I Was Raised Mennonite. By 18, I Was in Prison. - Pete Schmitt

And so I decided at a pretty young age, I was like 13 or 14, that I wasn't going to become a Christian until I was ready to be wholly committed. My flesh wanted the world, and so I decided, "I'm going for the world." I didn't know it at the time, but my brother later told me. He said he had prayed for me, that even if it took something really big, that God would do it in my life so that I would change my ways and become a Christian. It was a huge change. I remember waking up in the morning and seeing bars, and it just blew my mind. You're used to waking up in a regular bedroom.

It just hits you again and again, right? You're like, "Whoa, I'm in prison." I think there was a lot of people that would have, or a number of people that were really expecting, "Now Pete's going to change." Like, "This experience surely is going to change him." I had so much negative, evil stuff that I was watching, listening, and that was just filling me with just darkness. I was making my decisions in life. He wasn't—God wasn't responsible. He's somewhere, but he's on the back shelf. I don't think about God much at all. I was so convicted of my sins at that point in time, like I was so uncomfortable. And I think I realized that at the time, what was going on was that people at church were praying for me.

As I was listening to the preaching of God, there was conviction—real conviction—started happening in my life. This is where things really started to shift in my mind. I thought to myself, "You know, you've been procrastinating for so long. There's no convenient stopping place." And I just decided right then, "I've had enough. I'm done with the old life. I want to follow God, and I'm going all the way."

We're honored to have Pete on for this episode. Before we begin, I just wanted to let you know that this conversation does cover some difficult material and includes sensitive topics such as violence, drugs, and mental health. Please use discretion while listening and while allowing others to listen.

So, Pete, you would have been—you would have grown up in the old colony Russian Mennonite, I think—what? In Alberta, is that correct? Yeah, tell me about that. So I grew up—my first about 8, 10 years of my life would have been in an old colony, but it would have been in Ontario, not in Alberta. Southwestern Ontario. It's like right close to Detroit.

It was pretty challenging. We were—I was a bit of a loner, I guess, growing up. I wouldn't—they had a school. Some old colony churches, they'll have like a school that they send their children to. Others will just send them to the public school. But they had a private school, and so I went there. And I guess I didn't feel really accepted among a lot of the people that were my age, which made it tough. But since we moved away—sorry, didn't move away, we joined—my parents joined a different church.

After that, things went a lot better for myself with that. And—but yeah, it was—I mean, it wasn't all bad. There were some good things there too, but it was—it was tough. So what was your faith like at that point? Like, was it real for you, or did it feel more just cultural, "This is just what we do on Sunday"? Tell me about that. So I would say it was mostly cultural. There were a lot of things I didn't understand at that point that I understand now. I would say very traditional.

It seems to me that they still hold on to a lot of the values that they held back in Russia. Like when they—when they immigrated from Russia to Canada, the United States. Say, for example, like when we were in Mexico when I was young, my parents—we weren't—we didn't live there, we were just visiting in Mexico. But my parents went to church, and I would have stayed back as a young boy. And so at the time, I didn't understand why. But then my dad—somebody told me that. I think it was 11 and under, the children don't go to church. And I don't know for 100% sure, but I think it stems back to Russia because in Russia, you were—it was illegal for, I think, 12 and under to go to church. 11 under, 12 and under, yeah.

It was against the law. Which I heard, actually, in some of the old countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Even today, that law is still on the books in some of those places. That's kind of—that's kind of—I don't know, it strikes me as a little odd, you know, that they still had that in Mexico. So again, this is all old colony that we're describing, right?

Did you stay old colony, or did that change at some point growing up? Yeah, it would have changed. Like I said, I was 10 years old. We went to the Klenivny setting. But if you don't mind, I'd like to share a little bit more about— Yeah, yeah, go ahead. —about the old colony there. Like I said, there was a common thing that was said often that you're supposed to stay with what you've been taught. In German, we would say, "Bleiben bleibt, was die Besserheit." So even if it wouldn't necessarily line up with the scriptures, we were—we were taught to just do as we were told, as we were taught. And so therefore, a number of things—how would I say it?

It didn't really—yeah, it didn't line up with the scriptures, unfortunately. I mean, there were some positive things that they had a lot of good teaching. But there were things that were missing. But say, for example, like they would have taught that you cannot know if you're saved. They would not teach assurance of salvation. That's pretty much across the board.

A lot of the old colony churches would vary from church to church in the way they do different things. But the one main thing that I—from what I—the way I understand it is it's the same across the board. You cannot know if you are saved.

Huh. I didn't realize that. So that's just what you would have—how you would have grown up. Like, you just can't know, right? If you're saved. Okay. I guess depending on the person, but it seems like that could be pretty unsettling. It is pretty unsettling. I would say it causes for a lot of—a lot of difficult times for people, depression.

Because people want to know if they're right with God. And if you can't—if you can't know that, there's always this worry. Like, am I on that day when I see God on Judgment Day, will I be going to heaven or hell? I don't know.

So that can create a lot of uncer—that can create a lot of uncertainty. Yeah, fear maybe as well. Yeah, a lot of fear as well. Yeah, I've been told that, like, there's a lot of—a lot of them take antidepressants because—well, my conclusion, my—what I believe is because of the uncertainty, because of the fears. And they go into depression. So a lot of them take antidepressants, which is really unfortunate. But they would believe that basically you do your best and hope that you make it.

I remember one pastor had said that, you know, the kind of hope that you would have would be similar to a farmer sowing seed in the field and hoping for a crop. Well, if you think about it, you know, there's so many different things that could—that could ruin the crop. Like, you could have hail that's out of your control, completely out of your control, right? You could have a drought, not enough rain. There's different things that could—like, different mistakes that could happen, or things that—not mistakes, different things that happen that could ruin the crop that's out of your control. But with Christianity, if you have assurance of salvation, you don't—we can have confidence that God is going to do His part.

The things that are out of our control, we just leave them to God. And we do what—do what we can to stay on track. And so, yeah, it's kind of unfortunate that it is that way. But another different thing I would say about the old colony, in a positive side, not necessarily spiritually, but like work ethic. They have an incredible work ethic.

It seems no matter where they—where they go, they build up the economy. But yeah, they would also—another good thing that they teach is that fear of God. So there's a lot of people that actually find—find God in that setting. Quite a few, actually.

And why that is, is because they teach the fear of God. There's—there's people that, because of the fear, it drives them to the Word of God. And they study for themselves, and they read, and the Spirit of God moves.

And so they find—find different things that were missing in the teaching at that church. And so a lot of them leave after they find the truth, as far as like assurance of salvation and different things that might be missing.

But there's some that stay and really try to help their relatives in that setting. Yeah, I mean, it varies. Like I said earlier, it varies quite a bit from—from area to area as far as, you know, how they practice their different things. What I mean by that is, like, some would drive horse and buggy, some drive vehicles. Interesting. Okay, I didn't realize there was that level of variety there. Yeah, there's quite a bit. So say, for example, if you go to Bolivia, different parts of Bolivia would have horse and buggy also. Really? Oh, yeah. In Bolivia? Bolivia, Belize? I don't know why I just assumed that that would not be the case.

Is it a little bit like the Mennonite thing, where you had some of the old order Mennonites back in the day chose to stick with the horse and buggy, and then others were like, "No, we're going to have cars," whenever this was, 100 years ago or something. Was it a situation kind of like that, and some of them just held on to that in the old colony? Like, yeah, this is totally new to me. I don't—I don't know Russian Mennonite history, like, at all. Yeah.

Yeah, so some of them like that, they would have been—the fear of being worldly would have—would have kept some of them, like I said, depending on the area, would kept them to the point where they would have—they would hold on to their different things. Like I said, they were taught to stay with what you've been taught. And so then, therefore, like, they would really be hesitant to accept new, modern, even equipment. Like, some—some farmers would not have a cab for their tractor or for their combine.

They would not—they would not do it at all. And then I shouldn't—but then again, there's some people that do. They would—you're not also—some places you're not allowed to have rubber tires. So they'll have steel tires. But when some of them would—when it's time for harvest, they take the steel tires off, put on rubber tires. They would get excommunicated for doing it. And then when the harvest season is over, they would take the rubber tires off, put the steel back on, and then make things right with the church. And then they would be put back into membership again. Oh, wow. Wow.

That's a little bizarre. Yeah, it is. Again, that seems to mirror a lot of the things you see in, like, what I would be more familiar with within the Mennonite circles. You know, I guess this is more the—what would you say, the Swiss Mennonite branch? You'd have some of those same things, right? The steel versus rubber, etc. Again, I didn't realize that. And that's a whole—not the topic of today's podcast, but the whole Russian Mennonite story, the history there. There is so much there. And maybe someday we'll—we'll spend some more time on that. But back to your own experience here. So old colony, you're in Ontario. At some point, though, you do end up moving to Alberta.

Where does that come into the story? And is that when you switch from old colony to Klenivny? No, so we—I did move to Alberta, but we—like I said, when I was 8 or 10, I think we—my parents left and joined the old—sorry, the Klenivny. And I was pretty young at that age. And then I was—I only moved to Alberta, like, when I was like upper—well, lower 20s. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, so there's a bit of a period before that where I experienced different things in Ontario. Well, let's go into some of that then. So there's a switch there. So Klenivny, which is just another branch of the Russian Mennonites, if I'm getting that right. But you had told me before, when we were on the phone and we were talking about this interview, that at age 16, you just stopped attending.

Like, you stopped attending church and so on. What happened? Yeah, so just backtracking just a little bit. Yeah, so when my parents went to Klenivny church, I—from about 10 to 15, I attended. And so the youth group that was a part—the youth group in that church was pretty big. And they would have—like, they would do a regular camping once a year, a youth rally, I think they would call it. And so there was a number of my friends, I guess, they were older. I was a little bit younger than them. A number of them decided to follow after God.

And I kind of observed them quite a bit, you know, to see what it was all about, right? And then over time—it didn't take too long that there was a number of them that had decided they were going to follow after God. Some quickly turned back to their old ways. And then others just kind of, like, from my observation, what it seemed to me was they became lukewarm.

And so I decided at a pretty young age, I was like 13 or 14, that I decided I wasn't going to become a Christian until I was ready to be wholly—sorry, totally committed. I didn't want to be—I didn't want to be a backslider. Because you had seen what these other people did, and you're like, "I don't want to be like that." Correct. Basically. Oh. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, okay. I mean, I'm not saying that my thinking was altogether correct. Sure. I don't—I don't know. I mean, it's just that's what I decided at that point in time, that itself, which I realized that, but I decided I was going to sell my wild oats first. I was first going to live it up in my—for the flesh, right?

I was going to go party, drink, drugs, immorality, things like that. So then I had a group of friends that I went that direction. And so when I was 16, back to your question there, when I turned 16, I got my driver's license. So I could then decide for myself, usually, not always, but usually, where I would go.

So my parents would go to church, and I just decided, you know what, I want that for in my future. But right now I don't want it. So I don't—I'm not going to go to church anymore. Huh. It feels—it feels almost like you were looking at this as like a mathematical equation or something logically, like, well, I'm going to get there at some point, but you know what, I'm going to—I'm going to kind of live my life first. And when I'm really serious, then I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems to kind of the essence of what you're describing, right? And so again, I can—when I say, yeah, that kind of makes sense, I can understand the rationale, but also, like, I'm sure looking back on that now, you're like, ooh, yeah, not the right way to do it.

But I understand that also saying, you know, seeing all these other people that were lukewarm, and it didn't seem like it was very real for them. He didn't really want that either. Yeah. It sounds like, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I figured I didn't want to have a conflict of interest.

I wanted to be either all the way this way or all the other way this way. You know, if you think of Revelations, Jesus said, "You would rather you were cold or hot, not lukewarm." Yeah. And I just decided then, I was like, you know what, I—my flesh wanted the world, and so I decided I'm going for the world.

And in hindsight, I can see that it was very risky because I could have—I could have passed away at any moment, right? Like a head-on collision, or it could have been—there's a couple of different times that I had—I don't know if you could say a near-death experience, but close to it.

And then looking back, it's kind of alarming to see how close I came to death and was willing to accept the fact that I'm just going to continue on the way I've been going. Can you tell me about one of those situations? I mean, if not, that's fine, but yeah, like, it seems to me that if you would go through something like that, that would be a wake-up call and make you change your course. Yeah. But you're saying that's not—at the time, at least, that didn't happen. Yeah, so there was a short time that I lived in southern Alberta, and we would go to the—it was called the flume. Basically, what it was is a canal.

It would be the one end, it was—the water would come from a lake, and it would go into a river. And it was about like five feet wide by about five feet high. And so usually there was only about a couple of inches of water flowing. And we would take like a big old inner tube, and we would ride on that thing and just go down. Or we would just—on our trunks, we would, you know, just slide. So it was just basically—it was concrete, but on the top of the concrete, there was—all the water that had been flowing, there was moss. So it was slippery, right?

So we'd often been there, and the one time we'd come there, there was a fence that had been built, and before there was no fence, and a bunch of, like, I don't know, it might have been 10, 20 signs warning us to stay away. And I just didn't—I was like, you know what, I know how to swim, I'm fine, right? Like, those are—that's for the people that don't know how to swim or aren't strong, right?

And so we went, and instead of it being a couple inches, it was probably like two, maybe three feet of water flowing. And the water was just moving, like, really, really fast. So me and a friend jumped on this inner tube, and it was just—it was—the canal was probably about—the distance that we would ride on the tube would have been about almost probably half a kilometer to a kilometer. I guess you guys go by miles. Maybe half a mile.

You know, memory isn't perfect on that one. But anyways, so we'd go down, and the first stretch would be going pretty—I don't know, super steep, but it'd be going down, then it would go straight, and it would go for a while, and then it would go down into the river.

And so when we got to the last part, there was a lot of white water, and the water was just churning, like, really, really bad. And I was pretty ignorant. I just decided, you know what, I was going to lay flat on the tube, flat out. And so what happened is the tube hit the white water. And I just—I don't know for sure, but I think I might have just skimmed for the first part, and then the water pushed me past the worst part of the white water.

But my friend, looking at the white water, decided that he was going to hold onto this tube. And he grabbed it and was holding onto it right where it was coming down and right where this white water is churning, right at that spot is where he was at.

And then he was just barely above the water. Like, his mouth was probably like two inches, four inches above the water. And he was just holding on for dear life. And so I was already past, and I was still in white water, but it was relatively—it was a lot calmer, right, where I was at. And so me and my brother and his—and a friend were standing watching, which one of his friends was his sister.

And they were watching. And so we were telling him to just let go, and then the water will push you through. And he was terrified, and he stayed there for quite a while, but eventually he let go. And the water just sucked him underneath. I figured, give it five, ten seconds, he's going to pop back up, and he's going to be fine, right?

Ten seconds went past, and he just—he was still under the water. I think it was maybe 20 seconds past. His sister started to freak out, and I was as well. So I told my brother, "I'm going back in," which was absolutely ridiculous. Like, it was a terrible thought, you know, or decision to do is like, because it was so—I couldn't do anything for him.

And so my brother told me to stay back. I said, "I've got to do something because he's dying." And so I swam back, and all of a sudden, the water got a hold of me and sucked me down, and I started doing flips in the water.

I don't—I can't even describe how that exactly was because I was—it was—it felt like I was just not as fast as a fan would turn, but like, super, super fast. Like you're in a washing machine or something. Yeah, that idea. Yeah, exactly. And so I was swinging with my arms and kicking with my legs, trying to get above the water. It seemed like it made no difference whatsoever.

So anyways, because I was kicking and swinging my arms so much, I was using up a lot of my oxygen, and I was burning it out fast. And so it didn't take very long, and I needed air. And so, but I had to hold on because I was underwater. And so I was—I don't know how long it was underneath there.

And it got to the point—I don't—it got to the point where I decided, I realized in my—at that time, I thought, "This is where I'm going to die. I'm just—this is the end. I've come to the end." There was no thought at that moment. Quickly pray.

Quickly make things right. It was a matter of survival. It was—my mind was strictly on surviving this situation. But as I was just about to pull in water because there was—my body was crying out for it so desperately, I was just about to pull in a bunch of water, and my head popped above the surface, and then I just took a huge gulp of air. I was literally within a second or two just pulling in, like, an insane amount of water. And then what had happened was the white water had pushed me a little bit further along. But another thing that scared me was there was the concrete blocks. What was creating that white water was concrete blocks in the bottom that were designed to slow this water down.

And that was causing the churning of this water, which would create the white water, right? And so my head could have easily just smashed up against the concrete and killed me like that. But looking back, yeah, that would have been—I found it amazing that I was willing to go on in my sinful life even though I came that close.

Like, what happened to your friend? Did he get pushed out while you were under or like, yeah, I mean? He had popped up or he came up, I think, a little bit before I did. So he made it as well. We both made it.

I had never asked him about it later. It was just, I guess we were—I at least was in shock of what had happened. And we had just gotten out, and there was a truck that came racing, like, just barreling towards us. And he was quite upset with us that we had gone down here because he knew how incredibly dangerous it was.

So yeah, we both made it, but yeah, that's something that, you know, because people tend to think—people tend to think, well, like, at least I think I did, that if I ever come close to death or I'll just quickly make things right before then.

And that just didn't happen for you. Like, I'm seeing that experience, but coupled with your decision of like, well, at some point I'll make things right later on when I'm ready to be serious. If anything were to happen to you to make you get pretty serious, it feels like what you just described would have done that, but you're saying it didn't at that point in your life. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, it's quite something to look back and think of it in that way. But yeah, it's when you are in those moments, like I said, you would think that that's the first thing you would be thinking about is to make things right. But like I said, you're in survival mode. Your mind is—your mind is so focused on surviving that it does not turn to, "Hey, I need to quickly make things right with God," or try to connect with God in these last seconds. But like, even after the event happens, okay, now we're safe, now we're good. It feels like, again, that's the moment where you like, fall on your knees and confess, you know, because you're like, "I could have died there," obviously.

But again, that's not—that's not how the story goes. That's right.

I quickly shifted onto—I didn't reminisce or think about that situation a whole lot. A little bit, but then I quickly moved on to the life that I was living at the time. Yeah. Other people might have thought to themselves, you know what, I need to really do it now. But for me, it was a thing of procrastination.

It was just further down the road. So what you just described and experienced that is basically God trying to get through to you with a megaphone, like, "Pay attention, you know, listen. You don't change your life." What happens next? Like, where does your story go from there? If you're not—if you don't change, where does that lead you?

Yeah, so I believe God was trying to get a hold of me at that point in time, but I didn't—I don't think I really was thinking about it in that way at that time. Yeah, I was, yeah, basically just kind of living it up. But then when I was—yeah, I turned 18, then I had a pretty big significant accident that I was a part of or that I was involved with.

On the way, I had gone to work that day. I think it was the—August the 31st of 2010, gone to work, and then on my way back from work, a friend of mine called me up and asked if I wanted to smoke some weed. And so I was like, "Sure."

Weed was something that I had smoked a lot of in the last couple of years, like '16, '17, '18. Anyway, then we met up, and then after that, we went to his place, and I was pretty thirsty, so I asked him for a drink, and all he had was a beer.

So I took the beer and just drank about the neck of the bottle, which was not a whole lot. But then me and him were going to meet up with some other friends in town later on. And on my way there, this was—the sun had already set. It was dark.

And I was driving along, and there was no streetlights. I was driving along, and I noticed my phone buzzed, and I looked at it. I saw somebody text me, and I just put it back down and changed the song. I looked up, and I saw something right in front of me, like, just right in front of the car. So I grabbed the wheel and just cranked it to the left, like, towards oncoming traffic. I guess a vehicle was coming from the front. But I thought maybe I could squeeze, you know, just between what was ever was in front of me at that point in time and those vehicles. But I wasn't quite quick enough and didn't know what—right at that point in time, but it was a young man on a bicycle.

And the right side of my car hit him from behind. I believe I was going probably about 80 kilometers an hour, so it just hit him hard. I just remember the shock of what, like, right after. The windshield shattered, and there were so many thoughts going through my mind, like, immediately after that. It was just—and so what I thought, what I wanted to do was, and what I started to do, I slowed down to turn around. And as I was slowing down, I just about had come to a stop. My mind was just racing. I made one of the worst decisions I've ever made in my life. Looking back, I've many times thought, wished I hadn't made that decision, but I decided that I was going to leave the scene of the accident.

Wow. Yeah, it's a—looking back yesterday, as I was kind of reminiscing, thinking about it, I was—it was kind of hard to think about it, to realize what I had done at that point in time. But it's true. It's part of the story.

And so I left, called a friend up, and I was really shook up. Met up with him, talked for some time, explained to him what had happened. Then went home and told my—I think it was my mom, but now I'll jump a little bit to the side of him at the scene. Somebody had heard the—heard or seen—I think had heard the accident, and I think pretty much immediately called the ambulance. And so the ambulance came there, and they picked him up, and they brought him to the hospital. And I think they found, yeah, internal bleeding and head injuries, severe head injuries.

So they transported him from that hospital to a different one, and he was on life support. But his injuries were so bad that even if he were to survive, I don't think he would have ever been able to talk, walk, or anything. I think he would have just been laying there, just existing, right? And so the family showed up—his family showed up at the hospital, and they decided they were going to take him off life support. And so they took him off life support, and he just passed away. At that point in time, I didn't know—I didn't know much at all. I just knew I'd hit, and I was confident I'd hit a person, but I wasn't even completely 100% sure.

It's hard for me to remember exactly what my thoughts were at that point in time. I was actually quite sure that I had. But anyway, I told my brother in the morning that I had had an accident, and I got my mom to drop me off at work in the morning, got went to work the next day. And then at lunch break, I was going through my phone, scrolling through Facebook, and I saw some of my friends' posts, rest in peace, mentioned his name.

And I just connected the dots pretty much right away. This person that I had—this person that I'd hit and I was now gone. That shook me up like nothing ever has shook me up in my life. Well, one of—I don't think, yeah, it was—it was extremely difficult. Like, I mentally and emotionally, I was just falling apart.

I was at a restaurant with my coworkers and my boss when I was scrolling through Facebook, and they immediately could tell that I was very different. I was acting really strange. And so they looked at me, and they came over to talk to me, and I was just—like I said, I was just falling apart.

So anyway, I went back to work, and then I tried to work, but I couldn't.

I was just mentally, just like I said, it was in shambles. And so I decided—well, I was—I had caught a ride with my boss to work. And so when I got—when they were done—we were done work, I just sat in the vehicle for the rest of the day or somewhere I sat.

And that evening, I decided I was going to turn myself into the police.

And so I did, which they immediately put me in handcuffs. And then I had an interview with the police, and they just tried to find out what happened, right? And so I told them what had happened. And then they transferred me to a prison.

It was a day or two later. And then I was in prison solitary confinement for, I think, a day or two. And my parents—yeah, my parents bailed me out of jail a couple of days later. And so I got charged with—at the time was charged with criminal negligence, cause of death, dangerous driving, cause of death, and hit and run.

Yeah, those were pretty significant charges. I mean, when you get that, I can't imagine. I mean, not only do you have to deal with the consequences of what you did, but now you have to look at, okay, I mean, there's going to be a prison sentence. Your life, in a way, is kind of over. Or like, your life will never be the same, for sure. And obviously, the family of the victim.

I can't imagine what—I mean, your mind must have just been racing this whole time. Yeah, it was. It was.

I was young, and I was pretty naive, pretty ignorant. I didn't know what to expect, really. I had somebody come up to me and tell me that what I was facing—I think it was like a lawyer of some sort. I don't even know for sure. She came into my cell when I was at the police station there, and she said, "You're going to need to want to hire—you're going to want to hire a lawyer."

But my dad had told me, "You know what, God, I'm faith in God." I wasn't a Christian at this time, but my dad was. And he was telling me that, "You know what, just have faith. God will take care of you."

So I didn't hire a lawyer for the first while. Wow. For the first little bit, because I just—I was so shook up, right? I didn't know—I didn't know how to process this all. It was just so massive. It was all so sudden. So overwhelming. Yeah, it was incredible. You just go from like, "Oh, I'm going to go hang out with my friends," to like, your whole world has completely changed. And again, obviously, for that person and their family, like, I can't imagine that. It would be incredibly disorienting. Yeah. The family was extremely upset, like, very, very upset. Oh, yeah? I can understand that. Yeah. But they didn't want—understandably, they didn't want to have anything to do with me as far as talking to me or any of my siblings.

My brother had gone over there to try on my behalf, tried to apologize. And somebody else that was there, they just sent him off the property, didn't want anything to do with me. So yeah, I mean, then after I got out, I was on—oh, I think it was called probation at the time. They would have had—I had a curfew. I was not allowed to drink any alcohol legally, any at all.

I was no non-prescription drugs. And yeah, they had the funeral then, and I never—of course, I was, I think, probably in prison when they had the funeral. Yeah, he was pretty young too, which made it even worse. It's like 15 years old.

Yeah, so I got out of—I got out of there, out of solitary confinement. Solitary confinement was shocking to me at the time. I'm not—like, I feel like I deserved everything I got. I'm not trying to—I don't want to look like a victim here. I wasn't a victim of being in prison, but it was just four walls, a bed, a sink to wash your hands, or a toilet, no books, no Bible, nothing. You just had the ceiling and the four walls to talk to. Except for the guard who would come by every so and so often.

Every hour felt like, I don't know, four, six, eight hours. It just—the time just absolutely dragged in there. How long were you in that, in solitary? I think it was probably about two days. It was about two days.

But yeah, like I said, I got bailed out, and then I went back to work. Speaking a little bit about how God speaking to me in a megaphone, I didn't know it at the time, but my brother later told me, and he was a Christian. He said he had prayed for me, that even if it took something really big, that God would do it in my life.

And so that I would change my ways and become a Christian. And he felt—he felt bad. He felt terrible about that because, you know, here he was praying to God, "It doesn't matter what it takes, God, just do something in his life." And it didn't take long after that I had that accident. Oh. And so he felt guilty. It's like here he was praying, right? And I'm not saying he was wrong. I'm just telling you from his perspective, right? Oh, but you—yeah, you would definitely.

That would rattle you, you know? Because it's like, again, like, your whole life is going to—becomes defined by that, a before and an after, you know? And I'm sure for the rest of your family too. And again, yeah, your brother, that must have taken a little bit to process through because, you know, almost a—yeah, it's just hard to even know what to—wow. I mean, like, what happens next? I mean, you get sentenced. I mean, you were listing off the things that you were sentenced—what was the result of that? Like, I assume you go to prison then? Yeah. So I had three charges. And then I didn't know how the whole court system worked. I thought within a couple of weeks, maybe a month, this is going to all be figured out.

Like, I was incredibly ignorant or naive. And so it ended up taking about a year until I actually got—until I got a sentence. That must have been kind of bizarre, a year. Yeah. I mean, it was—it was really tough because not knowing what's going to happen, where's my life going to go? You know, you're just waiting for that day, right? And then before I got sentenced, the way I understand it is the crown attorney was working—this is in Canada, so it's, I think, maybe somewhat different. It's different around here that we think we call them a prosecutor, but over there they're crown attorney. He was willing to drop the criminal negligence cause of death and the dangerous driving cause of death.

So what had happened was I was driving along the road like I was supposed to be. He was—he was on the road. Like, he was not legally on the road. And so therefore, I think because of that, they dropped the dangerous driving cause of death. I wasn't—I veered to swerve around him, whereas I think technically he should have been on the shoulder.

One of my—actually, one of my coworkers at the time had left the exact same place I had about two minutes before me. And he was—he almost hit him as well. And then his wife had saw the young man on the bike and just screamed, right? And she—he hammered the brakes, and he was just screeching to slow down. And he just about hit him, and two minutes later on, I come.

And I didn't see him, and so I hit him, whatever. But going back to your question, so dangerous driving cause of death and criminal negligence cause of death got dropped. And then I just—I pleaded guilty to hit and run because I had turned myself in, and I knew that I was guilty of that.

So then I got sentenced in October 12 of 2011 to five months in prison. I didn't know what to expect before then, but like, actually, a little while before, my lawyer was kind of telling me what was possibly going to be happening. But the crown was looking for a year in prison.

And my lawyer, I didn't tell him what to go for, but he decided he was going to go for house arrest so I could go to work and I could go to church if I wanted to, and if I needed to go, like, buy groceries, just do the minimal, the bare essentials, get that. But other than that, you stay at home. So he was pushing for that. And so the judge kind of met in the middle and gave me five months.

Yeah, and then I ended up doing just over three months because if you behave yourself in prison, I think this applies to everybody up there in Canada. If you behave yourself, you get out early. The way I understood it was you do two-thirds of your time. But if you're violent, if you're causing problems, they're going to most likely do your full time, if not longer.

So I decided going in, I wasn't going to be a—I wasn't going to make trouble. I was just going to survive and then get out and never go back. So that's what ended up happening. And I'm sure you vividly remember the day when you go through those prison gates and you're like, "Life's a lot different now."

Yeah. It was—it was very different. I went in somewhat confident that I was going to be okay. My lawyer kind of reassured me that it was going to be okay. He had told my parents and whatnot, but I didn't know what to expect.

So I went in. It was a huge change. I remember waking up in the morning and seeing bars and just blew my mind. Like, you wake up and you wake up and it's like you're kind of like you're used to waking up in a regular bedroom. And now you're like, bars, and it just takes you, like, maybe 10, 20 seconds, a minute to or whatever to—for it all, it just hits you again and again, right? You're like, "Whoa, I'm in prison." This is life now, you know, for the next hour long. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it was—it was tough, really, adjusting to that because in prison you don't know what to expect.

They have their own rules in there. It's not the Canadian law. They make their rules. So they usually have, like, every range has the guys that are at the top of the—trying to find the word here. Like a hierarchy of some kind? That kind of idea. Yeah, yeah. They have a pecking order, and they have certain guys that are at the top, and they kind of make the rules and they decide. So from range to range, it'll differ the rules. And you come in not knowing what these—what these law—these rules are. And over the smallest thing, it's not like you go and, like, they'll hand you a—give you a warning or give you a fine or give you a ticket.

Like in life, right? Here, they just give you a ticket. But there, it's—they resort to violence just very quickly. You have people that are schizophrenic. You have people that are bipolar.

And so I remember one friend I had in prison, he was—I got to know him and I thought, "This is a really good fella," right? And he would flip within a split second. You'd be just walking side by side, feeling like really good friends, and you would say one thing. It could be the smallest little thing, and he would turn on you and he would want to fight immediately. Like, say, for example, we were watching TV one time, and the commercials, they would just turn the volume off. And then the commercials are over, you turn the volume up again, right?

And so I just told him, somebody else that was at the TV just turned the volume up. And he thought I had said something else, and he just grabbed me in a choke hold and just started choking me out. I was just like, "Wow."