CA Podcast: Episode 24 of Canucks Conversation “Botchford Forever”

Photo credit:Chris Conte

4 years ago

Another week, but not just another podcast. This week we lost an amazing human being. Jason Botchford passed away due to a heart failure and it shook me. It shook a lot of people and from that came an outpouring of emotion through many different forms of outlets. I woke up at noon on Wednesday afternoon after working a 16 hour shift at my place of employment, I opened up Twitter as I usually do to start my day and I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

I didn’t believe what I was reading, I closed Twitter and reopened it and there was TheAthletic’s tweet.

I’m not sure what I want to say in this article, I’ve been blessed to be able to be a part of CanucksArmy but I’m nothing special when it comes to writing to be honest. I’ve worked at it hard over the past couple years of writing and I think I belong here sometimes. But the main reason I think I was invited to join CanucksArmy was because of my podcast (Canucks Conversation).

I am better at engaging with people through my podcast and I feel that is why Ryan reached out to me to join this website. Hell, if you saw how many simple words I have to google to make sure the spelling is correct you would laugh me off of this website. I am confident that I can deliver a good product through podcasting though, I know from the responses to this idea that I launched 5 months ago.

I was so impressed by the articles that came out throughout the day, some here on this website, Cat and Petbugs, your article was so touching, it really was the thing that made me think that I had to do something similar to pay my respects and honour Botch. Then I read Ryan’s and Cory’s articles and something else came to my mind.

First off, Cory Hergott and myself go back a year or two now as we first talked on a podcast about the Utica Comets, we had an amazing conversation and that developed into us always being into each other DM’s and constantly congratulation each other on our successes. Cory was becoming THE guy to read and hear from about Comets hockey, he always had time for me and was a driving force in getting me involved with this website.

That’s where Ryan Biech comes in and he was the guy who gave me a shot here, I’m out of my league at CanucksArmy, I didn’t even know how to create a graph when I got here. But Ryan saw what I was doing with the podcast and my writing at TheCanuckWay, he must have thought that I could bring something to CanucksArmy for some reason.

These two are big reasons to why I am where I am and have the audience that I have and I wanted to thank them because as I was going through this day of recording I heard so many people talking about what Jason did for them and Cory and Ryan are huge components of my own success. They helped me get to a point where I have an audience to get my voice out there, they have accelerated my success similar to how Botchford sped up theirs. So in this time of loss I think it’s worth saying that these two are in a mentor role to me and I know they hate to hear it, and Cory if you are reading this I KNOW YOU ESPECIALLY HATE IT!

But you guys are that to me and thank you for everything.

So to the podcast.

This week I was scheduled to have Cody Janzen and Georgia Twiss on but I had to change what I was doing due to the loss of Jason Botchford. My apologies to Cody but he was very understanding and we will chat on episode 26.

I decided to reach out to nine people that I knew had a story to tell about Botch. I talked to Georgia Twiss, Justin Morissette, Jackson McDonald, Harman Dayal, JD Burke, Clay Imoo, Ryan Biech, Cory Hergott and Jeff Paterson. All nine of these people said they would be willing to come on the show without hesitation as they wanted to tell their story about each of their different relationships with Botch.

Jeff Paterson was landing in California on Friday and said he would have time to step away from his family for 20-30 minutes to tell his story and that was because he wanted to help out a guy like me the same way Botchford helped so many others in a similar way. I felt uncomfortable to be talking to Jeff at this time, I thought he should be with his family right now and I didn’t want to take him away from them, we will connect again down the road but right now he should be with his family without any distractions.

I think we told an amazing story on this podcast, we told the story that was behind the outpouring of emotion on social media this week, I wanted to put together a book of stories with different chapters and I think I accomplished that. Each person had such a similar but different story, there’s a few reoccurring themes that come throughout the conversation and I touch on them in my introduction.

He helped everyone and cared for everyone.

Personally, Jason helped me out in what I was doing. I created this podcast and was having minor success early on featuring some of my favourite people in the Canucks twittersphere and then I was lucky enough to chat with Botch and Harm on episode five. Jason gave 40 minutes of his time to a guy who was getting 30 listeners an episode.

He didn’t have to do that but he did. By that way that’s one of the reoccurring themes in the conversations. He didn’t have to but he did.

We chatted in DM’s from time to time and I remember him reading one of my articles and messaging me saying that the way I wrote about prospects was different and being different was the way to be noticed and that’s why he read and enjoyed that article. He loved my #ShotgunJake videos, using them multiple times in the Athletties.

There are some very emotional conversations here in these five hours but the two that really stick out are the stories that Harman and Ryan tell. I don’t really know how to even describe them I would just recommend to listen to them talk about him and what he would do for these guys. I’m sorry that I don’t know how to describe it with my writing but I think the conversations on the show speak enough to it.

I’m mostly just rambling on here so if you are looking for the podcast here it is. I recommend listening to it in different sittings. It’s a lot to take in, and from the responses that I have got over the past couple days I know that it came together even better than I could have ever imagined.

Thank you to all 8 of you for joining me to tell your story, as I always say with this show, it’s the guests that make this show what it is and it shows me that this is what my show was meant to be, it was meant to be a conversation about the Canucks but this week it evolved into even more. It became the way that I could contribute to the legacy of Jason Botchford. This is the way that I could do something and I owe it to everyone that shared their amazing stories so thank you Georgia, Justin, Jackson, Harman, JD, Clay, Ryan and Cory. You were all so strong to be able to tell your story to me through this podcast and you delivered with some absolutely amazing stories.

Jason may be gone but he will never be forgotten, he left behind a legacy through us content creators, whether that be the writers, bloggers, youtubers, graphic designers or even podcasters. He will live on through us now because we owe that to him.

He made this show what it is back in December when he came on my show and got it out to so many more people with a simple retweet. Even with him gone he is still helping out guys like me, because of him this show peaked at number five on the sports podcast charts. Thank you Botch, there will never be another like you.