By Black Sheep Whistleblower
September 17, 2026
How I Met Kirk Riese—and Why I Know His Story
Before I tell Kirk Riese’s story, I should explain how I came to know him and why our paths crossed. It is a strange, complicated chain of events involving the Freedom movement, people I had known through church, allegations of political corruption, our whistleblower broadcasts on X and, ultimately, what I believe became an alleged murder plot followed by the firebombing of my family’s home.
Sometime in 2023, I received a random message from a woman named Tanya Rowlands of Surrey, British Columbia. Tanya had been active in the Freedom movement during the COVID-19 debacle. I want to be clear that I had played no part in that movement. Tanya had apparently been communicating with a woman I knew very well: Svetlana Dalla Lana.
At the time, Svetlana was moving in some of those same Freedom circles. She was not a stranger to me. I regarded her as one of my closest friends and had spoken with her, on average, at least once a week since approximately 2017.
My wife and I first came to know Svetlana and her then-husband, Dr. Nathan Dalla Lana, through New Life Church. Nathan operated a medical clinic in Christina Lake, where Svetlana worked as a nurse. Nathan is the brother of Maria McFaddin, who served as mayor of Castlegar. Maria’s husband, James McFaddin, has worked with the RCMP in Castlegar, and Maria and James were formerly our pastors at New Life Church. That church connection is how all of our lives initially became intertwined.
In March 2017, New Life Church sent my wife and me, along with Nathan and Svetlana, on a multiday marriage retreat in Kelowna. Both couples were experiencing serious marital difficulties at the time. Svetlana told me that, before the retreat, she had stabbed Nathan in their home after allegedly witnessing him involved with one of his patients. That is what Svetlana told me; I did not witness the incident or the alleged affair and cannot independently verify her account.
There was another strange connection. When I met Nathan at a restaurant on the first night of the retreat, I recognized him as the emergency-room doctor who had treated me at Grand Forks Hospital in July 2013. I had been staying with my wife’s family at their Christina Lake property, where we had vacationed since before our marriage in the late 1990s, when I experienced a heart-related medical issue.
During that 2013 examination, Nathan suggested that I stay away from “recreational drugs,” which he was referring to cocaine actually LOL. I found that remarkable because I had never used cocaine in my life but my heart was clearly having a reaction like cocaine which clearly was not good. Four years later, I remembered him at that restaurant in Kelowna on the first night of the marriage retreat because he again had his sleeves rolled above his biceps (like who does that LOL), just as he had while wearing faded green scrubs in the emergency room. Nathan did not remember me… my first realization he was full of himself, I digress but between the rolled up shirt sleeves and the not remembering me a few years prior after telling me to stay off the cocaine (which I had never used before) it was telling about his character. Plus he has a hand shake like shaking the tail of a dead fish which is really telling as his had is all floppy, I digress yet again.
That episode is not the point of Kirk’s story, but the history matters because those relationships later became entangled in much darker events.
Tanya’s Unexpected Message
Back in 2023, in the year after covid in BC had ended in April 2022, … According to Tanya, Svetlana had secretly encouraged her to contact me and had given her my telephone number. Tanya said Svetlana told her that I “had dirt on Justin Trudeau.”
There was some truth behind that statement in the sense that I believed I possessed sensitive information concerning serious political and institutional misconduct..well criminal conduct invovling drug trafficking and moment laundering that the RCMP also knew and had buried. I had kept that information largely private for almost a decade for obvious reasons as I liked to live. Because I considered Svetlana a close friend, I had trusted her with portions of what I knew. I am not setting out those underlying allegations here, and none of them should be treated as proven merely because I believed—or continue to believe—that they are important. Needless to say Svetlana knew that I did have “dirt on Justin Trudeau”.
After Tanya and I began communicating like I said in about early 2023, she introduced me to Kirk Riese. Kirk and I spoke and I have to tell you at first glance I figured Kirk was bat shit fucking crazy and I am sure he thought the same as me but the thing was it was NOT us who was crazy it was our stories which made us seem crazy and still do today actually. She believed Kirk also possessed damaging information involving Justin Trudeau which he did and still does, although his experiences and evidence arose from an entirely different set of circumstances.
That introduction began what I would describe less as an ordinary friendship and more as a kinship between two people who believed they had witnessed serious wrongdoing and then experienced the machinery of retaliation. In my view, Kirk and I were witnesses first. The label “whistleblower” came later.
I could see common patterns in Kirk’s account: powerful institutions, allegations no one wanted to examine, financial and psychological pressure, and repeated attempts to discredit the person raising the alarm. I came to know Kirk and his story extremely well—not through a single interview, but through countless conversations over time.
From X Whistleblower Spaces to threats of imminent harm (a murder plot) and Violence (firebombing) at my home!!
For background please see this blog:
In September 2024, Kirk and I started a whistleblower Space on X before either of us properly understood how X Spaces worked. It began roughly, but over the following months it became remarkably successful. We brought together people who said they had survived institutional retaliation, forced psychiatric intervention, lawsuits, threats, gag orders, professional destruction and the loss of their families and livelihoods.
I later spun off and began hosting my own whistleblower Space. What followed is the subject of a much larger story. I allege that individuals and events connected to those broadcasts eventually became intertwined with threats against me, an alleged murder plot involving claims attributed to private investigator Jolene Johnson about Michael Martinz, and a campaign of harassment involving Danny Martin. Those allegations have been reported to police and oversight bodies, but they have not been proven in court and the people named are entitled to respond.
Michael Martinz was Svetlana’s former fiancé. Danny Keith Martin, who is distinct from Michael Martinz, later became a central figure in the online harassment I have documented. Here is the more on Danny Keith Martin for background:
First this is a photo of Michael Martinz and Svetlana Dalla Lana so you can approach with caution. Svetlana sent me this in a text message after she broke it off with him cutting him off the $200,000 per months sales of Ivermectin that he clearly was pissed at so he was trying to win her back (likely for the CIA) by taking her on helicopter flights over Hawaii…. she even says in the text message to me that she “ditched him as a business partner” and note my response that he cant be happy about being left out of the $$$$!!
It was clear that Danny Keith Martin was brought in by Michael and Svetlana and whoever they work for to destroy my whistleblower space as well as my host at the time Erin Graham because Erin had made a video about Svetlana allegedly she worked for the RCMP and likely a US intelligence agency and it appears that Erin was right as its been alleged that Michael works for the CIA and its not a stretch if that is that case that Svetlana was being handled as a “honeypot” for the CIA. This is the video by Erin (not me as I had nothing to do with it) that started it all:
You can read the Back Sheep blog re CIA for more background on that here:
Here is more background for context:
At first they (they being Svetlana and Michael likely backed by the CIA) used Danny (who has been widely known to work for Calgary Law enforcement) to target my wife at her workplace to get to me:
I allege that this network of personal relationships, communications and threats formed part of the background to what happened next.
On January 22, 2026, my family’s home in Castlegar was attacked with multiple Molotov cocktails while my daughter and I were inside. The RCMP later publicly described it as a targeted attack. Two masked individuals were observed, but I do not claim in this article that any named person has been convicted of—or legally established as responsible for—the firebombing. My position is that the preceding threats, relationships and communications must be investigated together rather than treated as unrelated fragments.
Back to Kirks Story …
This history is why Kirk’s story is not an abstract tale I discovered online. I came to know him through a chain of relationships that began years earlier at New Life Church, passed through Svetlana and Tanya, developed through hundreds of hours of conversations and X Spaces, and ended up intersecting with threats and real violence against my own family.
For my separate reporting about the Castlegar RCMP and its handling of these events, see:
As explained above, that is how I met Kirk Riese. In 2023, Tanya Rowlands—a self-described Freedom fighter who had been told by Svetlana Dalla Lana that I had “dirt on Justin Trudeau”—contacted me and eventually introduced me to Kirk.
Clearly, there is considerably more context than that. The history involving Svetlana is especially important because, three years after I met Kirk, those relationships became entangled in what I allege was a murder plot, a sustained campaign of harassment and, ultimately, the January 22, 2026 firebombing of my family’s home.
I also allege that Danny Keith Martin targeted my wife and attacked Kirk, Erin Graham and me in an effort to discredit us and destroy the whistleblower Spaces we had built on X. Martin has not been legally established as responsible for the firebombing, but the documented threats, public attacks and surrounding communications should not be dismissed as unrelated background noise.
The photograph below illustrates the connection. Beneath Kirk’s photograph is a post from the X account HUNGRYTRUCKER, which I identify as an alias used by Danny Keith Martin. The account states:
“Kirk is another grifting con man criminal just like dick pic David Drover. You already fell for David’s lies and bs and now you’re falling for Kirk’s. You know these guys spent time in jail right?”
The post’s accusations are not proven merely because Martin published them. What the screenshot does establish is that the HUNGRYTRUCKER account publicly linked Kirk and me, accused both of us of being criminals and con men, and attempted to turn its audience against Kirk by invoking the same degrading narrative it had already used against me.
In other words, Kirk was not being attacked in isolation. Martin’s own words placed Kirk and me together as targets of the same public campaign. The post warned people that, having supposedly been deceived by me, they were now being deceived by Kirk. That framing was designed to destroy our credibility collectively and undermine the whistleblower community that Kirk, Erin Graham and I had helped build.
This is why the context matters. I did not stumble across Kirk’s story on social media and decide to repeat it. Tanya introduced us because she believed we possessed different pieces of information pointing toward serious wrongdoing. From that introduction grew a kinship, countless private conversations and the whistleblower Spaces we later built together.
It is also why I believe Kirk Riese’s story deserves to be heard, examined and independently investigated rather than dismissed through insults, labels and coordinated-looking attacks on his character.
Canada loves to praise whistleblowers after history proves them right. But while they are still living through the fight, Canada hates them—sometimes viciously. Politicians, in particular, treat whistleblowers like political hot potatoes: people to avoid, discredit or quietly pass to someone else. Instead of examining what they are exposing, we label them troublemakers, criminals, lunatics or liabilities.
Kirk Riese says he knows that treatment firsthand.
Riese is a former Canadian Ranger and military whistleblower. According to the account he has shared publicly and with me, he spent years raising allegations of fraud, financial wrongdoing and institutional misconduct connected to the Canadian military and money intended to benefit Indigenous communities. He says that instead of receiving a full, transparent investigation, he was met with financial devastation, threats, detention, psychiatric intervention and the loss of virtually everything he had built.
These are serious allegations. They should not be accepted blindly—but they should not be buried, mocked or dismissed without an independent investigation either.
Trained to Protect Canada—Now Hiding From It
The bitter irony of Kirk’s story is difficult to miss: this man was trained to protect Canada. Now, he says he has been forced to hide within Canada, from Canada.
Kirk has described himself as living in exile aboard a boat, displaced from his Saskatchewan home and cut off from the stable life he once knew. He says he lost his career, his health, his freedom and his home after speaking out.
The property he describes was not merely a temporary residence. He says it had been his family home since 1999, was fully paid for, and had undergone substantial renovations. He estimated the house at roughly $400,000 and a two-storey steel shop on the property at approximately $200,000.
According to Kirk, all of it was lost.
He has also alleged that approximately $350,000 held in bank accounts was frozen or seized beginning in 2015, despite the underlying tax dispute being in the range of approximately $60,000. He further alleges that the town imposed about $15,000 in unauthorized yard-work charges before documents were issued indicating that he had lost the property. Long story short… Kirk lost his home in La Ronge Saskatchewan and it was bull dozed just last year actually.
Those figures and circumstances come from Kirk’s account. They require documentary examination by journalists, lawyers and an independent authority. But if they are substantially accurate, Canadians deserve to know how a dispute of that scale could end with a man losing assets worth many times the amount allegedly owed.
When Whistleblowing Becomes a Mental-Health File
One of the most disturbing parts of Kirk’s account concerns psychiatric intervention.
Kirk says he was detained and institutionalized (forced and drugged against his will to get there), and that he was labelled schizophrenic by doctors whom he says had not properly met or assessed him. He believes psychiatry was used not to help him but to discredit and silence him. He was labelled 110% disabled… who knew you could be 100% disabled?! What I know for sure is that he was 110% fucked over by the federal government and the medical system who worked to protect the federal govt … thats the facts actually.
Again, that allegation must be tested against medical, police and military records. But the broader issue is not imaginary. A psychiatric label can instantly change how police, courts, reporters and the public interpret everything a whistleblower says. Evidence becomes “paranoia.” Persistence becomes “obsession.” Fear becomes “delusion.” The allegation itself disappears behind the diagnosis.
That is precisely why any psychiatric action involving a whistleblower must be subject to rigorous safeguards and independent review. Mental-health care should never become an unofficial gag order.
Forty-Five Doors—and Silence Behind Every One
Kirk says he contacted more than 45 podcasters, journalists, politicians and public figures—including the Prime Minister’s office—in an effort to have his evidence examined. According to him, almost nobody was prepared to take the story on. Kirk went by the book over the years since 2019 to get his story out and the wrongs made right but nothing worked.
That silence does not prove Kirk right. But it does expose a serious failure in Canada’s whistleblower system. Where is a person supposed to go when the allegation involves the same institutions that possess the power to investigate, detain, tax, diagnose and discredit him?
Kirks story is published on the Whistleblower Canada website
Canadian Ranger’s reports alleging theft of taxpayers money ignored by relevant Canadian authorities and mental health weaponized. Calls for independent investigation.
posted by Pamela Forward | 94sc
June 03, 2024
…and there is a youtube interview with Peyman Askari of his story:
Kirk did not ask that every claim be accepted as gospel. His repeated demand was for a full, open and transparent investigation reaching back to the origins of the matter.. fraud and money laundering with links to the Federal Govt and military and the massive cover up of same that led straight up to Justin Trudeau and one of his Liberal shills Chief Tammy Cook Searson. In earlier correspondence, he offered to provide evidence, testify in person and cooperate with a review. He also sought scrutiny of a June 2023 interaction involving military police and related events.
That is a testable request. Examine the documents. Follow the money. Interview the witnesses. Review the medical and police records. Give the institutions accused an opportunity to answer. Then publish the findings.
Why is that apparently too much to ask?
The Whistleblower Spaces
Kirk and I eventually began hosting whistleblower discussions on X Spaces. The conversations were raw, long and sometimes chaotic because the people speaking were not communications professionals reading polished statements. They were people describing what it feels like to be threatened, jailed, forced into psychiatric wards, bankrupted, gagged, sued, defamed and separated from their families after challenging powerful interests.
Some Spaces ran for hours. During one extraordinary week, we hosted four sessions lasting roughly 12 hours each. The same themes appeared repeatedly: retaliation, post-traumatic stress, injunctions, lawfare, forced treatment, ruined reputations and the crushing isolation that follows when institutions close ranks.
Kirk’s experience was not presented as a neat story with a clean ending. It was the story of a man still inside the storm.
Investigation, Not Institutional Character Assassination
Canadians do not have to agree with everything Kirk says. They do not have to adopt every interpretation he has placed on the events. They do, however, have a right to expect that credible allegations of military and financial misconduct will be examined on their evidence—not neutralized by destroying the person who raised them.
Calling someone unstable is not an audit.
Seizing property is not an answer to an allegation.
Institutionalizing a whistleblower is not transparency.
Ignoring him is not due process.
If Kirk’s allegations are wrong, a genuinely independent investigation can demonstrate that. If they are right—or even partly right—then Canada has a scandal far larger than one man’s personal tragedy.
Either way, the truth should not frighten an honest institution.
Silenced in His Own Country
Kirks story is a stain on Canada’s reputation. End of Story!
Kirk Riese’s story is ultimately about what Canada does to inconvenient people. We celebrate courage in ceremonies and speeches, but courage becomes much less fashionable when it comes carrying boxes of documents and naming names.
Kirk says he went from Canadian Ranger to whistleblower, from homeowner to homeless, and from serving his country to living in exile within it.
Maybe every part of his interpretation will not survive scrutiny. That is possible. But scrutiny is the point. Canada should stop substituting labels, silence and institutional force for a proper examination of the evidence.
Open the files. Follow the money. Hear the witnesses. Let the institutions respond. Publish the conclusions.
Until that happens, the question will remain:
What was so dangerous about Kirk Riese’s evidence that it was easier to destroy the whistleblower than to investigate what he was trying to expose?
Editor’s note: This commentary summarizes allegations and personal accounts previously provided by Kirk Riese and discussed by Black Sheep Whistleblower. The allegations have not been independently proven in this article. Individuals and institutions named or implicated should be given a fair opportunity to respond.
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