The Final Video ❤️ Tod's Nanaimo Infusion

Okay. Hello.

Hello.

This is the final video. Of what? Oh, of the Nanaimo infusion. And we're going to go long on this one. Normally, normally I think we like, you know, try and rush it together, but I think we're going to just yabber. But first, a few things, housekeeping things to get out of the way. I'm Tod. This is my other brother, Darryl. Never gets old. It never gets old.

Um, you sleep with your brother?

Why do you always choose that joke?

It's so best joke.

It's so gross. All right, um, so we have lots to say, um, and but we're first going to talk a bit about the, um, the upcoming events that are happening in Nanaimo. There's stuff coming in May, June, and July like this Nunaimic Days. If you go to the website nanaimoinfusion.ca, there are links to those events. So if you couldn't come this particular weekend, then come another time.

And the Guinness Book Nanaimo Bar Bake that the VIU culinary students are doing in May, I think on the May long weekend.

All right, so I mean, I guess the first thing is thank you. You know, if you haven't been following this and you're wondering what this is all about, maybe you could explain it to us one day.

That's a good joke.

Thank you.

Maybe go back to the beginning and, um, your guess is as good as ours.

Yeah, so, uh, the way this started was about 2 and a half months ago, um, I made a little video saying, hey, if you're an American and you support Canada, why don't you come to Nanaimo and support us, our, our economy?

It just dropped.

What dropped? What?

The camera dropped a little.

That's okay.

All right.

Um, And hundreds of you came from all over the world and across the US. Like, we had people from Texas and Florida and New Jersey and New York and South Carolina, North Carolina, South Dakota, North Dakota. Yeah, it was, it was literally all those.

So I think there was California, Oregon, Washington. I think there was an Arizona as well.

And like 100 200 more. So thank you for, um, for participating and, um, you know, believing in, in, in hope and friendship. I think that makes— I think that makes a, a really big difference. I was thrilled. What did you think? We haven't even talked about this yet because we've been sleeping since the weekend. What did you think of it all?

I, I had so many thoughts about it. Um, You know what I'm— the feeling I'm left with is that was like being at summer camp. It was like a 3-day-long summer camp with 500 strangers. And it was that feeling of like buoyancy and connection and fun and meeting all these new people who we're gonna be friends with and And that— I did not expect that.

Yeah.

And I didn't expect how emotionally resonant it would be for us and for our visitors. Like, you guys sought us out. Some people cried, and there were so many hugs. So many hugs.

Yeah, it was really— it was— I, I would— did not expect it to be as touching as it was, you know.

Awesome. So wholesome.

And we went out for— I thought I'd picked the right time of day, but we're just like looking right into the sun. No, it's fine. I just squint for 5 minutes.

This is what I was like the entire time of the infusion, looking up at people like this. It's okay.

It's okay.

It's called sun dabbing.

It's fine. By the way, apologies in advance for you seeing ads on this video.

We—

the infusion, we didn't make any money off of it. Some people thought that we had like kickbacks from the hotels or something. We are not that organized. To begin with, but no, there were no kickbacks. We actually lost about $300 or $400 on the whole thing. So I am monetizing the hell out of this video. So you are going to see ads and we're going to make the $1.20 that we'll make out of this.

True. Did you ever give the money from the stickers and stuff that on lives to the food bank, to the Loaves and Fishes?

Oh, we haven't done that yet. Thank you. Thank you. I have to figure out how to cash that out of TikTok, but we will do that as well.

It is very difficult to get money out of TikTok up here.

Yeah, it's— and they convert it into like diamonds become gems. It's very complicated. Yeah. And I guess one of the things that I had not expected either was like we made like really close friends in 48 hours. It was so bizarre, you know, like especially the— so the first night, actually the Thursday night before it all started, we were just kind of like, it's okay, it's fine. We were just like, you know, why don't we just invite Well, let's go down for fish and chips, which we kind of wanted anyway.

Um, we ate out so much.

Why don't we just invite everyone down on the email list and in the Discord to come and join us for fish and chips? And like 20 people showed up. It was great.

Um, oh, that was so fun. It, it was the first day of the 2-week period leading up to it that I was not deathly afraid that nobody would show.

That is a good point. We should talk about that because we genuinely thought that no one would show up. Well, not no one, but like maybe 20 or 30 people or something for a while.

I've organized a lot of events, and to a certain extent, that is part of every event planning. You get to a point and you're like, I hate this. I never want to do this again. Like nobody's going to show or they're going to hate it. And with this one, we had, we, we had lots of people who'd said they were coming, but we had an uptick in emails starting with the like 1st of April with people feeling unsafe leaving America, feeling unsafe, unsafe coming back into the US. Yeah, and, and really getting quite scared because that was what the news was like. Like, I don't blame them. Like, people started— anyone on a visa started getting targeted, and I, I really felt for them. So that, that just kind of was a bit of a pall over the process for a little while, and we were both Just unsure if we misunderstood.

No, I mean, I knew that, you know, we had a— the Discord was such a blessing in a way because one of the sort of my— I'm not a good organizer, as Jocelyn can tell you. And so I wanted to, like, be as hands-off as possible. And I thought if I just set up the Discord, everyone can self-organize. And that's basically what they did. And we had a channel in there called We Booked, and you were only allowed to post in it if you'd actually booked your travel and/or accommodations. And just counting up from that, there were 175 people in there. And I figured that if you apply— if you assume that only half of the people that are coming were actually in the Discord, that'd be about maybe 300 people, 325 or something, which is about what ended up coming. I think the final tally was 550 people at Maféo Sutton Park, with a little more than half American visitors. So, you know, that's sort of in the range, probably almost 300, which—

and I thought there were at least 400 visitors. Like, there were a lot of people from BC, from other parts of Canada, from off-island, who are every bit a tourist as the folks from the US. Um, and, you know, so it seemed there were a lot of people who were not from Nanaimo in that park.

Yeah. Uh, some people have asked us when we are doing it next year, if this will be annual. We are not fucking going to do it again. We're not going to organize it. I'm not. I think Tourism Nanaimo would be a great organization to do it. They're the natural organization. I was not really able to gauge their— what?

What? Just let the dog growl for a little bit. She probably sees someone in the distance. This is why Turo didn't come to the infusion with us.

Anyway, so Tourism Nanaimo may or may not do it. I hope they do. I hope they do, because I feel like like we have passed the baton to them. So we'll see. Can you knock it off, please?

I'm sorry.

Not you. She doesn't like other dogs.

Give her a pause.

No, no.

I mean, like, pause for a minute. There we go.

Oh, there we go.

Okay.

No. Anyway, so I don't know if it happens next year. You know, lots of other cities were trying to, you know, were emailing saying, can you do this for us in our community? Or how do we do it in our community? And I don't know that it's possible to recreate it because like the whole thing was, it was a moment in time. It was like a really unique 2-week period where the tariffs had just started. Trump had started with his 51st state bullshit and it felt like Americans were wanting a, in that moment in history, in that very brief window, they wanted a way to go beyond like platitudes on Facebook. And so I don't know if it's, if it's possible to sort of recreate it?

Yeah, I think early on I really felt like this is not ever going to happen the same way again. And that doesn't mean it can't be tried, but anything based on virality is gonna be hard to reproduce. And I also think like, I've thought a lot about this stuff since the event.

True.

Not an event, since the festival, as CBC called it. Yeah. Um, and I really think that, um, Nanaimo was a— is a city that already had a lot going for it, but, you know, is dwarfed in attention by Vancouver and Whistler and Victoria. And so it was this diamond in the rough, like, not being, you know, undersold, I guess. And so it already had lots to see and do. And so I think, you know, maybe not every, you know, Central Butte, Saskatchewan or something is probably not going to be able to do this. But no, no offense to the Sask folks. But I think it's the kind of event or like activity that was very much out of its time, like people, like, it was drawn out of a time of fear and shock and horror and a need for community. And that's what it was. Like, I— it's such a weird thing. People at work are like, "So, how was the weekend?" And I'm like, "I lack words for it still." What was a big surprise for you about it?

I don't know. I, you know, it's funny. It's been like 3 days and I still have not had a chance to process the big thoughts, the universal truths, as we would say at CBC. I don't know.

Like, I—

it's still— the thing that I think I will remember out of this whole thing is how surprised I was that it meant meant so, so much to some people. Not all people. Like, some people just came up for a weekend and wanted just a fun weekend to get away. Some were locals, but there were some people that it meant the world to.

Like, you could see that on the media coverage. Like, I think it was the CBC, uh, one bit that interviewed probably 4 or 5 people in one. And you could see one guy was like, "Yeah, you know, seemed like an interesting idea and I got some cool Canadian candy." And then a couple of the other people were like, "This is a moment that we really need to be here together." Yeah, one woman was literally in tears.

Yeah. And like, it's like, you know, the people that we talk to, you know, like LGBTQ people who do not feel safe in their own country, in their own city, came up here and you could feel the weight lifted off of them. And that's one of the things that they said is they felt safe. They felt like they could be themselves. And like that, I think that's the thing that will stick with me is like, is that there was a place for them to have that and how much it meant for them.

I have to say, sort of drawing on that, I was taken aback in a good way by the people who volunteered and like believed in the idea, even though it was really crazy.

Yeah.

And we get it, like, it's not something that's been done before this way, and not everyone had the sort of flexibility or leeway to like make it fit. But like, um, the folks from The Coast Is Queer and the, um, the, the Cedar Farmers Market did the craft market, and then the, the, um, food trucks sold out like over and over again, and And then our friends Barbara and Laura and Lori, who had that brilliant idea for the welcome table and just showed up and did it. And I have to say, like, Tod was sick kind of throughout a chunk of time. And I think the idea of involving other people was like a weight on your mind. Like, I just don't know how to grapple or wrangle all those people. So no, like, you can do what you want, but like, I don't have any way for you to volunteer. Yeah, a lot of people wanted to volunteer.

A lot of people wanted to volunteer.

There was no thing for them to volunteer.

Yeah, I was like, the only thing we're doing is the photo and whatever you want to do. Like, someone— this is from Islandish. They were great. Islandish is like a little store in Nanaimo. They have all sorts of Nanaimo stuff. They were like fully on board, which is cool.

We should have dropped a fully fledged ad on them though.

Well, not an ad, but like a video. And someone had— someone made like a t-shirt. Someone was selling Nanaimo Infusion tour jackets or tour sweatshirts that looked like a tour thing in the back. I wish we could have gotten one.

I didn't see it.

And someone had made little tags that went at the end of the lanyards.

Oh, Henry, we love you.

People made all sorts of stuff. And my rule of thumb was, you don't need my permission. This is a community thing. Go do, go do whatever you want.

And people did. And they did a great job.

And the adopt— so at the welcome table, They had an Adopt an American thing, which was great because they had locals were filling out index cards with their name and their phone number and their family makeup and what kind of things they like doing. Like, we are these people and we're in our late 40s and we have two 10-year-olds and we like hiking. And then Americans would come up to the table and they'd like look through and find someone that they want to be adopted by and they'd pick up the card and they'd call them and they'd say— dozens and dozens of Americans apparently were adopted by people.

It was really cool to see people interviewed talking about like Oh, I'm here with my adopted American or whatever. Because I— there was a channel in the Discord called Adopted Un-American, and we knew kind of halfway through that it seemed like people were having trouble sort of pulling the trigger or like— oh, that's a bad word— having trouble making the decision of like, oh, this, this seems like people who are like me, and then pairing themselves off with their local partner or their American. Um, and it wasn't something that we had the bandwidth to do. And so Barbara and Laura kind of took that from the, the Discord world, which I don't think either of them ever went into.

No, I don't either.

And then brought it into the in-person world, which is so perfect because that was essentially what was happening writ large with Discord and the actual infusion. Like, you made that Discord, and I do think that was absolutely essential kind of community building that made people trust that it was worth coming to, that the infusion was a thing that would be fun and, and would be there when they booked. And, um, but it was so cool to see how many more people came than were in Discord. Like, you assumed there were probably at least as many people who didn't use Discord and came.

Yeah, it's very cool. Um, so what's next for us? We've been sleeping for 72 hours. I've been sleeping for 72 hours.

I went back to work last week, or last— on Tuesday.

Well, I mean, we both— not you went back to work, we've been working the whole time. Like, we've—

oh yeah, like, I mean, I went back to work after the weekend.

I took Monday off, but that was part of the challenge, is that we were doing this kind of as we were trying to do our day job as well. And the other thing that sort of happened to come out of this, which I would love you folks to check out, is I ended up somehow a Canadian influencer. Well, I, I don't know how it happened.

I'm so humble, but no, that's genuinely what happened.

Like, I was—

it is. But you were already doing that when you started the infusion, right? By accident. Yeah, you were doing buy Canadian posts and Americans were like, we're sorry, we don't want it either. Like, this is so dumb. And as the sort of loomed, and then after the infusion kind of took off and there was some media coverage, you started doing longer-form stuff.

Yeah, I started doing things—

You had more of an appetite for it.

Yeah, I started doing videos and writing on Canadian identity and history and politics and culture. And if you're interested in that, you should follow, because I'm just starting out on it. And the YouTube channel, which you are on right now, if you haven't followed, What do the kids say? Smash the like button, subscribe, comment. What? Anyhow, do all the things. I literally picked like the wrong time of day to do this. It's the golden hour. Cinematographers would love this. And anyway, and then I started this newsletter about Canadian identity and it is at farandwide.news. And if you don't understand what that is, the phrase from far and wide is part of the lyrics of the Canadian national anthem. Don't start singing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, And I had a little bit of insight that I hadn't thought about until this time when you started it, is that Canada is a nation of immigrants. Yeah, we are, you know, probably we colonized for sure, but it's a nation of immigrants that we kind of pride ourselves on people coming and bringing their culture and, and into Canadian multiculturalism. And I realized that it's not just the far and wide of our geography from coast to coast to coast, it's the far and wide of our origins. And I don't know, that seemed really significant to me. And I'm pretty sure that our anthem was not written from that perspective. There's another topic for for a year. But that's what— it seemed really significant to me because we're Canadians are in the process of a necessary period of patriotism, I think, of realizing that what we have is worth protecting.

So, um, on the topic of the Discord, I was going to shut it down, um, but I've had some people suggest that I leave it up, so I'm going to leave it up. I don't know how long for or what we're going to do with it. I'll probably just leave it in its current state. I expect fewer and fewer people will be there. I do have a new Discord, which is going to be for the Far and Wide stuff. So if you go to farandwide.news, there'll be a link to that there. Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen with the Discord. It's maybe a chance for people to, to keep chatting. I know I'm going to keep in touch with people that we met, like the night The night after it was all over, we did another impromptu, like, hey, there's the Sip Pub, which is just up the street from us, or over there, I guess. You know, if you're still in town, actually, I guess it was Monday, wasn't it? Sunday. Sunday, okay. If you're still in town, come on down and join us.

Oh, that was so fun.

And it was super fun, and locals came and visitors came, and I'm mad that they had to leave. There's some people in that group that it's like, I wish you were here, I wish you lived here. I feel like we could —anyone.

Not that we want to take all the good people and all the— Oh, we want to take all the good people. —out of America, although we'll take all your nurses and doctors, thanks. But we, I think we wanted people who needed a break to be able to take a break and like be there if they wanted to be there. But obviously like we can't do that, and what we would really like is peace and goodwill on our continent.

So, um, the thanks, uh, go to Kate and Danielle, who were the market people, and the food truck people coordinated themselves. Our friend Kelly, who came over and basically was our— looked after us. Um, Patrick and Lisa, our friends, also came over, and that was wonderful to see them. Is that the cat? No. Are you quite done now? The dog just like completely derailed all the fun. Um, yeah, as I was saying, thank you for being part of this. Um, thank you to all of the dozens and dozens of local people who supported this. Thank you for putting up with my crazy idea. Do you remember the first time I told you about it? It must have been the first night after I made the video.

Oh yeah, I— because I don't see every TikTok you make. But we were, um, we were in, in the bedroom like getting ready for bed, and you were like, did you, did you see what I made? And you described it, and I was like, they know it's not an event, right?

Oh, that's right, you were so worried about— because of your trauma from event planning.

And I was like, you gotta understand, that's a lot of people, and you gotta have them like booked in and registered. You have to have an event count. And like, I was having a Total mental breakdown because I, oh yeah, I was in the middle of planning an event at the time that I was not sure enough people would come to.

And, um, so it was traumatic a lot.

And you were like, no, no, they know. I'm like, but do they? You just said I'll plan an event. And if you go back and look at it, it's exactly what he said. But very soon thereafter you were like, Don't worry, very, very clear. And that made me feel better. But still, it was this lightning in a bottle. Like, we were just trying to hold its coattails and like fall— try and harness it, right? So you're welcome.

So thank you. Um, so if you want to— if you want to contact me, my website is just my name, toddmaffin.com. Um, there's a little contact Todd Todd Foreman there. Um, we are on Bluesky. I'm TodMaffin.com. You are Jocelyn LT. Jocelyn LT at Bluesky.whatever. And your TikTok is Jocelyn Hacks. My TikTok is Tod Maffin. I presume you know because that's where this whole thing started. Um, and yeah, hopefully— I hope Tourism Nanaimo picks it up and does it next year. If so, we will be there. In the audience enjoying it all with you.

Being the grand marshal.

Nope, not even that. He just showed up. Just in the audience.

And like waved. Just in the audience.

So. Yeah. Thank you.

We'll return to the anonymity of regular life and I hope that you'll follow Tod and his creative videos and I really enjoy them. I'm learning more social studies and history now than I did in school and But Tod didn't finish high school, so.

That's true. Alright. Thank you. Thank you all.

We really appreciate you being there.

Goodbye.