(0:00 - 3:11) Canada is becoming increasingly dangerous. Reports of random assaults are becoming a regular occurrence, situations in which a person is assaulted and sometimes killed by a complete stranger, often on or near city transit. Home invasions are also on the rise, and carjackings, which used to be extremely rare in Canada, are also climbing. And our Liberal government is not only doing nothing to stop this, but is making the situation worse, through increasing immigration and through wokeism, which paints the perpetrator as the victim if a person defends themselves. Vincent May is the Managing Director and Instructor at OPPS, On-Point Protection Skills, a Calgary and Vancouver-based organisation that teaches not only practical self-defence, but danger-proofing, how to avoid putting yourself in danger in the first place. The simple techniques that Vincent reveals in this interview can be quickly learned and practised by everyone. This interview is nothing less than the manual on how to survive in our increasingly dangerous country. Vincent, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. And I really appreciate you giving your time and your expertise to this, because as all of our viewers know, as you know, Canada is becoming increasingly dangerous. There have been multiple instances in the last few years of total strangers assaulting, killing people on transit, near transit stations especially. And so it's time that Canadians started to understand that this is not the country it used to be 20 or 30 years ago. You have to be aware of danger. And this is an area of expertise for you. So let's talk about situational awareness, those cases where somebody, an ordinary person has gone into a situation and everything seemed fine, but there's going to be signals that something is no longer fine, that they're now in a dangerous situation. So tell us what that is. Okay. So situational awareness is a word that gets thrown around a hell of a lot. And a lot of them, military law enforcement that I actually trained on this, they kind of get mad at me for teaching it. And, but then they, when I switch their brains, they go, ah, that's a different way to think of it. So if I asked you, what is situational awareness? Explain to me what is situational awareness? To me, it's being constantly alert and aware to things that are happening around me. And to anything that seems out of place. Okay. And then, um, majority of the people would also say, well, if I went into a 7-Eleven, I'm looking at who's in there, where are the cameras, where's the exits, right? Where's the fire extinguishers, right? Are there cameras, are there cameras watching me? And is there a getaway vehicle out there? Correct. Would that be a common answer as well? I would think so. Yes. (3:11 - 5:21) Yeah. So that's what I get a lot of the time, situational awareness. But from a lot of the, the law enforcement that I, that, that, that I trained, they were like, situational awareness is, sir, right? It's always hands up, sir. I have my Glock, my, my, my Glock 19. I've got my tactical boots. I've got my tactical belt with, with, with additional mags on it. I've got my vest. And if a shootout happens across the road right now, I know that I can be there in 3.77, 3.7 seconds and engage the target. So they love this fancy terminology. I'm like, I get it. I'm like, okay, you know what, you're, that, that's the movies. Cause what, in reality, what happens is you hear those gunshots go off or hear something go off, you're running, we're in a, in a room of maybe six, six or 15 other operators. How are you going to get to all these operators in 3.7 seconds? Right. Especially when everybody panics when they start hearing shots. A hundred percent. We all got a cup of coffee and it spills. Your tactical boots are not, no longer tactical on the, on the slippery tile. Right. Not only that you get over there, you still have to identify who's a threat. So now you're going to pull your weapon out and what are you going to do? So all in all, that's what I get all the time because we are so conditioned into what we, what, what, what, what we're told on social media, the movies and in our training. My world of, and there's nothing wrong with it. You still got to be alert. You've got to be aware. So a hundred percent situational awareness is being aware of what's going on around you, being awake, being attentive. In the ops world, the ops is the company on point protection skills is we flip it around. All right. We, we have a lot of, we got a lot of gold nuggets and a half moments or we change your, your mindset is situational awareness in our world is you created it. You created it. If you're walking around with your cell phone in specific countries and it gets snatched out of your phone, out of your hand, who's fault is that? Right. You're wearing a nice, fancy Rolex. (5:22 - 5:34) Right. And nobody else in that city has a Rolex and you get attacked for that. Who created that? You know, that today is 28 degrees sunny and you don't wear sunscreen. (5:34 - 6:50) You get sunburns. Who created that situation? Right. So from a flip side, yes. So same thing. Now we want to say we want to defend ourselves, defend our families, but what have you actually done? So as a, as a father who only does his work provides for the family, but he's never done any training. Now all of a sudden he has an intruder in his house. He has no idea what to do. Who created that situation? The father in that sense, right? Obviously there's other stuff we can talk about how to protect the house, but what has the father done to protect himself? Take the family, pass that information onto the family. You created that situation. You go on a vacation with your family and you haven't researched enough about what's going on in that country. Right. The, the, the, the cartel shooting up in, in, in resorts in Mexico and you got a trip down there. You haven't researched that. Who created that? Right. You have, you're wearing sandals and all of a sudden there's a shooting happening and how do you run in sandals? Right. You don't run as fast, but you created it. Figure out a way to overcome that now. So yes, in our world, situational awareness is be as best prepared as you can for as many situations as you can without becoming, um, uh, what's what I'm looking for a paranoid person. (6:51 - 7:14) Right. Yeah. But I think the point you're making Vincent, and it's a very good point is we never really know when that dangerous situation is going to happen. And obviously if we did, we wouldn't go into it. And so a lot of what you're talking about is what we can do within, of ourselves to be prepared for anything. We're as best prepared as we can be. (7:15 - 8:25) Exactly. And a lot of people say do drills, but who has the time to do drills? Not meaning, right? And drills for what? Because you could drill for one thing or this thing and something completely different happens. And this is where my answer to your question was to me, situational awareness is not only being aware of my surroundings, the objects and people around me, but is there anything that seems out of place? And this is, this is actually, I think, and I want your comments on this, but I think it's a very valid way of doing it. For example, how do you train a bank teller to recognise counterfeits? Well, you have them handle thousands of real bills. And then when they touch one or see one that doesn't look or feel quite right, it sets off their alarm bells. And so if you are constantly paying attention to your surroundings every day, as you're wandering around, just going about your business, you've trained your mind to recognise that, okay, all of this is normal. And then as soon as something isn't, it sticks out and you're paying attention to that thing. Okay. You know, this person is acting oddly. This person is, you know, perhaps moving towards me in an aggressive manner. You're going to pick up on that because you've been in the habit of paying attention to your surroundings. And the problem I see is that a lot of people walk around constantly paying no attention whatsoever. (8:28 - 11:20) No, very true. And here's a tip. Here's a tip on when you're saying, how do you pay attention? Because I teach people, how do you scan a room? Right. Because we run these huge music festivals or we have guys deployed in areas. How do you scan and look for something out of place versus just looking? Because now, see, that's the exact same training. The same conditioning is like, look for something out of place. But how? My question is always going to be how? Well, firstly, why? But then how do you actually do it? How do you? If I go back to a really quick story, when I was younger, we were told to love. We were never taught to love. Right. But if you look at your kids, you never told them to brush your teeth. You taught them to brush your teeth. Right. So now what's happening is all the coaching we're getting is like, guys, just be aware of your surroundings. Keep your head on a swivel. Watch your six. How? Right. So here's a quick, a quick tip. As human beings, we do everything out of habit. Whenever we cross the road, what do we do? We look left. We look right. Look left. We look right. We look for that vehicle because we're expecting a vehicle. Right. Or some kind of motorised vehicle or bicycle. I actually learned this in a safari. Because we take a lot of tourists down to look at safaris and they're cruising around. They've got their fancy binoculars on and they don't see a thing. Then we said to them, okay, so the guide said to us, guys, stop. What you guys are doing is you're looking left to right. What I want you to do is look right to left. Because everything you've done that's habitual is easy. Like lift weights comes easy. You don't think about it. So same thing when you're looking left to right, you're looking, but you're not really taking in. Now, when you're looking right to left, your brain slows down just that little bit and takes in more colour, takes in more content. Then you get to see more things as well. So you add that into everything you just said now. Be alert. Look at what's different. How the guy's walking. How many people in that vehicle. Is the guy beelining towards you? Is he going to cross paths with you? Does he slow down when you slow down? Does he change direction when you change direction? Right. Things like that. Does he cower away? And this is a tip for ladies. Does he cower away when you pull up your phone? This is when you're reading a message versus does he hide his face when it looks like you're taking a video, a random video of the scenery and the guy hides his face. All right. So yeah, those are things. And then the other one is. Something else I'd like your comments on, because this is something that I've been practising for years, ever since I started studying martial arts myself years ago, in terms of that situational awareness, our ears work. We don't have eyes in the back of our head, but if you start paying attention to the sounds around you, it's the same thing. Most people just tune all that out as meaningless noise, but it's not meaningless noise. You will hear things. Once you start paying attention and you train your brain to pay attention to those sounds that you're hearing. (11:20 - 13:58) Okay. I can be walking through the store. You know, it's a hardware store. I don't have to look behind me to tell you that there's two people walking down the aisle behind me. I can hear their footsteps. I can not only tell you probably how far away they are, but whether or not they're going faster or slower than I am. And it's not magic. It's just paying attention to your senses. A hundred percent. You pay attention to your senses and somebody mentioned to, I think it was called it sight gating or something like that, or sensory gating, where we could look at four people having a conversation, but you can hone in on that one person and hear more of them than the others. Cause you drown them out. You could do the exact same thing. Like a hundred percent, you're walking towards, you're walking into a hardware store. You can hear the door open. Your rings hit the door handle. As you do hear the door open, it creaks a little, but you can still hear the two guys behind you while, while the customers are chat, chattering away. Right? So a hundred percent, you can train yourself to do that. Similar when you're shooting to shoot with two eyes, you have to, you got to keep one eye open. So you train to shoot and your dominant eye will be on the target. And while your right eye is looking at the surroundings, you can train for those things. It doesn't always have to be one eye shooting, right? It's not meant to be. Yeah. And so I think that the important point of this is avoid narrow focus. If you're, if you're like most people who go through your day, only paying attention to the thing that's right in front of you, the thing you're doing right now, what you're actually doing is training yourself to ignore everything else. But it's the everything else that's going to alert you that something is not right. Yeah. When you're outside of your safety zone and your safety zone, you look, it could be at home. You could be in your bedroom, but things can still happen around your house. Right? If you've never heard a window break, you will, you'll poop yourself. Right? And then not only that, the window breaks, you run outside cause you think a kid threw a, threw a tennis ball or baseball through your window. Next thing you go downstairs and it's a, you've got three guys in masks standing at your, at your living room. Right. So are you even prepared for that? It's like, it's, it's, it's amazing what if people haven't experienced violence or breaking, they'll, they just won't be prepared. Yeah. Now, before we move on, I want to access your knowledge because as we've been talking about, Canada has become increasingly dangerous, but it could get a lot worse. And you know this, you're from South Africa. Originally you've spent time in other countries where there's far more violence than there is here, but it's the direction we're headed. If we don't turn things around. So Vincent, I know it's going to be disturbing for some viewers, but I would like you to paint a picture of some of the violence you have encountered in other countries. (13:58 - 16:45) Wow. So people can get an idea of just how bad this could get. Now I'm going to separate a little bit cause there is a lot of racism in South Africa. Right. I was, I was a victim of racism when I was younger. I was bullied, I was picked on, I was beaten to a pulp. Right. But you get, it got to a point where, um, well now where I'm old, I'm, I'm able to, to, to, to defend myself and aware and also got a very strong group of people around me, supportive group who will not take any nonsense. Right. Um, there've been like, well, let's talk about the farm murders, um, where they entered the house, tied the granny, tied the granny up on a chair, took a drill and drilled through her shins. Um, then they took a baby, ran the, the, the tub with boiling water, hot water, ground the baby in there. The people, when they came in there to scrape the skin and the blood off the, off the, off the side of the bathtub, um, female was hung upside down and cut from the middle all the way down. So that's, I mean, that's why that's a, that's a farm murders, but now let's bring it to, to this, to, to the urban city centres or the suburbs. The kind of stuff we've seen is a lot of carjackings. Now carjackings started way back in the early eighties in South Africa. It's only starting now in the, in the recent, I'd say three, three years in Canada, there's posts where they've just caught a bunch of carjackers for them. Um, like I say, so a lot of stuff that's happening over there in other countries is starting to bleed into you because those, there's certain immigrants that are bringing that stuff in and out because it's an easier market. It's easier to do that than to go work, to go, to go work, uh, work and earn 18 to $20 an hour. The violence you're going to see is, um, they will break into your house. They will hurt, they will hurt the male of the family because they feel he's the protector of the family. Um, and then they will hurt your children as well because if they hurt your children, you will give up everything. Um, they don't care. Crime has no discrimination. So if your mother's in the house, they will hurt your, your, your, your, your mother, your, the grandparents, right? There is no, it gets to that point because if they've done it once, if they've gone to a point where they've hurt the father, what's the point of this? Um, what's stopping us from hurting the mom? The next house they break into, everything just escalates. It's almost like a drug to them. It just gets worse and worse and worse. So just the carjackings alone, they'll smash your window, pull you out. You tried, most of you will say, well, I've got insurance. I'll just give it to him. And that one day is somebody who's going to fight for the vehicle because you've worked hard for it. (16:45 - 20:11) You want to protect it. And they're going to stick a knife in you. They're going to stick a knife in you outside of the vehicle because they don't want to dirty that vehicle either. They don't want any trace of you in, inside that vehicle. So they will hurt you in that sense. And then it gets to a point where, okay, knives aren't enough. And then they start using firearms. So the days of driving with the window open are going to be gone pretty soon because that's the first point of entry through your window, smash and grab. But in Canada, you're not allowed to tint your windows either, your front windows. And that is a huge help for smash and grabs. That's the other one. Well, smash and grabs is where they see your purse, you see your phone on the front seat. While we stuck in traffic, they'll just smash it really quick. And they'll use a spark plug or something really sharp, smash your window, grab your purse and run. There's nothing you can do. You're going to be so caught by surprise. Because as I said earlier, if you've never heard a window smash, you're going to be stunned. By then the guy's already half a block away with your belongings. I've lost six family members. So the family members were meant to start a big business. We had a butchery, then the others had a wholesaler. Then the one uncle said he's going to get a farm going. And then what happened was the family that owned the wholesaler, they came out of the wholesaler at the end of the day, mother, father, three kids in the back, some guy just stood in front and just shot into the, into the vehicle. This was in South Africa? This was in South Africa, yeah. And this was for money, right? So what's going to happen, like say we, we seen that, yeah, there's people cannot find work. So what's the easiest way to get money? Would you get any belongings, right? Crime, crime pays. Crime pays them, crime pays the city because the city needs to employ more people, right? More cops. So anyway, she turned over. By the time she turned over to protect the kids, they, all the kids, my cousin saw her, saw her life leave her. My uncle left the butcher with my cousin in the vehicle. They drove past and just shot into the vehicle, vehicle flipped. My cousin lay next to my father acting as, acting dead and watch his father lose his life as well. My brother, we don't, we don't know how he died, but it was blunt force trauma to the chest. And my brother's a damn good fighter. He was a, he was a boxer, but we don't know what happened. All we know, they, they, they lied to me. They, you know, the family wouldn't let me know exactly what happened, but a lot of them also didn't know because they know I would have gone crazy had I found out exactly like they said, blunt force, he had, they said he had a heart attack because his chest hit the steering wheel. He had a, I'm sorry, he had a, he had a, an MVA, his chest hit the steering wheel. But then I looked, I went to the area. I'm like, you cannot go more than 40 in that, on that street. It's an 80, 80 metre street. You cannot go more than 40 in a suburb. You hit a vehicle. It's because you're coming to a stop street. So he was assaulted before he got in the vehicle. And it was, to my knowledge, he was, he was trying to call another cousin. My cousin wasn't able to answer. So, yeah. (20:13 - 22:12) And I thank you for telling us that Vincent and, and, and for showing us obviously how it's impacted you. And this is an extremely important point that you've just highlighted though. People look at guys like you and I, you know, we're, we're big, strong guys. We're trained in self-defence, but so was your brother. Anyone can be taken out. And so I think this gets back to that situational awareness. And you were talking before, and I would think we could probably categorise the likely ways in which you might become a victim of these violent crimes into about three different categories. It's home invasion, it's a carjacking, or it's an assault while you're out as a pedestrian or somewhere in public. Now we'll get back to the home invasion a bit, because that's, I think a little bit different. Most people in Canada have very little knowledge of carjackings. As you said, this has only really started happening here recently. And so, and getting back to that situational awareness, danger-proofing, you've already alluded to the idea that we're probably reaching a point where driving around with your windows open is a bad idea, but what other things should people be doing to avoid becoming a victim of that crime? Are we talking about the vehicles or the homes? Talking about vehicles right now. We'll get to homes later. Okay. The vehicles, if you can get a, get a very, very light tint on your front windows, right, just because it does reduce the smash and grab. If you're driving around, so when we patrol, I'll tell you a little bit about history later on, but when we patrol, a lot of guys close their windows, right? And there's a good amount of us that leave our windows open either all the way, but we've got to be very, very, very, depending where we're driving. But if you leave it open a certain amount, you get to hear what's happening. Um, most of the times, if you, you can hear footsteps on tar on the tarmac because there's gravel and that's something we can add to, to, to help with home invasions later. (22:12 - 25:32) Just remind me to mention it, uh, with the gravel, you can hear footsteps. You can hear what the person's asking you versus them asking you to roll the window down. And you've hit the button because everything's automated. You hit the button and it automatically goes all the way down. So you leave your window open just a slight bit because that allows you to hear what they're saying, who's coming towards you. It allows you to also hear the screech of tyres. If a vehicle's going, barreling out of control or sirens or something, right? Because there's so many people with their windows and you've seen some people who don't pull over for, for, for an ambulance because they just have no awareness of what's going on. So if you leave your window open just a slight bit, your rear view mirrors, I know a lot of people will turn their rear view mirrors. I'll just, I'm going to try and paint a picture for you. When you're sitting in the driver's vehicle, if you look at your, your, your side view mirror, you do not want to see your door, nor the door, your back door. You want to see maybe just the handle and that's it, because that gives you a wider angle, a wider view of what's happening behind you. Because now you have a full 360 degree view of whatever's in front of you, but your eyes can see your 180 plus in your rear view mirror. And now your side mirrors have a wider view because that's what happens. I would also like to add to that. Something I've done on my truck is you can go to a hardware store and for a few bucks, you can buy those little stick on convicts mirrors that can put onto them and pay attention to what's moving in there. Cause that's going to show you something that's way over there. A hundred percent. And you are, you're born with it. Like if you, if you and I were talking right now and a mouse ran in front of me, my eyes are going to be pulled to that mouse as small as it is. So a small movement in your little, your, your, your, your mirrors is going to get your attention, but you have to pay attention because you're on the street. Your vehicle is a weapon, but it's also your safety, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your little safety bubble, or your, your, your safety room at that point. And that's, what's going to keep you safe. Make sure you, when you get in your, that your vehicles, your vehicle is locked right away. Um, so yeah, I think Calgary for now is safe. It's more happening on the East coast where you're going to get these kinds of things where you're stuck in traffic. Guys are going to come past and you're going to flip your door handle, flip your door handle. And if you're not wearing your seatbelt, they can pull, it's easier to pull you out. So just make sure you're wearing your seatbelts, not just for, for collision safety. It just makes it a lot harder to get somebody out. We, we, we pulled out a perp out of a, out of his vehicle once. And because he had his seatbelt on, it took an extra three to four seconds to get him out of his vehicle. Right. Where you could have done a lot of stuff where you could have sped off, change gears and ripped one, ripped one of us off and mowed the other guys down. Um, so yeah. And in terms of weapons in your vehicle, can you weaponise your vehicle? Yes, you can. Folks move away from the baseball bat, move away from the tie iron. Cause as soon as you get out with that, it's, it's considered that you are the aggressor, right? Get a nice Filipino Kali stick, carry that around with you. All right. Something that's not perceived a weapon, a piece of broomstick, although it's not going to hit hard, but you've got, again, you've got to know how to use that thing, practise at home, go hit a few trees or whatever, but don't bring out a tie iron, do not bring out a baseball bat. (25:32 - 29:09) You will be instantly seen as the aggressor cause everyone is filming that. Right. Yeah. So the, and you've just, I want to summarise because you've just given us some really important tips here, Vincent. So folks, if, if you're concerned that you're in an area where you might be possibly the potential victim of a carjacking driving around in your city or you're in a strange city, here's, here's that list that Vincent just gave us. One, your seatbelt's on. Two, your doors are locked. Three, your windows open just a crack so you can hear what's happening out there. And four, your mirrors are properly adjusted and you're watching for the motion in those mirrors. Yeah. And another thing, what Canada needs to get more use of is WhatsApp. There's, you know, I'm meeting, I'd say six to seven out of 10 people who don't choose WhatsApp because what happens is you and I will be on a chat group. So if you're my brother, I would be sending you my live location. So that's WhatsApp, right? I don't know if you can see it properly, but you'll hit your, you'll hit your location button and you can share your live location for 15 minutes, an hour or eight hours. So if you, like, if you're driving through a neighbourhood that you don't know or a city you don't know, right. And I just coached, I just coached a family now where the kid is travelling on her own. Like, wherever your movements are, just hit live location and your parents can follow where you are. All right. So that's a huge, huge plus. You can go into Google, I'm sure there's other apps, but it's free on WhatsApp. Right. So if suddenly people can't reach you, you've disappeared. They know your last location. They'd be able to identify where you are from that. A hundred percent, yeah. And research, I mean, don't just drive into, don't just drive into an area and say, oh my gosh, like, I didn't know this was a bad area. Research before you go. Like, I'm also a trained bodyguard, so we could do a lot of our advanced training. Why don't, doesn't the average person do it? You do it for your day, your, your daily work. Like, oh, it's going to be a rough day today, so I better take extra food and water. I'm going to be walking a lot, maybe take a change of shoes. You do all that stuff. But in terms of like, how do I get to from one, one location to another? Let's let me, let me take two minutes while I'm on the toilet or while I'm having my breakfast. Let me map out where I'm going. Oh, I don't know this area. Well, I'm in a new city. What is this area? Let me research. We've got everything at our fingertips right now, but we don't use it enough. But, and a key thing is don't let complacency be an excuse for being an attacked or being unprepared, like not having enough juice in your, in your phone, not having a full tank of gas wherever you go. Right. Not having researched the area. Yes. And I think I'd like to add something to that. This is, this is now getting into the individual situations where you may be assaulted almost at random out on the street. People, we go out all the time to meet with other people. Maybe we go to a show, we go to a bar and maybe we stay longer than we expected to. And now it's dark. And, you know, once again, using that situational awareness before you go outside, you take a look, how many people are out there? Well, there's nobody out there. It may not be a good idea to just walk out onto the street to flag down a cab or walk to your car. If you've got concerns, stay inside, call a cab, call an Uber. Do not go out there alone into an unknown situation where you're an easy target. (29:09 - 30:42) Yeah. That is predatory world right there. When your senses have been numbed by alcohol or possibly narcotics, you're an easy target. Very easy target. Because it takes nothing for a guy like me to come up and chat to you because as Canadians, we're super friendly, right? Chat to you or, Hey, I have an accent. I'm like, Hey guys, how was your, how was the night? This bar, this bar is awesome. I just, just came out of there. You haven't seen me in there at all. Right. I can just bring up conversation or you don't know. I'm like, you're talking about breaking down barriers of a person, right? It's so easy to break down barriers. And now we chatting away and I'm like, yeah, it looks like, it looks like there's a whole lot of vehicles coming out. Let's just move over to the side here. Move over to the side where I need you. Right. And you will comply. Yes. And I like that you've just done that nice little segue for us because now we are getting back into the personal situations and you, you made a very good point to me before we started the interview, we were chatting about how the predators will get people to drop their guard. I'd like you to cover that. I think it's especially important for women, but, but everyone should know this. Yeah. Parents, parents who have daughters, women, this is super, super important. It's a psychology that's, that's been studied, but hasn't been really been put out there. There are barriers that they're going to break down of So very similar to dating. If you look at dating now, online dating or any kind of dating, doesn't start with a, let's go online. I like this guy. Let me research him a bit. (30:42 - 30:49) Let's chat a bit. Uh, here's my email. Uh, then you'll give him your phone number later. (30:49 - 31:52) And then you'll talk about more where you work. Then you get more deeper into your more personal stuff, right? And then you end up meeting up. You meet up in a public place because that's what everyone tells you to do. And then it starts becoming more and more private. So there is a barrier broken down. You don't even realise that, right? You've broken down a barrier to your heart, but now a barrier to your safety is a guy gets onto a, onto the train with you, right? And he's standing three feet away from you. And he's just a friendly guy. He's carrying a briefcase or he's carrying a phone and he goes, yeah, love. Yeah. No, you know what? Lasagna would be awesome tonight. Thank you. See that smile, see the bullshit. There was nobody on the phone there and he greets you. You greet back. I've just broken down one barrier, right? Now we, now we're on common ground and you trust me because you just heard me talking to my wife. Even if I didn't talk to my wife, I'm like, Hey, how are you doing? How's your day going? She's like, good, good. Well, this train's busy. Small talk breaks down barriers as well. (31:52 - 32:07) Now all of a sudden he moves a little closer. You don't realise he's moved closer because he's talking to you and he's taken half a step. Each time he's taken half a step. Next thing, the train moves a little bit. Oh, sorry. It's a little off, off balance and shoulders touch. (32:09 - 32:19) Touch is so important. You need to teach your, your, your, your daughters and women that the touch is so important. Once you've allowed a man to touch you, right? That's a huge barrier. (32:19 - 33:01) Cause what happens is it's like, what about a high five nightclubs? You high five somebody instant that touch, you create a trust. Now that high five becomes, how's your night going? Now it stays on there for three seconds. Awesome. Come, come with me for a drink, right? See how the barriers are broken down. And then, then you can see where it goes from there. So be really mindful about men touching women or women being touched by men, your daughter being touched by somebody, right? Super touch is a huge breakdown in barrier. Same thing with a smile. You can talk to them from a distance. There's no need to touch me. (33:02 - 35:05) There's a particular instance has happened several times in Canada now. And I'd like your thoughts on how a person, the victim might have been able to recognise the danger and get out of there before the tragedy happened. And that's cases where, especially on transit, especially on trains, there's been a person sitting alone in the car. There's one other person in the car and that other person comes up behind them and stabs them or slashes them with a knife. It's a total stranger. They don't know this person. In that situation, what things would you recommend that people should have been paying attention to that might've tipped them off that they were in danger? So if we're looking at the most recent one, right? When she walked onto the train, she was on her phone right away. So everyone uses that as an excuse. So remember, I was saying, don't let complacency be an excuse to be attacked. This is complacency, being on your phone. You're on the train, look at, we talk about situational awareness, look at who's around you, right? Somebody's just come to sit behind you, like you don't know them. The guy wore a hoodie, his head was covered. There's a reason why I have a hoodie, but I only wear this when it's cold. That incident that's on social media and the media now, it's happening in the springtime. It's not that cold, right? So have your head up, look at what's happening. Somebody sits behind you. You don't feel comfortable. Change your angle, right? So she was facing this way. The guy sat behind her, sit right up to the window, turn. So now you can see movement. Look at how long he got up for, took out the knife and he stood behind her, right? So similar to if you're getting in your vehicle or you're going home and you get to the door, everyone's back is to the door, correct? So versus you've opened that door a hundred times, over a hundred times. (35:07 - 37:50) You know where the door is, the door handle, height of the door handle hasn't changed, your key hasn't changed. Find the hole, stand at an angle so that you can see behind you. When I say watch your six, you cannot watch your six. You have to change your angle. So you can see from there, if this is my door, right? And I'll open the door with either hand and look at the angle versus having my back to the open space. Yes. And I would say, even if you live, my family and I are fortunate to live in a very safe neighbourhood in Calgary with a very low crime rate. But this is another instance where I have trained myself to pay attention to what I'm hearing. So sure, I open my door and looking at the door, but that doesn't mean I'm not listening. If there's somebody coming up my front walk behind me, I'm going to hear them. It's a concrete sidewalk. They'd have to be moving awfully quietly for me not to hear that. So once again, it's a matter of so many people go through their days narrowing their focus. And what we're saying is no, broaden your focus, pay attention to your senses and what is around you and your peripheral vision. You're hearing, sometimes even smell. I can think of situations where this would actually happen, where maybe you just walked into the bathroom at the bar and there's a strong stench, a body odour coming from the stall right there. Body odour doesn't tend to stick around that long after people leave. That tells me there's somebody with very poor hygiene in that stall. I don't have to look, I can smell it. Yep. Or if you, for example, are not a smoker and there's a smoker standing right behind you, you can smell them. Yeah. You know, for that lady, just going back to that lady, don't sit, stand up, right? Because I think a lot of people are too polite. If she had to move, it'd be like, oh, am I making people around me feel uncomfortable? Because now I'm watching, I'm watching my back. Now I'm watching this guy on the side. Stand up rather. Because now you have full peripheral vision. She could have stood up against one of the hand poles, right? And had a full peripheral vision. If somebody walks up to her, she can move, right? Whereas there she was stuck in a seat, not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable by moving. But it should have been a major alarm bell because any decent guy who gets on a bus or a train car, and there's one woman in there, the last place we're going to sit is right behind her. (37:50 - 39:04) Yep. We know that's going to make her uncomfortable. We'll go sit at the opposite side of the train from her. Yeah. So the fact that that guy just went and sat right behind her. That should have been a major alarm. We also don't know if he followed her from work, because she just came from work, right? She worked at a pizza place, right? Yeah. He could have been a customer at one point and followed her. And folks, I want to make it very clear, Vince and I are not blaming this poor woman, but what we're trying to do is to get across. If you're paying attention to what's going on around you, these things can often be avoided. You can avoid getting into that situation in first place. And if she had received that kind of training, maybe this tragedy wouldn't have happened. And make eye contact. Don't let people know that you're scared of them. It happened here at the early morning. I had to go do a site visit at one of the sensors. And getting off the train, you had to walk through this tunnel. Young girl walked by me. When she was about 10 feet away, she dropped her head. You cannot see if you're going to be attacked or not. You cannot identify me after you've been attacked. Keep your head up. Look at the guy. Look at him straight in the eye. (39:05 - 39:21) Take note of everything. Watch what the hands are doing. Yeah. And pay attention to who's looking at you. A hundred percent. Keep your eyes up. Yeah. These things have become terrible, right? And yes, it leads people to this false sense of security. And I'd like to make a comment on that. (39:21 - 40:26) I'm not an expert in safety as you are, but I spent a fair bit of time studying abnormal psychology. And sure, that phone and pulling it out, what everybody's taught, you start filming and most people will not commit a crime if they're being filmed. But those are normal people. We're taught, I mean, by definition, anybody who's going to get on a train and stab a total stranger, this is not a normal person. This person's crazy. And they are not going to respond the way most people would. And so those things that you've been taught are going to protect you. There's a good chance that person's going to completely ignore them. They don't care. Yep. A hundred percent. All right. So now that brings us to something else we were talking about before, which is a very practical piece of self-defence that anyone can do. And I did it with my own daughter, dog spray. Because it's legal in Canada where mace is not, you can buy it on Amazon. It's small. It fits in your pocket. It fits in your purse. And you can have that on you ready to go at a second's notice. We had a conversation about that, Vincent. So I'd like you to comment on it. (40:27 - 43:52) So for those who don't want to use dog spray, because yeah, there are legal implications. I just trained another family here and I said, get a small bottle of perfume or air freshener. It's got to be aerosol, right? The exact same thing. Put some tape on it. The guy has no idea, right? He has no idea whether it's dog spray or not. So in his mind, his perception is that's pepper spray, but totally legal to carry. So it's nice to say you're armed with pepper spray. There's so many people I know out there, even in South Africa where I train people, they're armed with pepper spray. And I'm like, well, get it out for me. It's stuck deep down in their purse. They don't know where it is. So one thing, ladies, is know your craft or men, know your craft. In other words, know where your stuff is. If you've got a purse, right? You've got a bag, your keys on one side, your phone is in one pocket, pepper spray in another pocket, right? But some people are saying, but you're never ready for it. Yeah, you will never be ready for it. Because if I attack you, where will you have time to pull it out? You don't know when you're going to be attacked. So when your spidey sense goes off, especially if you're in a space where you're vulnerable, right? I'm not talking about at a food court, we're talking about late at night, you're walking home, you're walking to your vehicle after work, you're the only person at the office and you need to leave, you have that pepper spray in your hand. Now what happens is two types of pepper spray. There's one that has a direct stream and there's one that's a cloud. Which one is better? Everyone says the direct stream. Why? Because the cloud is just going to go back in your face. Folks, when your life's at risk, you don't care. You have no idea which direction the wind is blowing or the AC is coming from when you're being attacked, right? You just deploy that pepper spray. So yes, the direct stream does get a lot further. It almost goes, gosh, easily 20 feet, very easily. So now I'm going to give you some points on how to actually use pepper spray because it's nice to have it, but how do you use it? If you spray, so if I took this pen or a cup and I threw it at your head, right? Well, what are you going to do? You're going to dodge. So that's exactly what every criminal is going to do, right? Another quick tip, try and kick him in the groyne. It's not going to work. They know this, right? We worked with the anti-kidnappers. They guys are wearing groyne guards. So don't teach your kids to kick somebody in the groyne. And I'd like to jump in on that one, just to interrupt you briefly, because this is a discussion I had with both of my children when they were teenagers. You got a guy my size coming at you and he's angry. I don't care if you kick him in the balls. All you're going to do is make him angry. He'll feel it later. It's not going to stop him then. So if you think that's a way to stop a big guy from coming at you, you better think again. Yeah. I'll teach you guys how to stop a big guy. I'll teach you how to stop Will. How's that? That's great. But anyways, I interrupted you. We're talking about the proper way to use pepper spray. So pepper spray. Yeah. You don't just buy pepper spray and think you're going to use it. First things first is, go home, deploy it. Buy two. Will bought two for his daughters, one for practise. So learn how to use it. Build that memory on how to use pepper spray. See what it actually does, how far. You might even get a whiff of it on your face. So you know how it affects the person. So going back to, if I throw a rock at you, you're going to dodge. So you hold this up. (43:52 - 44:37) What does it look like? Pepper spray. So the guy is going to move out of the way. You might get a little bit, but he doesn't get the huge amount. So he has a simple trick, folks, is if it's a cloud-based, you're going to get a foot of spray out there. So what you can do now is you can take your wrist and your wrist only and do a figure eight while you're spraying. Now you're going to get almost three to four feet of coverage. Folks, and remember I was saying your wrist and your wrist only. Do not use your arm because your arm takes way too much work. You spray it out there. The guy's over here. Not to mention if he's close enough to you and he knows anything about fighting, when you do this, he's going to step in and grab your wrist. Or trap you. Yeah. Or trap you. Yeah. (44:38 - 44:59) And avoid extending your arm because they do this in the movies. Every female that I've seen, they hold a firearm, but they hold something at them and they go, stay back, stay back. Don't put it in their working space or not just their working space, their grabbing space. So keep it close to you because then you can manipulate it. Right? So that's one way of spraying. Okay. (44:59 - 45:57) But while you're doing that, you keep moving back. You move away. So you're moving away from the spray and you're creating more distance. If he's chasing you and you feel like it hasn't affected him yet, it hasn't taken effect or you maybe missed him, you're going to take that pepper spray, put it at your ear. If it's at your ear, it's safe. And you keep running and you spray backwards and you do the exact same thing. You just move your wrist or you hold it at your hip and you're going to do the exact same thing. Point it upwards and just run. If the person across you, like let's say it's at home, you don't get a chance to deploy the pepper spray or the person still has some form of immunity to it. Not, I don't know anyone who has. They get right up on you and they want the pepper spray. You're fighting for it. Don't fight for the pepper spray. Spray it in your hand, right? Or if he hasn't seen a jet, spray in the back and also put your hands to the back, spray it, drop that can and fight the guy off. Get your hands in his face. (45:58 - 47:57) Yes. That's how you use pepper spray. Right. And one more thing I wanted to add that you alluded to it briefly, but people who haven't been trained to do this, it's okay. You're in this situation. You've got the pepper spray out. Maybe you've even hit the guy and maybe he's six to eight feet away. The natural instinct most people are going to have once they've hit someone with a weapon like that is they want to kind of close in. That's exactly the wrong thing to do with pepper spray. Back up because the most, even the stream ones, after about 10 feet, that stream starts to split up and it's sort of individual droplets. So I would say the ideal range for that weapon is about 10 to 15 feet where you can hit them with that spray. And if you're doing what Vincent said, you're doing this and you back up, okay, you're going to get them and that stuff's going to disable them and give you time to get away. And this is, and Vincent also made allusion to this. When I bought these for my daughter years ago, when she first started her first job, working at a pet store, she was 17. She was in high school. There were times when she had to come up from work, walk to the bus stop across a dark parking lot by herself. And it wasn't a matter of, you know, was there somebody that can go with her? Because the problem is the other employees were all young women too. That doesn't help. So one, I bought two of them for her, as Vincent alluded to. And I had her, the first one I said, I told her, go out in the yard. I want you to empty the entire thing into a tree. So she would know how it works. She'd get familiar with it. Now, and she was very conscientious about this. When she's walking to the bus stop, it's in her coat pocket. The safety is off. It's in her hand, ready to go. Because as Vincent will tell you, if it's in your purse or tucked into an inside pocket, that's not going to help when you get attacked. Or on your key chain. Yeah. Yes. Put on your key chain. Yeah. Have it loose, separate from your keys. Yep. All right. Because how do you display somebody and get your keys to your vehicle at the same time? Exactly. So now we've covered car jacks, we've covered the pedestrian crimes. Now I want to get back to the home invasions, because in my mind, it's a little different. (47:57 - 49:32) In those other cases, you're moving potentially into the danger where your house isn't going anywhere, which means the danger is coming to you. But what are your recommendations there? So some of the things you can do. So we're going to talk about, well, in other countries, there's specific, I can't put it, Uber drivers, right? The people who drive in the Uber drivers, that they come to your house, they deliver your food, they deliver whatever it is, drop whoever it's a consistent drive. And they see the house that you live in. They have a clear view of any security cameras out there as well. So when somebody is delivering your pizza, they're not just delivering the pizza, there's a camera there. They see the window, they can see who's walking around in the house. You're a young female going into the house. They know the entrance that you use. So that's already a vulnerability. Somebody knows how to access your house, literally from firsthand. So one of the things you can do first is go into Google, go to Street View. Then at the bottom right, it says, report a problem. Type in your address. Sorry, type in your address, go to Google Street View of your house, report a problem, and then it will have a mask. And you can ask them to blur out your house as well. The number, if it's got surveillance cameras and all that stuff. So that's one way just to do all the pre-work. (49:37 - 53:13) Because Canada is so safe, we don't have a barrier to our windows. If you go to other countries, they have that first layer of lace. It's supposed to look pretty. Because back in the days, my mother, my grandmother, all of them had it because it looked pretty. It's actually a barrier so people cannot see into your house. But I'll guarantee you, go drive past any neighbourhood, you can look directly into somebody's kitchen and living room. So from a distance, those people can see you. So get some kind of a barrier or even a light tint on your window so that it reflects light and people cannot see in there. Okay. Again, when you're going home, have your paper spray ready. How do you hold your keys? How do you hold your keys for self-defence? Let me ask you that really quick. Well, people say keys. Well, I don't because I'm not trained to use keys as a weapon. I'm trained to use these as a weapon. Exactly. So on social media, they say, put your keys in your fingers like this, right? But ladies, they say, put your keys like that. And then they go, oh no, why don't you double up? Now you've got like a knuckle duster. Okay. Folks, social media is going to like you. You're going to get hurt. Firstly, if I'm a criminal and I approach you and you have your keys like this, I know you're ready. I've been watching from the time you got out of the vehicle and you're prepared. So this tells me right away you've watched social media and you're ready and you're a little more alert. So now I have to use a different tactic. My tactic is grab this hand, grab a wrap around by the arms. Whereas if you just held your key as normal, this is normal, but put your finger on there, right? Guys, how do you cut your stake? You put your finger on there for more power, correct? And accuracy. So you'll do the exact same thing with your key. This looks like I'm just going to open the door, but now I can slash, right? You'd have to go to a course to actually teach how to slash so you're not telegraphing all that stuff. So that's, that's one of the ways. Yeah. If you've got signage up on your house, beware of the dog. Another one, beware of the snakes. We have snakes as pets. There are a lot of people, there are a lot of, shall I say Africans who are scared of snakes. I did not know that. Okay. So yeah, good signs, beware of snakes. Okay. Have, have cameras out there and it sucks that in Canada, you're not allowed to have a dummy camera, right? Out at your friend's house. If you're going to put a dummy camera, rather just put a real one. Not only that is a little trick when you get home, when you're in the Uber, you make a fake call on the Uber and say, hey dad, I'm on my way home. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the, I'm, I'm, I'm in an Uber. Yeah. It's a white Toyota Prius. Yeah. Are you not done? Are you bringing the police car home as well? What have I done there? Right. Yes. Yes. You've just signalled that you are not the target they want to go after. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Okay. As to proofing your home and you can add your own comments to this. Years ago, I actually knew a guy who was, he founded an international organisation for home security. And one of the things he taught me is that, yes, it's great to have cameras. It's great to have, you know, bars on lower windows, but the number one thing that criminals do not want is to be seen. So you put up motion lights. (53:14 - 54:20) Motion lights. Yep. On the corners of your houses. So if somebody is saying, you know, going into that space between your house and the neighbour's fence, that light comes on. Most of them are going to book it because they don't want to be seen. Yeah. You can, if you go on Amazon, you there's these lights from China that have motion sensor. So you can switch it to motion sensor for the light as well as a siren. And the siren will go for about 10 seconds. You'll annoy the neighbours, but at least it's an alert you. Because what happens when you're sleeping, you're not going to see the light on unless you're sleeping close, unless your bedroom is close to the light. And that's where you would put that light so that it actually shines into your room. But a lot of people have blackout curtains. So what's the point? Right. So you want to be able to see that light or you want to be able to hear it because you've just lost, you've lost your one, your sense of sight, but you can still hear. So you can go on Amazon, look for those, those sensor lights that actually have a, have a siren on it as well. But then it's only activated at a certain, at nights because it's got a motion sensor, it detects the light of the day. Right. (54:21 - 55:33) Yeah. And then obviously if you have a dog, you know, dogs are great, right? It's not always the bigger dogs that are your helper, your pit bulls and those, or your German shepherds. It's your little yappy dogs. They will tell you somebody's at the door. Yes. We have a Sheltie who's all of about 20 pounds, very friendly dog, but he goes bananas when anybody comes and he'll hear them coming up a walk. They're not even at the door yet. And he's got this booming bark. You'd swear we've, we've got a Rottweiler in here. Um, so that's, yes, it doesn't have to be a big dog. It just has to be a dog that's going to set off an alarm that people are going to hear. Yeah. So there was a mistake we had in South Africa. Our dogs were all outside dogs, right? So they could hear somebody breaking into our vehicle, but other than that, somebody breaking into the house, there's nothing we could do. So having it inside your dog inside is important. Like listen to your dog, right? If they're barking at night, get up, be wary, move slow, right? You don't have to put, don't put all the lights on yet. Cause if you put up, put the lights on, you cannot see out, right? They don't know where you are. You put on the kitchen light, they know you're in the kitchen, right? You don't know if they've entered. (55:33 - 55:52) Um, another thing you can do is also put tint on your windows on the inside of, not a window tint, but an anti, anti like a shatterproof or glass, um, anti glass break tint on your windows, especially on the lower windows, but they cannot break through it. Right. It's going to be harder for them either, even, even, even to cut through. (55:55 - 56:01) Um, uh, get a wedge, a wedge for your door. Harder for them to kick it in. Right. (56:01 - 56:48) And keep it open. Yeah. Other than that, the rest comes through. Yeah. What you know and how to protect yourself inside that house. Once they get in, they're really good. They really want to get in or get in. Yes. So now let's talk about that worst case scenario. You've woken up in the middle of the night, maybe a window broke or something and something woke you up and you suspect there's someone in your house. Now, what you and I might do is as large, physically capable men, uh, might be a little different than what a lot of people would do, but what would you advise that a person should be doing in that circumstance? You think maybe there's somebody in your house. Okay. So you need to confirm. Obviously, if it's at night, somebody's definitely trying to get into your house, right? You've worked hard for those. Uh, look, the laws here are, let's not confuse it. (56:48 - 57:19) You are allowed to protect yourself. Can you protect assets? No, no, but it's very difficult to prove what those perpetrators are in the house for. So having given you my little bit of history and my experience from what's happened today in South Africa, that's moving here. You try and put, you don't, like I say, you cannot decipher the fact that he's broken in there. He knows that there's people in there. You get in between him and what he wants, you're going to get hurt. (57:20 - 1:01:06) So you're going to have to at least do some, like understand how you're going to protect that family. What have you done to protect their family? First, let's, let's work with pepper spray. All right. Most of the family, hopefully you're sleeping upstairs or depending what kind of house you have, you have pepper sprayed. So one of the things we do is we have, um, trellis doors at the, at the hallway to all the bedrooms. So at night that trellis door gets locked. So you can break into the house, go into the kitchen, go into the living room. It's all good. All right. But at the same token, if they're getting through the bedroom window, we trapped inside there, but then that's where you, that's where you, you safeguard all those windows. So having a, having one of those, those, those doors protect the, your, your, your, your sleeping areas is key. Folks, like I'm not going to be, I'm not going to bring up the legal stuff. I will protect my family. I don't know what you broke into my house, everything I've worked for, the safety I've created. You've breached that. I will protect my family. If you come towards me, I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to hurt you really, really bad. Um, and I'll put on, there's a good chance I won't call the cops for at least an hour. Okay. And I'm going to add something to what Vincent just said. And I want you to listen closely, very, very closely folks to how I'm going to phrase this because I'm not advising violence. I'm quoting somebody else. Years ago, I had a discussion with a retired police officer about this very circumstance. And his advice was, his advice was, kill him because now it's your word against the dead man's and you don't know what his intent was. Maybe his intent is to kill your whole family. Yeah. Folks and cameras in your house can work for and against you, right? You know, something that happened a while back, guy broke into a guy's house. Um, they go into a bit of a, a bit of a little bit of a fight and the guy, the, the, the, the intruder, intruder was seriously hurt to the point that he didn't make it to the next day. Right. All the guy had to do was, I was attacked by a knife. Right. Exactly. Yes. And this is why my police officer friend, my retired police officer friend said, it's your word against the dead man's because in our legal system folks, a lot of you know this, if that person survives, they and their lawyer are going to cook up some crazy story. Like, oh, I was drunk. I was in the wrong house or my car broke down and I needed a phone and nobody was answering the door. Right. But if that person's dead, there's no story. There's just your story. And like Benson said, we're self-defence. Yeah. Folks and it's not easy. Let me tell you it's not easy taking a life. It's not, especially as a Canadian, you know, those guys who've hunted, yeah, maybe you could, but taking a human life, it's not easy. I'll tell you that. So when you, when it comes to situational awareness, a huge tip I teach people, how do you train situational awareness? We call the what if game. You need to sit down with your, with your family and go, what if you heard the window break or what if you came home and the door was open? What if there's a guy standing in our living room? What are you going to do? So that your wife doesn't get involved and try and pull your way while you're trying to protect your daughter, that kind of stuff. Like you need to sit them and it's called a what if game. That builds a psychological strength because when you've spoken about it, it's almost like it's happened already. So it makes it easy for you to. (1:01:08 - 1:01:52) Yes. Think about this situation, walk through it in your head. And when it, if it happens, I hope it doesn't, I hope it never does. And then one thing to add to what you were talking about before, because of course we don't have, most Canadian homes don't have that kind of security system where you can lock the doors, the bedroom doors, you know, automatically. That should be done manually. So here's a situation that I have thought through. Okay. I wake up and I'm a light sleeper. So I probably will be the one who wakes up first. And I hear a noise in my house. I'm pretty damn sure it's not my wife or daughter. Okay. Two things are going to happen, folks. First thing I can do is make sure my wife's awake. When I go out into the hallway to find out what's out there, what I'm going to do, I'm going to lock, close that door behind me. (1:01:52 - 1:02:13) And when I walk past my daughter's room, which were on the other side of the hallway, I'm going to reach in and lock that. I'll close it behind me. Okay. Now at least there's some kind of barrier if I get taken out and hopefully they have time to go to window or something. Yeah. And announce that you have a weapon, right? Yeah. (1:02:13 - 1:02:27) If you announce you have a weapon, there might be a chance that the guys will leave, right? And you don't have to deal with anything. Just announce that you have some kind of weapon. If you have pepper spray, spray it into the house, right? If you hear the guy coughing, he's still there. (1:02:28 - 1:02:36) Yes. And it's the easiest thing to do to spend that less than 20 bucks on that dog spray and it's on your bedside table. It's right there. (1:02:36 - 1:06:45) What, what I suggest to people is you weaponise your house. So we have a blade, a blade tucked away with Velcro in certain areas. And every now and then we'll walk past, touch it, make sure it's still there. Now you've built a motor memory. I know the blade is there. I know a blade is in there. There's a one in, because the movies always show you the person runs into the bathroom, tries to lock themselves in the bathroom, but what are you going to do? What weapon do you have in the bathroom? Nothing. So what we do is, and I've done it to my mom's house, is there's a blade and there's a pepper spray behind the bathroom door and her door. Because as she closes the door, it's right in front of her. Right. I mean, that's going to extreme and that's, and that's not being paranoid. That's just because we've been attacked. Uh, our family's been attacked. I'm lucky. I haven't, I haven't been, um, we've saved a lot of people, but it's just way too many, too many incidents where people don't, they have all these fancy cool weapons, but it's not at their disposal. Yes. But I think that brings me into the last subject. And I, I kind of cautioned you before that we were going to talk about this, because as soon as people know that you, you train self-defence or they find out that I'm a black belt and a lot of people thought about studying martial arts or self-defence. And the question though, what we'll get is, well, what's the best one to study? And of course the answer is it depends. So your answer. It depends. Of course, I'm going to say it comes to ops, right? Um, folks, and it's not, it's not, it's not more when you talk about a martial arts, it's not your traditional martial arts because traditional martial arts were meant for a beautiful form for a lifestyle. Yes. You, you learn to kick and punch and stuff like that. But when it comes to realistic, realistic self-defence, you need to go find schools. You need to research a school where the instructor has real life experience versus an instructor. And I get a lot of trouble. Like one of the, uh, key, one of the martial arts out there that does not like me is Krav Maga, right? Because they're like, Oh, you, you, you, who, who, who, who do you think you are, et cetera, et cetera, whatever. Krav Maga in my mind is it's like Nike, very well marketed, not the best system out there. Right. And it's been bastardised. Um, research the instructor, has he been through real life? Um, so scenarios educated versus certificated. There's a lot of instructors that are just being given a certificate, right? And now they, now they teaching these fancy moves that never, never ever happened on the street. Right. I'll get you. We'll take some of those techniques and turn and, and, and convert it into two, two moves, right. To put, put the, put the attacker down. So get, when I say educated, that guy has to have had experience. You don't want, you don't want some reservist military guy who's never been deployed, teaching you how to shoot, teaching you how to clear a house. All right. So to me, that's, that's, that's important because that guy's going to give you the real life fact. And I get a lot of, a lot of flack from the traditional martial arts that my stuff doesn't work. I'm selling magic, but I'm like, well, how many of you have, how many, how many shootouts have you guys been through? How many, how many arrests have you done? Right. How many huge fights have you been in? How many lives have you saved in front of you? And I'm not talking about like a third party. Some, somebody who said one of you, one of you guys who you've taught, et cetera. Right. It's like, how many of you physically, how many times have you physically wrapped somebody up? Right. And know that this technique works. So we, you know, we've really honed down our stuff to keep it really simple for people so that, like I say, I can teach a female to take you down in 2.5 seconds, but I'm actually lying. I'm lying. She'll take you down in 0.6 seconds, 0.6. And that's where they'll give me a hard time about that. Yeah. And I want to back up what Vincent just said. Obviously ops can train you if you're in the practical self-defence. I tell people, uh, sorry. Calgary and Vancouver. I'm mostly based in Calgary. (1:06:45 - 1:07:22) Okay. I didn't realise you also had an operation here. So Calgary, and we'll have a link to their site underneath this interview as we always do folks. When I studied, I say I have a black belt in karate and officially I do, but this gets back to what Vincent was talking about of research your instructor. We chose the instructor who had trained some of the top cage fighters in Alberta. So really my black belt was in mixed martial arts because not only had he been in the ring himself, not only had trained some of the top cage fighters, but he was fourth degree karate, second degree jujitsu, had black belts in judo and taekwondo, and had also studied boxing. (1:07:22 - 1:08:53) And he taught us all of those things. And that's practical because I've met so many people who will say, I've got a black belt. Okay. Let's spar. And I realised I could take this up. Person apart in five seconds flat, because they went to a black belt mill where you show up and you do the certain things and you pay your money at the end of X number of years, they give you a black belt. They've never required you to prove that you can actually fight. Yeah, that's true. And that's the problem with certification these days. Like, you know, I work in the security industry. In the security industry, you study online for 50 hours and then you get a certificate. That only allows you to work in the security industry. It doesn't mean you're experienced. It doesn't mean you're knowledgeable, right? So same thing. You can be a black belt and you can break wood and you can kick a bag, but it doesn't mean you know what's happening out there on the streets. If you've never been punched, if nobody's taking you by surprise when you're in your stance, right? Or now all of a sudden, yeah, you do have multiple attackers, but you've only been taught to block four different ways and punch five different ways. And that punch didn't work, you know? So yeah. And we spoke earlier on, it's not always about the, it's not always about fighting. I don't judge, I don't pick a school on how they fight. I look at the theory. You know, how do they, how do they condition the mind? Because there's a lot that happens before the fight. We don't get into fights at ops. We finish the fight. That's it. (1:08:53 - 1:10:21) Yep. And absolutely right again. I have to agree with Vincent. People are always surprised when I tell them I can teach anyone, even including an 80-year-old grandmother, the single most effective self-defence move I've ever learned in my life. And this gets back to what you and I were talking about, Vincent. Now this is the circumstance where the person's going to get belligerent with you. They're going to give you a warning. This isn't going to help you with the crazy guy who just walks up to you on the train and stabs you. But most of the time, your assailant is going to give you a warning. The most effective thing you can do is take two steps backwards and turn sideways to them. You've just bought yourself reaction time. And by turning your body sideways, you've covered up a lot of your most vulnerable spots. Anybody can learn to do that in seconds flat. Back up. Give yourself some room. Makes sense. Yeah. And ladies, same thing with the, with the pepper spray. When you back up, you create an imaginary line. If that guy crosses the line, well, firstly, you know, you know, the distance your pepper spray or your, sorry, your, your dog spray works, right? He crossed that line, deploy it. Right. You know, if a guy, if a guy's four and a half feet away, if he takes a step into, he's actually taken two feet, two foot of a step in towards you. That's your personal space. Right. Look at that personal line. Yes. And that's the other thing that, that backing up does. If I'm in that situation, I got a guy who's belligerent. I think he's probably going to attack me. I back up. Okay. Now, if he comes at me, I'm not going to wait for him to attack me. I'm going to attack him. (1:10:22 - 1:11:40) Yeah. And folks, everything's on the camera these days too, right? You back up, you're seen as the person who's retreating. You're another victim when he advances. Yes, exactly. You gave him opportunity to walk away and he didn't take it. And it's the same thing. If you're a woman with pepper spray, you gave him opportunity. He didn't walk away. Yeah. Yeah. Some, I was just thinking now what a lot, a lot of stuff I hear here in Canada, when people go, well, it's not just on Canada, social media with the new woke communities, like they say, I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe. If the guy breaks into my house, right? Folks, somebody breaks into your house and you do what you needed to do. You need to be able to justify yourself. You cannot take my words, world's words. You need to be able to justify yourself, your justify your own actions. Right. And I'm just going to say, I didn't feel safe. I did what I had to do. That's a good answer. That's a good answer. All right, Vincent, thank you so much for your time today. And I know that you've given the viewers some really good things to be thinking about. Folks do think about this, start practising the things that Vincent has advised today, because Canada is becoming increasingly dangerous. Do not be the next statistic. Vincent, thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good day.