Shaun "The Viking" Zimmer defied COVID lockdowns by hosting unlicensed fitness boot camps, facing $5,200 in fines, and later led Monstrosity Burger—fined nearly $100K—to close after losing its liquor license. His 26-hour blizzard drive to the Truckers Convoy, frozen bank account, and forced switch to Cinnaboy Credit Union revealed systemic suppression of dissent. Now teaching kids self-sustainability through gardening, he warns of climate agendas replacing COVID restrictions, pushing boundaries from health mandates to digital currency and gender ideology in schools. [Automatically generated summary]
Link and Jay bringing you a very special episode of Andrew Says as a guest host filling in for our friend Andrew this week.
Today we're going to be joined by a familiar face of Rebel News, Sean Zimmer.
I have reported on Sean a couple of times, including in Winnipeg, regarding him being fined by the police for running his backyard fitness classes.
And we also met up during the Truckers Convoy in Ottawa where he actually had his bank account frozen.
Stay tuned because this is going to be a good episode.
Without further ado, let me introduce you to Sean the Viking Zimmer.
I'm Sean Zimmer.
Some people call me the Viking.
I'm a father, an individual who speaks from his heart.
It's truth, authentic, and raw.
So ask me anything you want, brother.
It's good to see you again and chat.
So we, Sean, we first crossed paths in Winnipeg where you live.
And it was because I saw a video.
It was going viral at the time of you having, let's say, some interesting interactions with the local law enforcement in your area.
You were running a fitness class, a boot camp out of your backyard at the time.
You know, we were going through lockdowns.
You know, we were dealing with COVID restrictions almost at the peak at that time, I believe.
And you decided, I'm going to open up a, you know, I'm going to start running fitness classes out of my backyard and just provide that to the community.
And ultimately, the police ended up visiting you.
Can you just tell people, we'll get into the police interactions shortly, but why did you first start doing the fitness classes in your backyard?
I first started doing them in my backyard because I knew people, one, needed a space to come together and help them feel sane with everything going on in the world, have a place they could connect with like-minded individuals who were just going along to get along.
And secondly, to be a shining light, a lighthouse in a way where I could inspire people to open their doors and not listen to this tyrannical rule that was being put upon us.
So we have a clip actually from the first time that we met and I reported on you.
We're going to run that clip right now so people can see what exactly you were doing at the time.
So I guess to start things off, can you just give us a little bit of a background on what actually takes place here?
What are you running?
What's organized here?
Yeah, absolutely.
So my name is Sean Zimmer.
What we're doing here is taking a public stand, I guess, a tyrannical rule that we're seeing across Canada, specifically Winnipeg, where we're at right now.
So I've opened a boot camp in this backyard.
We've got a few individuals.
So we're taking a stand saying, all this is right.
I'm helping people come together and have a voice and show that there's people they can connect with that feel the same as that.
Because I know it's more so people not scared of the virus.
They're scared of the ridicule or scared of the fines from just opening instead of waiting until they're allowed to open.
So here we're free men and women taking a stand showing you that you can do the same.
So the police, as you'll see in the videos, they're pretty ashamed of what they're doing.
You know, they say they're just doing their job.
They come right here on the fence.
We're not doing this in a private location.
My house is next to one of the busiest streets here.
And they come here and they gave me three fines so far, $1,300, $1,300, and $2,600.
And they just stick it right in the fence and they get their bus out of here as quick as they can.
They won't even give me their names.
They say it's for going against public health orders.
Because originally when I started this, you weren't allowed to gather more than one person, then five people, then 10 people now.
For me, if you tell me I can gather with 10,000 people, I want 10,000.
What?
Don't tell me how many people we can gather with here.
So, the police interaction was pretty embarrassing on their part.
I'm going to be honest with that.
This story is very interesting.
It's my second most viewed video that I've done with Rebel News.
A lot of people were very interested in this story.
Now, the police gave you, ultimately, gave you, at least we see in that video, that they gave you three fines for running these boot camps in your backyard.
Can you kind of break it down for people what it was like when the police first started approaching your property and what that experience was like as a whole?
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I can't even tell you how many fines we're at now.
I haven't been paying attention.
All those fines I just wrote, I'm not in contract with you and sent them back.
Those interactions, you know, at first were definitely putting pressure on.
I knew it was going to come, though, when I made that statement that we were going to offer free boot camps in the face of what was being told that we can't do.
I knew the police were going to hear about that and come at me as well.
So, the first couple times I felt the pressure, they were definitely trying to scare me into shutting out and listening and closing my doors and not taking the stand I was.
But I knew in my heart what I was doing was right.
So, I, at the beginning of everything, was pretty angry and told them to F off.
You know, put my phone right in their face and put them on blast all over the internet for people to see what was going on.
And it didn't take long actually until the group of police officers that were the unit I suppose was put in charge of me started changing.
I think people were pretty embarrassed to come.
They didn't want to be blasted all over the internet for the tyrannical rule they're getting behind.
So, that kept changing with different officers, and they wouldn't share a whole lot of conversation with me.
Just here, you can't do this.
Government's telling you you can't.
We don't really have a great reason behind it.
Take it up at court if you have a problem with it.
And I stood my ground.
You know, I put a no-trespass sign up and didn't allow them to come on the property, didn't listen to them.
We kept going and kept going, and they didn't put a stop to this.
So, I'm happy I was able to be that shining light in the community here.
So, it's now been almost two, it's almost, it's been just over two years now since we first initially met, since the police first started hassling you in your backyard.
Supporting the Monstrosity Burger00:09:57
Let's fast forward to today.
Are you still running the boot camps?
What's that like?
So, now things have opened back up.
People have their gym facilities to go to, so there wasn't a need for that.
I only opened the boot camps to provide a place for people to come together as I used to teach fitness classes and boot camps and various other classes.
I had moved out of that business as just outgrown it.
So, as I said, I only opened it to bring people together.
And those two reasons we opened out in the podcast here.
So, this year now, moving forward, I focused more on children.
We've turned the whole backyard into a garden, or I call it a yard in the whole yard to encourage people to start becoming more self-sustainable, how to grow their own food, teaching classes on that, and really getting the children out together and connecting and having families have a place of ground and learn how to become more self-sustainable and connect with more like-minded individuals.
So, we are doing community events still, just in a different way than we were last year.
Now, the second time that we met, again in Winnipeg, was through Monstrosity Burger.
Now, you actually were, you were the person that reached out to me and made me aware of Monstrosity Burger, what they were going through.
Again, for people that aren't aware, just to sum it up very quickly: Monstrosity Burger is a restaurant in Winnipeg, and They did not submit to any of the COVID mandates, whether it was mandatory masking, vaccine passports, and they were just not having any of it.
And because of that, as I'm sure you can guess from Sean's experience, they were fined.
They're almost at $100,000 worth of fines now for various infractions for those mandates that I just listed off.
There was huge support in the community.
That's where we saw each other.
They were having a the so they ended up closing the restaurant for indoor dining.
They pulled their liquor license.
So the only way Monstrosity Burger was actually able to serve customers was through takeout.
So the community in Winnipeg ended up showing up to Monstrosity Burger and they basically had a picnic outside.
I'm going to show a clip from that day.
OK, so it's absolutely packed here.
People are waiting in line.
You have a closure notice for indoor dining, but clearly you're still getting tons of support.
Do you want to just tell us what's going on here today?
Yeah, we're just having like a get-together for everyone to come pick up food and we're going to have some music outside and just get the community together and we're just happy to be able to do that.
Yeah, there was a bunch of rallies today and it looks like everybody ended up here.
And I just wanted to say thank you to everybody that comes.
It's just an amazing day.
How does it feel having this kind of support from everybody?
I know you guys have been through quite a bit.
$60,000 in fines now.
You had your liquor license recently pulled also.
With all that going on, how does it feel that all these people have your back?
Oh, it's so amazing to bring the community together.
Like, and we can see that everyone's kind of like on the same page, obviously, and we want freedom for everybody.
My heart just is, I don't even know what to say.
It's just crazy.
Yeah, it just feels really good.
It got so bad.
I mean, my wife and I have been paying our employees and our bills out of our savings, which has dwindled down to pretty much nothing.
And we had a negative bank account.
So we had to let our staff know that we only have a few more days, which is why we closed last Saturday.
And it just came on them all of a sudden.
And we hate doing that.
But we were left with no choice.
And we were just hoping that something would happen to keep us open for a little bit longer.
So Monstrosity Burger is now closed.
And we need to take a month off and get our heads straight and kind of figure out our next move.
So it's pretty sad watching that.
So as you can see, almost, as you can see, the community there is in full support.
Monstrosity Burger, when I first visited them, they were open for indoor dining.
They were thriving.
They were very busy.
They had a lot of community support.
And then they have their liquor license pulled.
A lot of people, when they go for dining, a lot of people, the sad reality is that if they know that a restaurant, they can't get a beer or a glass of wine, a lot of people will just choose to go elsewhere.
So that's a huge, that hurts Monstrosity Burger huge there.
And now, so we fast forward to just a few months ago, and they've had to ultimately temporarily shut their business down.
I know you've been a huge supporter of Monstrosity Burger.
You've really tried to shine a light on their business through their tough times.
What's it like for you as a member of the Winnipeg community to see these good people, Dave and Paulina Jones, go through this battle and ultimately have to shut down their business because of these mandates?
You know, it's definitely tough in a few ways.
I remember when Dave and Paulina started coming to boot camp, and that was before they decided to take their public stand.
And they spoke to me and referenced to what I was doing and shared that that's what they wanted to do.
And, you know, I was a big part of that journey with them.
And we definitely came together as a community in a beautiful way to support them.
You know, myself, I'm not an individual who goes out to eat.
And I did make a point to go out quite often just to bring community together and support.
And when everything opened back up, we saw that fall apart.
People were happy to go support the businesses that shunned them away for a year and over, which, you know, many people were taken back by how open people were to just go and support those individuals.
And for me, you know, I do my best not to judge anybody.
My stand is I'm not going to give you my business unless you publicly apologize for what you've done.
Then I'm open to go on there, which we haven't seen anybody in the community do that yet.
So seeing Montereosi Burger shut down their doors is tough.
But, you know, I'm a man of God, a man of faith, and I truly believe that everything is given to us for the evolution of our consciousness and our path, our journey here.
So I do know this mountain that they're facing right now is it has a beautiful view at the top of it.
They just have a grueling climb to get to the top.
And whether that means, you know, they come into opening up Montereosiberger again or in a different way or something completely different.
I do have that faith.
So I'm there for more I can be.
I chat to Paulina and Dave here or there.
We go to the farmer's market, actually right down the street from me.
And they hold a special place in my heart.
And I'm definitely going to be here to support them on whatever venture they take on.
I know last time I spoke with Dave and Paulina, they're not like they have hopes of opening it back up.
So I guess we just have to keep our fingers crossed and see what happens in the future.
Now, the third time that we crossed paths was probably one of the crazier times was during the truckers convoy in Ottawa.
Now, again, for people that might not be aware, you know, Winnipeg to Ottawa, it's not, you know, it's a quick flight, but it's not exactly a quick drive.
So you made the journey from Winnipeg to Ottawa.
Can you just kind of break down your experience, what the journey to Ottawa was like being in Ottawa, and then after we'll get into what happened with your bank account ultimately being frozen and the Emergencies Act being invoked?
Yeah, absolutely, Lincoln.
The drive there was exciting, but grueling at the same time.
Myself and three other individuals drove out just two days after the initial convoy headed out.
So we got there on the Monday instead of the Friday, I believe, is when they got there.
We drove straight through a whiteout, big blizzard.
And I think it was 24 hours straight, or it might have taken us 26 or 27 hours because of the storm.
So that definitely threw the sleep cycle off.
But the excitement getting down there to be boots on the ground, you know, just put that off to the side, no problem.
Getting to Ottawa, that was the biggest catalyst to me changing and evolving from being a man coming out of a place of anger and instead now changing to be a man that comes out of his heart space, you know, experiencing the love, the community really coming together there.
Everybody doing what they had to do to make it work, whether that was shoveling snow, bringing food, cooking food, raising funds, smuggling gas in to keep the trucks running in the cold winter days to keep everybody warm at night.
It was life-changing, absolutely life-changing.
You know, I talk often on how I was a man before who didn't like to hug people.
And there I was standing with a sign that said free hugs and giving hundreds, if not thousands of hugs out every day.
And that evolved into different things I took part of to help out wherever I could.
Definitely life-changing.
Anybody who was in Ottawa knows that that was a game changer, you know.
And shortly being there after about a week, I felt I understood, I had a vision what was going to happen, that this was going to end with riot police coming in, that we were to stand in peaceful non-compliance, you know, following the suit of Gandhi and having the lies the government was portraying about us show to all the people around the world that could see it through our social media.
Crazy Moments Unveiling Corruption00:07:35
And it woke up a lot of people to the corruption within our government.
Unfortunately, not everybody, but a lot of people.
So that's kind of been in a nutshell, really, life-changing.
And as hard as it was not to retaliate with any physical force, we succeeded at that.
And I do know that that was the right thing to do.
And it changed a lot.
Now, there was, you know, looking back at that whole experience, I was there for the entire time, start to finish.
You know, there were so many just crazy moments.
There was a lot of positive takeaways, you know, from that whole experience.
Seeing Canadians unite like that was really special.
But there were some very dark, dark moments down there, really dark.
And you were the first person that Rebel News became aware of that actually had their bank account frozen.
It was unbelievable that, you know, it was a coincidence.
And it was unbelievable that, of course, it's you, you're the person that has their bank account frozen, the first person that we hear of at Rebel News to have their bank account frozen.
We're going to just play a small clip from the day that I met you and found out that you had your account frozen.
As of today, a bank or other financial service provider will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order.
So your account, I'm not sure if you're aware, but there was a DMA required national institution to suspend financial services for accounts with large crowdfunding going through towards the protest.
Who is this?
So you guys have not only frozen my account, but suspended my account?
Came down here with the Freedom Convoy here in Farland Hill, Ottawa, and my bank account has gotten frozen.
Crazy to think that the government was actually freezing people's bank accounts.
What was that like for you?
What was that experience like?
For me, you know, I saw it as another win, everything.
And I see all the ridiculousness and things that are being done to wake more people up, shake them, and have them look at just how much the government is overreaching and how much power we've given them or we shouldn't and how they're not here to protect the people.
So for me, I definitely saw the glasses half full with that one and did my best just to work around it.
And, you know, that ended up with my bank account, I think, of 15 plus years being shut down.
They never opened it back up.
But again, it woke up a lot of people and really set that fire under a lot of people's asses to take a stand and speak out and say, enough's enough.
We need to do something about this.
So I looked at it as a good thing.
And I honestly wasn't that surprised when it happened.
It's still frozen now?
Yeah, they shut that account down actually.
After about three months, I was getting pretty upset about it.
I said, hey, bank, what's going on?
I wrote to them and finally called them a couple of times.
Like, you guys got to figure this out.
And the next day, they just sent me an informal letter without any conversation other than the fact that, hey, we've closed your bank account down due to our regulations with the federal government and our risk to reward ratio.
And that was that.
So I've, yeah, I've switched over to a different bank now.
And that was a credit union, a Cinnaboy credit union.
So a lot of people think they were safe with credit unions.
And actually, that was not the case.
That was with credit union.
That's crazy.
We're just running out of time here.
So I want to just get two more quick questions in with you.
So a lot of people believe that with what we saw with the Truckers Convoy in Ottawa, they believe that that changed things in Canada.
You know, it didn't happen right away, but now we can see that I know not everything is back to normal.
Like we have firefighters here in the city of Toronto who are still off work because they're not vaccinated.
You know, there's a lot of people who are still on the wrong side of what we've seen for the past two years.
But a lot of things are back to the way they were.
Do you think that is because of the Truckers Convoy?
Do you think that the government has just kind of moved on from COVID and they're on to something next?
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I definitely think the Truckers Convoy had a big impact on that, along with everything.
You know, all the things that I spoke on, the ridiculousness, all the things that have helped people wake up.
Originally, at the beginning of spring, I thought for sure things are going to come hit heavy in fall.
And then I started realizing, oh, a lot of people are saying enough enough.
Even those who got behind this mess of things at the beginning are like, no more.
Holy shit.
I see what you guys are talking about.
So for the last few months, I've been pretty confident.
I think we're not going to see a push this fall or even maybe for a few years until people lose consciousness again.
There's too much pushback, right?
They have to be careful.
They do have their goal they're going for.
But when there's too much pushback, they have to stop, right?
And that's where we saw the crumbs, so to say, being handed throughout the pandemic, where they open things a little bit.
Even just look at the gas prices, right?
Jack them up, drop them down just a little bit, and people start getting, oh, thank you.
The gas is down to 160 now.
You know, just that take two steps and one step back.
Take two steps, one step back.
So I think right now the real push is the climate change, the agenda that's being pushed at schools, really encouraging children to make sex changes and get on different prescriptions, hormone blockers and whatnot.
And then obviously coming into a digital currency and having all of the things that come after that.
Yeah, so a lot of people believe that they're going to, now they're done with the COVID mandates, they're going to move into some sort of climate, climate mandates.
I guess we'll see what happens.
Thanks a lot for taking the time, Sean.
Now, if people want to find out what you're up to, what you're doing these days, where can they find your stuff?
Yeah, absolutely, brother.
I finally got my podcast started up, which is called The Vikings Voice.
You can find that on most platforms and pretty active on Instagram, at least on my stories, sharing what we're doing on a daily basis.
And you can find me on Instagram, Sean, S-H-A-U-N-J-Zimmer, Z-I-M-M-E-R.
Awesome.
Well, thanks a lot for making the time, Sean.
Appreciate it.
Always good to see you.
Yeah, my pleasure, brother.
Till next time.
Cheers.
Sit on their ass while they loot the guys.
With their suits and ties, we rip them off with the strength of gods.