviously about the yukon and the gold rush and farley mode who's a

00:06:10.680 canadian uh writer and ernest hemingway and for some reason maybe it was um the the confidence my

00:06:16.760 parents instilled in us but i never had any doubt that i could go out and do these things i just had

00:06:21.640 to figure out how to get them done so right at an early age is when i decided i wanted to do this

00:06:26.460 stuff i mean i've been really fortunate that i've been able to live this sort of this ultimate boy's

00:06:32.700 life you know being an airline pilot and being an adventurer and go to the jungles and the deserts

00:06:37.080 and the mountains all over the world and that started as a child and i think it had something

00:06:41.120 to do with the confidence my parents they gave me to do whatever i wanted so sounds cliche but i

00:06:46.720 really think it had a large part to do with it yeah yeah the stories of like kids reading

00:06:52.420 national geographic i don't think that really happens anymore because i don't think people

00:06:56.640 subscribe to national geographic the magazine i wonder what the what's going to inspire

00:07:01.620 adventurers in the future i don't know just a thought um so can you talk about some of the the

00:07:07.600 adventures you've been on because this this isn't just like little micro adventures these are actual

00:07:11.600 like feats of endurance that uh you've been on so can you kind of take us through sort of the

00:07:17.320 the the resume of adventures you've been on yeah sure um i don't know if they're going to be in

00:07:23.640 order because there's been a few but um you know i've uh climbed uh i guess i go from sort of smallest

00:07:29.560 to largest not not that there really is a scale but i sort of started my ski mountaineering life in

00:07:35.000 the cascades of the northwestern u.s i was a young airline pilot based in vancouver british columbia and

00:07:41.640 i would drive down to as far as northern california and climb and ski rock climb ice climb and ski these

00:07:48.900 big volcanoes around the pacific north northwest and then as an airline pilot one of the greatest

00:07:53.260 benefits of it one of the reasons i did it other than the love of flying is that you get travel

00:07:57.640 benefits in airlines all over the world so i was able to very inexpensively fly anywhere i wanted for

00:08:03.240 next to nothing for less than what a dinner would cost so i uh went to scuba diving in honduras even

00:08:09.420 though i didn't know how to scuba dive flew down to bolivia and climbed the highest mountain in

00:08:13.300 bolivia which almost killed me from high altitude cerebral edema but uh even though that happened i

00:08:18.760 seemed to have a propensity for suffering i loved it and i was hooked then i went down to uh argentina

00:08:23.880 climbed the highest mountain in south america called aconcagua i did that on my own climbed the

00:08:28.560 highest mountain in mexico went to denali climbed the highest mountain in your country and the highest

00:08:34.160 mountain in north america denali kilimanjaro mount elbris and then suddenly i realized i

00:08:39.360 i'm ticking off some of these continental high points elbris being the highest mountain in europe

00:08:44.080 which is in russia near the chechen border and um that started to really whet my appetite for more

00:08:51.620 mountaineering but not just the seven summits i like going to unusual places places that i either

00:08:56.660 read about or were intrigued by because they were the news so i went to iran by myself and i climbed the

00:09:02.240 highest mountain in iran and skied down it a mountain called damavan i became an adventure racer so i

00:09:07.240 started doing these eco challenge type races so mountain biking there's a paddling uh part of it

00:09:12.780 a trail running navigation that type of thing uh mountain bike racing ice climbing and eventually

00:09:19.840 decided that hey i was going to do everest and what's really interesting about my everest expedition

00:09:25.880 was that i did that in 2010 and about december 2010 i decided i had to ask slash tell my wife janet

00:09:35.680 that i was going to climb everest so we sat down at our kitchen counter and i poured her a glass of uh

00:09:41.580 i can still remember it was an argentine red called luigi bosca and i poured her a glass of red wine

00:09:45.740 and i was trying to get my courage up i poured her another glass of red wine she probably thought i had

00:09:50.580 ulterior motives and then i said babe i think i'm going to go climb everest this spring and i'm going

00:09:55.820 to do that oxygen she took a sip of her wine didn't even pause looked up and said it's about time you're

00:10:00.780 not getting any younger so that's the type of woman that i was fortunate enough to marry there was no

00:10:04.820 questioning of it she never had any um doubt that i could do it she basically just said go get it done

00:10:10.660 so in um yeah so the end of march of 2010 i flew to uh to nepal and then into we drove into um tibet

00:10:20.860 and um two months later i was uh standing on everest becoming the first canadian to climb it without

00:10:26.940 oxygen you know not without mishap we had some tragedy on that trip we lost uh one of our expedition

00:10:32.820 members to uh high altitude cerebral edema just at the summit he died 27 year old from the uk

00:10:39.860 and uh i uh on the climb to the summit froze three fingers in my right hand and then

00:10:46.340 about a month and a half later after returning to canada i had them amputated so um i did pay a

00:10:51.680 price but i think it's a very um minor price compared to uh what peter um peter kinlock the

00:10:58.300 guy who died in our expedition paid so did you do any special training for this for the the everest summit

00:11:03.960 well i've you can tell by my resume that i'm active i work out every day both uh using

00:11:09.780 weights body weight especially and endurance so a lot of cycling and a lot of running and you know

00:11:15.520 ultra running was a was a big help however once you get sort of above the death zone so above 26 000

00:11:22.280 feet until you've been up there you don't really know if you've got the genetics to do it and that

00:11:27.020 is just simply a crapshoot it's either you've won the the genetic lottery you haven't because um at

00:11:32.220 those altitudes there's only i think the number is about two to four percent of the population can

00:11:37.780 can function at these altitudes uh your brain starts to swell you start to develop fluid in

00:11:42.880 your lungs called pulmonary edema cerebral edema is obviously the fluid in your brain

00:11:46.860 and there's speculation that uh genetics is one of the reasons that some of us can can um can maneuver

00:11:54.260 up there but it's an interesting question because i think i had such good fitness going into everest

00:11:59.960 and then as we ascended across the tibetan plateau at every place we stopped for the night

00:12:05.640 i'd be the guy that would out be out running or climbing in the nearest peak or the highest peak

00:12:10.200 i could see in the region so i was always pushing myself to adapt quickly to the to the thinner air

00:12:15.500 at altitude and even at base camp i'd be off in the distance doing push-ups i'd be doing crunches and

00:12:21.600 i'd be running in the hills as soon as i was able to run at that altitude and climbing all the mountains

00:12:25.620 around base camp on the north side of evers so using an aviation analogy and um started to go to to

00:12:33.940 explain this aviation analogy i spoke to a u2 spy plane pilot once in denver colorado and he told

00:12:39.600 us about flying at such high altitudes that the russian interceptors could get to them but once

00:12:44.740 they got there they couldn't maneuver so it simply fly by in a parabolic arc and dive out of the way

00:12:49.120 and sometimes it'd be so close that they would actually give him the finger from the cockpit

00:12:52.860 just letting him know that that the russians had him in sight but they couldn't maneuver they

00:12:57.480 couldn't do anything to sort of harass him and i think that my fitness was like the afterburners on those

00:13:03.640 on those russian fighters it pushed me up to altitude but luckily i had the genetics or we'll

00:13:09.240 call it the wing if we want to use an aviation analogy that allowed me to maneuver up there

00:13:13.740 allow me to function and allow me to get back down there alive so my fitness pushed me up there my

00:13:19.280 genetics are the ones that allow me to survive up there and get me back down without oxygen even

00:13:22.860 though i did lose three fingers from frostbite yeah and so losing three fingers from frostbite so that

00:13:28.500 that happened on the way up you said right yeah it had it was a a ten and a half uh sorry a 17 and a

00:13:34.840 half hour day um 17 hours and 35 minutes is what it took me to go from high camp to the summit back to

00:13:40.700 high camp and about uh two and a half three hours out of high camp i froze uh the three fingers on my

00:13:48.160 my right hand but having said that it's not because it was cold um it was obviously cold but i'm a

00:13:55.240 canadian i've done expeditions all over the world including the canadian arctic and it wasn't really

00:13:59.260 that cold it was probably minus 25 to minus 35 which is you know it's all relative but for me that's

00:14:06.880 not that cold i've got the equipment i've got the experience this is this is stuff that i'd walk to

00:14:10.940 school in as a child these types of temperatures but i made a mistake i had the wrong equipment so

00:14:16.100 the jumar or the device that attaches to the rope that you slide up the rope as you climb

00:14:20.220 was not designed for these heavy duty really puffy himalayan sized mitts so when you put your hand

00:14:27.320 into there it compressed the down which of course reduced the insulation around my fingers and caused

00:14:31.940 me to um to lose my fingers so that is just an example of taking responsibility for a mistake and

00:14:37.840 then learning from your mistakes so i don't whine i don't whinge i don't moan about how cold it was

00:14:42.400 and ever sure it was cold but the only reason i lost that those fingers was because of my mistake

00:14:48.420 and that's something i've learned from aviation that you know 99 percent probably of all airline

00:14:54.960 accidents are due to human error what we call pilot error and if you dig down into uh in your country

00:15:01.620 what they call them the ntsb reports uh here we call them the tsb reports when they study an airline

00:15:07.700 accident you'll see that it's human error and i just made a mistake i wasn't prepared because of the

00:15:13.220 wrong jumar i used i took a shortcut and i paid for it by losing my fingers so

00:15:17.480 and how quickly did you get back to adventuring after you had your fingers amputated uh let's see

00:15:23.640 uh i was at the gym the day after i had my fingers amputated i was running that day and on my bike just

00:15:32.280 being a little bit ginger with my right hand but i was right back into it i my son at the time who's now

00:15:38.620 15 was 8 and i had my fingers amputated and about a week later we were riding our bicycles from the city

00:15:49.320 where i live which is calgary to uh another town called drum heller so we did a but a 100 mile a bike

00:15:57.120 ride right after that so it did a few fingers lost is not that big of a deal it doesn't really impede you

00:16:02.600 that much other than maybe with typing and i'll never be a hand model right right what'd your wife

00:16:07.360 think she's just like you idiot when you got back or was she pretty devastated or did she was like okay

00:16:11.860 oh not at all she she realized that that if you're gonna do this type of stuff every once in a while

00:16:16.900 something's gonna happen right you're going to you're gonna suffer injuries and you know i've been

00:16:21.500 very fortunate uh for considering what i do that i've had some fairly minor injuries and i would consider

00:16:28.120 that a minor injury i consider it a failure it it eats at me and it bothers me but um you know she uh

00:16:34.660 she was there when the amputated was just local anesthetic she didn't find that too impressive

00:16:39.040 watching that but it's just i think it's just the scars and the stories that you accumulate through

00:16:45.020 an active life and that's one of the things that i'll always have is is the three stumps

00:16:49.980 the three stumps i like that so okay you're the first canadian to summit mount everest without

00:16:55.660 oxygen what else have you done because i think you said they get bigger and bigger so you've done

00:16:59.400 some other stuff as well after that yeah and then i got back from there and i um i went down to climb

00:17:05.620 the highest mountain in australasia so we as mountaineers has taken all of southern asia meaning

00:17:10.660 australia new zealand even though australia is a continent when we've because the highest mountain

00:17:15.620 in australia mount koskioko is so small we've decided to take the highest mountain in sort of the

00:17:22.300 archipelago of indonesia the philippines including australia and new zealand and there's a mountain

00:17:28.100 in the jungle in indonesia papua papua province called karstens pyramid and i did this really

00:17:34.960 incredibly tough rewarding trek through the jungle just this classic mountain trek through the jungle

00:17:42.240 with local porters that were going on strike we were held up at log bridges with porters with

00:17:48.940 bows and arrows and spears demanding money we had porter rebellion we um it was just a really

00:17:56.980 incredibly good trip and we went into the deep dark jungles of indonesia we climbed this the highest

00:18:02.300 mountain down there called karstens so that's one thing i did loved it another different trip for me

00:18:06.480 because i'm not a real jungle guy but i have done some stuff in south america but this was a really an

00:18:12.040 incredible trip sort of the classic jungle expedition and then after that i came back and i went and climbed

00:18:18.320 the highest mountain in iraq which was really unusual it was before the rise of isis so 2013

00:18:24.660 i traveled into the border region by myself between iran and iraq and i had hired a fixer a local guy in

00:18:33.640 erbil in northern iraq in kurdistan which is sort of the the the least violent area of iraq it's a

00:18:41.080 semi-autonomous region run by the kurds and i found a guy who spoke kurdish and arabic and got a

00:18:47.560 vehicle and i said here's where i want you to drop me off and i want to pick once you pick me up here

00:18:52.240 a week later and he said you won't get there because of the military checkpoints so we traveled

00:18:56.280 through the military checkpoints and everyone uh we somehow sweet talked our way through at the last

00:19:00.780 one that was nearest the border with iran he asked what the westerner was doing in the car and my fixer

00:19:06.500 said that uh he was just going to look at the mountains for the day even though i had about a

00:19:10.340 60 pound backpack with an ice axe and skis and ski poles in the back seat of this toyota he dropped

00:19:17.180 me off and i wandered off into the mountains of iraq along the iranian border in an area that was

00:19:22.020 just littered with landmines so this added a whole different challenge to backcountry skiing when i had

00:19:27.580 to tiptoe through landmine fields going rock to rock so i wouldn't step on any earth that could have

00:19:32.320 been dug up and set off a landmine and uh after a few days i got uh near the top of the highest mountain

00:19:40.320 in iraq and then summited and then telemark skied down and telemark skiing is that skiing where your

00:19:44.500 heels are free i telemark skied down and then to make a long story short i made it back down to where

00:19:50.820 my fixer was picking me up and on the way down there i saw some unusual tracks in the mud they look

00:19:56.820 like military boot tracks and sure enough the iraqi security forces have been hunting me up there

00:20:00.960 i don't think they're hunting me to to do me any harm but to keep me away from the iranian border

00:20:05.740 because this area is very famous for it's a region where in 2009 i believe it was three americans were

00:20:11.740 kidnapped and held for i think up to two years by um by the iranians and had to pay a massive

00:20:16.640 ransom and i was uh they suspected that i'd been kidnapped by iranians and they're i think they're

00:20:23.880 coming up to save me in fact uh on that trip by myself one night in the tent i heard somebody cough

00:20:30.100 outside my tent early in the morning and as i looked under the fly of my tent i could see a

00:20:35.700 guy in khaki pants standing there at the bottom of his legs holding a gun the butt of the gun was on

00:20:40.780 the ground by his feet so i thought this is it the jig's up i'm about to be kidnapped like those

00:20:45.720 americans but it turns out it was a local kurdish hunter hunting ibix and we had some chocolate and

00:20:50.720 tea and spoke in sign language and off he went i got down to the bottom of the mountain first security

00:20:56.320 checkpoint i went to just a few kilometers after getting in the car i was picked up by the iraqi

00:21:00.940 security forces and was interrogated for about four hours in various buildings funny enough that one

00:21:06.440 of their buildings interrogated me was called the cia and after four hours of interrogation they

00:21:12.520 couldn't really prove that i'd been into iran even though i had crossed the border because the summit of

00:21:17.200 the mountain is right on the border and it's in fact it's about 80 meters into iran and they let me go

00:21:22.340 so that added a little bit of excitement to the trip and i became the first person to ever climb

00:21:27.380 and ski that mountain in iraq it'll probably never be done again because it's such a dangerous area

00:21:31.560 full of landmines that's great how long ago was this again that was a 2013 wow and then that same

00:21:38.260 year i came back and did a trip in canada's high arctic another ski mountaineering trip to a pretty

00:21:43.060 iconic mountain up there and on that trip instead of landmines we had a sawed off 12 gauge shotgun

00:21:49.760 and and always patrolling for polar bears that were uh in danger of hunting us down but luckily

00:21:55.080 we didn't see any so so some pretty unusual uh challenges something more canadian like avoiding

00:22:00.120 polar bears and something definitely more middle eastern like uh avoiding landmines so i've done some

00:22:04.780 some unusual stuff and then and the latest thing was really outside my comfort zone i i can't even

00:22:11.720 describe how far out a comfort zone it was for me but i decided to take a solo ocean rowing boat a 20 foot

00:22:18.260 long one person boat uh about uh four feet across and 20 feet long i row it from mainland of north

00:22:26.300 america the mainland of europe so i rode from halifax canada to um brest france 3100 miles across

00:22:35.300 the north atlantic by myself and that was um a real step into uh a real step outside my comfort zone and

00:22:43.760 outside of my wheelhouse for sure what what we have first off how long did it take for you to

00:22:49.200 go from halifax to france 53 days i planned for 100 days that that route had only been done once

00:22:56.140 before in history from mainland canada mainland europe and it took that canadian uh female 129 days

00:23:03.800 and she had to be rescued mid-ocean and resupplied by a cruise ship but i was bound and determined to do

00:23:09.960 it under 129 days without any aid whatsoever and i did it in 53 days and came into brest france on a

00:23:18.940 very foggy day august of 2016 with my wife standing on the dock so it's quite a quite an expedition

00:23:24.660 that one yeah and what was you said this is completely out of your wheelhouse what inspired

00:23:28.500 you to to do this adventure brett that's a tough one i think i aim for blank spaces on the map i think

00:23:35.320 i've there must have been something that i read as a child or that i'd followed either as an adult

00:23:40.500 and this chunk of ocean this blue expanse between canada and france for some some reason really

00:23:47.260 pulled at me i'm of i'm of uh a mixture but i'm french canadian and german and and and i really

00:23:53.740 thought to do a trip the way my ancestors came to north america although backwards would be uh pretty

00:23:59.740 unique to uh to row a boat versus sailing in a boat but to row a boat human powered across the

00:24:06.280 north atlantic it just seemed like um it seemed like a challenge that was uh going to stretch me to

00:24:12.080 my limits and then coupled with that two years previous to that we tragically lost our our son

00:24:19.180 richard we our 21 year old son was um just got hired as a young bush pilot so pilot flying in the

00:24:26.420 north and arctic canada and he was canoeing on uh the mckenzie river which is the second largest river

00:24:33.760 in north america after the mississippi and he um was with a pretty girl that he was starting to date

00:24:39.120 from the town that he was in it was 9 15 at night and in the summertime in northern canada it doesn't

00:24:44.040 get dark so 24 hour daylight so bright sunny day and the canoe flipped and he stayed with the canoe and

00:24:50.280 she swam for shore and um we found his body eight days later and um that um that uh tragedy was such

00:25:01.040 an existential hit to us as a family and um for some reason i decided to bury myself um out at sea alone

00:25:10.760 on the water i think in some ways it was um cathartic and therapeutic and allowed me to somehow get maybe a

00:25:18.280 little closer to richard um by by doing that so that's why i chose one of the reasons i chose the ocean

00:25:23.860 and um it was uh especially difficult i celebrated the second i shouldn't say celebrated i marked the

00:25:32.120 second anniversary of richard's death in the middle of the uh north atlantic on a sunny day with uh a pod of

00:25:38.340 dolphins keeping me company so it was it was quite something i'm really really sorry um about your loss

00:25:45.060 um but i mean that's it's it's great i mean for me it's like i think it's crazy that you would just go

00:25:52.320 right back to it so i think for a lot of people to have a tragedy happen like that to a close family

00:25:58.420 member to a son they'd be like they would want they wouldn't have want anything to do with that again

00:26:03.120 um yeah it's it and it's really hard to explain i think that you know i i think i believe i've heard

00:26:10.920 that you're a parent now brett and there is nothing like losing a child it really is the worst nightmare

00:26:17.540 and what it does is it there's nothing good that comes out of it but just let me let me preface that

00:26:23.840 by saying that it's the loss of a child or the loss of a close family member is this there's this

00:26:29.580 permanent injection of sadness that is now injected into your life at all times but i want to be clear

00:26:35.240 that doesn't mean that this injection of sadness means that you're inoculated against ever being

00:26:40.380 happy again you can still be just as happy as you ever were you can still experience joy and you can

00:26:45.400 still experience wonder and you can still laugh and and for moments of your life it's not hanging over

00:26:51.380 you but at the same time it's always in your system so multiple times a day you will miss him you will

00:26:57.480 be reminded by him you will see his younger brother move like him or talk like him or say something that

00:27:04.120 he would have said or you find yourself wearing his t-shirt or his jeans or his boots or and what

00:27:10.100 it does it is it gives you as a person and and especially as a couple and as a family this new

00:27:15.300 relationship with uh with death and you know death is part of of life and that um the what i'm trying

00:27:23.380 to say is that it gives you this newfound wisdom maybe on the on how tenuous life can be and um how one

00:27:31.060 little error from an experienced canoeist on a summer night can end in a 21 year old at the height

00:27:38.500 of his power is uh drowning and it's um i think you come out with and you know we we were bound and

00:27:44.900 determined not to come out with ptsd and i think we trained we tried to change it into like a ptg or

00:27:51.960 post-traumatic growth where we we we did everything possible to come out of this healthy as a couple and

00:27:58.280 as a family so that meant grief counseling that meant talking about it openly that meant revisiting

00:28:02.760 our memories with richard on a daily basis pictures of him all over the house and and and that occurred

00:28:08.880 from the moment i got that call at 2 30 in the morning from the rcmp or what we call the royal

00:28:14.520 canadian mounted police here in canada and when you get that call at 2 30 and he says this is constable

00:28:20.120 of the norman wells rcmp are you the father of richard saint germain and then he gives you the news

00:28:25.700 and i went right back to my aviation background and i sat down on the bed for 15 minutes uh i was

00:28:32.220 sleeping in my youngest son's room that night because he was in our bed and i just sat there

00:28:36.660 and i started to go through a checklist a checklist of what i needed to do now as a man and as a father

00:28:42.200 to to handle the death of child and i followed that um got my wife brought her into the room quietly

00:28:49.920 told her you can imagine but she's an extremely tough uh lady and um she was uh devastated but by

00:28:58.060 staying busy by following this checklist we were able to um to fight our way through this and um

00:29:04.060 hopefully did get some of that ptg at the end that uh that growth that comes out of a horrible loss

00:29:09.000 and what i mean what was on that checklist was it the just it was memory every day that what you were

00:29:14.680 talking about earlier well the immediate checklist was what are what do i have to do now so at the

00:29:20.300 moment who do i have to tell how am i going to tell them how am i going to handle this i had to

00:29:24.960 i had to recruit my brother into he had to tell my mom before this got out on social media we had to

00:29:29.600 tell her daughter who is who is uh she's a ski coach and she was doing training that day

00:29:34.540 uh we had to tell janet's mom we had to make sure that people that were immediate family found out

00:29:41.400 from us so we actually made a plan like to the you know not to the minute but to the half an hour of

00:29:47.340 how we're going to get to all these people and tell them and then we started to work through the

00:29:51.140 process of what we're going to do i wanted to go up to the river i wanted to thank the people who

00:29:54.880 are trying to find him and to try and rescue him at that point there was still a recovery uh mission

00:30:00.020 going on but when you're uh when you're sitting on a river that's five kilometers across and

00:30:04.760 and uh somebody goes missing you unfortunately know what the consequences are so we flew up there

00:30:10.040 48 hours after it happened and talked to the rescuers and thanked them and and uh we just

00:30:16.300 stayed on that checklist and and that's what i've used for everything in my life is especially in in

00:30:22.600 expeditioning is this aviation um discipline of of risk management double checking things redundancy

00:30:30.980 making sure i have the stuff i need and then i literally for example if we want to get away from

00:30:35.480 the tragedy part of my life is that even on the boat i had a abandoned ship checklist and it's and i

00:30:41.540 i structured it just like i would an emergency checklist on the boeing 737 that i fly and i would

00:30:47.280 review it in storms i would i would have it out and i'd be reading it and getting ready because i was

00:30:51.800 you know the boat was getting crushed by waves it had capsized and this happened multiple times and

00:30:57.000 and and and checklists i think are really important in life it gives you a structure it gives you a

00:31:05.220 way to cover prevent errors you're never going to prevent them but mitigate errors or reduce them and

00:31:09.960 i think it really helped in my case with with the ultimate disaster of uh of losing richard i was able

00:31:15.020 to bury myself in this checklist in quotation marks and get the family through it and not on my own

00:31:21.520 we did it as a as a team i even use this checklist analogy to waking up in the morning

00:31:26.820 you know what makes a good day for yourself brett you know that uh if you're if a good day to you

00:31:32.260 means you're going to spend some time with your children you're going to have a good breakfast you're

00:31:36.060 going to make yourself a good coffee you're going to have an excellent workout you're going to do a

00:31:39.360 good podcast interview you're going to write a blog whatever i'm using use an example you know that

00:31:44.240 already so when you wake up in the morning you could jot that down what's going to make a perfect day

00:31:48.780 for brett mckay and you write that down you just do it so by the end of the day if you haven't done

00:31:52.980 it all you've haven't completed the checklist but at least we all know what makes a good day there's

00:31:57.720 no reason that we have to wake up and just take the day as it occurs or just take life as it as it

00:32:03.200 occurs we know we we we know the secret but for some reason we just let it happen we let it sort of

00:32:09.160 roll over us like a wave versus uh getting involved and uh and and manipulate life the way we want to

00:32:16.060 yeah i love this idea of checklist um so i you you know you you've mentioned how you've written out

00:32:22.600 these checklists for specific emergency situations and you had this checklist you created on the fly

00:32:27.860 when your son tragically died i'm curious and you it sounds like you do like a checklist for your day

00:32:32.520 but like do you have other checklists for other situations like very specific situations because i

00:32:36.840 know like for a pilot like there's like you know a checklist for uh you know pre-takeoff and

00:32:41.680 there's a checklist for takeoff there's a checkoff so like do you get that specific with your life

00:32:45.660 yeah yeah and and absolutely yeah you uh for anything to do in life you can use that checklist

00:32:51.960 or those checklists so for like you alluded to with aviation we have these macro events or these

00:32:56.980 these flight segments or what we call phases of flight and the real critical ones are obviously

00:33:01.980 takeoff approach and landing those are the critical parts of flying you want to make sure the flaps are

00:33:07.500 set and the trim is set and the landing gear is down all this stuff because if that stuff's not

00:33:10.580 done you're going to die it'll kill you so so we use those checklists and and and but each one of

00:33:17.740 those macro events meaning those flight segments are broken down into smaller segments so here's an

00:33:23.600 example rowing the ocean there is no checklist for rowing an ocean there is no there there if i wanted

00:33:30.060 to become a a pilot i could follow the procedures to become a pilot i get my student pilot license i get

00:33:35.840 my recreational pilot license or i think in the states called the sport pilot license i get my private

00:33:40.100 pilot license i follow these items but when you do something like climb a big mountain or row an ocean

00:33:46.120 you have to you have to write down what you think you're going to require to come back alive so i

00:33:50.340 literally sat down and jotted down a checklist what kind of education did i need this is a prairie boy

00:33:56.480 from a farming town originally in northern alberta canada i don't have any ocean experience so i had

00:34:01.360 to do my yacht master training first before that i had to do my day skipper training i i a lot of the

00:34:08.300 the navigation and meteorology stuff was similar to aviation but i had to know how to retie charts i

00:34:13.280 had to get my marine radio operators license and i wrote all this stuff down but it was like um

00:34:19.460 you're going in blind in a way but but with my experience as an expeditionist i was able to make

00:34:25.160 a checklist that covered all the bases and i actually did go out and do it successfully in the

00:34:30.320 fastest crossing ever and come back alive so somehow and i really attribute this to my aviation

00:34:37.100 background i made the checklist that got me back alive so super important but you can use it in

00:34:41.620 less critical situations on a daily basis like i said you know what makes a good day write it down

00:34:46.680 and do it do it yeah there's a great book uh we've written about it it's the power i think it's the

00:34:51.620 checklist manifesto is what it's called go on day yep absolutely yeah yeah check that it's fantastic

00:34:56.420 yeah and it's uh you know as an airline pilot we uh we use checklists all the time you do not fly an

00:35:02.740 airplane without a checklist i flew this morning and i did i can't even count how many checklists

00:35:07.580 and switches i had to do but all operated via checklist even though i've done it thousands

00:35:12.280 and thousands of times and it's uh it's the only way to go in a lot of situations in life right because

00:35:17.920 it just reduces that human error it it helps reduce human error and when you're doing something

00:35:22.020 that you do over and over and over and over again you think that you're an expert and you think it

00:35:26.660 can't happen to you like all of us think that but uh this checklist these checklists force you to follow

00:35:32.780 procedure and and checklists are what we say are written in blood the reason that there are checklists

00:35:37.600 is because other pilots have killed themselves because they forgot that switch and all of these

00:35:42.380 standard operating procedures and checklists are written in blood that goes for mountaineering that goes for

00:35:48.060 aviation that goes for sailing or ocean rowing and you learn from the mistakes of others

00:35:54.320 so i'm sure there's a lot of men listening to you uh tell about your adventures you've been on

00:36:00.540 and they're thinking this sounds great i'd love to do it but like i'm not a pilot so i can't get the the

00:36:06.260 flyers discount that sounds really expensive to you know get equipped for a trek up mount everest

00:36:12.400 what's your advice to these guys who want to go on these you know adventures like this but

00:36:16.700 they don't think they it's in their their wheelhouse or in the realm of possibility i guess

00:36:21.720 it's um it's like anything if you prioritize here's an example if you're a young married couple and all

00:36:28.640 of a sudden you have a child that you weren't planning on and you weren't expecting yeah the

00:36:34.000 reason expecting literally but if you if you beforehand had decided not to have a child because

00:36:39.680 you couldn't afford it when that child comes along you all of a sudden figure out a way to give that

00:36:44.580 child what it needs in life and you you pay for it literally you fund that child's life you can do

00:36:49.700 that with any type of goal if you really want to do it it's amazing how when you get focused on

00:36:54.600 something and maybe this is something that has to do with or that's that's peculiar to people that

00:36:59.300 like myself that do these expeditions and have these sort of lofty goals i guess is that once i get

00:37:05.520 focused on something it's amazing how things start to fall into place and how you find the money to do

00:37:12.360 that how you find the time to do that how you negotiate this or you arrange that if you really

00:37:17.380 want to do it i mean it sounds cliche if you really want something you really have to do what it takes

00:37:21.820 now what i also like to say is you just don't want something you don't say i want to be a an airline

00:37:29.200 pilot you say what do i need to do to become an airline pilot what do i need to do to be a solo ocean

00:37:36.420 rower i don't want to row the north atlantic what do i need to do to do that and you figure it out

00:37:42.060 you sit down you've got the benefit of google you've got the benefit of things like podcasts

00:37:46.040 believe it or not where there are so many tidbits that you can pick up to get these things done and

00:37:52.140 if you really want it you're going to be able to get to there to that uh to that goal or at least to

00:37:57.760 the starting line of that goal and then once you get there you're the one who's got to unzip that tent

00:38:01.960 and step out of the door at high camp on everest or shove off the dock into the north atlantic by

00:38:07.420 yourself but you have the means of getting to that point before you step out or shove off and i think

00:38:13.580 that's really something that people have to be aware of is they can make these things happen and

00:38:19.360 if you are going to do something prepare for prepare for it though please do the hard work none of this

00:38:26.280 stuff comes easy it's years and years of training it's um sitting at night in front of a computer

00:38:32.480 doing a course on on ocean navigation it's it's researching google map images and google earth it's

00:38:41.400 it's learning the local language so you can ask are there landmines here you can ask how do i get

00:38:46.240 there where do i buy fuel uh help me where is water that type of stuff and there's a there's a

00:38:52.720 very famous saying that i've fallen back on in years from a it's a greek philosopher named archelokos

00:38:59.100 he said we don't rise to the level of our expectations and i like to add dreams and hopes

00:39:03.900 but we fall to the level of our training so no matter what you hope for no matter what you pray for

00:39:10.940 unless you're prepared for that when this hits the fan so to speak it's your training that's going to

00:39:16.260 get you out of these situations or successfully to these situations or into them yeah you mentioned you

00:39:21.840 said pick up or was it step off step out and shove off yeah sort of like become your motto right it

00:39:26.880 has it really has to to grab a tent zipper at high camp on everest at 11 o'clock at night and unzip that

00:39:35.120 without oxygen and realize that you're out for the um for the physically and maybe maybe not

00:39:43.400 psychologically but the toughest day of your life it uh it takes a little bit of well it takes a lot of

00:39:50.340 commitment it takes a lot of preparation and it takes a lot of confidence and i think that's a

00:39:54.800 positive feedback loop that comes from preparation and there's nothing like it you could make up a

00:40:00.400 lot of excuses you could say i've got altitude sickness that i'm sick you could say that i'm too

00:40:04.860 cold you could say that i've got frostbite you can make a ton of excuses to not step out of that

00:40:09.640 tent just like when i shoved off the dock into the north atlantic stepping out and shoving off is very

00:40:15.000 tough though the the only one that's really made me pause for a second was shoving into the north

00:40:19.980 atlantic because that was a whole different world i mean i literally had no ocean experience at all

00:40:23.600 but i you know i just like a checklist i guess proceeding through a checklist i just sort of went

00:40:28.100 step by step wave by wave and and made it across and what's really interesting on the subject of ocean

00:40:34.960 rowing is that it's the only it's the only um mode of travel i know that you're facing where you

00:40:42.580 just came from you're never looking at where you're going and it's really strange because where

00:40:47.740 you're going is always in your imagination it's a compass heading that you can see by your feet

00:40:51.800 there's a compass between my feet on the boat but you're only using your imagination to to get to

00:40:59.580 where you're going versus canoeing down a river seeing the next bend or going around that rock or

00:41:04.800 climbing a ridge and going to that rock or going to turn up that crevasse or i'm going to get to that

00:41:09.100 peak and follow that coal or i'm going to ride my bike up that hill and by that road i'm going to

00:41:13.780 turn right it's a strange bit of a um psychological test when you're rowing a boat for these distances

00:41:21.260 first of all there's no markers out there and you're only using your imagination to get to where

00:41:26.420 you want to be which i think there's something there and i haven't quite figured it out yet

00:41:30.440 so not only were you doing these great adventures and being a pilot but you're also balancing fatherhood

00:41:38.660 as well so how how do you incorporate that element because i'm sure there's a lot of i know when a lot

00:41:43.260 of men they get married and they have kids they think well my days of adventures are over you know

00:41:47.780 i had my 20s for that i gotta i can't do that anymore how do you balance adventure and family and

00:41:53.420 career yeah so luckily for me i had the kids when i was in my 20s other than eric i was in i guess

00:41:59.020 early 30s when i had eric but uh i just brought them along i had the chariot i pulled behind my

00:42:05.040 bicycle and i'd go on long training rides in the mountains with a little tiny kid behind me a

00:42:09.920 backpack and then soon as they were literally old enough to start riding a bike they'd be on trips

00:42:14.740 i mean when when richard was 13 and andrea was 11 that's her daughter we rode our bikes 800 kilometers

00:42:21.060 in the canadian arctic up a gravel highway the youngest people ever to have done that and kids don't

00:42:26.380 know what they don't know and they don't know what they what they can or can't do and that's

00:42:30.500 what i love about them they're this blank slate and they pulled off this 800 kilometer remote

00:42:35.740 arctic canada ride on their bikes and it was just another bike trip and you just include them we got

00:42:41.700 them into skiing we got them to ski racing they became ski coaches all three of them eric is a ski

00:42:47.360 coach now at age 15 and we were in japan a year ago we are a year and a half ago we janet toured around

00:42:54.700 tokyo and the kids and i climbed skied up mount fuji and skied down it we took a couple of days and

00:42:59.600 did that on eric's 13th birthday i took him to the most active volcano in europe which is um on the

00:43:06.480 aeolian islands it's called stromboli and we sat on the rim and watched it erupt i mean

00:43:10.320 these things kids can do without any issues and it's um just bring them along and it doesn't really

00:43:17.380 slow you down that much but it does give you a new level of of awareness of your responsibility to

00:43:22.540 come back alive and and you may be getting tired of airplane analogies or aviation analogies but

00:43:28.980 when there's a aviation safety report like i alluded to earlier an accident there's always a cause and

00:43:35.180 it's usually the pilot and i never want my kids to see that i took a shortcut that i that i didn't

00:43:41.880 follow my procedures that i didn't have my safety harness on that i didn't check my knot and that's

00:43:46.280 what killed me or that i you know i didn't have i wasn't tied in when i fell into that crevasse

00:43:51.720 and because that'll be my epitaph on my tombstone for them um figuratively speaking and i don't want

00:43:59.740 that so i'm really cautious about never taking shortcuts even though i do some you know what i

00:44:05.800 think some people think are very dangerous things i do it in a very measured way and i'm extremely

00:44:10.000 cautious i didn't make one mistake on everest other than freezing my hand but i didn't do any

00:44:16.080 shortcuts i didn't shortcut my preparation i didn't take any shortcuts literally on the mountain and same

00:44:22.080 with the boat i um i was always tied into my safety line when i went onto the deck never ever did i risk

00:44:28.680 it no matter how calm the water was because i could have been knocked off by a rogue wave i could have had

00:44:34.080 a whale hit the boat which i did have i could have any situation and i could have just simply

00:44:38.760 disappeared and it would have been my mistake so makes you hyper aware of uh of uh risk mitigation

00:44:45.580 definitely and i guess another aspect of being able to balance family and doing this adventure

00:44:51.320 stuff is also marrying someone who's on board with your adventure lifestyle absolutely that's such a

00:44:57.360 critical i mean i think you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who if the wife was told that the

00:45:03.440 husband was going to climb ever so at auction she just says we'll get on with it sort of uh basically

00:45:07.300 what she said is you're not getting younger that's the exact quote so yeah it's it's fantastic she's

00:45:13.760 got this level of confidence in me that sometimes is a little disturbing she always thinks i'm

00:45:18.560 guaranteed to come back although the ocean was especially difficult i remember we had a dinner

00:45:23.820 before i left just her and i and the way back i took the whole family actually to europe to see the

00:45:28.680 boat when it was being built i wanted them to see what an ocean rowing boat was and how safe it was

00:45:33.840 and i actually went out and rode the boat with eric so we actually tested it let him row it let him

00:45:38.680 sort of get used to the systems on it so that's he was sort of my touch point with janet and andrea

00:45:43.100 and he could explain the systems to them and and this thing is literally like uh almost like a

00:45:48.540 space capsule it's that tough and it's it's it almost looks like a space capsule from the apollo days

00:45:53.660 inside it's got this tiny little cockpit with this door that seals and it's quite robust but

00:45:57.840 i took them there and then on the way back we stopped in reykjavik iceland and jan and i went

00:46:02.240 for dinner and i mean we were both in tears you know she she was you know sort of in desperation

00:46:06.680 saying to me why do you do this stuff what drives you to do this why on earth would you want to row

00:46:11.160 across the north Atlantic ocean what is wrong with you and i you you can't respond it's it's very

00:46:17.720 difficult and it is the biggest negative aspect of this type of life is is the uh is the worry

00:46:24.460 and the i guess the suffering you can put your loved ones through but luckily for me even though

00:46:31.420 i think um i've really tried to make my own luck i've always come back alive minus a few digits right

00:46:38.540 minus a few digits so i mean i guess you were doing this adventuring stuff before you married her so she

00:46:43.400 kind of she knew what she was getting into i think uh just four or five days after i met her i took off

00:46:48.980 to kilimanjaro okay so it was she never she's never known anything different yeah i think it'd be

00:46:54.280 hard if you you marry someone and then you're like five years later hey honey i'm gonna become

00:46:58.800 an adventurer you know what would really scare her is if i said hey honey i'm gonna take up golfing

00:47:04.220 she would absolutely panic that's wrong something's wrong well laval this has been a great conversation

00:47:13.320 is there some place people can go to learn more about your work and the other adventures you plan on

00:47:17.440 going on here in the future oh that's a quite like do you have any adventures planned oh i was scared

00:47:21.800 you're gonna ask me that i've always got many uh being planned i've got one of the seven summits

00:47:27.120 left it's the highest peak in antarctica called vincent i'm just sort of it's not a very difficult

00:47:32.980 peak it's only 16 000 feet high it's basically just a flight in there and you spend 10 days uh ski

00:47:39.340 mountaineering to the top i'd like to combine it with something else though so maybe a south pole

00:47:43.420 expedition so that's on my mind and usually when these things uh are on my mind they start to

00:47:49.320 fester and they turn into something and i also want to do a desert crossing a big desert crossing

00:47:54.280 something that's never been done so that one's a little bit confidential so i'm um i'm working on

00:47:59.960 doing a desert crossing and of course all my trips are human powered it's not going to be on a motorcycle

00:48:05.260 or on a in a jeep or anything like that so i'm working on those two plus all the time i'm doing stuff

00:48:12.740 we just got back from central europe janna and i she she's a big wine expert so we've toured all over

00:48:18.160 central europe and while she was doing wine tours i was running up the highest mountain in hungary

00:48:22.280 the highest mountain of poland to the highest mountain in the czech republic so wherever we go

00:48:27.300 i try and uh stay active get a run in and beg a peek or two so it's a real passion so there's always

00:48:33.240 something going on is there some place people can go to like follow you on these adventures

00:48:37.660 sure yeah so you can go to my twitter account it's probably the best i'm pretty active on twitter

00:48:41.900 and on instagram and it's just at laval saint germain so that's l-a-v-a-l-s-t-g-e-r-m-a-i-n

00:48:51.060 and my website is my name.com no period after the t in the website so laval saint germain.com

00:48:57.860 and there's a contact form in there you can reach out there follow me on twitter and instagram and

00:49:04.000 obviously facebook as well i'm on facebook i'm sort of new to that but uh really active on twitter and

00:49:10.360 uh and instagram and i'm also a public speaker so i i i got hired to talk about these things which i

00:49:16.280 absolutely love sharing these uh these stories of i called lessons learned from the beyond the

00:49:22.460 waves and above the clouds and that's really what it is because i think as men especially we love

00:49:28.100 these tales of adventure where the climber you're watching them from the bottom of the mountain they

00:49:32.300 do they disappear above the mists into the cloud and you wonder what's going on up there

00:49:36.620 or a boat that disappears over the ocean horizon and it's um i've always wanted to know what

00:49:42.180 happened uh out of sight and i've been doing it so i really love sharing my stories well laval saint

00:49:48.200 germain thank you so much your time it's been a pleasure thanks a lot brett my guest today was

00:49:52.400 laval saint germain he's an adventurer airline pilot and family man you can find more information about

00:49:57.200 his adventures and follow him on his adventures by going to laval saint germain.com all one word no

00:50:02.920 period in the between the saint germain also check out our show notes at awim.is slash laval

00:50:07.760 where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:50:10.720 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:50:27.880 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the show you've

00:50:32.300 gotten something out of it since you've been listening to it i appreciate if you take one

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#340： Life Lessons From an Adventurer

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