Anastasia: It's unusual for us to talk with two athletes at once. But Piper and Paul are not your usual guests. Fully ten years after they began skating together, the ice dancers find themselves at the peak of the Canadian team. Step by step, they found their own unique path. Fans cherish their programs and performances... and for the first time in their long careers, they are a couple of graceful strides ahead of any distraction, heading into the winter Olympics.

Anastasia: Mr Paul Poirier, we met in Vancouver 2010. I really am curious as to how you have been at this level of your skating career for 12 years.

Paul: I think sometimes I don't realise quite how. Long, I've been doing this and competing at this level, it's been it's been a big chunk of my life and I think, you know, then you have those weird, sobering moments, like when a kid you taught to skate is now competing at a senior level against you or something like that. So you have these weird sort of wake up calls where it just becomes very real, how long you've been doing this. But it's also provided an opportunity for me to change my relationship with what I'm doing, and I think that's what's allowed me to to skate for so long as I've had to change my relationship to skating.

Anastasia: OK, so let's go there then, and I'm going to bring Piper. So Paul, of course you were in 2010, not with Piper, with a different partner, but how did you two meet?

Piper: I remember getting a phone call while taking my dog for a walk, and I got this random phone number from Canada and I was like, I don't know who this is, but I'm going to take this call. Sure enough, it was Paul. He was asking me for a tryout and he was like, I don't know if you're skating right now, but I kind of was in limbo at the time. I got an offer to potentially do Disney on ice, and it was like the day I had to sign a contract to do that or take a risk with Paul. And I took the opportunity and came up a couple of weeks later to do a tryout. And that's my side of the story. I didn't know any of these things that Paul might mention until about a year ago. So it's kind of kind of funny.

Paul: Putting out little spoilers here, I was looking for a partner at the time in 2011, and I think Piper's old coach, Patti Gottwein had high hopes for her and thought there is more she could accomplish. So she actually reached out to me, unbeknown to Piper, and said, I really think it would be great if you and Piper did a tryout. I think you should contact her. And I was sort of at a point in my career where I didn't know. I didn't know what I was going to do next. I was just starting university, so I kind of thought, is there is there more I want to do with this sport or not? And I didn't really know what Piper's status was, what she was, what she was doing, what she was up to because she hadn't competed the previous year. So I just kind of reached out and and started that.

Anastasia: When did you know that you had something special?

Piper: Literally within the first, like five minutes, just kind of doing basic stroking skating, we had similar style, we were built somewhat similar. And we were just both super athletic and I think willing to try different things. And I think that was what made us super special. Off the start it was like, we never said no to anything. And I think it was fun for our coaches too, because they always gave us a challenge each day and we kept accomplishing those challenges. And then we continued to grow. And I think from the get go, I think that's what made it fun for the two of us.

Anastasia: Did you know that it would work even before you had gone on ice? Or was it when you were …sorry, 'strides'. I know speed skating and figure vocab. I say crossover. you say, cross cuts.

Piper: I say crossovers.

Paul: Yeah, I think cross-cut is a very Canadian figure skating thing.

Anastasia: OK, well, that's what Patrick Chan calls crossovers. But like, did you know that it was going to work before you went on ice?

Paul: There are you know, there are a lot of excellent skaters, but the physicality just doesn't work for whatever reason. And sometimes you can tell, like just by watching someone else skate separately from you. But I think usually within a few minutes, you kind of know if the physical side of things are going to work. I think the more difficult aspect of managing a partnership in a sport like ours is, do you have the same approach to your work? Do you have the same goals? Can you make the logistics work of like where you're going to train and what you're going to do and who's going to coach you and kind of all of those decisions. And those are that's actually the harder thing to kind of know when you do a tryout with someone is whether those things are all going to work out and whether you're going to be aligned in those things

Piper: With any new partnership, it's kind of the honeymoon phase for a while. And I think even for like the first year, it's exciting. It's new. We have so much we can accomplish and will blossom with the second year. But once you get past that, I think that's when you really start to know whether or not you can work with someone because everyone's on their best behaviour and we're all great and dandy. But when it comes down to having disappointments or things not coming your way, it's learning how to handle those. And I think the two of us always kept wanting to do more, and I think we're our goals aligned. So I think that's really what kind of. Really made us understand that like we were capable of working together and being friends and and learning about. How to work with someone because we are very different people, but we we complement each other so well, and I think that it really comes with time,

Paul: It comes with time, but it's an active process. Yeah. You know, obviously by osmosis, you're going to spend time with someone and get to know them better. But I think there is an intentionality that's required. Mm-Hmm. And that's true of the skating. You know, you have to, you know, physically think, OK, Piper is moving this way. I'm going to try to move the same way. But I think that's also true of how you just manage your relationship as two people.

Anastasia: Was there ever a time when you're like, Oh, we ain't going to make it?

Piper: No, no. Not really. It's funny when Paul and I fight, we fight because we're speaking about the same thing. It's just that we don't understand sometimes how they're trying to communicate. We communicate very differently, too, but most of the time, anything when we've had any kind of disagreement or, not understanding what the other person is saying, it's because we do want to succeed and we want to be better, we just don't know how, how to fix it. And I don't think there's ever really been a time like…mmm.

Paul: I don't trust skating couples that never argue.

Anastasia: Yeah. I love how you brought up communication, though, because you have a deep knowledge of language. I know you're a brainiac as we say it politely. I think that's the technical term. Can you do me a favour? Because I know that you are beloved in Japan? Can you give me, in Japanese: Thanks for listening to the player's own voice podcast. In your best announcer voice in Japanese.

Paul: (「プレイヤー自身の声」ポッドキャストを聞いてくれてありがとう). And that was probably terrible, but I'm not going to try it again.

Anastasia: thank you

Music

Piper: When it started to click was when we had our first nationals in Moncton and we just went out there and had fun. And I remember when I finished competing before Paul and I started getting together, I didn't think I was ever going to compete again. I didn't think I love the sport anymore. I just didn't want to be involved. And in that moment, I remember absolutely loving the sport that I do and loving the person that I'm doing it with. And I definitely knew at that point, like there was something so special that can make you feel so in love with what you do again.

Anastasia: Do you mind me asking what happened prior to that, where you're like, I don't know if I love this sport?

Piper: I started off ice dance with my first partner and we were great together, but we just kind of outgrew each other. He was like my brother and I made the decision to find a new partner, and we just were so different people. And then the second year, I think that really showed we just didn't have the same vision of what we wanted to accomplish in dance. And I think over time, a lot of words were said. We weren't very nice to each other because we were kids, we were kids. And all you know is like when something upsets you, you kind of put your feet in the sand and stand your ground, and the both of us did that and. You know, just kind of sucked the love of skating for me, and I just I was kind of at that point was like I was graduating high school, like, what do I do with my life? I don't have a plan outside of skating.

So I made that decision to stop, we ended our partnership and I moved to L.A. and I thought I was going to be an actress and that didn't work out either. But it just kind of goes to show that skating brings a lot of life lessons, even when I feel that as a partner and what? I could bring to this partnership, I think even now I still compete against him, his name, Zachary Donohue, he's one of our closest competitors, but I think we have a lot of respect for each other now. I think when we were younger, like I could be, I'm going to beat him. But having that friendly competition is nice, but I respect everything that he taught me as a as an athlete. And yeah, it's kind of cool that we're all still competing against each other, even though it didn't work out for us. I've got a great new partner and he has one too.

Anastasia: Well, new partner, that's been 10 years in the making

Paul: very new

Anastasia: 10 years. How have your relationships with yourselves and with each other changed in ten years?

Paul: We've really put in the effort to learn how the other person communicates and to meet the other person there. And I think that's an active process and one that I think in any relationship just needs to constantly be there. It's not like a one time learnt lesson. And then you just like move on in life is dandy. I think it's a it's a constant commitment to to doing that. We have a relationship as two people, but we also have a working relationship together where we have this common goal we're trying to accomplish. And I think in the end, the personal relationship has to kind of trump everything.

We've always taken the effort in the time to prioritise that, you know, we've kind of we spent our 20s together, essentially, and that's already such a time of personal development. Over time, our sort of journey as a skating couple was: we've really had to carve out our space as figure skaters to say what work we want to put out to the world. What artistically do we want to share with people and who are we? And I think at the beginning, we were kind of trying to shove that down people's throats all over, like, ' please like us, please like you have to like us' That really marked our earlier skating together and over time within our partnership, I think we've grown more confident in who we are and what we have to offer to the world of skating. And I think that's what we've been able to do as skaters. And I think what we're both getting better at it and just as people.

Piper: I for myself, I know I'm a completely different person than I was when I first moved here at 19. I mean, we've both been through so much good and bad. And again, like life is all about experiences, and I've been so grateful to have these experiences with him. But we've definitely just almost stopped caring about what people thought. And we just did what we what we wanted to do, and we kind of did that from the beginning. But I think over time we just said, Yeah, this is who we are and we're constantly learning where we're improving little by little and I don't know, just taking ownership of that.

Anastasia: What are some of the significant personal moments within the last 10 years that you think have shaped your partnership and you as individuals as well?

Paul: Not qualifying for the games in Sochi was sort of a big one for us, for real. We really had to take stock of what we wanted our skating career to be. I think that was a really big pivoting moment for us.

Piper: We began to trust each other, especially right before the Sochi Olympics, when Paul had broken his ankle in May. And again, it's right before the Olympics. It was again our first Olympic trials together as a team and. I think in that moment was exactly where we needed to learn whether or not we were going to support each other. That was a test. I think everything's been a little bit of a test, but we had trust in each other. We had trust in our coaches. I think it was just a moment where we knew that we could all rely on each other even for myself, like when my mom got sick and it was right before the World Championships in Helsinki. And I remember Paul being so supportive, so supportive. Same with our coaches, but I trusted him. That he was going to help me get along and continue our journey because it was something that it was a goal for herself, it was a goal for my mother and I knew basically from then on, like I, I will always have a person that I can trust and that will always be there for me.

Anastasia: And how was Pyeongchang for you guys ?

Paul: We really made the most of that experience. We had really great skates. We had absolute belief in what we were doing. And but I think for both of us, it was a really great experience. And I think we we left those games wanting more, which is why we're still here.

Anastasia: So this is my question to you, though, because you're a self-proclaimed introvert. Is figure skating your outlet to be extroverted or expressive? Like, how does an introvert harness the performance aspect of being an ice dance? Let's be honest, y'all are a little bit camp.

Paul: Camp is a compliment in my book, so I'll take it. I, you know, I think it's one of those things where in some, in some ways, you know, you're putting a performance out there and there's tons of people watching and you're and you're connecting on an emotional level. And at the same time, besides Piper, of course, you are completely alone on the ice and you sort of exist in those two spaces at the same time as as a performer in in ice dance. Or we're kind of doing things together. And I can't imagine being a single skater and you're really on the ice by yourself, right? I don't miss it.

Anastasia: Piper is shaking her head like, No, thank you.

Paul: I don't miss those days, either. You know, I think there's an aspect of extroversion to performing, but I think there's also like a very introverted aspect to being a performer and kind of going through like, this is my character. These are the emotions I'm portraying that sort of in all of that internal process that happens while you're skating. I don't know. I find comforting. I do think for me, skating has always been a place where I, where I feel comfortable expressing myself and I've been very grateful for it the whole time. I will say, though, in some ways it's also been one of my biggest challenges as a performer.

I am a very technically proficient skater. I really enjoy learning about the mechanics of skating, breaking things down like endlessly to the point where everyone is exasperated with me and I'm like, OK, how are you lifting this arm? I can be like that, and I know that. And one of my biggest shortcomings because of that is I'm so busy trying to focus on exactly how to do everything that I want to do, the way that people want me to do it. Sometimes I don't necessarily get that emotional connection, whether it's with Piper or the judges or with the audience. And that's something I've had to learn. I think every aspect of yourself can be a strength and a weakness at the same time, and I think it's learning to harness everything that you have as a strength.

Anastasia: What's your strength and what's your weakness, Piper?

Piper: This is kind of strange because it's like it could also be one of my negatives, but I can take a problem or something and get super creative and make it work to my advantage sometimes, and that kind of goes with skating because like a lot of the things that we can come up with are from mistakes that may have not have been what we expected or planned, but we can work with it and make it into something else. And I feel like, I don't know. I've always kind of been that kid like, I have gotten myself into trouble. I was trying my career as a kid. I guess I was just like more adventurous and a little more of an extrovert. I would say the opposite of Paul. I just. I just did things like you could show me something or test me, and I would just do it. I'm the opposite with Paul. Paul's very, very, very bright and I am extremely nervous and not confident in my learning in school like I was. Just like, if you gave me maths, that kind of stuff, I could do it. I'm super dyslexic. I'm not good with words. Skating is where I excel. Skating is where I can feel like I'm. I'm strong and confident I'm here, so I find that, like my weakest part of myself is my confidence in how smart I feel. But then when I go on the ice, I know exactly what I need to do. You can show it to me is like, Show me once and I can just do it a million times and figure it out. Whereas like Paul, it's like you got to tell me step by step, like what I need to do. And I'm like, Just give me 10 tries and I will figure it out. So I don't know. It's kind of hard to say what exactly what my strengths and weaknesses are, but there's a few.

Paul: Piper is a very instinctive skater.

Piper: I just I do. Don't tell me, I do.

Anastasia: So then how do you figure it out? Like, how do you find that middle ground to tackle a problem?

Piper and Paul: We mumble.

Paul: We mumble. We like fake communicate. We're really good at that. We also, you know, we have three really great coaches who mediate a lot between us, especially in the choreographic process. We have our two coaches, Carol Lane and Juris Razgulajevs, who are really doing a lot of the choreographic work and and we're part of that process as well. I think we've all learnt how to create together and make things together, whether that means someone just telling me like, OK, just do it. And then I finally just kind of have to force myself and tap into that and tap into that instinct. You know, it's like really takes like the strongest mining tool you can take, like in my soul. And just like, like hacking away at it.

And finally, I can get over my insecurity of doing the wrong thing. And I kind of like, try to follow along a little bit. But I think we're all really good at meeting each other where the other person is at it and sort of providing for each other so that we can make the best thing. And I think that's always the thing. We're always we're always united in two things. The first is that we want to sort of test the boundaries of what is possible in skating and try and kind of like reach as far as we can. And I think the second thing is we're all committed to creating the best work possible and knowing that we're all aligned on that goal. I think just allows us to to push through.

Piper: Yeah. But I also do think that like Carol and Juris, Carol thinks a lot like you and Juris thinks a lot like me. He's a doer and she's a thinker. It's taken 10 years to get us to be where we are and they know us. They know us so well.

Anastasia: They obviously know you, and it's obviously working because you too are, you know, the top dogs now. How are you handling that pressure?

Paul: It's weird. And in some ways, I think it still feels a little bit abstract because of the pandemic, because, you know, the last two competitions we've done have been without audience. But I think in some ways, it's really exciting. This is really this season is the pinnacle of what we've been working towards our entire lives. And sometimes I don't like to think about it that way because then it it feels really big and insurmountable. And just like how in the world are we going to do this? Those moments might be a little bit more frequent throughout this season, where the stakes can sometimes feel really high. And what we're asking of ourselves and of each other can feel really high sometimes. But other than that, you know, in the end, like we're still like we go to the rink and train every day. We have our sort of pre competition planned before every competition. We know what we're doing three weeks out, what we're doing two weeks out or doing one week out. And in some ways that hasn't changed in so long. And it's it's comforting in a way to know that, you know, your methods are tested and work. And I think in the end, that's kind of what you have to rely on as you kind of go through the wringer that is the Olympic season because it can feel so overwhelming and daunting and insurmountable.

Piper: I feel like right now. It's really cool to be in this top position because I think when we were younger, it was like, I want to strive to be in the top position, I want to be a role model, I want to be the best, I want to be inspiring. But now we've gotten to that position and it's weird because I don't feel any different.

Anastasia: imposter syndrome?

Piper: Yeah, I don't feel any different. But then I think I shouldn't be any different because my story, I have to own my story and own that. Our journey is inspiring even if only to one person. And then there's kind of a weight to believing in your own hype. But then you have to take a step back like I'm an actual human being and this is my story and it is inspiring, and I have to be grateful for everything that has been thrown my way to finally being in this peak position. And we're exactly where we need to be. I wouldn't have changed any little bit of our journey, our story, because that's just me as who we are. We can be inspiring in that way because we've stuck to our guns. We've stayed true to ourselves and we've grown as people and I think. People can inspire to create their own story.

Anastasia: I love it. And I would agree that you have completely stuck to who you were, stuck to who you are. And it's a bit of an elephant in the room, right? Like you competed against some of the greatest figure skaters ever, Tessa and Scott, Kaitlyn and Andrew. But you always were Piper and Paul. Where does that come from?

Paul: Stubbornness.

Piper: It started from the get go. I really did like, I don't know what we came out, we just

I think it started at the very beginning because we were so new. We didn't have an identity of who we were as a team. And I think at the beginning, it's just like, just try everything. And I think that became our motto from the get go was like, OK, well, we haven't done the tango yet. Let's do a tango. OK, well, we've done. I don't know, we did sweet dreams, we've done very contemporary stuff, but. Over time, that became "oh, that's just Piper and Paul, like, they're just weird, they're kind of quirky, but I think we loved it.. It didn't matter. Like where, where we ended up.

I think obviously we were so frustrated for a few years because we just didn't know where we where we were going with it. We begin to be known as as Piper and Paul from our weirdness and I think our coaches. I don't know. I think they were just on the same journey with us and they wanted to do the same thing until we we realised what. What we were doing it for and then ended up being for the people, and I think going into this, this why we've chosen programmes that I mean they they are for ourselves, but it's kind of a tribute, a kind of a thank you to the people who have believed in us and accepted our quirkiness and our weirdness. And you know, we're finally we're going into the Olympic Games, finishing our quad, celebrating the people who have been a part of our journey.

Anastasia: What does that process look like for you to pick a programme? Is it lightning in a bottle or do you have a process?

Paul: Sometimes it's hearing a piece of music randomly on the radio and then searching everywhere to try to find the name of it, which is sometimes so difficult and vexing.

Anastasia: Let me give you a little hint. Shazam. You get that app, my friend. You just play it in the radio and you'll know that song, right?

Paul: I'm talking about you know, this is like 2010. People don't have smartphones. You know, I've been doing this a long time.

Anastasia: Yeah, actually. Funny story, though. 2010 Patrick Chan did have an iPhone, and I was like, Oh my, a professional athlete. Like, I thought, like my mind was blown.

Paul: I had a dinky flip phone, you know, I maybe had a web browser. I'm not even sure.

Anastasia: But yeah, it was like $10 a minute.

Paul: So, you know, I think I can think of so many programmes and some really start with music. Some really start with like a concept or idea or a character. Some come together in a week, some come together in three months because you cannot figure out what you want to do. Sometimes you find one piece of music, but it's kind of incomplete by itself, and then you spend months looking for another piece of music to go with it, and it never materialises. So I think the process is very different each time.

And in terms of, you know, coming up with the choreography, I said sometimes it's just kind of we're improvising and we find things we like. Sometimes it's like I had this crazy dream last night, and it's probably not possible. But what if? And that conversation has happened many times throughout the years.

Anastasia: Do you guys remember your dreams?

Paul: I'm not good at that.

Piper: I dream lifts. It's every choreography like season, and I'm trying to come up with something, I dream lifts to sleep and I try and figure out how to connect this transition. So you get so psychotic sometimes, like Paul said it sometimes. Some programmes take forever, and it's like the little things. It's like 15 seconds, maybe. But it takes so long and it's so infuriating. Like, it's, yeah, frustrating. But I think like even with Starry Night, Carol actually thought of the idea at the Olympics, I feel like she happened to come across a Facebook video and this is what she does with Paul, and I have learnt this.

Anastasia: And when you say Carol, you mean Carol Lane

Piper: Carol Lane, our wonderful coach. But Carol kind of she knows how Paul works.

She puts like a little a teaser or like a treat kind of in front of Paul. Like, it's like I have an idea for next year, but I'm not going to tell you until you finish worlds. I saw these guys, busker artists on Facebook. She loves Facebook, and I don't even know if we can get a hold of them. I heard them singing Starry Night, and I think this is going to be amazing. How do we get a hold of them? And I was like, I'm on it.

Paul: Yeah, a little detective emoji here.

Piper: Oh yeah. Slipped into their DMs for sure. And sure enough, like we met these two two guys, Dom and Jack, who are known as Gavardo, and they're just incredible human beings. And I think the moment we connected with them, like they knew exactly what we were asking of them. And like, they didn't know anything about figure skating or ice dance. And we have these tempo changes that are absolutely mandatory and ice dance. And they just got it, you know, and it it took time. They were like, Well, just give us a couple of months, we'll kind of figure this out, but. We'll let you know when it's kind of done, and we sat there like so nervous for so long because we just didn't know we didn't hear from them.

We were like, we've risked everything. We were so trusting in these two people that we've never even met but felt so connected. Even when we started, like the choreography process, it just it did it kind of did itself. It just it moved. We just kind of tried to create art instead of just being like element, element, element, how do we how do we move and how do we create? And I still remember one moment when we were trying to figure out the change of tempo in starry night, and they didn't exactly understand what we were talking about. And Carol had to sing it. That goes to show, like our whole career has been kind of collaborating with Carol and Juris, and it's been so special. But I think what made it even more special was we opened it up and we truly became artists with two other artists. We created our first programmes for the people, and it was it was, I think, so unique because every time we did it, it felt different. I think that was our biggest growing year. we brought every emotion out onto that ice every time we performed it, and it was always different, and I think people felt that and connected to it.

Anastasia: So give me a hint then. We're we're like. Five minutes from Beijing, this feels like. What can we expect for for this season?

Paul: Well, we decided to collaborate with Govardo again. And so they've they've done our new music for this season for the free dance. And we're they've done for us a rendition of The Long and Winding Road, the Beatles song.

Anastasia: Lovely.

Paul: Yeah. And it is much more of a reflective kind of retrospective programme, which in some ways feels a little bit self-indulgent. But I think it, but I think in a lot of ways we really wanted to. We really wanted to take stock of what the last 10 years have been and what we've been able to accomplish and what we've been able to create and all of the moments we've been through and all of the times we've had to pull each other through things. And I think this programme is really about that story. And it's really just a pleasure to skate. It's still very early in the season, and I think there's so much more to develop in it. And that's my my inner athlete perfectionist talking right now.

But you know, I think for us, we were really happy to come full circle with Govardo to work with them again, to come full circle with our our own career and to really celebrate that on the biggest stage in the world for our sport, which is the Olympic Games. And we really wanted it to be a programme that felt Olympic that sort of contained all of the all of the potential and all of the amplitude and bigness that is the Olympic Games. And to really channel that energy through our skating in a way that Starry Night was a very, very introspective, intimate kind of piece where, you know, we welcomed people into what we were doing, but in the end, it was a very intimate piece. And I think it starts from the inside and then really explodes outwards. And I think in in some ways, that's really what what the Olympics are about. It's about the inner journey of the athlete that has kind of committed their entire life to the craft of what they're doing and. That sort of inner journey just kind of gets magnified on the on the world stage and, you know, I think the programme really embodies that process.

Anastasia: Y'all should tag Paul McCartney. You should upload that programme and tag Sir Paul, and you never know. Maybe he'll invite you to lunch.

Piper: I'm just waiting for Elton John's invite. Really, that's what I'm waiting for. I mean, we're do. We're doing Elton John for our rhythm dance. And again, it it's kind of tribute to our our story, and it's that it finishes with, I'm still standing. And I think we've been through so many ups and downs and and maybe people not believing in us and we fought through it all. And here we are, and we're still standing. And I think that's going to create a moment and. It feels very iconic in our bright orange jumpsuits, and it's again, it is a very Piper and Paull programme, but it's a very big celebration and I like we're here. We've stuck it out. And here we are and. I hope Elton sees that, too.

Paul: You know, we're still standing and we're still hella camp. Yeah.

Anastasia: Or I don't know about the orange. Yeah, I hope you didn't take offense at camp comment. Honestly, it's the biggest compliment. You're a little bit camp. But that is coming from the purest corner of my heart. And yeah, I just know Canadians have fallen in love with you. I know skating fans just love you and. I don't know, maybe your gala. Like, what do you think about Frank Sinatra's I did it my way? Like I always when I was in like low moments in my career, I was like, Yep, let's play this song. And it would tell me that I made the right decision, even if I probably didn't. But that is not reflective of your career. But you guys have done it your way. It's so exciting, and it's going to be a great time in China.

Paul: Sure hope so

Piper: I'm glad we have fans too.

Anastasia: Yeah, especially from Mainland China, so I'm very confident that you're going to have a lot of people cheering you on. And there's nothing better than sports. Pretty lovely when there's fans in the crowd, too. So I am so grateful that the both of you took time to come on this little podcast. I'm so excited to see what you do in Beijing, and yeah, I just appreciate you two.

Paul: Lots and lots of love

Anastasia: peace.

We recorded that chat from our living room here in Toronto. Players Own Voice podcast is a cbc sports production.

Social media? Hashtag players own voice...I'm Anastasure. David Giddens is our producer.

Olivia Pasquareli is our editor Theme music by Adam Blinov.

Thanks for listening...