Kelly Day, a Canadian musician turned political YouTuber, performed How They Rule Ya at Rebel Live in Calgary (2023), critiquing media censorship and framing Tommy Robinson’s imprisonment as fear of a "caliphate." Raised in Esteban, Saskatchewan, her shift from liberalism to conservatism stemmed from health struggles—depression in winter 2019—and Dr. Jordan Peterson’s philosophy on suffering for meaning. Now a "small government conservative," she supports Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party over radical libertarianism, rejecting progressive tribalism while avoiding confrontational rhetoric. Her journey, marked by self-correction and dialogue, reveals how personal crises and ideological honesty can reshape political identity, offering a bridge between polarized views. [Automatically generated summary]
A talented musician who is also not afraid to be a very public and open conservative, and one from Canada at that.
I'm sure you're saying no such thing, but no.
Tonight I'll introduce you to one.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
I met someone over the weekend at our very successful Rebel Live event in Calgary that I think we probably all should get to know just a little bit better.
She's a new political YouTuber, but she's also an incredibly talented musician, and she's from the prairies.
You know what?
Instead of listening to me talk about how great she is, why don't you listen to her for yourself?
Here's Kelly Day singing Owen Benjamin's Ode to Tommy Robinson, How They Rule Ya, to our crowd of 600 in Calgary.
Here's a secret court where journalists weren't allowed to report.
But you don't really care for freedom, do ya?
It goes like this without the fifth.
The gavel falls and they cut your wrist.
It's not okay and this is how they rule ya.
How they rulia, how they rule ya.
Averulia has been here before.
He's seen this room and he's walked this floor.
Last time they tried to kill him, but he ended.
They need the voice for the growing state.
They don't care who their voters rape.
And it's not okay if this is how they rule ya.
How they rulia, how they rule ya.
Please do sing it with me.
How they rule you, how they rule you.
Was it time the press let you know who is really coming to your shores?
But now they don't tell the story ever.
True yeah, state tries to say Tommy has racial hate, But really it's a fear of a caliphate, And the state says no, take it.
This is how we rule ya, How we rule ya, How we rule ya, How we rule ya, How we rule.
While Tommy Robinson incarcerated But you never seem to care for children, do ya?
The grooming gangs moved in on you and the kids looked up to you for truth.
Please don't just say, baby, this is how we know Rulia.
How they rulia, how they rulia, how they rulia, how to rulia,
Realizing Allies Aren't So Solid00:14:56
She did a beautiful job on that song.
Kelly's such a talent, but she's more than that.
She's got a really great story to tell about her journey to the political right and her quest for continued dialogue with her political opposites in a time when politics have never really been more polarized.
So joining me tonight from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to talk about her new foray into political commentary is musician Kelly Day.
So joining me now from Prince Albert is musician and I guess sort of newfound political commentator Kelly Day.
Kelly, thanks for joining me.
Thank you very much for having me, Sheila.
Now I wanted to have you on because I found you so fascinating.
You spoke at our Rebel Live event and I think you have a really great story.
At these Rebel Live events, it was my job to keep everybody sort of moving along in the right time.
So you didn't have, I think, all the time that I would love to have heard from you during, but, you know, tight schedule and we got to keep it moving.
But I thought, what a great time to have you on as a guest.
You are not, I guess, or are you, originally from Prince Albert?
No, no, I was born and raised in the very south of this province.
So in Esteban, smaller oil city, about 11,000 people.
And I've moved all over.
I've lived in Ontario.
I've lived in BC.
I've lived in many cities and towns across Saskatchewan.
I'm in Prince Albert now.
My fiancé's going to school here.
Now, you mentioned at the Rebel Live event that you've spent some time on the left coast.
And while you were there, you sort of considered yourself a bit of a lefty.
You know, I really did.
And partly is because I think I mentioned it's all relative on the on the west coast.
I was considered kind of uptight and just got to relax, you know, be a little more hakuna matata, if you will.
And then when I was, you know, back visiting family in Saskatchewan, they called me more the gypsy of the family or the hippie, the free spirit.
So it's really interesting how it's very much all relative.
But absolutely, I identified very much as a liberal.
You know, I wouldn't say that politically at the time.
I was dealing with personal stuff, health stuff.
So I wasn't involved in politics.
But when it comes to how I viewed the world, absolutely very much liberal, what you might call progressive.
At least that's what I thought the path was that I was on.
So for sure.
So I guess I hate to use the phrase because it's so overused, but what was your like red pill moment where you realized, well, maybe I'm not a left liberal.
Maybe I'm something else.
Right, for sure.
No, and it's funny that you say that because I don't love those labels either, but sometimes they fit so well, you just have to keep using them.
And red pilling is definitely a perfect way to put this.
So I often joke that I took the time release version of the red pill.
I still get like little bursts of the medication once in a while, and I have some kind of aha moment where I feel like I have to relearn a whole news story or a whole perspective from a new point of view, which can be really actually quite disheartening sometimes because sometimes you have to face things that you didn't want to face before.
So I guess you could say red pilling for me was a bit of a process, but I can think of a couple major things.
So the first was when Donald Trump was elected.
Some of my friends or Facebook type friends, very much more, I guess, left-leaning I see now, called me on my privilege when I tried to ask for some calm and taking a deep breath when he was elected, because of course everybody on the left thinks he's the worst person in the whole universe.
So stereotypical, right?
Like it's so true.
It's so true.
It's like a Trump derangement syndrome.
It does exist.
I finally realize that now.
So I just called for calm and I was called on my privilege, of course, because I couldn't possibly understand being, you know, a white cisgender, whatever woman.
So it started to get me thinking.
And then just little events were happening after that.
And in my personal life, I have a chronic illness.
I've had many surgeries.
I got really sick and it reached a pinnacle for me this past winter.
I was very sick.
I was very thin.
I was miserable.
I was in a lot of pain.
And I wasn't sure what the point was going on anymore.
By the time I had my surgery, which was successful, but it was taking a long time to heal.
I was very depressed.
And I wasn't sure I was going to make it through about February, March.
And then I found Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Dr. Jordan Peterson basically said, you know, you have to pick up your suffering and bear it and be this version of yourself that you believe you're meant to be.
And you have to follow meaning.
And it struck a chord because seeking happiness versus meaning is very much what the left seems is all about.
It's about instant feeling good as opposed to maybe overall good policies or good thoughts for your life going forward.
And it really started to shift me in a personal way.
From there, I started to go back to my faith, reconnected with the pastor that coincidentally, maybe or not, lives in the same city I am now from my childhood to kind of bring me back to that.
And then with it, of course, politically, I realized I think I've been a conservative all along.
I just didn't realize what conservatives were capable of.
I had this stereotypical view that conservatives were heartless or non-empathetic.
And of course, that's what the media tells us.
So I bought into that baloney and finally realized over time that it wasn't true.
And also some CBC articles that showed me how much our media can lie to us, you know, those sorts of things.
So slowly but surely, I realized, holy cow, I've been in the wrong.
And I made this YouTube channel sort of to pay penance for my mistakes and try to teach other soft-hearted people like me how to not be fooled, fooled by the liberal lies.
You know, it's funny that you should mention, you know, like your perceptions of what conservatives are versus what conservatives really are.
They're often two vastly different things.
You know, the media will portray conservatives as, you know, oppressive or we're anti-woman, we're anti-gay, we're, you know, anti-immigration, when mostly we're just pro-being left alone.
Like, just leave everybody alone.
Leave the gays alone.
Leave the Christians alone.
You know, leave Canadian culture alone.
Just leave everybody alone.
And it's, it's once people really sort of, and that's what, sorry, I just, I want to go off in another direction because one of the reasons, one of the reasons I really appreciate what you do on your YouTube channel is because you reach out to the other side.
Because I think part of the problem is that people do have perceptions about conservatives, and we do have perceptions about liberals that often are not always true.
And the only way we can sort of break down those walls is through dialogue.
And you do quite a bit of that.
Yes, I do.
So the music stuff is thanks to a good friend of mine.
His name is Rance Derek.
If anyone wants to check out his channel, he heard me singing some of my regular stuff, non-political stuff, when we were connected.
And he said, you know, you should consider just doing some political commentary.
So it started with the song from Maxime Bernier and kind of continued from there.
And I enjoy that side of it, but I also enjoy just the spoken words.
So sometimes when I have a rant or a feeling, I just sit in front of the camera.
It started with an anti-modern feminist rant back in July and has spread out from there and grown into something kind of exciting.
And the dialogue, like you say, Sheila, is so important.
What I notice is, because I spend the time to read the comments, I mean, it's getting harder as the channel grows, but I try to really have discussions, even with people that I disagree with.
Pretty much as long as you don't start off the dialogue with, hey, you stupid expletive word, you know, insert expletive word here, I'll pretty much usually, you know, come back and have some kind of a dialogue.
And I've learned a lot.
I've had to pull videos because of, you know, finding out a news story was fake or embellished.
It teaches you a lot about intellectual honesty and these different things that come along with doing this type of work.
And the dialogue has been the key for me.
And I've actually had a few people that have, you know, discussed something with me, not agreed with everything and followed me over and subscribed to my channel.
I have no idea how many people sit in the background that hear my views.
It's mostly conservatives I speak to, but I do hope the odd liberal will poke their head in and hear something that maybe makes them stop and think, even just for a second, right?
I think by now people should know that you appeared at our Rebel live event.
You gave a little bit of commentary and you did just a stirring rendition of how they ruled.
Yeah, the song about Tommy Robinson.
What has been some of the response from, I don't know, either the left or other conservatives from appearing at our event?
Very interesting question.
So I've been working with some other, you know, Patriot Canadian YouTubers and one of them has mentioned to walk into the fire.
I think Thomas Saul mentioned that as well.
So I feel like I kind of dove into the fire, just jumped right in this weekend.
You mentioned, Sheila, that if you get the stink of the Rebel on you, then you can have a problem.
So I think I just like doused myself in Rebel Stink this weekend and honestly don't care.
I'm happy to smell like the Rebel.
These people were some of the greatest people, both the audience members and of course all of you guys that I got to meet, the speakers, just salts of the earth, good Canadians.
And so the people there, fantastic.
I had amazing, amazing interactions with people after.
One 75-year-old man or so, I would guess in the age group of 75-ish came with his wife and told me he hadn't partook in the national anthem in over five years.
I don't know why.
His wife said, yeah, he just won't sing it.
And he said, but for some reason, when you sang it today on that stage, I just felt like I had to join in with everyone in the room.
And he sang the national anthem.
And it almost brought me to tears.
You know, I had these moments where I felt like people really listened.
And I, you know, I felt some energy or some solidarity there.
So that was pretty amazing.
Beyond there, of course, you have Twitter, which is quite things.
Liberal-wise, yeah, I'm considered spewing hate.
I'm a hypocrite.
I'm an idiot.
I'm all these things.
So that's the general liberal go-to.
That's been a fun red-pilling moment as well, realizing everyone that you thought was on your side is actually kind of, I don't know how to put this.
They're very harsh, a lot of vitriol.
I think I could probably say it in worse ways, but I'll stick to a diplomatic way this time around.
So that's been, you know, on the side, but I'd say overwhelmingly good, good response.
How they Rulia was actually shared by both Owen Benjamin and on his live stream as well as on Twitter, as well as Tommy Robinson saw it and put it on.
So it's floating around.
I think it's at about 50,000 views.
I haven't checked.
So, yes, it's on a few different sources, and the response has been incredible.
Apparently, I make lots of grown men cry, so that makes me kind of laugh because I'm a pretty nice gal, but apparently, the music does something to the soul.
So, yeah, I feel like it's been a really positive experience.
I'm very glad I went.
Yeah, no offense to Owen Benjamin, but I like your version better.
And I don't think I'm alone in that opinion.
Now, I guess what are some of the responses from people who knew you before as sort of apolitical liberal Kelly versus Kelly who's walked into the fire now?
Another interesting question.
So, I grew up conservative and Christian.
So, when I was in high school, I was, you know, very type A personality, exceptional grades, involved in all sorts of things.
I played the oboe in band.
I was in the debate club.
Total overachiever.
Just a nerd.
You sound like just an insufferable nerd.
I was such a nerd.
And I was nice, so I wasn't hated or anything or made fun of or put in lockers, even though I'm totally small enough to be stuffed in a locker.
I was not.
But yes, I was into a lot of music stuff.
I was very involved with my church and my youth group.
And so, if you knew me before, if you knew me as the conservative Kelly, then none of this would seem so crazy.
But it's that period of time when I would be, I guess, between 19 and, oh, I don't know, late 20s was when I started to shift out of it.
Not too far from when I met my partner, who's a libertarian, and kind of opened my eyes up to the don't tread on me concept that I think was in my soul all along.
So it depends when you met me.
If you met me in that period of time when I lived on the West Coast, yeah, I'm losing friends at the speed of sound, that way, and it hasn't been pretty.
So, Bernier has been interesting because he's seen as such a sexist misogynist, is-ist, is-ist, is of all the kinds.
So, that's been interesting to deal with the backlash of that, thinking that people really don't know my heart and are that convinced that when you go to the other side of conservatism, you turn into this, I guess, heartless demon.
I'm not sure.
But for the most part, for every person I've lost, I'm gaining someone that's just incredible, very strong people in my life.
So, it's good and bad, but yeah, it's been, there's people I haven't even told yet.
I still haven't come around to coming out to everybody.
This has been a slow process.
So, you just mentioned Maxime Bernier.
You're Maxime Bernier's supporter, which seems like maybe you skipped a step.
Like, you went from being a liberal to being a libertarian now instead of moving through the mushy middle of vegetable lasagna conservatism.
And I just want to know how that happened.
Again, this was not a conscious political choice.
It just sort of became this meshed in change in my life.
So, it came in with a spiritual change, with a physical change, you know, huge mental awakenings, you could say.
Libertarianism, very different.
One of these words that's defined very differently, say, even in the U.S., people on the very extreme and pure libertarians who are, you know, anarcho-capitalists, right?
And you have maybe they don't believe in borders and they don't believe we should have any government at all.
You have these people that do kind of support more of an anarchy model.
Then you have libertarians that are more of classical liberal, which of course doesn't exist in the liberal parties anymore.
Like the Democrats in the States are no longer liberal.
The liberals and NDP are not liberal here.
They are pretty much socialists.
I think we can all agree with that, or as close as you can be in our society.
So, I think that libertarianism has to be defined sort of individually right now, which is unfortunate.
So, I would say that I guess you could say classical liberal would be a similar thing for me.
Finding Respect Across the Aisle00:10:25
I'm not anti-government.
I understand we need a police force and a fire, you know, a fireman.
I understand that we need some government, but I'm very much pro-limited government.
So funny story, when I first met my partner Steve, he had sent me, this is when we were first talking, he sent me like a joke test, what kind of, what's your true political nature?
And I did the test and came up 100% libertarian.
I'd never heard the word before.
But when you look at the values, they're all everything I've ever really wanted to practice.
It made me realize that that liberal phase of my life was a front, a mask, right?
It wasn't who I am.
And my dad always caught that.
We would have these arguments because he was so, he's such a staunch old school conservative.
And he'd say to me, you're not really a liberal.
And I was like, yes, I am so mad.
And he'd say, no, you're not, with a smirk on his face.
And I remember how much that angered me, but he was right.
He could see that his daughter was being led by the blind, right?
And so basically, libertarianism for me is more about the important ideological cultural views of it, less than, say, the pure economics of it.
We can always debate about that.
I'm what Tim Mohen would call a milquetoast libertarian because I don't necessarily dive into inform of that.
So basically, libertarianism for me is a lot more about small government.
Being a Westerner, and I'm sure you can appreciate this, Sheila, there's way too, there's too many hands in the pot when it comes to Ottawa dealing with Western affairs.
And people in Saskatchewan have been pretty disillusioned for years with the East.
So when it comes to Maxime Bernier, libertarianism, he's a conservative, but he's got some libertarian undertones.
For me, it's about focusing on smaller government and dealing with the demographics at hand.
So Prince Albert's going to have different issues than Ottawa, obviously, and different than Nova Scotia and Vancouver Island.
So to me, it's about having actual small government of communities as opposed to this BS of having this one huge government diving into our lives.
It's also about personal freedom and understanding what the West really means.
So that's where Jordan Peterson helped me to understand not to feel ashamed of my Judeo-Christian heritage, that even if you're an atheist, you can still respect this freedom, this Western freedom mentality.
So those, I think, those ideologies are what shifted me from liberalism to libertarianism.
I was considering running for the Libertarian Party, and then Maxime Bernier went and started his own, and I had to decide who I felt the most ideologically compatible with and seem to have a lot more oomph in the political spectrum than the libertarians.
They're just a bit too Puritan to ever gain power in this country.
So yeah, I'm on Bird Ballon.
I'm a president of the EDA in Prince Albert and taking on all the vote split hate and all that.
So yeah.
Yeah, it's, I would describe myself as probably the smallest of all government conservatives.
Libertarians, God love them.
You know, I do.
I think I crib a lot of ideas from the libertarians, especially on gun rights and small government.
But a lot of the radical libertarians, and I'm not talking about your normal Western libertarian, but the radical kind, they are the people who could probably least stay alive without government.
And I don't mean that to be, I'm not trying to be rude, but some of them really, they need government.
Like they need to help.
I would completely agree with you that some of the most anarchy types are kind of, some of them are a little unhinged at times, which not all, but some.
So yeah, I would agree with that.
I think having some government isn't the worst thing in the world.
It's just about having the government that actually lead people.
And I don't think that Canada right now is much of a democracy.
I'm sure you'd agree with that.
So yeah, I agree with you.
There is that anything radical, that's for me staying not moderate, like lukewarm, standing by your laurels for sure, but I'm just not a radical in pretty much any sense.
So yeah, I try to be with anything radical, you have to be careful because people can be more focused on the group or the team than where it actually sits with their values, right?
Right.
And that takes me to something else that you've really talked about.
You've sort of talked about, you know, radical tribalism and you've really reached across the aisle to the other side.
We talked about this before, but I mean, you did an entire video on C16, that's Canada's pronoun law, and you did it with a trans person because you're not afraid to have the discussion.
You've talked about veganism as a radical idea, and you've talked about people who radically hate veganism as being, you know, two sides of the same coin.
You've talked about white guilt, and then you've talked about uniting conservatives.
So you are sort of, I guess, probably one of the more ecumenical conservative YouTubers I think I've ever seen.
Well, I'll take that as a compliment because, and good word, by the way, I always like when people use good, good smart words.
I appreciate the compliment.
I want to be, like I said, not lukewarm, mushy.
I've had, that's probably my biggest criticism on YouTube is from the conservatives saying, hey, you're being too PC.
You know, crank it up a notch.
And I totally respect that.
I respect those comments.
I think when I first started, I was a bit scared of stepping on toes.
Very liberal in that respect.
It's hard to get out of that skin.
But it's important for me to not turn people off by being like some kind of personality.
I'm a pretty gentle, soft-spoken person.
That's why Lindsay Shepard has been, you know, being able to see her speak and meet her was incredible for me because she's, like you said, such a nice, soft-spoken person.
And when I saw her just get basically eaten alive by her own side by the left, it was just horrific to watch.
And I want to make sure that, you know, there are people on the left that are too far gone.
There's an irrational thinking wave that's gone on that I don't think you can reach.
And that's something I have to accept in trying to reach across the aisle.
You just can't.
You have to really be careful not to waste your time because some people are just out to insult.
They are deeply disturbed in some cases and they can't be helped.
But there are those people that are like I was.
They're just disillusioned.
For me, it was illness.
You're stuck in an environment that tells you that socialism is the answer.
You're being fed garbage all the time telling you that we have the best system and we shouldn't ever question it.
And really, you know deep down that it's not right.
There's a cognitive dissonance.
That's where I deal.
I guess I want to help other people who are in that boat.
It always happens to people who are considered highly sensitive or empathic.
It's the empathetic, bleeding heart folks that get wrapped into this want to reach.
If you're a sensitive person who has a hard time balancing head and heart, that's what I want my channel to be for.
So it's basically balancing pragmatism and empathy.
I see a lot of people strongly in their head and a lot of people strongly only thinking on knee-jerk emotional reactions.
And neither of those are going to get us anywhere.
So that's kind of what I try to do with my channel.
Now, I guess now's a good time to let people know where they can find your channel.
How can they find your music?
How can they support you in this, I guess it's sort of like a walkabout, like a truth quest to not only educate people, but to have these ongoing discussions with the other side.
Well, I'm on YouTube right now.
This is all weird for me because I actually am not really much of a techie.
And so doing anything with, you know, even having to buy a webcam and all that and do all of this was not really in the stars, I didn't think for me, but I guess here I am.
So right now I just have YouTube.
I am on Twitter.
You can follow me at KellyRDA19.
I'm on there a little more than I used to be.
My YouTube channel, you can just type in Kelly Day.
I believe there's only two of us.
There's myself and I think a Brazilian supermodel.
So I'm the non-Brazilian supermodel.
Please feel free to follow me there.
I try to post a couple times a week.
I try to do different interviews, like you said, Sheila, with people that I want to challenge me or, you know, keep me advised or informed on something.
I also am going to be starting a Patreon because yes, this will start to take some money now and I'll be keeping my viewers posted that way.
So that's probably the best way to find me right now is just straight up YouTube and Twitter.
Facebook isn't much of a thing and I'm not an Instagrammer.
Well, you know, I hope people do seek you out.
I hope they do find you.
I hope they do watch your videos.
I think your music is being shared and enjoyed more broadly than it ever was, especially after this weekend.
But I think you're doing really important work and you have a really important journey into conservatism that I think people need to hear.
So Kelly, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today.
Thank you for letting us get the stink of the rebel all over you.
And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to really articulate these ideas in a way that people understand.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate the opportunity.
Like I said, this has been a really bizarre journey and the support I'm getting is incredible.
So for anyone that's seen me so far, thank you.
It means the world and the opportunity to be at the Rebel this weekend.
Yes, it's been incredible both for my music and just for my soul.
So thank you so much, Sheila, for having me on today.
Thanks, Kelly.
Take care.
I think Kelly has a really great attitude about remembering that the person sitting across from you on the ideological aisle, they might not necessarily be evil or hateful.
They might just be wrong and they may have never ever met a real life conservative before.
Some people's bubbles really are that small and we can't pop their bubble for them if we don't talk to them.
It's important for us as conservatives to also remember that we are sometimes brand ambassadors, whether we want to be or not.
I hope everybody checks out Kelly and her commentary and her incredible music right now.
She's a hidden gem, but I don't think that she'll be staying hidden for too much longer.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you, everybody, once again for taking the time to tune in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.