Episode 35: NOT Canada's Greatest Know-It-All
Summary
In 2012 I was on a 8 episode Discovery Channel TV show called "Canada's Greatest Know-It-All". The show was a combination of Survivor, Mythbusters, and Jeopardy, with a bit of elimination thrown in each show. Basically they put 10 Canadians in a room, who thought they were "know-it-alls" and then let them duke it out through all kinds of weird challenges, and watch them fail miserably. It was actually great fun, but alas, I did not win the show. The last one standing was Canada's Greatest Know-It-All (and it wasn't me). On today's episode, I talk about my time on this amazing show, who I bonded and battled with, and what I learned!
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Full Episode Transcription
Welcome to my life as a landlord, where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're
looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right
show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.
Well, hello. Welcome to my life as a landlord. I am Dr. Jen, and in today's episode number 35, another Salisbury
adventure, I get to tell you all about how I'm not Canada's greatest know-it-all. Now, for those of you
new to the channel, I'm excited to tell you that we have five rotating topics that are both applicable in US.
And Canada, and they rotate in a predictable way. Last week was a real estate investment topic. Next
week is a landlord topic. And so if you don't like the topic, just wait a week. Next Saturday, it'll be a
different topic. So I was a know it all for the Discovery Channel on this TV show. It was kind of cool.
So I get to tell you all about Canada's greatest know it all, the TV show. I will tell you about the bad guy.
And ultimately what I learned. What I learned being on this TV show, which was really interesting. So
let me tell you about this show. The this show was on the Discovery Channel. It is Canada based, but the
show creator was trying to do an international pilot. So you'll see well, actually you won't see because
unfortunately, there are no episodes airing. So even if you Google Canada's greatest know it all, you
won't find a whole lot. You might find a few interviews with some of the other know it alls, but you
won't see any of the shows. There's kind of some bad blood that happened at the very end of this. But it
was Canada based. And so it was not specific to Canada itself, at least season one. There was a season
two, but it started with ten contestants who considered themselves know it all. And the whole show
was testing us and watching us fail, which is sad. But the show itself was a cross between Jeopardy,
Mythbusters, Survivor, and there was an elimination aspect. Now, this was about ten years ago, and so
technology has changed a lot since then, but about ten years ago. So there's a lot of local folks in Canada
who might remember me from this TV show. Each episode had three challenges, and the loser of each of
the first two challenges faced off in the third challenge. And then the loser of that was eliminated. And
some were individuals. Some challenges were done with individuals, others were done in teams. And
interesting, interesting show. So it was filmed in Hamilton, Ontario, two locations. Mostly. We had a
quarry, like a rock quarry that was outside this humongous rock quarry. And they did some explosions
and all kinds of things, lots of big equipment. Then there was a warehouse location. For those of you who
are not familiar, hamilton, Ontario is a steel town, so it's got lots of steel factories. And as a result, you've
got lots of these gigantic warehouses that were dealing with all of the steel trade in Hamilton, Ontario.
We used one of the warehouses to film the TV shows and these challenges, but we did use other remote
locations as well. And so the ten of us on season one, there were eight guys and two girls, me and
another gal. And I was the only American. I was considered a landed immigrant at the time. And that's
basically for my US friends. That's basically someone who's got a green card. And so I was the
loudmouth American hunter lady. Now, the show took place over eight shows, eight episodes, and I was
eliminated at the end of episode seven. So I made it almost to the end of it. And then at the end of it, the
whole idea here was that you would find out who is Canada's greatest know it all. And so by the time I
was eliminated, there were only four of us left. And then I got eliminated, leaving three more folks that
went into the finale. And then we did have one winner. Who was crowned Canada's greatest know it all.
Now, what did he he didn't get any cash. The only cash that is given as a prize for those of you who
might have seen the show called Cash Cab, that's really the only show that gives out cash. But you get a
trophy. A trophy. So it's monetary award for being Canada's greatest know it all. Now, along the way, we
did have a bad guy. His name was Carrie. And most of the time, when you hear somebody say the
word know it all, there is a stereotype that they're egotistical and dominating. I guess that's the
stereotype that they can't be wrong. So Carrie was very much like this. He was not necessarily a team
player, was really not really fun to be around. And quite frankly, I felt sorry for him. But there is an
error of an ego for the stereotypical know it all, but the rest of us didn't seem to have that. The other
nine of us didn't seem to have that know it all. That stereotypical know it all air. And we would sit in
between filming, we would sit in the green room, which is the room that's where everybody's sort of
together, and while you're waiting to be filmed. And we would go, how can we use our knowledge, our
collective knowledge of us to benefit society? And we were talking about some of the big problems that
are with society, about food and water and worldwide hunger and global climate change. We were trying
to tackle some big things here, and we really decided that it really started with the classrooms, and it
started in our local areas. And so we all pushed back and said, you know what? When we get home, we
need to take action in our local areas. And we did, which is actually kind of cool. But this gentleman,
Carrie oh, my goodness. The nine of us banded together. I guess there was already one elimination in
episode one, and then I ended up eliminating Carrie in episode two. And as a result, the rest of us, the
other eight of us, really became quite bonded. We were always together, and the crew was not allowed to
talk to us. The host was not allowed to talk to us unless we were filming. And so we were completely
segregated from anyone else in the crew. They weren't allowed to tell us anything. Yeah, it was really
interesting thing. And so. I was. I eliminated Carrie. But as a result, we had this incredible catalyst,
this stereotypical know it all. Who I eliminated made the rest of us really bond, which is actually really
cool. And I'm still Facebook friends with some of the other ones. Some of the other know it alls from
season one. I know there's another Wayne from season one. He actually made it all the way to the finale.
He was also not Canada's Greatest Know it all, but he lives in the interior British Columbia. What a
wonderful guy. We still talk to him, which is really fun. What I learned from being on this TV show, you
don't always get to pick who is on your team, right? You don't always get to pick. You don't get to pick
your family. You don't necessarily get to pick your colleagues. 1s You never know the opportunities that
get thrown your way, right? I ran across this casting call to be on Canada's greatest know it all. I didn't
even know what that was. And I said, yes. And I know my stepdaughter, Lil Jen, she had jumped in and
said, look, you've got to do this. We don't even know what it is, but you've got to put your name in the
hat to do this. And we did. And I remember when they interviewed me for being on the show, just in the
original who's the ten know it Alls that we're going to pick. They were asking me questions in the
interview and said, if you were going to build a spice rack for a blind person, what would your spice rack
look like? And so I remember, actually, all the know it alls, we asked each other. We said, look, what's
your spice rack look like? And so some of us had digital spice racks. My spice rack, that I want three
shelves. 1s Each shelf is going to have glass bottles with a screw on top with a little chain that's going to
be connected to the glass part of it. There'll be braille on the glass part saying what the spice is. And then
further, I'll have 15 or maybe 21 for the total of three shelves. But I want spicy stuff on the top, medium,
not so spicy stuff on the bottom, like salt and pepper and cinnamon. And then on the bottom, flavorful
stuff like curry, maybe some chili peppers, things like that. And so that was my spice rack for a blind
person. And so they were trying to see how you were thinking, but had I not seized that opportunity to
actually throw my name in the hat to be a part of this TV show, I would have never been able to try this.
When do you ever get asked, if you were going to build a spice rack for a blind person, when would you
ever come up with that kind of stuff? And during the interview process, there was a lot of questions.
Like, for example, they said, Tell me, what is aurora Borealis? Tell me all you know about it. And so I
just did this brain dump about aurora borealis, and they were trying to see how you think. They wanted
you to think out loud. And this was a reality TV show, right? And one of the things I learned was that. 1s
It is a reality TV show, meaning you only get one take. One take. You don't get a do over. You don't get
to say, you know what? I didn't like how I said that. And much of a lot of the time on this on this podcast,
quite frankly, I just do it raw. I don't like editing unless I'm really coughing a lot or like the dog that just
walked by. I really try to just warts and all be real, because that is life. You only get one life. You only
get one chance. And I liken it to the second Jumanji movie where they have the three things on their arm
and they get two more lives. Well, no, we only get one life. And so just like one life in this TV show, you
only get one take. As a result of being on this TV show, I made some amazing memories with some great
people. I got to see some things I'd never gotten to see. I went to Toronto and went to the CN tower.
Never been there before. Went to Niagara Falls for the first time. I did get injured in the show. I had a
stress was we were filming six days a week and we had Sundays off. I was away from Michael for almost
a month, and it was really painful. I had a neck injury that was just these muscles were just absolutely
tightened up, and so I had to continue through the pain. I know some of my fellow no Dolls weren't really
big fans of that, but that was part of the drama of the show. So you have to kind of play into that,
knowing that that's kind of the stuff they're going know, harbor in on. But we would go to dinner all the
know it alls together, especially once Carrie was eliminated. We all went to dinner every night together.
And then as people got eliminated, whoever got eliminated, that was their last dinner with us. And so
they got to pick where we went. And then the next day they would fly home or drive home. And so,
remember, the crew wasn't allowed to interact with us in any way, not even the host. So we would get up
and we would go to breakfast, and then they would provide lunch on set. And then at night at dinner,
we'd go to a fun dinner just there in Hamilton. And we were all staying in the same hotel. We all got our
own rooms. They would come and get our laundry and do our laundry for us and bring it all back. But the
biggest thing that I took took away was that I never would have had this experience had I not thrown
my name in the hat. I wanted to tell you about a few of the episodes. In this. The episodes aren't
airing. You can't Google this. They're not available. So let me tell you about a few of the episodes. So on
the quarry, they had a limo parked in the center of the quarry, and it was sort of laid out like a football
field. And the limo was in the very center of the football field, and the sunroof of the limo was open. And
they told us a bunch of different information about a Cessna airplane that was going to fly over and drop
a sandbag. And we were trying to tell the Cessna, whoever's going to drop it out of the Cessna to try to
get the sandbag into the sunroof of the limo. That was the challenge. And so we had to calculate when
we were going to tell them to drop it out of the plane. Okay, well, so it comes time to film. Now, of
course, we cannot watch the other. We can hear it, but we have our back to the filming so we can't see it
because we don't want to be able to see or hear anything. Well, we can hear the plane, but we couldn't
hear what they were saying. So it comes time to do this challenge. And this Cessna plane well, it's not a
Cessna plane. It's a Lancaster bomber. I mean, there's only like two operating Lancaster bombers on the
planet. And so it wasn't a Cessna that we were telling them to drop this sandbag out of. It was a Lancaster
plane. And it was a huge deal, like a huge deal that we had this. It was really incredible that the show was
able to not only get permission to use the plane, they did. I guess there was seven of us or six of us. I
don't remember how many know it alls were left at that time that we did this, but I was injured at this
point. And so we had to do some calculations. And long story short, nobody got the sandbag in the limo.
Sunroof. One of them got really close. I did. Okay, but for example, that was one of the challenges. And
then whoever was the furthest away from hitting the limo was considered the loser on that challenge.
Further, we had a riverboat. No, it wasn't a riverboat. It was a power boat, like a speedboat on Niagara. 1s
Right around Niagara Falls. And of course, there was all these power generating folks like the
Westinghouse Tesla. That was the whole idea with utilizing the power of the falls to convert it to
electricity. And so after we did this riverboat ride, this Niagara Falls ride on this boat, on this huge boat,
there was a quiz. That was the challenge, was the quiz about all the things this guy had rattled off to us
because we were always trying to figure out, okay, what's the challenge? We know there's a challenge in
here, but remember, nobody was allowed to talk to us. They knew we were incredibly smart, which
sometimes I was like, really? You guys are going to not tell us? Okay, fine. One of the other challenges
that we had was we had to take a trebuchet, which is sort of like a launch pad thing, a trebuchet, and play
basketball with it. Well, my team was terrible at it, but that was one of the challenges, is they made this
huge basket, a ten foot around basket, and we had to use our trebuchet to launch basketballs in there
another one. They had frozen an entire skeleton worth of bones in a block of ice, and we had to remove
the bones and then give the bones to our teammates to assemble as much as they could. In fact, it was the
ice chipping the ice that hurt my neck. Finally, there was just straight up trivia contests. There was quite a
real traffic accident scene that was I think that's probably the only thing that you can see on YouTube or
TMZ is the accident scene as you've got this accident. They had gotten all these paramedics to be actors
in this really terrible, very real accident scene. And then they threw us in as a know it all and say, you are
in charge of this accident scene. And it was traumatizing on quite a few people, including myself. And I
ended up killing myself in that challenge, by the way. I ended up killing myself and I think six or seven
other people. I mean, it was really horrific. I lost that challenge. So a couple of the other non traumatizing
challenges were puzzles, like big wooden puzzles that we had to put together. We had to build a boat that
was a team exercise. Some of the know it alls had to build a plane. Some had to teach a lesson. We
had to teach a lesson using a bunch of animals, like a rattlesnake, a snapping turtle, a tarantula. Oh, jeez,
I'm trying to remember what the other ones were. But there were five animals, and they brought this
school bus, literally, they drove a school bus into the warehouse, and it was all of the crew's kids that
were a part of this lesson. So they would unload the school bus. The kids are in the classroom, and we
would walk in, and we had ten minutes to teach a lesson about these five animals. And it was really
incredible. I actually did pretty good on that. I'm pretty happy about it. So there were several other
episodes. There was a season two of the show, and season two, I thought, was really a lot more refined,
let's say. So they did sort of like an escape room in season two where they were thrown into a house and
there had been a murder at the house, and they had to figure out all the clues of why and the motive. I
mean, it was really neat that they were looking at the computer and they were looking at all the artifacts,
and there was blood on the ceiling, and it was really theatrical. But they were thrown into this situation
and they said, figure out what happened and go. And so they did. The other thing they did that I thought
was super neat was they went skydiving. They went skydiving, and they had these gigantic letters on the
ground. And so the know it alls had to jump out, memorize the letters on the ground, and then when they
got on the ground, they had to remember the letters and untangle them to form a word 1s or as many
words as they can. I forget the exact challenge in season two. They also had to learn how to knit, if you
could imagine. I don't know how to knit. But they brought in a world class knitting expert, and they
taught the know it alls how to knit. And then they had a challenge based on the knitting, which was really
cool. So anyway, I digress. This is another Salisbury Adventure podcast, so you never know what you're
going to get. But the whole idea I wanted to tell you about this TV show, I wanted to let you know how
this bad guy had bonded the rest of us and made some incredible memories. And then all of the things
that I learned was really neat. Takeaways. Here's my call to action, to you, to all of you. And I'm looking
at the camera on my YouTube channel, my Life as a landlord, if you'd rather watch this. Call to action,
you must say yes to the next opportunity that scares you. The next opportunity that scares you. Whether
you see it in your Facebook feed or you see an ad in the paper or somebody's talking to you about some
opportunity that could be something that you can try, say yes. You never know what is going to happen.
You never know what's going to be the result. Things will happen and you're going to be so excited that
you tried it, even if you fail, right? I'm not Canada's greatest know it all. Am I considered a failure? Not
at all. Not at all. So as we come to a conclusion for this week's episode, let me know your comments and
questions on our Facebook Group and also in the YouTube comments for My Life as a Landlord. Just
remember your questions and your comments create the next podcasts. I do take all of the questions and
comments seriously and that rolls right into the next podcast. Next week's podcast topic is a landlord
perspective. That'll be episode number 36, and I'll be talking about Standard Forms 101. You have got to
hear this one. I will see you next Saturday. Thanks for listening.
Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes and all the links mentioned
in today's episode, visit our website at www.mylifeasalandlord.com if you're looking for educational resources for getting into real estate,
investing, becoming a landlord, or even a better tenant, then I have a page on my website to get you
started looking for a solution to the pickle that you're in. I have suggestions for that too. You can throw
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Salisbury, in this episode of My Life as a Landlord. I'll see you next time.