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The AIH Transcript for July 24, 2020

Hosts: Duncan McCue and Chris Howden

DUNCAN MCCUE: Hi, I'm Duncan McCue, sitting in for Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I’m Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

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Prologue

CH: Tonight:

DM: No kid gloves. Amid a spike in COVID cases, Canada's chief public health officer has some words for young people. But an Alberta infectious disease specialist tells us the real enemy might be coronavirus fatigue.

CH: Guilty. A 93-year-old concentration camp guard is convicted on five thousand, two hundred and thirty-two counts of accessory to murder. The case may possibly be Germany's last Holocaust trial.

DM: Altered reality. The owner of a Hamilton, Ontario movie house tells us the theatre may look a bit different when it reopens today. But nothing can touch the unique pleasure of sitting in the dark watching a big screen, together.

CH: I like mar-ble butts and I cannot lie. A cheeky project has museum curators all over competing over a very specific part of their collections — the bums.

DM: Succumbing to their base instincts. After opening day, Major League Baseball officials curse themselves for not realizing that empty stadiums amplify the sound of players cursing at each other.

CH: And… Started from the bottom, now we're here. The new toilets in a Toronto condo complex are getting blocked like clogwork — but management insists that dozens of residents must use a single, shared plunger.

CH: As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio unplugged.

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Part one: Alberta COVID, Hamilton movie theatre, best museum butts

Alberta COVID

Guest: Lynora Saxinger

CH: When it comes to COVID-19, things are looking up. And not in a good way. Today, Canada's top public health doctor announced that the country's average daily case counts are trending upward. And that one age group in particular is contributing to that surge.

THERESA TAM: The upward trend in daily case counts is worrisome. We know that we have the means to keep COVID-19 under control, but this is by no means a sure thing. It is going to take all Canadians doing their part and working together with public health to keep the curve down. This includes younger age groups, in particular, those aged 20 to 39 years, who account for the highest incidence rates for COVID-19 cases across all the ages during the past two weeks. So I must urge all Canadians, particularly younger adults, to not give into COVID-19 fatigue. This is your generation and your future that is being shaped. Younger age groups are not invincible.

CH: That's Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, speaking earlier today. Alberta is one province that's seeing its COVID-19 numbers rise. In recent weeks, it's seen the country's highest increase in new cases per capita. Dr. Lynora Saxinger is an Infectious Disease Specialist and an associate professor at the University of Alberta. We reached her in Edmonton.

DMC: Dr. Saxinger, Alberta’s chief medical officer says the rise in cases should be, quote, a wakeup call. What message do you think Albertans need to get right now?

LYNORA SAXINGER: Well, I think that there has been this period of time since the restrictions started to lift where I think people were kind of testing the0 boundaries of what seems to be okay. And it seemed to be okay for a while. But there really has been marked increases over the last two weeks. And I think that tells us that people have been maybe a little bit more cavalier about the fundamental basic measures that are important. And that we have to dial back on our face-to-face contacts and on our contact times and all of those things. Because it's clearly still transmitting in our communities.

DMC: Specifically, what's behind this recent bump in Alberta?

LS: Well, I think that the age ranges where we're seeing the highest increase are relatively young. And part of that may be driven by social contact numbers. And looking at the types of outbreaks that we're seeing, there have been a number of outbreaks linked to, you know, bars and restaurants and barbecues and things like that. But there might be other factors that I think would be important to consider in that the one thing about that group is that they don't tend to have such a high hospitalization rate, although it's not nothing either. I think that we've had 31 hospitalizations in 20 to 29-year-olds in Alberta. So that's not nothing. But we might actually start to see that spreading to other age ranges just because there's more transmission.

DMC: But when you're talking about those young people, though, the one they're the ones under the age of 40. I mean, earlier this week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford told youth that they need to stop partying, and his quote, they need to rein it in. How much evidence do you have that young people are catching this because they're flouting social distance rules?

LS: I mean, the only direct information I would have is that the number of outbreak investigations are going up. But to be honest, the number of outbreak investigations linked to specific, you know, bars or restaurants is still relatively small. And there's lots of other kind of in-home and other barbecue garage-party-type outbreak investigations that have been happening across the province. So I think it might be a combination of things. And I guess just another thing that I think was a good point raised to me earlier today is that as things open up, this cohort of 20 to 29-year-olds are often people who have the kind of casual job, restaurant-type job, server job where they're actually in public-facing jobs as well. And that could be part of this, too. And I don't think we should discount that. So it might take a little bit of an assessment to figure out where the messaging really needs to go.

DMC: Calgary has just passed a mandatory mask rule — that starts August 1st, but the province says they won't introduce that province-wide. Is that a mistake?

LS: [chuckling] That's a really nuanced question. I think that if we look across a country level and province or state level mandates are relatively uncommon, I think, because of the still considerable uncertainty as to how much mask's add to our bundle of protective measures. And it tends to be something that happens in places that are having uncontrolled growth of infection. And so because of the uncertainty in the, I guess, rigour of the scientific evidence, it is not that clear cut what we would expect in terms of a benefit from a mask mandate. But there is a few possible benefits that could include people, you know, seeing when you're inside a mask mandate and therefore taking everything a bit more seriously. Counterbalancing that, there's some concerns that people might say, well, I’m masked, so I can go out and do the things I want to do. And there's no evidence that that actually protects as much as reducing your contacts and distancing. So it's a incredibly difficult discussion. And I think that's why we have this patchwork arising across the country.

DMC: You talk about the challenge of getting Canadians to take this seriously. As we reopen across the country, I mean, is it a question of Canadians getting COVID-19 fatigue?

LS: Well, I actually think that pretty much everyone is experiencing COVID-19 fatigue right now. And that can manifest in different ways. And I think it's just crucial that we try to make the messaging something that is focusing on the most important pieces, and that will be sustainable. Because as we were releasing public health restrictions across the country at different paces, things started to look a lot more normal and feel a lot more normal. And so people kind of fall into old patterns. But that does not serve us well because the virus has not gone away, and most of us are still susceptible to it. So our actual situation, since say May, when everyone was really deeply distressed and concerned and staying at home, is not that different. It's just that now we're not taking it quite as seriously. So to refine the messaging down to simple things like we have to keep our physical distance, we should avoid indoor shared airspace without masks.

DMC: Should people wear masks in public indoor spaces?

LS: I think it's a reasonable thing to do. I'm not comfortable saying that I would mandate it, but I think it's something that should be part of our toolkit. And to me, that really more important thing is I think you should try to avoid circumstances where you're required to wear a mask. You know, it's like don't enter the battlefield like that, if you can avoid it. And I think that's an important thing that people are forgetting.

DMC: What happens if the numbers keep rising? I mean, how will Albertans and other Canadians respond if we have to go backwards and start imposing more restrictions again, start quarantining again?

LS: Well, I think getting the horse back in the barn is always going to be a really big challenge because that was hard. It was hard for so many different reasons. And I think no one wants to go back to that. I think it's a little more likely that we would see maybe a graduated increase in public health restrictions, like on gathering sizes or on certain types of public spaces being open and interactive in an attempt to control it short of an actual stay-at-home order because that really is immensely disruptive and difficult for individuals and the economy and society. And it's horrible.

Dr. Saxinger, thank you for joining us.

LS: Oh, my pleasure.

CH: Dr. Lynora Saxinger is an infectious disease specialist and an associate professor at the University of Alberta. We reached her in Edmonton.

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Hamilton movie theatre

Guest: Jacob Tutt

CH: We've come a long way since the lockdown started. From the stay-at-home orders in March to the long, sometimes painful wait for things to return to some kind of normal. Well, today, more of Ontario is finally moving into Stage 3. And Stage 3 brings us pretty close to life before the pandemic. Nearly all businesses and public spaces will be reopening — so you can eat inside a restaurant, work out at a gym, get your nails done, and even have your kids play on the playground. That is, of course, with masks on, hands sanitized, and keeping a safe social distance. Jacob Tutt is excited for this next stage. He's the manager and owner of the Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton, Ontario. And tonight, the independent movie theatre is getting ready for its first show in ages. We reached Jacob Tutt earlier today.

DMC: Jacob, how does it feel to finally be reopening the Playhouse Cinema?

JACOB TUTT: Oh, it's exciting. It's been a long time coming. It's been four months, I think, and ten days if we’re counting days. But it's great. We're looking forward to having people back in the theatre and welcoming our audience back. And it's really a history-making day.

DMC: Describe for us, what's the theatre experience going to look like with all these COVID-19 safety measures for the Playhouse?

JT: Well, in some parts, it'll be different. So people will enter the theatre, and from before they even enter the building, they'll see socially-distanced markings on the ground leading up to the building and into this lobby. There’s going to be hand sanitizer. There's going to be plexiglass separating them from the concession staff. And then the big, most noticeable one, they'll walk into the theatre, and the patrons will see physically-distanced marked seats. So we have pairs of marked seats in our theatre where people will be able to watch the film physically-distanced.

DMC: How many people can you typically fit in the theatre and how many will you be able to fit in now?

JT: Well, our capacity is 277 when we have every seat. So our capacity is down 82 per cent to the required 50 seats in the building.

DMC: Do you think that the public is going to show up?

JT: Yes, we feel very strongly that our loyal audience base they’re going to be the people who want to come back. And so we have really strong supporting community members who come out and support this theatre. And we've seen that in ticket sales. Our advance ticket sales are moving. In fact, our opening night screening tonight of “Do the Right Thing” has sold out.

DMC: “Do the Right Thing”, a good choice for a hot summer movie.

JT: For a hot summer movie and the sort of the environment, political and climate environment we're in right now, it's a great choice for an opening.

DMC: You're going back to some old classics then, but there are very few new releases coming out. So what are you going to do? I mean, the big producers are pushing back their dates for all the new releases.

JT: That's right. So we as an independent, we're an art house, independent cinema. We don't rely so much on the big tent pole blockbuster movies that Cineplex will. So the fact that those movies aren't available right now doesn't impact us too much. And there is a trickle of good quality, independent and Canadian cinema still available now. So our patrons can expect to see that good quality independent cinema as it becomes available. But with that, they'll also see lots of family favourites, classics and real crowd-pleasers on the big screen again.

DMC: You just opened the Playhouse Cinema last year.

JT: That's right.

DMC: So how hard has this been on you?

JT: Well, we opened March 1st in 2019. We got just about a year under our belt before we closed. But our first year was phenomenal. And we have a really strong community here in Hamilton and our neighbourhood in particular that really supports the cinema and wants to see it do well. So our first year has helped us carry this through, carry us through this period of closure. But it's been tough. We haven't had any revenue for the last four months. So it has been difficult.

DMC: Your family has been in the movie business for 35 years now. There are some people who are saying, some analysts are saying, that the pandemic is hastening the watching at home movie trend that’s already been happening. Do you think that the theatre movie business can bounce back?

JT: I really do. And it's because the theatre-going experience, you can't replicate it. It is such a unique experience. You're getting together with individuals, strangers sometimes, who you have a shared passion and curiosity for the movie that you're about to see. So that experience, getting together with people and watching a movie on the big screen, you can't get that at home. And not to mention for the Playhouse, in particular, this is a 104-year-old, sorry, 106-year-old building. And I truly believe it's one of the most remarkable small-town neighbourhood cinemas I've seen in Canada. And the experience of watching a film in a beautiful, historic building like this, you just you cannot get that through watching a movie at home.

DMC: Your theatre does have a special history. I mean, it's over 100 years old. You've had a chance to look into some of that history. It dates back to 1914 and the days of the Spanish flu. What can you tell us about the theatre and how it fared during that time?

JT: Well, it's tough to say because, well, libraries and archives have been closed the last four months. So I don't know the specifics about how the Playhouse, in particular, adapted to the Spanish flu in 1918. But the cinema was young then. It was only four years old. And as we know, the pandemic, the Spanish flu pandemic, was around for a period of two years. So it gives me confidence going through this and going through our period of reopening to know that the Playhouse has been through this before. And what history has shown is that movie-going and the movie industry, in general, thrived after that pandemic swept through the world.

DMC: So tonight you're going to sit back and watch some Spike Lee with a big box of popcorn, I imagine. What are you most looking forward to for your reopening?

JT: I can't wait to see our regulars. I can't wait to see our audience again. It's been well over four months that we haven't seen them in the theatre. So I can't wait to see their faces, and albeit behind masks, but I can't wait to see our patrons return again.

DMC: Jacob, have a great reopening.

JT: Thank you very much, Duncan.

DMC: Thanks.

CH: Jacob Tutt is the manager and owner of Playhouse Cinema, an independent movie theatre in Hamilton, Ontario. That's where we reached him.

[Music: Rock]

Best museum butts

Guest: Jo Killeya

CH: During the pandemic, England's Yorkshire Museum has been determined to keep the public engaged — no ifs, ands, or butts. Well actually... yes, butts. Lots of butts. With two T's. For weeks, the museum has been running a series of so-called Curator Battles — where collections from around the world put forward their favourite specimens for thematic consideration. And one recent theme was particularly cheeky: Best Museum Bums. Jo Killeya is the head of public engagement and curatorial at the Yorkshire Museum — and has been trying to get to the bottom of all the submissions. We reached her in York.

DMC: Jo, what makes a great museum bum?

JO KILLEYA: Well, I think it depends on whether you're thinking about a bum as art or a bum as something useful and practical. And the curator battle has actually allowed us to look at bums of all shapes and sizes. But some of the very finest bottoms are, probably as you'd imagine, those are the Roman and Greek gods.

DMC: [chuckling] Tell me about some of your favourite submissions to the Best Museum Bums battle?

JK: Well, I think probably some of the most beautiful are those of, for example, the Wallace Collection submitted a beautiful 16th-century sculpture of Hercules, which is fantastic. But there’s some just really fun ones. So the Constitution Museum submitted the butt of a pistol from 1818, which we thought was very clever. And the Rugby Museum in England submitted a great painting of some rugby players getting changed with their bottoms on display from 1950. So some slightly more contemporary bottoms. And we've had submissions of ships and trains. And Sutton Hoo even submitted the bottom of a Byzantine bucket, which we thought was extremely clever.

DMC: Artists throughout the ages, have been fascinated with the human body. You're obviously trying to be a little bit cheeky about this. Why?

JK: Well, bottoms are universal. And in their interest and have been studied, you know, ever since sort of humans, first of all, I think people have been interested in looking at bottoms. But what the curator battle does so nicely is find those universal themes. And those things are in collections around the world. All museums can look at. And their take on what that might be is often completely different, as we've seen in every single battle. But it's that wit and satire that really makes the curator battles come to life. And bottoms is just a really good example of that. Every museum everywhere in the world has got a bottom in some way, shape or form.

DMC: And the curators really have been jumping into this, posting all kinds of outstanding bottoms. But in all of the battles, they've really been posting some beautiful work and being funny as well. Can the public participate, or is this just for museum curators?

JK: Well, it's live on Twitter. And we get a majority of people joining in are often curators. But often we get people who have a real love of certain collections in certain museums or art galleries, and they will submit their preferred object for a subject as well. So it's really open and welcome. And we just love different people sharing everything they've got that's, you know, a clever take. And it gives us a chance to see things from collections that we often may never get a chance to see.

DMC: The public has been weighing in on the Twitter feed on their favourites. Which bottoms seem to be coming out on top, so to speak?

JK: Well, unsurprisingly, the Viennese cast of Michelangelo's David is, of course, extremely popular. But one of the funniest, and the one of the most liked, is from the Royal Armory’s submitted two bottoms. Both Henry the Eighth armour, one from 1520 when he was a 32-inch waist, and one from 1540 when he was a 51-inch waist. And you can imagine how much larger his bottom was 20 years later.

DMC: Oh my, yeah! A much larger bottom. [both laughing] This isn't the only one of these battles, these curatorial battles, that you've been running. What kind of response have you had?

JK: That's right. We've run... This is our 19th and final battle today. We started way back at the beginning of lockdown when we had to close our sites. And we have done every theme you can possibly imagine from dullest object, blingiest object, interesting interiors, best egg, best cat, best dog, mystery object. And the response has been fantastic, and it's just grown and grown. And our most successful was our creepiest objects, which had a huge following from around the world. And now, 15.4-million people have seen our curator battles.

DMC: The creepiest object?! What was the creepiest object that you heard about at Museums?

JK: We saw some, frankly, quite terrifying things. An awful lot of taxidermy. Strange taxidermy things. Lots of Victorian dolls that often look very creepy indeed. And things that are slightly unidentifiable. But actually, what's really interesting, I think, about the creepiest objects are things that were collected by museums or art galleries, you know, whenever they were collected. And at the time, they had some kind of residence or reason for collecting, which have often got lost in translation. So we're looking back on things now, thinking, oh, good grief, what's that? Where at the time, often, the Victorians, for example, didn't see those things as creepy at all.

DMC: This has been a way to have a bit of fun and to share the museum collections with the public. But I understand that you're going to be opening up again to the public on August 1st. So how does your museum staff feel about that?

JK: We are all chomping at the bit. I'm really excited to get our sites reopened. It's a challenge. We need to do it socially-distanced. So we've got some innovative measures in place that we're really excited to get to get people back in and enjoying our arts and collections again.

DMC: And until that opening, you've got a few more battles left. Well, tell us about what the last themes that you've got going on?

JK: So the very last thing we've got is actually today. So if you hop onto the Yorkshire Museum's Twitter feed, you'll see we're battling out the star objects, meaning either your most iconic or your most popular objects or the most valuable or the thing you're most well-known for. And there’s some really amazing things that museums are putting forward as the thing often that the public like the most. And that's often how they're defining the star objects.

DMC: That will be popular. Jo, thank you so much for telling us about this.

JK: No problem at all. Thank you for having me.

DMC: Take care.

CH: Jo Killeya is the head of public engagement and curatorial at the Yorkshire Museum. We butted in on her evening ... in York. For more on this story — and to see photos of some of the Best Museum Bums — visit our website at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: A swing instrumental]

MLB swears

CH: Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the stands were empty — except the ones behind home plate, which were full of cardboard cutouts of people. And it seemed obvious that some of the players were a little uncomfortable without fans there. But on Opening Day yesterday, when the Los Angeles Dodgers were playing the San Francisco Giants, there were times when you could have sworn it was just a normal baseball game. Except — and I can't stress this enough — you couldn't have sworn. Because there was no crowd noise to muffle it. So everyone would have heard you. As Dodgers outfielder Joc Peterson proved when he grounded out to first.

ANNOUNCER: Peterson grounds that one out to First, for the out.

ANNOUNCER: Joc Peterson you could hear because the stadium is empty.

[Music: Country acoustic guitar]

Part two: Nazi guard trial, polar bear study, new condo toilets

Nazi guard trial

Guest: Thomas Will

CH: Five thousand, two-hundred-and-thirty-two counts of accessory to murder. That was the conviction handed down yesterday in a Hamburg courtroom, where 93-year-old Bruno Dey was found guilty. He was given a two-year suspended sentence. Mr. Dey was 17 when he served as a Nazi prison guard at the Stutthof concentration camp during the Second World War. Thomas Will is the acting head of the Zentrale Stelle, a special investigations unit for Nazi crimes in Germany. We reached Mr. Will in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

DMC: Mr. Will, what went through your mind when you heard yesterday's verdict?

THOMAS WILL: That was good news. When I heard it, I got it on my mobile from the public prosecutor at Hamburg, immediately after it was spoken. And I felt affirmed that our idea of handling these cases was successful. We are a preliminary institution authority, and we prepared this case for the public prosecutor's office. We said anybody working as a guard in a time of mass extinction in this camp and he must have seen that. So we don't need a concrete act of homicide. We need only his knowledge that this matter is happening. And so we were very contented with this verdict.

DMC: Your organization did the initial investigation into Bruno Dey. What did that investigation find out about his role at Stutthof concentration camp?

TW: He had the same role as a lot of the scouts had. You head in Germany, at the end of the war, a very great amount of camps. There were different camps. There were POW camps. There were labour camps. And you had these concentration camps. And that was our idea. There were tens of thousands of these camp guards. And without these guards, this system of killing, of pressing down people, this hard labour without enough food and without medical care, without these guards could not have happened.

DMC: What argument did Mr. Dey give in his defence? He did admit that he was a guard there.

TW: As I have heard, he said he was in the camp. And we found evidence in the forehand that he has been at the camp, but he did not feel himself guilty. He said, I only was... how to say guarding it. I did no killings. He did not think that he was guilty.

DMC: He has, in fact, denied accusations that he had any roles in the murders at the camp. He said that he was only 17 — a teenage guard.

TW: Yes, that's right.

DMC: And perhaps that he didn't have any choice. What would you say to that?

TW: Yeah. A lot of former guards say they had no choice. They could not go away, but it would have been possible. They could have made an appeal to go out of the camp. That had meant that they were sent to the fighting troops, to hotspots. And that would have been full of danger for their own lives.

DMC: Some people say this was so long ago. He is now an old man. He's 93 years old. Why is it important to prosecute these kinds of cases?

TW: As a politician said in the 60s and 70s, mainly because of the national socialized crimes. There will be for homicide limitation of action. And that is the basis for our work today. We have to work, we have to persecute these people, because there is no limitation of action. And we do this work until all perpetrators are dead. That is very important for survivors to get these mass crimes on court, to get it on the public and to get trials for this. I know from the families of victims that they don't want this old man come into prison for years. They want it said what happened? As I said, they don't need imprisonment.

DMC: In the end, Mr. Dey was given a two-year suspended sentence.

TW: Yes.

DMC: Which means he won't be sent to jail. So do you feel is there a purpose for these trials beyond punishing an individual?

TW: Yes, it says to us in Germany, and maybe it's a signal also that nobody can be free from punishment if he has in a criminal regime, if he makes homicides and killings, that when the hasheem changes, that he will not be prosecuted in later years.

DMC: Mr. Will, this trial is happening at a time when right-wing extremism in Germany is on the rise. How concerned are you about the prevalence of that threat today?

TW: It is true that there are problems with right-wing people here in Germany, not only in Germany. It’s not the only nation in Europe, for example, that has its problems. I hope that this work will show that people in the majority will see that we won’t have this here.

DMC: There aren't many Nazi perpetrators left. They're getting awfully old now. Do you think this will be the last Nazi trial?

TW: It was also said in the 1980s that there is a last Nazi trial. Now, we are 40 years later, and it will be surely one of our last Nazi trials, we are working that it won't be the last. We have given 14 files against other perpetrators to the public prosecutor's offices in Germany for crimes in that concentration camps Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Stutthof. And we hope that there will be another trial.

DMC: Thank you for your time. Thank you for telling us about this trial.

TW: Thank you for your questions and goodbye.

DMC: Bye.

CH: Thomas Will is the head of the Zentrale Stelle, a special investigations unit for Nazi crimes in Germany. We reached him in Ludwigsburg.

[Music: Indie rock]

Indigenous Smithsonian painting

CH: For months, Nelson White says he has had to keep the news under wraps. But earlier this week, the Mi'kmaw artist from Newfoundland took to Twitter to say that his oil painting had been acquired by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in the US. The portrait called "Veteran Elder" will be part of its permanent collection. Nelson White described the piece to the CBC's Jamie Fitzpatrick, earlier this week.

NELSON WHITE: : it's a painting of an elder who's a military veteran, and he's not in full uniform. It's more of a casual dress, but military insignias. And he's saluting and looking off into the distance and he's looking very stoic. I'd like to think he's looking very stoic. And the idea behind it was just a representation of all of the Indigenous people that served in the forces, because there's a long history of service within Indigenous communities. As well as for the viewer, the viewer can read into it their own thoughts as to what he’s thinking and what he's contemplating and what he feels about his service. So that's what the work is trying to convey.

JAMIE FITZPATRICK: Is there a story behind it? Is it modeled after a particular person?

NW: ah, yes it is. It is modeled after Elsworth Oakley, who is a father of a friend of mine. And Elsworth is originally from Massachusetts. He’s Wabanagan and he moved to Eskasoni, Nova Scotia and married a girl. And he's been living there for, I don't know, 50, 60 years. But when he was 17, he served in the Airborne during the Korean war with the U.S. military. And he's very proud of his service. And he’s, again, one of those interesting stories that was just very proud of, like, his time served in the forces. And Elder Oakly just had a great face. He had a face that just cried out to be painted. Even if I wouldn't have found out the story about his military service and did the painting about that, I would’ve probably wound up painting Elder Oakley anyways. Just because he has a great face to look at.

JF: You're an established artist. You've exhibited far and wide. I've seen your work up at The Rooms here in St. Johns, for example. What does this particular honour mean to you?

NW: A few things. It's flattering that an institution of that magnitude recognize my work. It's flattering that they knew who I was [soft chuckle]. It's a great resume piece for moving forward. I'm just really relieved that the painting has a good home. The painting had a very good life before it was acquired by the Smithsonian. It was shortlisted for a national award, the Figureworks Prize. And it was shown here as part of Atlantic Indigenous Conference in last June. It was shown here in St. Johns at Eastern Edge. So the painting had been around for a little bit and I really wanted to go to a good home and find a final resting place for it.

CH: That was Newfoundland artist Nelson White speaking with the CBC about his painting "Veteran Elder," which has been acquired by the Smithsonian.

[Music: Bright, happy piano]

Polar bear study

Guest: Peter Molnar

CH: Polar bears are tough. Cute and easy to love — from a distance — but extremely tough. Just possibly not tough enough for what they're facing. Polar bears depend on sea ice to travel and find food — mostly seals — to eat. But as global warming persists, ice sheets melt, making the bears highly vulnerable. Now, a researcher at the University of Toronto has published a study on polar bears' chances of survival. Peter Molnar led a global team of scientists to look at the prognosis under different scenarios — each marked by different greenhouse gas emissions levels. And they've found that melting sea ice could cause polar bears to disappear as early as 2040. Peter Molnar is a researcher in global change ecology at the University of Toronto. He's in Toronto.

DMC: Mr. Molnar, I think most people know polar bears are endangered, but these numbers are really quite grim. How did you come up with these predictions?

PETER MOLNAR: As you say, most people know that polar bears are in trouble. And that has actually been very clear for a long time, that polar bears are going to suffer under climate change. Because they are so tightly connected to the sea ice. They require sea ice to access seals, which is their staple diet, and they're not good enough to capture seals in open water. So if you take away the sea ice from the bears, you're essentially taking away the food from them. What's now new in our study is we essentially calculated is well if that happens, how long can bears go before they're limited by the amount of energy that they have stored in their fat reserves before they got cut off from the food? So how long can a mother go before she has to cut off lactation and milk production to her cubs? And then that means the cub will probably die. How long can an adult go before it starves to death? And by doing these calorie counting calculations, you can essentially come up with thresholds for the number of fasting days that a polar bear population can endure without seeing problems. And then you connect that with projections of future sea ice. And that allows you to then come up with these timelines that we calculated of when different polar bear populations would start seeing steep declines in reproduction and survival and in ultimately abundance.

DMC: It can be political, this work, trying to determine when polar bears will be impacted? And why did you embark on this study?

PM: [chuckling] Well, not for political reasons. You know, polar bears have been regarded as the poster child of climate change and global warming for a very long time. And that's because they sort of have this canary in the coal mine function. They're so tightly connected with sea ice and this ecosystem that when the sea ice disappears, when the climate warms, bears will be early-on affected. And, you know, you need to know the future of any population if you want to have any chance of preserving it and managing it in a proper way. And so what we needed to do is to come up with these predictions of if, and if yes, then when would that happen to different polar bear populations?

DMC: Your study suggests that polar bears could start dying out beginning in about 2040, and particularly sub populations of bears in southern Hudson Bay and western Hudson Bay. Is there a possibility that the bears might start moving north to follow the ice?

PM: Well, there's a couple of points to be made here. First of all, we actually are already seeing impacts of climate change. That's not just in 2040. The Hudson Bay populations, for instance, started seeing declining reproduction there since around the turn of the century. So some of the ones that are earliest affected are southern most. And then as the climate gets warmer and the sea ice disappears more and more, some of the northern ones are going to be affected. Whether polar bears could follow the sea ice or adapt in any other sort of way. Some people suggest they might just go online and feed there. Well, first of all, bears aren't doing that already. They are, like I said, there are declining body conditions in Hudson Bay and the bears are sticking there. They are very faithful to the areas that they have always come.

DMC: They’re homebodies.

PM: I’m sorry?

DMC: They are homebodies.

PM: Yes, they totally are. And actually, to the point, if you look back at the fossil record, there used to be polar bears in the Baltic Sea, where we have no polar bears anymore. That's because there was more ice way back in the day. And once the ice disappeared, polar bears disappeared as well. They did not move onto land. They did not start eating other food. They simply disappeared. So, you know, the changes that we're expecting are happening on the decadal scales. The changes that I mentioned in the Baltic states, that happened on millennial scales. And yet, polar bears couldn't adapt back then. Why would they be able to adapt now?

DMC: If, and this is a pretty big if, but if it was possible that we do start to reduce greenhouse gases, what impact would that have on the number of polar bears?

PM: So in this study, we compared two different climate scenarios. One is the RCP eight-point-five scenario, which is typically referred to as the high emissions or business as usual greenhouse gas emissions scenario. Under this scenario, there's a very high chance that you will lose almost every polar bear population in the world, except perhaps in the very high arctic near northern Greenland. The other scenario that we looked at is the RCP four-point-five, if we actually miss the targets that we set ourselves for the Paris Climate Accord, will lead to a warming probably on the order of two-point-three, two-point-four degrees Celsius. And this would result in, unfortunately, still the loss of some sub populations, in particular, those in Hudson Bay and the southern edge of their boundary. But you're giving the northern populations a much better chance of persisting past a century.

DMC: Those are very discouraging scenarios because, of course, I mean, the polar bear is an icon of the north. And I think particularly of a place like Churchill describing, you know, not having any polar bears. So is there anything that can be done to protect them before some of those scenarios that you're describing start happening?

PM: Unfortunately, I'm very aware that this is a very grim and sad story that we're telling. And unfortunately, I also like to emphasize that the way we've calculated these timelines of risk is actually optimistic because there were parts where we didn't have data. And in these cases, you always make the most optimistic assumptions that we could. And then we calculated what if the bears would be doing worse? If we are too optimistic, we could see effects a decade or two earlier. So, yes, the story is grim and sad. What can we do? Well, that's been known for a long time. We need to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, there is really no other solution. We have known this for a long time. We know what needs to be done. We just need to do it.

DMC: Thank you for your time.

PM: Thank you very much.

CH: Peter Molnar is a researcher in global change ecology at University of Toronto. He led a global study on polar bears and how they'll fare under different emissions scenarios. We reached him in Toronto.

July 24, 2020 Episode Transcript

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