Jody Vance: Disagree with Decorum
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Welcome to the Jan Arden podcast and show. This is our three millionth show today. So we're handing out egg salad sandwiches. You get an egg salad. You get an egg salad. Yeah. I'm here with Sarah Burke. She's in Toronto. I am in Springbank, Alberta. We have a very special guest today, Jody Vance. Let me tell you a little bit about Jody Vance. Jody was born and raised

Vancouverite. She built her career in radio and TV in British Columbia before her big break. I'm going to have Jodi explain how big of a break it was. She was lured east in 2000. Sportsnet. So all you sporty people out there will remember that. Moved to Toronto.

And it just led to an incredible opportunity to make sports broadcast history, basically, because she was a national personality. So she did a brief stint as host at Sports Central. And then the executives, the guys on the upper special floors of the building, decided to offer up the national supper hour program seat. Unheard of. Oh, I know you sporty guys are just like twisting in your pants.

your pants right now. A decade later, 2009, the ocean called her back home with a return to Radio Roots in the cards for her greatest casting mother to her, Miracle Baby. And there is a story that we're also going to pick your brain about here.

You settled back home, Jodi. Do you sound like you're on This Is Your Life, Jodi Vance? I love it. Jan Arden's explaining my life. Let's go. It's a moment. It's going in the bio. So you're settling back home. The year is like 2010. The Olympics.

Things got really super busy. 2011, you picked up a few fill-in sports shifts at CBC Vancouver between hosting Middays on Shore 104, which was another dream opportunity presenting itself to you. Host of the Canucks Stanley Cup post-game show, Seeking Stanley. Holy crap, Jodi.

And then your career path took a bit of a turn out of sports and into full-time news, current affairs. And in 2011, you joined City TV and you were hosting Breakfast Television. I mean, this runs the gamut. Five years of that. Yeah.

We watch The Evolution where you are now a broadcaster. You're shaping conversations that impact your entire community. It's an opinion-based show and we know that you have got lots of... Listen, I could go on and on and I want to go on and on because I want people to have a sense of who Jodi is. Jodi Vance, welcome to the Jan Arden Podcast and Show. You're one of my favorite people. I have goosebumps. Thank you, Jan. I love being here. You know I love you right back. Let's just start with women in sports broadcasting.

You really busted down a lot of doors for dozens of women in this industry. I have to give props, though, to the women who came before me because I wasn't the first first. Like there was Terry Libel and the amazing Teresa Cruz. And I mean, I could list off a bunch of unbelievable women. I got to be the first to have their own national show in prime time. And how did that feel? Was it scary? Was it daunting? Was there jealousy? Tell me all about that experience. You know what's really crazy is...

When I was offered the job to go to Toronto to do Sports Central AM, the idea of getting up at 2.30 in the morning to do four live regional half-hour shows each day was like,

It was crazy to me. I agreed to do it for a year. I ended up staying for nine years, but I agreed to do it for a year and I didn't know if I could even do that. And so I went and I did it and the ratings on that show were fairly low, flat. It felt like not a lot of people were watching it, but it would air 13 times in each time zone. So it was a lot of Jodi all the time in every time zone. And I was doing just...

crazy Jodi stuff. Frankly, I was like wearing party pants on a Friday and I was wearing fuzzy slippers and kicking them up there. And I was not taking it too seriously because let's face it, guys, I was doing last night's sports. Nothing's happening at 6 a.m. unless Wimbledon. Yeah. So I would have fun with it and make the sports the star. I would just make fun of myself. And then the ratings went up 400% in the first three months that I was doing the morning. Only 400% folks, only 400%. 400%.

400% of not a lot. But then the powers that be, so Scott Moore, who was the boss there when I was there, and really a dream maker for me, brought me into the boardroom. I'm exhausted, guys. I don't want to do 2.30 in the morning. I love the job. I hate the ship so much. I was so tired living in Toronto by myself, didn't know anybody, had moved across the country with my cat, Harley, and

And I'm sitting in the boardroom and basically my executive producer, who I'm pretty sure didn't believe Michael Gillings didn't really believe that women should be doing sports anyway, was like, we're taking you off mornings. And I was like, great. Now what? Scott goes, do you want to know what the plan is? I'm like, sure. But all I know is I'm not getting up at two thirty tomorrow. So but I promised him I would do it for a year. And then he said, we're going to move you to six o'clock. And I was like, sorry, sorry, me.

And when you asked about jealousy, what's really interesting here, Jan, is my expectation was Hebsey was doing the sports. Mark Hebbshire, who was like an iconic mainstay sports guy in that market in particular. And really, people knew him across the country, but really Toronto. And he was on the desk at the time. And he was so classy about it because he knows it wasn't my idea. There were a couple of people in the room that were like,

Feeling it was their turn, but also didn't blame me. So a room full of guys and all of us in broadcast have some level of ego associated with what we do. I would count myself included. I'm proud of what I do, but they were really good to me. And it wasn't until I'd already done my first show.

that I saw the press release that said it was the first ever. And I was like, holy shit, I'm glad I didn't know that before. Yeah, like everything. I just come at it like, well, if you're going to give me the chance to do it, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to do my best. And that's really how it went. And that's what you've been doing. You've been doing your best. We're just going to fast forward like a number of years. And here you are Thursday nights on Czech television doing an op-ed, fun,

gritty, thought-provoking show with Linda Steele. And Jen Arden. Well, I've been there a couple of times. Thank you for having me. But is it Vance and Steele? Is it Steele and Vance? You know, this is still up in the air. It's still up in the air. It's Steele and Vance. But Linda Steele, I've known for years from talk radio and a lot of things. So here we have two women. It's Current Affairs, and you have special guests. But for the most part, this is something that I don't think would have worked

five years ago. And here you guys are killing it. Like you are getting great feedback from your viewers. It's going up week after week after week. How has that been with Linda? Oh, it's just been an unbelievable ride. I can't believe we're only three episodes or two episodes left of 42 week season. We've been picked up for season two. I know. Woo!

Linda and I own the show. So here's an interesting way. I think that media is going to continue to move forward because content is always going to be needed, right? You're creating great content right here with Sarah and you and being on Sarah's podcast as well. Like this is content people will want to

to listen to, to watch, to have. It's just how it's presented. It's always been you have to pay an exorbitant amount of money. You have to know the right people. It has to go through the right filter. If somebody isn't into it, then it doesn't happen. With Linda and I, we created this show and Check is partnering with us. So we

We create the content and they lease the program from us. They sell the commercial time. We get to sell the sponsorship time within the show and obviously make our lease payment and are supported on the technical side by Check. Now, Check is the only media outlet in North America

that is owned by its employees. If there's a greater statement to be made in where I want to be moving forward in media, because all of those people with the upside down Canadian flags that want to scream that I'm owned by somebody, when they come at me,

it shows how ill informed they are. Right. You know, and I kind of I want them to watch our show and know there's a place for them to learn from what we're bringing to the table. We are British Columbia's kitchen table. Linda and I say we watch the news for you. I love it. She is a news person like she you know, Jan, she is detailed. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I'm a

I like to say I'm Jimmy Kimmel to our Walter Cronkite. The nice thing is too, is that you're not mired in political correctness. You are not working for big brother that, you know, either leans left or leans right, or, you know, or is too afraid to say anything, God forbid to offend anybody. So you have this really milk toasty, uh, show that, that doesn't hit any buttons. And I know that when I was on there, uh,

you gave me this opportunity to thank Bonnie Henry, who has been spearheading the COVID efforts when we were in the middle of the pandemic in British Columbia. And as we know, every single person across this country that was heading up any kind of consortium dealing with COVID in the pandemic, they got massacred. It all started out pots and pans and cheering, and then these people were eviscerated.

And Bonnie has, you know, she was telling us that, yeah, she in some circumstances had a plainclothes officer with her. Three. Myriad death threats. Yeah. Death threats, folks. And I had the opportunity on your show, which you actually played, of thanking Bonnie for standing up to that. And I felt good that I had a place and I faced a lot of opposition for saying that, yeah, you don't know how many kids she killed and you don't know. Like, I'm just like shocked.

Just shut up. This isn't your time to beak off about things that have nothing to do with science, nothing to do with actual facts. You can live in that world if you want to, but that was gutsy. And I don't think I could have done that at bell. I don't think I could have done that at CBC or city TV or any of the major ones. I don't think they would ever have played it. This is the thing people don't understand. You're allowed your opinion. Sarah's allowed her opinion and I'm allowed an opinion, but free speech, free speech, baby.

Free speech except for yours. Yeah, it's weird.

It is so important to say out loud your truth, especially your educated truth. And I love the fact, and you know this, Jen, from being on the show, Linda and I are very different people, okay? She comes from Edmonton. I'm from Vancouver. She has no kids. I had IVF to have my son. She has no pets. I'm the crazy dog lady. You know, she never cooks. I went to culinary school. She and I come from very different places.

opinions at very different points of view. But what would a show be if you were agreeing all the time? Exactly. But sometimes we do this in front of people on camera and at the end of it, we do this. Cheers. And then we move on because what's lost today is

is being able to disagree with decorum. Where is the debate? Where is the conversation? And then the agreement to say, you know what? That's not the way I see it. And Linda and I have had a couple where people were watching the show going, oh my God. And it's like, it's fun.

It's fine. It's okay. She wants to reiterate her point because she's right. And I'm like, still not my opinion. Don't you both find that there are so many people sitting on the fence in their opinion in media right now? It's so much stronger when you take a stance. I think that's so lost now. Yeah. Why do you think we've come to this place, the war between the left and the right and absolutely no middle ground and no one's willing to budge?

Sarah and I have talked about this so many times. We've moved from anti-vaxxers to freedom convoys to it was drag queens about, you know, eight weeks ago. Yeah. The pro-choice. And now we're attacking LGBTQ2 plus spirit community. And it just seems like we keep moving into these issues that I thought were kind of laid to rest. Because there's no real...

Strategy or platform being put forward by most of the people who would make the attacks, as you just explained on, you know, whether it's women's right or LGBTQ2S plus right. Black Lives Matter. Woke.

The people that use the word woke, you can identify those people as speaking to no actual meaningful platform and policy. What they're doing is they're creating the fear of the other. You have to have an other that you can target to so that you can tell a broad base, you should pick me because I will protect you from that fear.

other. The interesting part of that, which I hope will correct itself as this pendulum swings so wildly, it just feels so wild right now that there's even a conversation about a future president of the United States being able to run from behind bars. I never thought I'd live in a world where that was a thing. But that

chaos making has permeated out of what once was the greatest democracy on the planet. And now we're seeing the pillars of democracy shaken because a reality TV host managed to get himself into the Oval Office by being popular enough to a

I would say undereducated base who just said, I know who that is. I'll vote for him. I like him. He seems tough, not having any sort of meaningful platform to say what he's going to do. So I just want to talk about something that I don't know if men deal with it as much as women do, but because you are a public personality, because you are opinionated, because you are very attractive, because you are...

a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners type of a person, you had a stalker. And you had a man who viciously, verbally, emotionally taunted you, jabbed at you from afar, from near. He sent hundreds, if not freaking thousands of texts, emails. Tell us about that. It was sort of resolved, sort of not this past few months. And

made national headlines, of course. You know, stalking's serious and we've got to start taking it seriously. So tell us, if you can, your story. I totally can. And the broken system. Let's touch on the broken system, please. No kidding. The broken system. Yeah, well, Sarah, you and I spoke about this on your Women in Media podcast and I've done some Canada land. Like you said, I was on the National with Ian Hannah-Mansingh. I did media. I'm not used to being the story. Can I just say that? That was really weird for me. And yet at the same time, on behalf of the

Far too many women, particularly BIPOC women in particular, who have suffered online harassment that I can't even imagine. And I can tell you that mine was more than enough to make me almost leave the industry.

It was unbelievable the breadth of attack that I suffered from this one individual. I didn't know who he was at first, so it started pretty benign, I thought. You know, you woke blah, blah, blah. About the same time Donald Trump came down his escalator as he was announcing himself to be a candidate for president. Yeah. And it was like...

There was a very obvious cadence to his emails that he would send to me. And he did it under his real name. And for years, I did not say his real name. And let me be clear up front. I do not want this man to be cancelled.

I want them to be counseled. I want there to be consequences moving forward. I want other women to know that, that I'm going to fight for swift and meaningful consequences for people who would harass online. That's my goal now. Not canceled, counseled. The line of the century. Not canceled, counseled. I want a t-shirt. Okay, go ahead. We should make t-shirts. I should do that. We should. You know what? That's a great idea.

I'm going to do, I'm going to do that because I really don't, I didn't say his name out loud for years of the process, even in the face of the stuff that he sent me, he would copy in. So if I'm on CKNW in Vancouver doing a fill-in show, let's say I'm filling in for Linda seal. Cause that's how we met Linda and I filling in on her show. Don't even have my own show. And I would get emails from this man.

That would include all of the guests who were on the show, all of my coworkers, all of the people at the food chain. He copied me in on a death threat to Dr. Bonnie Henry. That was his first mistake because that activated the RCMP at the legislature. Cause you're not allowed to threaten somebody who has an office in, in our government buildings that activates a whole different piece of law enforcement. I would argue now all of these years later,

that that activation should happen for anybody. I was going to say, it's unfortunate that you have to be a member of parliament or someone in the upper floors, let's say, in order to garner that kind of serious attention. It was five solid years of harassment. Oh, come on. But so five years of it. And honestly, I went to the powers that be at Corus and

they've changed policies and things have changed significantly since then. But at the time it was like,

We don't know who he is. But why do you have to know who it is? Why does this person, oh, he's a doctor living in the North Shore. We know exactly who the guy is. Drives a Dodge Dart. Like, I don't even know what that means. Find out who he is. Exactly. If it was the prime minister, they'd know who he is. That's, again, I'm not the prime minister, but I am a person. They'd know if he was circumcised, you know? They would know all these things. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So I asked him to stop early days. It was on my radio email that I get and answer when I'm talking to listeners. And he had sent me some stuff and it really escalated. I said, please stop. And he sent me another. And I said, I asked you to stop. And he sent me another. I said, if you don't stop, I am going to take action. And he said, good luck with that. Yeah. Knowing full well that it didn't bode well systematically for

for a woman in your position to have this taken seriously. Yeah, it's so frustrating. So fast forward, this did end up in the court of law, Jodi. It did. It did. So I had seven years of evidence that the Crown ultimately whittled down to six months worth of evidence in the interest of saving time. And because they took...

the seven years and collapsed it into six months, there was basically no punishment. They entered into a plea agreement. I had a very novice crown attorney that went up against his very experienced defense attorney going into court that day, March 10th, 2023. I was told it was going to take 20 minutes. It's all agreed. It's very procedural. The judge ended up after hearing my victim impact statement,

stopped proceedings and said, I'm going to need to take a break. I'm going to need to see those emails. And then he came back and he read a couple of the emails. And I never in my life imagined Jody swallows at gmail.com being said in a public court. That was only one of thousands of emails that he created that were sexualized and evil. He'd Photoshop my face into Auschwitz. The big one for me, the thing that changed it all for me is he mentioned my son.

And that's when I was like, I'm taking you out. Fuel my fire, baby. I'm going now. Well, yeah, you can mess with me, but you step into my child, my family, my sacred space, the people that I love so much. So what was the outcome? The judge took a break, read some of these emails and came back with what, Jodi? He ended up quoting because it was a plea agreement that the defense attorney in the Crown had come to.

They agreed he was going to plead guilty in this agreement. He would stay away from me for a year. He can't have a firearm for 10 years and a conditional discharge at the end of one year. He will not even have a criminal record. He will not even have a flag if he does this again to someone else. This won't even show up, which is the part that really pisses me off. Unacceptable. Right.

We need a system that flags people who do this as a deterrent. Well, never mind that in the workplace and everything else. It should be, you know, if a DUI can haunt you for 25 years, a DUI that is one night out of a person's life, I'm sorry, stalking a person for seven years with thousands of derogatory, sexualized shenanigans.

Shitty comments. Threatening. Threatening comments. That needs to be much more substantial. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. We're civilly suing him next. Good. Literally next week. We're trying to find a team, a legal team that will do it on contingency because Jesse Miller, who's a part of this with me, Jesse actually identified this man. Jesse from mediated reality is my godsend in all of this.

He one day picked up, he texted me and goes, got a second for a phone call. I answered and he goes, grab a pencil. This is his name. This is where he lives. This is what he does for a living. This is, he's married with this many children. I was like, Oh my God. We have got so much more coming up with our special guest, Jody Vance. Holy moly. Don't go away. We'll be right back after this quick break. You're listening to the Jan Arden podcast and show.

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We are back at the Jan Arden Podcast and Show. I'm here with Sarah Burke and our special guest, Jody Vance. And Jody, was he in the courtroom when you were there? Yes, I stared him down in my victim impact statement and I actually said to him,

I know you want what I have and you can't have it. I'm going to keep it. And I hope that your children never experience what you did to mine. He's still married, I take it? Oh, yeah. She was sitting stoic. She was mad at me in there. They are in it together. I'll tell you this. He's still active on social media, spewing the same thing. He's just targeting other people. I wouldn't be surprised if he was on your feed. Now when you look at it, you might notice him there because he's

He had two or three pages small typed for his statement that he was going to make. And as he was getting up to go and sit in the stand to deliver, his attorney was like,

trying to tell a path to him as he was speaking to the judge your honor my client certainly comes here today wanting to explain why he disagrees with Ms. Vance and what he believes to be true and his reasons behind but he in the interest of brevity today in this court like

The defense attorney was directing his client in the moment. And after he spoke, the judge, to your question, the judge said, this is disgusting and there is no place for any of this. You could tell he wanted to wipe away the plea agreement, sentence this man. And yet...

had to go through. He quoted the Supreme Court of Canada three times as to why it is important to honour a plea agreement that the Crown has entered into. But he did so... Reluctantly. ...at every

At every moment, I thought, maybe he's not going to do it. And he went so far as to say, Mr. Oliver, I want you to understand that I can bring you back to this courtroom at any time and sentence you without further trial. Do you understand? So if he steps out at me this year. Obviously, there's nobody watching his behavior. He's like you said, he's sending vitriol out to

many other people. We need a task force of people. We need a, we need a federal task force of people and not have these people land in jail. That as I, as I told you, Sarah, not have them land in jail, but have it be like you said, Jan with the DUI, the punishment of a DUI is a deterrent for those people other than the fact that you might kill someone or yourself.

is the fact that if you are caught doing this, it will cost you this much the first time. It will cost you this much and your car the second time. It'll cost you this much and your driver's license and you might go to jail this time. And if you do it again, then you're just going to jail. If we could have a system for online harassment that was like that,

If I tell you to stop and you come at me again, it's $100. Take it to the government. This is a tax-paying boon right now. There are so many people doing it. If you could collect fines...

for harassment right now? There's so much AI, like the algorithms for all our social media platforms. They can certainly tell us what ads to show us. Why in the world can't they use some of this intelligence to flag certain kinds of statements, gather it up? This guy's name appears 4,500 times. With that word. So first and foremost, you're going to lose your privileges on this platform. You're

And free speech, when it's hate speech, I think has limitations because my freedom is at stake now. You're taking away my freedom to go about the world in a carefree way. You're taking that away from me. How do we keep believing in people, Jodi? Do we stay off of social media? What's our choices? Obviously, if you're walking through an airport, Sarah and I have talked about this, if you could see the bubble of people's tweets online,

like hovering over their heads through the airport and what they're saying and who they are and what their handles are. But you can't, in an airport, everyone's just doing their thing. This could be the person that is sitting in their basement eating cheesies, hurling the most vicious of insults

So why are we one person here on this social media platform and we're an entirely a different person in real life? What is triggering that? He worked in an old age home. Wasn't that what it was? No. Senior care. Yeah. He worked in senior care, which was one of the major also triggers for me to be like, no, not in a vulnerable community like that. I'm not going to, I can't just leave this.

But to your question, Jen, it's interesting. I just had an opportunity to sit at a gathering for Frances Haugen, who's the whistleblower from Facebook. She worked at Facebook and she's talking about...

the ecosystem of social media and how it's kind of like big tobacco and alcohol and automotive before seatbelts. We're kind of catching the tail of this comet. The people who are running these social media platforms are

Their currency is a dopamine hit. Every time you get somebody to hit that heart or retweet or comment, and a lot of people do it because they have no attention in their everyday life and they're starved for it. And any kind of attention is better than no attention. And I think that's something broken in our society, but it's being fed by social media platforms. And we're late to the party on having the big tech companies

identify the toxicity of, and the impacts of some of the products that they're putting forward. You know, cigarettes now have to have warning labels. You know, you have to buckle up when you get into your car because we've identified that you can save X number of lives with seatbelts or the automotive industry is going to be on the hook for those. Like there is no activation for that in social media. And I think that that is definitely fed into,

I highly recommend Frances Haugen as a guest for this podcast. She was unbelievable. I'll give you her information because I sat there and I went, this is what's broken here, that there is that culture of ugliness. No one's taking the responsibility of what happens, the interactions that happen on these platforms.

And then there's people like Elon Musk that'll say that this is my playground and it's supposed to be free like that for you to use it. It's what people do to each other on these platforms. And yet there's another side of it that is gloriously uplifting, community-minded people. There's such an opportunity to learn.

I've learned a lot of stuff. I've met a lot of incredible, not in person at this point, but one great woman I know said good things come from bad things. Jan Arden. Yeah. Well, it's not untrue. And it's something that I sort of cling to each and every day as I make my way through the world. It does get harder and harder to believe in good people, but just sitting here looking at the screen at you two.

um, incredibly strong women that are not afraid to express opinions. They're not afraid to make mistakes. They're not afraid to, to step out and, and be seen and use their real names on social media. I'm like, Oh, I don't use my real name because you know, I'd be in trouble at work. And what, what, how, how is it that I'm yeah. Yeah.

It makes no sense, all this. I'm banana one, two, three, four, because you don't want to accept any responsibility. You don't want to face your bubble. You don't want any responsibility. Exactly. You want to walk through the airport and not have anyone know what you're really doing in your mother's basement. Anyway, Jodi Vance, any words of wisdom you want to leave us with? The one thing I will leave you with, because we did mention my IVF baby off the top. Yes. There are...

Women watching this for sure who are struggling to conceive or struggling to stay pregnant or have suffered loss. It's a very daunting journey when you're in it. And I want people to know, again, I'm available on Twitter to have these conversations about the fertility journey. My miracle is now six foot one. His Afro makes him six foot five. Yeah.

But he, I mean, this is my words of wisdom when it comes to the pregnancy journey. If any of my pregnancies that didn't work on my two and a half years of fertility to my round of IVF, they wouldn't be him. Yeah. So when you're feeling like, why not me? Why didn't that work? Why, why did this happen? It's because when it does happen, you'll know why.

And the journey is real, whether you end up having a biological child or an adoptive situation or even a foster to adopt, which a number of my friends have done incredibly successfully and lovingly and added to their family in ways. Or through marriage. I have two stepchildren who are wonderful. And, you know, I'd like to leave that family vibe as beautiful.

you know, it doesn't have to be conventional or traditional in order to be incredibly rewarding and lovely. If you're meant to be a parent, you will be. Well, thanks for ending there too, Jodi, because at the end of the day, with all the shit that's going on, friends and family, these are the building blocks of our lives. So the stalking and the vitriol and the politicizing everything and all the news, everything we see when it comes down to it, you close that door in your home and your family and your friends and, you know, watching a movie, having a nice meal.

And I think we all have to keep in mind too, that there's a lot of people that don't have that. They don't have a door that they can close. And so we know how sacred that is and we know how valuable that is in order for us to keep doing what we're doing. And so we need to do better. All of us need to do better. And for those of you hitting that keyboard madly and sending it out into the abyss,

Those are really hurting people, real people. This isn't a fake world. This isn't a game. This is an Xbox where it's a virtual enemies. These are real people. So get your kick somewhere else. And I'm going to let you say it. Our t-shirt, we're getting t-shirts made that are going to say, not canceled. Debate not canceled. Canceled.

counseled, not cancelled. Yeah, I want him counseled, not cancelled. But then there's also, I want debate with decorum. Oh, these are...

And still my opinion, the new show with Jodi Vance. Yes. And stealing Vance starting again, the first Thursday after labor day in September, we watched the news for you and landed on your Canadian kitchen table. Linda and I, if you need to take a break from the news cycle that can be very noisy and painful to consume on an ongoing basis, we will take the week that was and put it on your kitchen table and lands for us. Well, thank you for being amazing. Thank you for being unbelievably generous to me and,

and the horse shit campaign and having me on your radio, your radio shows, whenever Jody's pinch hitting for anybody or when she's got her own thing going on, she is waving the horse shit flag and we are all so grateful. So thank you. Let's get together this summer. Let's have food. You got to get your butt back out here and hang out. I'm in.

I already tried to recruit her to come when I'm coming for the Canmore for the golf tournament. I'm like, we need to find a way to meet. I'm in. Yeah. I'm in. I've got oodles of time this summer. I'm taking a break from the nonstop constant treadmill of work so that I can hang out with my friends like you. So just say the word and I'm in. I can't wait. I just can't wait. I'll be sure to start picking terrible movies now. Yay.

I will stock the candy bin. Ladies and gentlemen, Jodi Vance, Steel and Vance, renewed for season two. We love you and hope you'll come back and see us anytime. See you, ladies.

Thanks for this. Wow. Jodi Vance. Hey, just, I love her. So I've never met this woman and I need to meet her. Yeah. So capable, so professional, so smart, so driven, so multifaceted. Fearless too. She's, she's just done it all. She hasn't had this life that's

been easy. She's worked so hard for everything that she has. And I hate hearing about someone who can be a coward and an absolute moron from a keyboard and cause such pain. Just a shout out to the people that are making the laws in this country. Do something about it. Fix it.

start imposing much harsher, stricter punishments on the people that are doing this in social media. There are kids dying, killing themselves over this kinds of stuff. Jodi's a grown ass woman. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, she even had her limits, obviously do something about it. Free speech ain't free when you take away somebody else's freedom. Simple as that. Moving on.

on as you know in this show we go from one thing to the next the wedding finally happened the wedding update sarah's sister finally got friggin married yeah well you said you had a nice wedding too it was it was really lovely jake and jesse congrats it was excellent they they all went to char bar afterwards very small house wedding 30 people were there it was lovely everyone cried

Jesse, like a lot of modern families, has four parents, stepmoms and dads, right? Okay.

But anyway, they had a really lovely ceremony at their house, in their backyard with their pals. And then a couple hours later, everyone went downtown to the sort of the east side of Calgary. What a beautiful day it was. But there were hurt feelings. People that weren't at the 30-person wedding ceremony thing. There was drama. But there's 30. You can't. That's what they wanted. Jake and Jesse wanted that. Nobody else was in charge of the guest list. Yeah. But, you know, drama. Jeez.

My dad is one of seven siblings, right? So with six other siblings, you know, many of them have kids. Like we could, Joanna, my sister, she could not invite all the cousins as much as like normally you think you invite the whole family, right? Couldn't invite everyone. It was like the parents. It just had to be the aunts and uncles because there's only so many spots. Yeah.

The stuff that ensues from these kinds of things, the misunderstandings, the assumptions. Oh, many. You know, why are they more important than me? Like,

You know, why was she there and I wasn't there? So that's so tough on everybody. And it really makes it tough for the young people that are getting married or the old people that are getting married that you can't please everybody all the time. Anyway, other than that little glitch of people making it about themselves, it was an absolutely fantastic day. And it's really...

so inspiring seeing people in love and love is very inspiring. And Oh my God, like I thought for this wedding with like, you know, all the things I've been through, I was like, I don't feel like I'm going to be emotional, you know, a straight face at this wedding and just do what I was told and whatever. I lost my shit when my sister walked down the aisle. I was like, shit.

I cried the whole time too. It is emotional. It's not even my, it's not my kids, but I love those kids, but your sister looked beautiful. You look beautiful. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I took an edible in the Uber on the way to meet Sarah Burke. No, I, this is how I was going to get through the day. It was going to be good. Okay.

I wanted to be in good spirits. I wanted to be, you know, and I was, I definitely was. So on the way to meet my mom and the bridesmaids, I definitely got brushed off when I got there because I don't think anyone would know the full story of what's going on. And the bridesmaids were looking at me like, how dare you not be here this morning? You know, that kind of vibe. It was fine though. I did my thing. My mom looks so gorgeous. I've never seen my mother look so gorgeous in my life. They knew

you weren't coming to the hair and makeup thing. They knew that. That's why I wanted to have an edible because I just had a smile on my face by the time it was kicking in and everything was great. You were eating your bag of all dressed chips and having your bagel and you didn't care. Yeah. So, okay, get this at the photos. We're taking photos. Um, after the ceremony, they're calling people up for photos to keep it going fast. And they're like, okay, we need Lauren and

and Paula and they say my now ex-boyfriend's name. Everyone's going, ugh. So this is why the edible was good. Everything was just laughed off for the day. Oh, God. So the ex-boyfriend was cordial? So I actually ran into him, funny enough, at an event yesterday and it was cordial, but he didn't want to talk. It was a brush off and that's fine. That's hard and I think there's still some processing going on. It's fresh. So

So can't blame him for that. But I know that for me, I needed to say, hello, how are you? And be that person. And I did that. Whether I got brushed off or not, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So you wanted to wrap up here with arguments. And it's funny because Jodi kind of touched on arguments too. What got you thinking about it? I just, I think the wedding and what kind of the aftermath of people unhappy with how the guest list was set

who got invited and the pecking order. And I can't believe they're more important than I am. So they really personalized it. It has nothing to do with who's important. It's up to, you know, the people that they wanted there. They went out of their way. They had everybody two hours later to get together.

where everyone's partying instead of celebrating, but in their house, in their modest house. Like, come on. That's what they could fit in the backyard. And, you know, it's not like being picked last for a baseball game when you're four years old. Sorry, it's not that vibe. Two sports references in the show today, Jan. I'm loving it. But I'm just saying, you know,

They're just petty arguments and how do you resolve them? And I read this Marianne Williamson quote one and Marianne Williamson used to be very highly revered by myself. I've since lost a lot of

My respect for her just because of her political aspirations and just the way she, she's, she's just said a lot of really strange things for me. Maybe other people like them. But anyway, one thing she did say that, that really struck me, and this was years and years ago, I was, I was trying to reconcile being dumped in a relationship and I was so heartbroken. And I read this book and one of her quotes was, you know, do you want to have peace or do you want to be right?

And like, I want to have peace. I do not need to be right in an argument. I'll be the first person to go, hey, that's what you need to do. That's what you need to do. I will never be defiant. I will never go, you're wrong. I'm right. I'll just be like, cool. A lot of my friends have said that in arguments, because I've always been someone with like, call it a thesis, like a verbal thesis. I want to go through my points and I have a strong opinion usually, right? And

That happens in my relationship with my sister. That happens with anything. But I think in the last year, that's sort of changed for me. I've kind of learned to go for the peace. And there's something beautiful about that little bit of peace, I think. There sure is. I'm stepping into it.

It sure is. And there's so much heartbreak and so many families get torn apart by arguments and issues that are decades old. And I'm not kidding you. Not weeks, not days, decades. A decade old thing that happened at a family get together, whether it was a funeral, an episode at a wedding, a child's graduation, you know, life events. Yeah.

Things that never are resolved, that everyone goes to their corner, they put their guns in their holster and they're just like, nope, this is it. I'm never talking to her again. But I really think that after a while, people don't even know what they're mad about. And what exactly are you looking for? Are you looking for someone to get down on their hands and knees? And I'll tell you right now, usually that's not enough.

The person will come back and say, listen, didn't mean for that to happen. I was drunk or this, that. The apology is never enough. It's too late. The other person now who has been given this little bit of power is going to exercise that and go, nope, you had your chance. Well, no, but what is this called right now? I'm literally down on my hands and knees telling you,

that I'm very remorseful and sorry. Yeah. It will not be enough. A lot of times people do not accept an apology. We're going to talk more about that. We're going to ask you folks right now listening, send us those stories. If you've got stories, send us a voice note on any of our social platforms. Tell us about

a family event or a relationship event or a friendship event. And I'm not talking about forgiveness here. And I know we've covered that. This is a whole different thing about the art of an apology. Yeah. The art of an apology and, and how arguments get started and why really do we make a choice to stay inside of those arguments? It's funny with my sister's maid of honor.

I was hoping to see her at the brunch the day after the wedding. I'm not really sure why she wasn't there, but I had this little plan in my head that I was going to approach her and apologize for my tone at one instance during this experience. Yeah. And then I was going to also say, I want you to consider

how you might've made me feel as well. And that's why I'm coming to tell you how I've been thinking about how I maybe made you feel, right? I wanted to have that piece. That is so admirable. That is so admirable. Did you? No, but I am going to send her a text message or a voice note. Now be prepared. She may not accept it. And don't feel bad about that. Feel really proud of yourself for making that kind of effort because you are now, you've put that

You've given that to her and that's a gift. We need to be open to that. And before we wrap up here, we did get a couple comments last week. Yeah, yeah. My God. So Laura Lee, she sent us an Instagram message.

Hi, Jan. I've recently discovered your podcast. I've been binging from the beginning. Wow, that's a lot of episodes. Just jumped into recent episodes. Losing virginity. I also lost my virginity on a waterbed. It was my bed with my boyfriend. He was a year older than me. We were considerably younger than you had been. My mom is likely still recovering. I am 53 this month. I spent most of the

loss looking at the clock as my parents were at a Blazers game. And I was worried they'd come home early. Incidentally, the Blazers lost last night out of the running for the Memorial Cup.

She says there were more waterbed adventures, including bed of said boyfriend's brother. But that's another story. Loralee, thank you. Wow. Yeah. And then Andrea sent us some song ideas for our summer jams, jams, summer jams playlist. We should kick that off the week of summer, right? So we'll get that going in about a week or two. June the 20th. Andrea says honeymoon suite, wave babies. What does it take?

bruce springsteen dancing in the dark john cafferty and the beaver brown band on the dark side there's one i haven't heard of yeah fine young cannibals she drives me crazy she drives me crazy i like that one yeah cheap trick i want you to want me classic uh duran duran hungry like a wolf and madonna vogue looking forward to the playlist share the link asap we will awesome well listen we're we're out of time and uh

We love that you're listening. We appreciate you so much. Leave us a review. Give us five stars. Give us seven stars.

But we appreciate you more than you know. Sarah, I appreciate you. As always, you do such an amazing job. Jodi Vance was our guest today. She's phenomenal. Steel and Vance is Thursday night. Their last show is coming up in the next few weeks. But you can also tune in online to watch the show if you are not in the Vancouver area because it is a local show. I'll have a link for you in the episode notes. Thank you so much, guys. We'll talk to you soon. Toodaloo.

This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.