In this 10‑minute behind‑the‑scenes vlog recorded in a Vancouver hotel room, Tod Maffin and his close collaborator (Speaker B) give subscribers a public glimpse into recent personal and professional developments. Tod announces his upcoming Ottawa keynote—the first ever focused on Canada in his 22‑year speaking career—and teases a new TV‑pilot project. The bulk of the conversation centers on the creation of their music video “I Am a Modern Canadian,” covering its origin after the Nanaimo Infusion event, budgeting decisions (thousands of dollars), production challenges, and the emotional backdrop of Tod’s recent biopsy and cancer scare. Speaker B describes her role as a “sensitivity reader” and “fun police,” highlighting the tension between event‑planning stress and creative freedom, and the collaborative process of lyric refinement and cinematography. They reflect on the video’s performance (≈60 k YouTube views versus an expected million), emphasizing the value of friendships made during the project rather than raw view counts. The vlog closes with gratitude to supporting members and a reminder of the 10‑minute time limit.
Chapters
Hello! Hi! And welcome to the behind the scenes, usually the member-only, subscriber-only video, but we are making this one public for everyone so you can see what you are missing, kind of.
Cheers!
Oh, I forgot to tell you, we have a 10-minute time limit on this for a variety of reasons. Um, hurry up then. All right, okay, okay. So I was looking at the wrong place. Hi, you're over here. Um, as you will notice, we are— well, I don't know, maybe you won't notice, but we are not at home. We are in a hotel room, uh, in Vancouver. Because you were here for a conference. Well, work stuff. Work stuff. And I am flying to Ottawa tomorrow for two reasons. One is because I'm giving a keynote speech about Canada, my first keynote speech about Canada. I've given 22 years' worth of keynote speeches, but this is the first about that.
And it's been like 10 years, 8 years, 8 years since I gave one.
Yeah. And then I'm doing a pilot for a TV show, which I'm sure I'll be able to tell you about later. Um, normally, uh, every week I do a behind-the-scenes video where I talk about our personal life and projects and things that we have on the go. And normally that is reserved just for paying subscribers, um, but we're gonna let it out, let it all out. So can we talk a bit about— first about— because what one of the behind-the-scenes things that I wanted to do with you but we didn't end up doing it just because we ended up getting busy is like your perspective of the whole I am a modern Canadian video? Oh gosh, um, so yes, so like when it— when I first thought of the idea or came up or told you about the idea—
oh, can I, can I talk about how I first heard about it? Okay, okay, so we're, we're about 2 months after the Nanaimo Infusion, the event in Nanaimo that invited Americans to come to Nanaimo, um, in light of all the politics around Canada and the 51st state. And it was a smashing success, but stressful, especially the last couple weeks before it happened. Um, so, you know, a month goes by, a month and a half. Sometime in June, we're getting ready to go visit Australia. Like, we haven't seen my sister's family in years. And so big trip, we've saved up for lots of stuff to organize. Tod comes home one day and he's got an idea, and he's like humming something, and he comes into the, um— are you eating chips?
I'm hungry.
And he comes into the bedroom and he says, I, I have an idea. Or was something else, it was almost more ominous. It was like, I have something I'm gonna tell you. And I was like, and can I tell them that you— what was happening with you medically?
Sure.
Okay, so Todd, we had been waiting for, um, a more specific test, a biopsy, um, because Todd may have had cancer. And that was really stressful for Tod and for me. And, um, anyway, so that was kind of in the background, and Tod's like, you know that song? And then I was like, yeah. And I'd heard him playing it earlier. He's like, I'm gonna do a music video.
Oh, I'd already decided when I told you. It wasn't just like I'm thinking about it, it was like I'm going to—
No, well, you had decided. Um, you were kind of like And, and I was like, what? What? I mean, I had some, I had some not objections, but like, yeah, clarifying questions. And then there was like, I don't, um, and then you told me about the budget and I was like, the what? Um, well, and, and I'm not gonna say exactly what it was, but it was in the thousands. But, but I was, I was like adamantly, hey, A, you told me never to let you do big projects again after the infusion, and B, that was a lot of money and we were going to Australia, which we'd saved up for.
But I knew that the money, if we monetized the video, the money would come back. That it would not be, that it would take a few months, but we would eventually earn it back. Oh.
I, you know, I don't, I am a person that finds it really hard to plan based on money that I don't have in my hands. Same. So same.
It was, it was just an idea. See, like, I sometimes like to call you like the family's Senate.
I'm the fun police.
She's— no, you're not the fun police, you're, you're the sober second thought. And, and it's like, you know, like when I— when the Nanaimo infusion idea was there, you were supportive of my crazy ideas. You were not a fan of this crazy idea at first though. No, because you do event planning for work, and event planning sucks. I've seen you when it—
I find it so stressful.
It's so stressful. And you saw this as one giant event where there are a million things that could go wrong.
And even as a simp— relatively simple event, there was a lot that stressed you out. And I think you understood why I hate event planning. I'm not— that suspense, it for me is not excitement, it is dread. —but, and all I could do is like support Tod and be like, it's gonna be okay. You know what I do? I'll just go, 48 hours from now this will all be over for good or for bad. That should show you how I feel about event planning. So this one was a real, like, I could totally tell, I already knew how much fun it was gonna be. And I had a renewed understanding about how much your creativity was doing for you in that moment as you were afraid for your mortality and worried about me. And there's just a lot— you had a lot rattling around in your head at the moment. And, and I didn't want to be a naysayer, and I have been saving up for my mountain bike for quite a long time, so who am I to say you can't spend money on your hobby? Um, but the money— the amount of money for what was going to get out of it seemed like a lot.
And most of it, like, was, you know, like, I wanted to pay our photographer, our principal photographer, the cinema cinematographer, because he's really good at it. And I need, you know— not that you're not good at—
I like that you say our— this is a Tod Maffin project.
But I needed someone who could— I was the idea person— who could operate a camera and move at the same time, which you cannot. No. I cannot.
I once, um, someone tried to think up a way that wheelchair users could do dolly shots. I think that's what they're called. They are dolly shots, yeah. Because we have wheels already. Um, it was a weird idea and I don't use a power chair, so that wasn't gonna happen. Yeah. Um, but after that it became like the thing that you talk to everybody about. Like, you got on board pretty quick though. You folks out there with the neurodiverse tendencies, you know about falling down a rabbit hole and making it your special interest. That's— it was Tod's special interest. And I, I think I helped out with some of the lyrics.
Yeah, you did. You definitely did.
You definitely did. And, um, tried to, uh, interpret your crazy idea. The lyrics were definitely the hard part for the people in your life who were like, what is Yeah, the lyrics were definitely the hardest part because they had to be right, they had to be good. And, and I tend to be like the— I, I would call me your sensitivity reader for pretty much everything. It's like, that doesn't read well when we're talking about Indigenous people or whatever. Obviously I don't have all the experiences, but I find that that's what I'm thinking about. I don't— we don't want to hurt anyone, we don't want to like insult people or whatever. So it was important to me, and, and I got to hear Tod being like crazy.
And you heard me sing, which you've never heard before because it's— I'm bad at it.
That was really cool. I've never heard that. I was impressed by your range, actually.
I was shocked by my range, actually. The recording engineer, when I hit that first low note, he was like, honestly, I thought we'd have to Auto-Tune that. I'm like, all right. Um, but all in all, it worked out okay.
I'm impressed. I mean, I was You, like, the only thing I was really concerned about is that you were like, you're gonna be disappointed, and you have not been. No, I would have been tired.
I— the only thing, you had a really good point, which is like, what happens if no one watches this? And to be fair, not many people have watched it actually. Like, I kind of thought this would be a million views. Go watch it! I kind of thought it'd be a million views. I think it's like on YouTube, it might be like 60,000 now, which is not small, but Less than I thought. Um, but you're like that TikTok meme where it's like, my husband's gonna show you, you're gonna like this fucking watchers thing though. Um, but I— but you know, you're like, are you gonna be happy if it doesn't get a lot of views? And I'm like, I will, because of— because of the friends we made along the way.
But no, but it was your— your art. Yeah, I think for you it was being creative. It was. We gotta end this.
We gotta end because we're coming up on 10 minutes and then TikTok gets grumpy afterwards. So Um, but anyway, um, thank you for watching. If you are a supporting member, thank you for being a supporting member. Um, and yeah, uh, we're in a hotel room and we're not going to let that go to waste.
And like and subscribe if you want more. Right over her head. I'm ignoring it. Bye!
