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The AIH Transcript for February 17, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

CAROL OFF: Hello, I’m Carol Off.

ALI HASSAN: Good evening, I'm Ali Hassan sitting in for Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

AH: Tonight:

CO: Terms of internment. A leaked document reveals disturbing new details about Uyghur Muslims being held in Chinese detention camps — including who they are and why their government locked them away.

AH: Wrong baby on board. Two Newfoundland men are suing after discovering they were switched at birth nearly 60 years ago. And that's inspired our guest to finally tell her story of being given the wrong baby at the same hospital.

CO: Stringing him along. When an American violin teacher realizes her student in China is stuck inside because of the coronavirus outbreak, she steps up his Skype lessons to keep him occupied.

AH: Rideau BANAL. People in Ottawa say a new addition being built onto the Chateau Laurier could ruin the view of the Rideau Canal. Now UNESCO is sending signals it might cost the Ottawa waterway its status as a World Heritage site.

CO: Green eating. An Edmonton restaurant isn't just counting calories. It's also counting the carbon emissions that go into creating each meal.

AH: And ... Literary buzz. An eleven-year-old-girl's passion for insects used to get her bullied. Then it got her a book deal. Tonight, she joins Carol in studio to explain why bugs don't bug her ... but insults sting.

AH: As It Happens, the Monday Edition. Radio that loves to relax with a little mite reading.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: Uyghur documents, coronavirus: violin teacher, The Bug Girl book

Uyghur documents

Guest: Adrian Zenz

CH: In China's Xinjiang province, wearing a thick beard or visiting the wrong website could land you in an internment camp. That's what a new set of leaked documents appear to show. They were leaked to the BBC and Associated Press, and they offer a shocking window into the fate of Uyghur Muslims, detained in China. The documents are essentially a database, profiling three-hundred and eleven people from one county in Xinjiang province. It's a spreadsheet that shows how often people pray, how they dress, and who they contact. Adrian Zenz is a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. And he's been pouring over these documents. We reached him in St. Paul, Minnesota.

CO: Mr. Zenz, as you know, we have many sources telling us about these human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in China. What does this latest leaked document tell us that we didn't know?

ADRIAN ZENZ: This latest document gives us great detail about the fate of hundreds of individuals. It gives exact reasons why they were put into internment camps. And why they are either being kept there or might be released. The document clearly shows that what Beijing is doing is not in any way a fight against terror. It's a witch hunt against any slightest sign of religiosity. It's interning people for having grown a beard several years ago. It's interning people for having prayed before meals or going to a mosque.

CO: And some of it's not even having done anything. It’s just being untrustworthy.

AZ: Yes, the arbitrary nature of the detentions is notable. The government is distrusting these ethnic groups. And in order to do something about them, to bring them under long-term control, it has introduced general categories of suspicion, such as the Labour untrustworthy person.

CO: Other ones are: linked to anything abroad, violating birth control policies — which is the one child policy. If people fall into these categories, if this is the reasons for taking them away, what's happening to them by virtue of these accusations?

AZ: Well, in the camps, they learn that they have to stay away from even the slightest form of religion. People who have been allowed by the government to tour these camps and to speak to the detainees found out that they then said I'm no longer Muslim. I no longer believe in Islam. I no longer pray. They are basically forced to abstain from even the slightest trace of even superficial cultural religiosity.

CO: And at what point do any of these people get released from these camps — from this internment?

AZ: People have to be in re-education camps for at least one year, no matter what. After one year, people can be released if their performance is up to par. They have to have confessed and repented. There's a lot of confession and repentance language in these verdicts. But not only that, the government very closely monitors their families. If the family continues to exhibit a, quote/unquote, “dense religious atmosphere” or if they don't follow local regulations such as attending the mandatory flag raising ceremony every morning, then the people have to remain and re-education camps.

CO: How difficult is it to actually meet these demands to get out when so many of the cases are people who it's not them it's family members. It's a female member of the family wear a veil once. How can you demand that someone is reformed for things that they’re not even doing?

AZ: People are heavily intimidated. They have been starved. Some of them have been tortured. They have been through a terrible experiences, and they never want to go back.

CO: This must be a tremendous risk that people are taking to get these documents into the hands of the foreign media. What do you know about it?

AZ: The greatest risk would have been taken by the person who leaked them out of Xinjiang. It is almost certainly would have to have been a government official — possibly a Uyghur government official — because a Han Chinese would not be likely to risk this. But then the whistleblowers abroad who received the document and passed it onto the media also received threats. Asiye Abdulaheb in Holland, who gave me and too many media outlets the document, she had received death threats anonymously.

CO: What do you think motivates them to take that risk? What are they seeing or learning that makes them willing to do that?

AZ: The Uyghurs are seeing the destruction of their own people in front of their eyes. And they just cannot bear it. I mean, this is cultural genocide on an unprecedented scale. It's basically the largest incarceration of an ethno-religious minority since the Holocaust. These people are absolutely desperate. You cannot talk to any exile Uyghur who does not have a large number of family members in one of these camps, who is desperate to find out anything about their loved ones.

CO: It's not like the world doesn't know that this is happening to these hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs. How do you think the international community should be responding to this kinds of information that keeps coming out about the Uyghurs?

AZ: The international community — and particularly the Muslim nations — should unanimously rise up and make strong statements, and then let the strong statements be followed up with action. Be it resolutions at the United Nations Human Rights Council, targeted economic sanctions, sanctions on bilateral cultural exchange. How are you going to do a cultural exchange with China if China's interning millions of its ethnic minorities?

CO: Do you think, to some extent, the issue of the coronavirus is overshadowing the plight of Uyghur Muslims in China?

AZ: Yes and no. It has captured the news. It has put China in the spotlight. But it also highlights the risk that the virus poses to the region of Xinjiang, where many people are in internment camps with terrible conditions. And the dangers that the rise of that. But also, we are seeing some of the practices that China has pioneered in Xinjiang among the Uyghurs of domestic security or facial recognition. A lot of these mechanisms are now being used in eastern China — in Beijing, Wuhan and Shanghai — in order to fight the war on the virus in order to lock down communities there. So in some sense, the Han Chinese majority is now, in a small degree, experiencing some of the draconian measures that are commonplace in Xinjiang.

CO: Mr. Zenz, we'll leave it there. And I appreciate speaking with you tonight. Thank you.

AZ: Thank you.

CO: Bye-bye.

CH: Adrian Zenz is a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. And we reached him in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[Music: Sombre instrumental]

Coronavirus: violin teacher

Guest: Anthea Kreston

AH: For the past six months, Anthea Kreston has made a weekly Skype call from Oregon — to a teenager in Chengdu, China. Ms Kreston is a world-renowned violinist, and 14-year-old Kevin Tang is her pupil. But since the new coronavirus has swept through China, Kevin — and millions of others in the country — are essentially under lockdown. With a student who suddenly had a lot of time on his hands, Ms. Kreston decided to put him to work — upping their lessons from weekly to daily — and offering the lessons free of charge. Here's Kevin performing for his teacher, after long hours of practice.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: "Symphonie Espagnole” by Lalo]

AH: Anthea Kreston has been helping him with that piece. And we reached her in Corvallis, Oregon.

CO: Anthea, what piece of music are we hearing your student, Kevin, play in that clip?

ANTHEA KRESTON: That's a Lalo, "Symphonie Espagnole”. That's the beginning of the second page of the first movement. It's where it kind of emerges from anger into kind of a beautiful love story.

CO: You were already giving Kevin weekly lessons on Skype. How did you learn that perhaps Kevin's situation had altered?

AK: Well, he didn't mention anything to me. But when I was giving him his lesson I think it was February 2nd. I noticed some things were just a little bit different. He Skypes me from his living room or somehow the family room. It's usually extremely tidy, but it was a little bit messy. Some things were a little bit funny. He was also wearing his winter coat and rubbing his hands a lot. His hair looked slightly less teenagery funky [CO chuckles]. He kind of he has a great attitude — a great teenager attitude. So he's physically looked a little strange. And also, he's normally extremely well-prepared. I think these extra lessons are a big, big part of their family. It's a financial commitment for them to have a weekly lesson with an American teacher on top of their Chinese professors. So usually he's extremely well-prepared, and he seemed lethargic. He wasn't making jokes. He wasn't interacting. And so from all those things combined, I thought something was quite different with him.

CO: Now, did you figure it out immediately that he might be part of the lockdown, part of the quarantine that so many people in China were going through?

AK: It did occur to me right away, although I had been doing research online for Chengdu — which is a good thousand kilometres away from Wuhan. I hadn't found anything. Nothing had been showing up on The Guardian or New York Times. And when I had been searching for it, I couldn't find any mention of Chengdu. And so I thought everything was okay. I thought he was far enough away. But I asked him if he was okay. He said he was cold. And then I said, how are lessons going? He said I'm not having lessons. I'm not in school. I said, are you know able to play with your friends in the courtyard? He says, no, we can't go outside. And I said, do you have enough to eat? And he said, well when we run out of food, someone has to go out there.

CO: The reference of him wearing a coat. What we have learned is that people have an idea that the virus — the coronavirus — might travel through the pipes of their buildings.

AK: Yes.

CO: So they're shutting off their heat. And so there you were, you know thousands of miles away. What did you figure you could do to help him?

AK: The first thing I tried to do is maintain a professional relationship with him. I don't want to put him in any kind of danger. So I never said the word virus. We never talk about the government. We never talk about those kinds of things. It's hard to tell what is safe and what's not safe there. So I'm extra careful with that.

CO: Yeah, and you're right. From everything we've heard, you have to be really careful because he can't really say much, can he?

AK: No. I mean, I don't know what they can see and what they can't see or hear. So I'm always super careful with that. So I felt like I had enough information from him. And then, after doing more research online, I still didn't find any information. And I talked to my husband. I was really, really worried, and I said I don't think he's doing well. Then I said, what happens if I proposed to his dad that you know while he's inside that we have a special kind of project — if I can give him a specific assignment every day, a very difficult technical exercise, and then also a new page of this concerto? So I thought this concerto was the perfect thing. It usually would take a 14-year-old maybe a year to learn this concerto. And I said to him why don't we learn it in 20 days?

CO: Wow! And so did it work? Did your idea of giving daily lessons free of charge get him out of his lethargy?

AK: Well, it took him and his dad a day to decide to do it. I'm sure that they…. And I don't want to add stress to his life. So I'm sure they had to think about that. And I said that we could do it in a way that's stress-free. That it's like a fun project. And I noticed after three or four days he started like emojis started to appear again in our chat. That he was smiling. He's still wearing his coat. And he jumps up and down a little bit. I think he's pretty cold there. But that you can even hear from that recording, his passion level is great. And, interestingly enough, in the last three or four days, I think his father is happier. I mean, I can imagine the stress that his parents are under. His mother works for a hospital for supply. So she's apparently going all around Chengdu desperately looking for masks and medical safety equipment for the hospital people. So it's a stress for them to have her go out and do that, and also for her to come back.

CO: Right.

AK: I mean, it's it it's a double-edged sword.

CO: I understand that there are others, there's a connection with some other music students in China, who you are helping to connect with teachers in the United States and might be able to help?

AK: Yes, yes, actually, there was a New York Times article. And since that time, a bunch of my friends and former teachers who are all you know professors at wonderful universities, and from Berlin to Brazil, and throughout the states, and far-flung places, have contacted me and said they'd be happy to help out as well. And so I've been able to pair some people up — actually friends of Kevin's — because right now, I can't get through to any of the music schools. When I write to them, things bounce back. So just through Kevin specifically, and through his network of friends, I'm getting some videos from those people. Of course, they have to speak some English. Although I have a bunch of friends who speak Chinese, so I'm able to also put people together who don't have English language. But I'm just trying to put some really simple parameters of like the amount of work and how it has to be optimistic. It's more of like a practice buddy, or someone you would meet at the gym. And so my sister has a student, Jason — my husband — has a student, and I'm slowly pairing people up. I would love to make it more broad, but I just have no access to the schools or anything.

CO: Well, good work on your part, Anthea. That's great that some kids will be able to have a connection with the outside and music. It makes a difference, doesn't it?

AK: Yeah, I think it does.

CO: Thanks for telling us the story.

AK: Thank you so much. Have a great day.

CO: You too.

CH: Anthea Kreston is a violinist based in Corvallis, Oregon. That's where we reached her.

[Music: Elevator music]

The Bug Girl book

Guests: Sophia Spencer, Nicole Spencer

AH: Sophia Spencer just turned eleven — and she's already got a published book under her belt. The Bug Girl: A True Story is, well, just that. It’s the true story of Sophia's love of all things creepy crawly ... and how it has affected her short life in big — and sometimes difficult — ways. Sophia wrote the book with Margaret McNamara and it came out last week. Today, she and her mom, Nicole Spencer, joined Carol in studio to talk about the buzz it's generating.

CO: Sophia, welcome to the As It Happens studio.

SOPHIA SPENCER: Thank you.

CO: And your mom, Nicole. Welcome as well.

NICOLE SPENCER: Thank you for having us.

CO: Thank you for both coming in. Okay, Sophia, I have to start with the million-dollar question. Why do you love bugs so much?

SS: Well, I get asked that a lot. And I think it's mainly because they have their own ecosystem. Like, they've made their own world — their own mini universe.

CO: Okay, I know you love bugs. And the rule is in your house you're not allowed to kill bugs. But what about bugs that sting and bite?

SS: Um, no, we still don't kill them. We have a net, and you will catch them. And I'll grab them and I'll just let them outside.

CO: I want to ask your mom. Nicole, so having a house with a no-kill bugs rule, what's that like to try and manage [she laughs].

NS: Um, it's not too bad. There's only been a few times where I've covered the bug with the net for her to take out the next day. And the next morning, when we wake up, the bug is gone [CO laughs]. But I'm not going to discourage her from you know the rule is no killing bugs. They're important, so I manage it. But it's okay.

CO: This story of The Bug Girl — and your story, Sophia — begins with the first time you fell in love with an insect. Can you tell us that story?

SS: Well, when I was two-and-a-half, I went to a butterfly conservatory in Naga falls — which is a zoo that's just for butterflies. And then as soon as I walked in there, a blue butterfly perched on my shoulder. And I was just crying all over my face. And it didn't leave. The entire time I was there, it was just on me. And when I left, because you know you can't take home exotic butterflies, [CO laughs] the guard had to take it off of me, because again, you can't take home exotic butterflies.

CO: So Nicole, when did you realize you're your daughter had a really special connection with insects?

NS: After we left the conservatory, she asked if she could get bug net so she could try to catch some bugs. So it pretty much spiraled after that, where I was buying containers, and nets, and magnifying glasses, and my life revolved around Google for a really long time. Because if she found a bug outside, she'd want to know about the bug.

CO: Sophia, when you started going to kindergarten, at first, you had classmates that you could share your love of bugs with. How did they respond in school?

SS: Um, well, when I was in kindergarten, they loved it. Like, if they ever found a bug, they could be like, Sophia, what's this bug? And I would usually know what it was. And they responded really well. And I still know some of the kids from kindergarten. And they're like I can't believe children did that like it's cool that you like bugs. And I’m thank you!

CO: And what you're referring to is what happened when you switched schools, I think in grade one. And you had a very different experience. What happened with the kids there?

SS: Well, the kids at my newer school, they didn't like the fact that I was different. So they would tease me, they would bully me. If I would bring a bug in from home, they would like knock it off from my shoulder and kill it. So I felt just really upset, really sad and beat down.

CO: And so, at one point, you decided that you just had to give up a bit on your bug interest, right, you sort of packed things up. What happened? What did you do?

SS: Well, I started to pack up all my bug stuff, all my bug nets. I let all the bugs that were at home I let them go. I just gave up because you know I wanted friends. If I could have friends, but not do my passion, then I was ready to give that up.

CO: And did that help? Did the kids stop bullying you become friends with you?

SS: Um, no, not really. They knew I still like bugs. They just they knew that I liked bugs, but they knew I was just faking it. So they still didn't like me.

CO: Nicole, for you, for being a mom, and to see the effect this had on her in school. What effect did that have on you?

NS: When you see your child side and thinking well if I stop liking something, maybe I'll have friends. It's heartbreaking to see your kid go through something like that. And then you get really angry. And I just was upset. I didn't want to see her give up something that she had loved for so long and was so excited about.

CO: You had an idea for what to do. What did you think might work?

NS: I thought if I thought outside the box and wrote a letter to the Entomological Society of Canada, we could maybe get a pen pal for her. And it went viral, and we had an amazing outpouring of support from across the world. And it was just incredible to see so many people reach out to her.

CO: Sophia, did you think when your mom wrote the letter to the entomologist, the society, did you think that you'd get much of a response? Did you think, yeah Mom, that might work? Or where you kind of doubtful about that?

SS: Um, she didn't tell me when she was doing it. She didn't want to like get my hopes up and then nothing was responding. So yeah, she didn't tell me.

CO: And then what did you see happen?

SS: Um, well she told me that she asked them, and that you know it went viral. And that there was so, so many people that liked bugs. And that told me I should keep doing what I love.

CO: From all around the world, right?

NS: We had women that were studying bugs in the Amazon writing emails to us and telling her that you know they had had similar experiences growing up, that they had been bullied for their love of insects, and they didn't let it stop them.

CO: And what effect did that have on you? Did you tell the other kids at school? Did they know that you were becoming a kind of star?

SS: Um, well, by when this happened, I was in a different school. I changed schools again after grade one. And the kids there were a lot nicer. They encouraged me a lot. Yeah, it was a lot better. And then, yeah, we started to make the book.

CO: And that became The Bug Girl: A True Story — which is a beautiful book. What do you think of it when you saw the whole book put together like that?

SS: When I first read it, I thought I was just an amazing book. I thought it was just so cool. It really does express like the story really, really well.

CO: So I tested your book on the weekend with my granddaughters, and they love your book. But they had some questions for you. They wanted to know [she laughs]. My granddaughter Chloe, who's almost eight, she wanted to know what feelings you had when you first had that butterfly land on you?

SS: The first reaction I had was like this is really cool. Like, it's not leaving. It's on me. It's not leaving me. And I thought it was really, really cool. And I was very surprised that the fact that I was the only one in the whole conservatory that it was staying on.

CO: And then Clara, who is almost six, wants to know about one fact you have in the book. You said that there are bugs in Antarctica?

SS: Yeah.

CO: She thought that's impossible. It's so cold there.

SS: Nope.

CO: Okay. I'll tell Clara that's the case. And they both had one last question for you. What do you want to be when you grow up?

SS: Um, well, I'd like to be an entomologist. I'd like to grow up to study bugs in different environments.

CO: Sophia, congratulations on your beautiful book.

SS: Thank you.

CO: And, Nicole. Thank you so much for bringing Sophia in to talk to us.

NS: Thank you so much for having us. It was a pleasure.

AH: Sophia Spencer co-wrote The Bug Girl with Margaret McNamara. It's illustrated by the French duo, Kerascoet and published by Penguin Random House. Sophia joined Carol in our Toronto studio with her mom, Nicole Spencer. And she's right — by the way — about that Antarctic bug. We looked it up. It's a midge.

[Music: Indie rock]

Part two: Newfoundland birth switch, Carbon footprint diner

Newfoundland birth switch

Guest: Muriel Stringer

AH: Clarence Hynes and Craig Avery were switched at birth in the 1960s at a small hospital in Come By Chance, Newfoundland and Labrador. The two men are now in their mid-50s. They've never met their birth parents. Now they're suing the regional health authority. Their story is shocking — but it may not be the only mix-up that happened at the hospital's maternity ward that year. A Newfoundland woman is now speaking out about what happened to her. We reached Muriel Stringer in Hodge's Cove, Newfoundland.

CO: Muriel, I know you were 19 years old back in 1962, when you gave birth to your son at Walwyn Cottage Hospital. How many days old was he when you got to take him home?

MURIEL STRINGER: The baby was three days old, but in the car, when I looked at him, he looked a bit different. But Mom said oh no, that's probably the balm that he has on.

CO: Now, you were in the car going home from Come by Chance, heading back to Hodges Cove, is that right?

MS: Yes, yes. And so what differences were there that made you wonder if this was really your little boy, Kent?

MS: Well, his nose was different. [she coughs] Kent’s nose looks like mine, and I got a bigish nose. But I dress him myself. They dressed him in hospital and gave them to Mom.

CO: And you couldn't think that something would go wrong there. You'd think that you had your baby, right?

MS: I didn't think anything could happen.

CO: What happened when you got home?

MS: Well, we sat down, and Mom still had him in her arms. And I was looking at her, and she said, no, he’s not your baby.

CO: How did your mom know it wasn't your baby?

MS: Because his name was on the bracelet he had on his arm.

CO: What was the name on the bracelet?

MS: “Baby Boy Adams”

CO: [she chuckles] It was not your baby boy Kent, Was it?

MS: [she chuckles] No, no.

CO: How did you react when you saw that?

MS: Well, we were scared for a minute, and then surprised. We didn't know what we were going to do. Everything was going through our minds. So my husband went to the post office and phoned up and said, look, we've got the wrong baby. She said bring the baby up here. But first thing she said was, didn't the mother know her own baby?

CO: This is what the nurse said at the hospital?

MS: Yes. So anyway, off they went. And I stayed here. I guess the word got around in the hospital because the mother was on the steps. My husband said she was there waiting on the steps.

CO: The mother of baby Adam?

MS: Yes.

CO: So she knew her baby was missing?

MS: Yes, so she must have been frightened of it. Are they gonna bring him back or what, you know?

CO: Oh no! Where was baby Kent?

MS: He was still in the hospital. What happened was that they put the babies in the wrong cribs, and they just looked at the name that was on the crib and took the baby.

CO: And the Adam's baby was only had just been born. He wasn't more than a day, is that right?

MS: That's right, he was born that day.

CO: Oh my gosh! The mother must have been frantic.

MS: We were worried too because I mean an infant baby, taking him on a long bumpy old road like that. Could've been in an accident or anything, right? All this is going through our mind.

CO: Okay, so then they straightened it out.

MS: Yes, got up to the hospital and changed the babies, and came home and lived happily ever after [both chuckle].

CO: Okay, happily. But were you angry at them for what had happened to you? What were your emotions?

MS: So only for the little bit, where the nurse said, you know, didn't she know her own baby? That was the angriest thing that was said between any of us, right?

CO: But you didn't take the wrong baby, you were given the wrong baby?

MS: That's right, yeah, yeah.

CO: Now, this is way back in 1962. But this summer, this story came out of these two men — Clarence Hynes and Craig Avery — were born in the same hospital, and realized just by chance — Come By Chance is well named, isn't it? That they had been switched at birth in the same year.

MS: Yeah, well see, we found out at the time, way back. But they didn't find out about this for a couple of years ago.

CO: It was a really distressing story when it came out because these two men were really sad. They had good lives, but they had never got to know their parents.

MS: That's true. That's true. Yeah, that's the worst. That was a really bad mistake, that was.

CO: Wow! Now, what did you think when you heard their story, knowing what had happened to you in the same year with only a few months difference?

MS: Well, I pity them like everything, and was glad that we got our baby, you know? Everything turned out all right for us.

CO: This raised questions for you about what might have been going on at that hospital back in 1962, when your baby Kent was born?

MS: My daughter, when she heard about this the other day, she was one that got mad about it. She said, Mom, there was something going on back then. Then I started to wonder if there was, you know? But way back then, I was I don't know too busy having a family, and babies all around me all the time [both laugh]. Something like that didn't come to mind, you know?

CO: How many more did you have after Kent?

MS: Well, I had six children. Kent was the second.

CO: Four more babies after Kent?

MS: Yeah.

CO: But now, did you start to wonder though when you're talking to your daughter about that, maybe there are other instances of the same thing?

MS: Yes, I did. And I did hear there was somebody else around here it happened to too.

CO: You heard another story of somebody else who had gave birth in the Come By Chance hospital, who got a switch?

MS: Yes.

CO: Okay. Well, that sounds serious.

MS: But I can't remember who they were [she laughs].

CO: Well, the two men — Clarence Hynes and Craig Avery — are suing the health authority for what happened now that they’ve found out. But the health authority says it's not responsible for what happened at the hospital because that doesn't exist anymore. It’s all part of a new system. What would you want them to know about what it was like for you before you got your baby back?

MS: I can understand how they feel. But it only happened to me for a few hours. So they must’ve been really, really mad about it, and couldn't do anything about it. Both their parents were deceased, and they didn't know anything about it.

CO: Well, at least Kant got back to the right family then. At least you got your baby back.

MS: Oh yes, no problem to know because he looks Just like his father.

CO: [she chuckles] Muriel, I really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

MS: Thank you.

CO: Take care.

MS: Bye.

AH: Muriel Stringer was a young mother in 1962 when she says she was given the wrong baby by Walwyn Cottage Hospital in Come By Chance, Newfoundland. We reached Ms. Stringer in Hodge's Cove, Newfoundland. And earlier, we told you about Clarence Hynes and Craig Avery, two men who were switched at birth in the 1960s at the same hospital. The two men never got to meet their birth parents. Now, they are suing the provincial government for negligence. And last month, Mr. Avery spoke with CBC's The Current about what happened 58 years ago, and how that mix-up turned his life upside down.

SOUNDCLIP

CRAIG AVERY: Well, when you find out that you have siblings that you grew up with, and then all of a sudden, you've got siblings that's in another family. And now you find out that you got different parents, and then you find out that your parents that you should have grown up with are passed on. And you never got to meet them. And you didn't grow up with all your siblings. It was crazy. It was heartbreaking. It teared the heart right out of your body.

MATT GALLOWAY: How hard is that, I mean, both sets of parents died before any of this was discovered. How hard is that for you, Craig, knowing that that you didn't get to talk to the people who were truly your birth mother and father before they passed?

CA: Well, when I went to the gravesite, and I stood in front of their headstones, [he’s breaking down] and looked at their headstones, and knowing that’s the closest that you're ever gonna get to em. It tore me in pieces.

MG: And it's still really hard for you now.

CA: Oh, it'll be hard forever.

AH: That was Craig Avery speaking with The Current host Matt Galloway in January. Mr. Avery and Clarence Hynes were switched at birth 58 years ago in Come By Chance, Newfoundland.

[Music: Horns!]

FOA: ABC raid

AH: When police raided the Australian public broadcaster's newsroom in Sidney last year, some journalists called it media intimidation. Today, a federal court in that country dismissed ABC's intrusion complaint, and said the raid was legal. Police raided the ABC offices after journalists published a series of articles called the Afghan Files. They were based on classified military documents. David Mcbride leaked those documents to ABC. He is a former military lawyer with the Australian Armed Forces. Here he is speaking to Carol in June.

SOUNDCLIP

CO: Mr Mcdride, did you ever think you'd see a day when the Australian Federal Police would raid Australia's public broadcaster?

DAVID MCBRIDE: No. Times are changing, as they say.

COO: What did they seize? What did the police take from ABC?

DM: Well, that's a good question. It was an unusual, very modern kind of warrant, where they had the right to access computers, and delete things on them. So I guess that says something interesting in that they weren't trying to gather evidence for a court case. Rather, they were trying to delete things which they didn't want people to read. They had the right to do that. And I think that was probably the real purpose was not to seize anything, but to erase things.

CO: Now, what ABC did with the hundreds of documents that you provided was they made a series called the Afghan Files — which has some quite shocking allegations. Can you tell us what has been reported at this point?

DM: The key things they reported on was to say some time in Afghanistan, one of our Special Forces patrols in the mountains had shot a shepherd boy by mistake thinking he was Taliban, and they didn't report it. The Afghan Files were mainly reports of investigations by independent Australian investigators, who, by and large, said this is an unfortunate incident. However, there's no cause for criminal charges. What I believe was the biggest story was the fact that the leadership — the generals, and I believe also the politicians — had performed some illegal operations and then tried to cover them up. That's the purpose of these latest raids. The police have realized that there is much more to the Afghan Files than was first revealed.

AH: That was David Mcbride, a former military lawyer with the Australian Armed Forces, on As It Happens in June. He's facing criminal charges for leaking documents about the Australian military's role in Afghanistan. He'll appear in court next week.

[Music: Ambient]

Carbon footprint diner

Guest: Debbie Parker

CH: As its name suggests, The Highlevel Diner in Edmonton is no greasy spoon. When you sit down to tuck into their comfort food, you'll know just how much gas you'll be producing — greenhouse gas, that is — because the carbon footprint of options on the menu has been calculated — and is now clearly displayed alongside each item. Debbie Parker is the co-owner of The Highlevel Diner. That's where we reached her.

CO: Debbie, if I open the menu at your restaurant, what would I see in the terms of a carbon footprint information?

DEBBIE PARKER: So there's symbols on the menu that represent a low-level carbon footprint, a medium, or a high level.

CO: Uh huh, and so what would be something, Let’s say if I was really hungry, what would I have as a meal that would be a low carbon footprint?

DP: We have a Thai coconut curry, and it's on the lower level. And as well, we have a pad thai. And mostly the vegan and vegetarian dishes are going to be the lowest carbon footprint.

CO: And what if I didn't care?

DP: Then we have short ribs. We have a Guinness cottage pie. We have a prime rib steak, and chicken, and fish, and that kind of thing as well.

CO: And you tell people what the carbon footprint is for each of those items on your menu, do you?

DP: There is an estimated value beside the majority of the items. And then on the Northern Climate Stewardship and Sustainability Society website, there is a listing with each of the items listed.

CO: How did you calculate how much carbon footprint there is to each of your meals?

DP: We gave the information to the NCSSF, and they basically took all of the values from the sourcing, the recipe size, the portions, where the product was coming from, and they compiled all of that data to come up with the estimate for each menu item.

CO: And that's the Northern Climate Stewardship and Sustainability Society?

DP: That is correct.

CO: Okay, so why did you want to do this?

DP: Well, we've noticed an increasing number of people that are concerned about their own carbon emissions and carbon footprint. And so when we were approached by Northern Climate, they had said there was a restaurant in Sweden that had done this. And we thought that it would be interesting to try this pilot project with them, and see what kind of response we would get.

CO: And what kind of response have you had?

DP: Our customer base, we've had a very positive response. People are interested. They want to know what items they can eat, what they can't eat, and that sort of thing. And some people are not pleased about it. Unfortunately, I think they feel that we're against maybe the beef and the meat industries, the dairy, and all of that kind of thing. But it's definitely not that. We're trying to offer our customers options, and we've been supporting local Alberta beef and dairy producers for almost 40 years. So this is just a matter of offering consumers options.

CO: But I mean, you are in cattle country, well in Alberta generally, but then also oil and gas country that it's been resistance to this idea of what's the carbon impact. So are you going to lose customers because you're doing this?

DP: I don't think we'll lose customers over this. I think that most people realize it is a pilot project, and the whole idea is to get people talking. We've spoke even with one of our local farmers, who was talking about the industry itself, and how agriculture is also looking at different ways that they can lower the carbon footprint. I think in Europe — maybe in the Netherlands — they've been feeding beef activated charcoal. And that has had a positive impact on reducing their carbon footprint. And you know I think that it helps with the conversation and get people talking, and that's a positive thing.

CO: Do you have anybody who comes in and they've decided not to have the prime rib or not to have the pork ribs because of what you said about the carbon footprint?

DP: Um, not that we've been able to calculate so far. It's only been a week-and-a-half now since we've had the menu out.

CO: Uh-huh, but do you think though also there might be a bit of virtue signalling when people want to see what's coming out of the kitchen for your table that you might feel a bit [both laugh] okay, maybe I should have the spinach pie?

DP: Perhaps, perhaps. But I think in general, it just gives people the option, similar to nutrition facts on a label, that if you're concerned about your sodium intake or sugar intake, then that would be something that that you're going to pay close attention to. But I know even myself included when I go out to a restaurant you know I want to indulge. And that's the time that you may want to just go ahead and order the steak. And there's nothing wrong with that. Certainly, we're just putting it out there and starting the conversation and seeing what happens.

CO: Well, your glass of wine might have a bigger carbon footprint than your steak.

DP: [she laughs] Truly.

CO: Depending on how many air mile points it has. And also, I mean people like I presume drive to your restaurant [she laughs]. Do they get a reduced carbon footprint if they walked?

DP: Well, we do give a ten per cent discount for people that ride their bikes, so [both laugh]. So again, and parking is definitely an issue. So, you know, the more that people walk, the more that people are working towards that, I think the better for everybody.

CO: So this is a pilot project. How long will you keep it up before you evaluate whether it's a good idea?

DP: We'll be doing a review in six months to take a look and see where we'll go from there.

CO: All right. We'll leave it there. I'm sure we'll hear some from our listeners reaction to this, Debbie [she laughs]. But it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

DP: Very good. Thank you.

CO: Bye.

DP: Bye-bye.

CH: Debbie Parker is the co-owner of the Highlevel Diner in Edmonton. We reached her at the restaurant.

[Music: Jazz]

Chateau Laurier UNESCO

KG: When you own a gorgeous heritage property in a picturesque setting, you value your viewscape. You don't call it a "viewscape". But you still don't want some developer building some eyesore nearby and completely wrecking it. This is why UNESCO is upset about the Rideau Canal in Ottawa — which it refers to as "the best preserved example of a slackwater canal in North America". The UN Organization still views the canal as a World Heritage Site with Outstanding Universal Value. But it takes a dim view of what's happening to what it calls the "viewscape" — because of the Chateau Laurier. As you've undoubtedly heard, the owners of the historic hotel next to Parliament Hill are putting an addition on it — an addition that's been described as "a post-modernist mess", "an act of architectural violence" and "like a Travelodge rear-ended a hotel." There's been a huge furor about it in Ottawa, with public complaints, legal challenges, and general disgust. And apparently, UNESCO shares that disgust. In a recent letter, it asked Canada to put the construction on hold, until the potential damage to the "viewscape" can be reviewed. UNESCO isn't saying the Rideau Canal doesn't still have Outstanding Universal Value. It's just saying it's an awful nice slackwater canal — and it would be a shame if something happened to its World Heritage Site status. And if something does happen, that addition to the Chateau Laurier will be the...viewscapegoat.

[Music: Indie rock]

Part three: Feature interview: Mark Bourrie on Bush Runner

Feature interview: Mark Bourrie on Bush Runner

Guest: Mark Bourrie

CH: He was the first European to explore the upper Mississippi. He was vital in the creation of the Hudson Bay Company. And he's the namesake for a global hotel chain. But Pierre-Esprit Radisson may be best described as one of the biggest hustlers in Canadian history. His adventures began in New France in the 1600s — but they took him all over the world. And in a time when few travelled, Mr. Radisson crossed the Atlantic seven times — and double-crossed almost everyone he met. He was everywhere history seemed to be — all while pursuing his dream of creating an arctic fur trade. Mark Bourrie has written about Mr. Radisson's remarkable history. Bush Runner The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson is shortlisted for The RBC Taylor Prize. Mark Bourrie joined Carol from a CBC studio in Ottawa to talk about the book.

CO: Mark, this is quite a romp through this story. Why were you so drawn to tell it?

MARK BOURRIE: I think because he had such of a life. He had a real full life. And I just couldn't believe that all of these things happened to one person.

CO: Is it because you stayed in a Radisson hotel once that you figured that there must be a story here [she laughs]?

MB: I’d looked him up for something. But as I read his life's story, realized that that little bit that we were taught about him in school was just a tiny tip of the iceberg of this person's incredible life. Not just his incredible life, but the wild world that he lived in.

CO: So Pierre-Esprit Radisson, you describe him as many things. But one of the amusing lines you have is “he was the Forest Gump of his time”. How did you come to conclude that?

MB: I think that was almost the first conclusion I made about him. Because when I read about him, and I read that he had been adopted by the Iroquois when he was a prisoner as a child, and then I though okay, that's kind of neat. And then he goes out west. That's kind of neat. And then he goes to England, and he's in the great plague. And I thought wow, he made it through that! And the great fire. Oh my gosh, he was in that too. And then I read about him going on this expedition to the Caribbean and getting wiped out with all these other sailors and left on a rock tropical island. I thought, oh my gosh. And it keeps going and going. And not only is he in all these places where things happen, he's with all the people who are making things happen at that time in Europe and in North America. So he meets everybody that you would want to meet in that time.

CO: [she laughs] And he meets people that that clearly wanted him dead, or should have wanted him dead. This is the astonishing thing that he everything from pirates, to warriors, to kings who had people beheaded for much less. I mean, he survived so many people who really didn't like him.

MB: Yeah, he died in bed. He died an old man. And I don't think anybody back in his time if they were sort of taking bets on that would have put any money on him not ending up at the bottom of the sea or at the end of something sharp, literally. It's just phenomenal that his life keeps going, and he keeps crossing people, and he keeps getting into these wild situations and these incredible adventures and survives.

CO: So just at the beginning, the story where he is, you've just mentioned it, where he is adopted by Mohawks, and after he is captured. He's a teenager, and he's in New Francis, this is we're talking about mid-16-hundreds here. What happened to him with that family?

MB: Well, the last place you want to be [he clears his throat] as a as a European person in the world in 1650 is in New France. It's a disaster. And it's on the losing end of a war against the Iroquois, who’ve just basically blown away all of France's allies in the Great Lakes Basin. They dropped this 15-year-old kid into the middle of it. His parents ship him out to his sister, and his sister’s got all kinds of other things happening in her life — including her husband who gets killed. And he gets picked up by the euro Iroquois as he's out just hunting, walking along the river, hiding ducks and things that he's shooting. And they take him back to the Iroquois country. Now, normally that's the end of the story — because he's the first person — the first French person — who is adopted by the Iroquois after being taken prisoner. Everybody else had either been given back or had had died in the Iroquois country, had been killed. And one of the first things he does is he starts cooking for the guys who captured him. He doesn't like their food. So he starts turning it up in a sort of European way. And they like it. And then he starts paddling. And they obviously like that. And they realize that this guy, he's not afraid, and he's got a lot going for him. And so they decide he would actually make a good Mohawk.

CO: But that's not enough, is it? Because this is another mouth to feed, isn't it? They're struggling, like many people in the region, with just dealing with food supply. And yet, there is a particular couple who take him in. Tell us about his adopting mother and father?

MB: Well, some of the myths that the book puts aside pretty fast that there's no sort of rich people in these societies. And the couple that adopt him are rich and they're powerful. The woman is a clan mother. The man is a war chief. They've got the wherewithal to kit him out in European clothes that they buy from Dutch traders who are not that far away. They give em a little gun. He's treated like a prince. He's got it made when he's living with these people, and they love him. And one of the neat things that comes across in Radisson’s own writing is that that love is the only love that he really talks about in the course of his life. How much that went right to the core of him.

CO: They treated him very well, and he betrayed them. Can you tell us about that?

MB: Yeah. Well, first of all, he betrays them one time in a way that I don't want to spoil for readers of the book. And he goes back, and they still forgive him. Then he really shows that he is part of that society after that point. And he goes on a war expedition. And he's really fit again with them. But then when he goes to the Dutch trading post of Fort Orange — which is where Albany, New York is — he gets talked into believing that he's in personal trouble, the French are going to come and get him for being a traitor. And that's why he leaves them. I don't think it's a dissatisfaction with the culture that he was in or his situation with the family. It was that the French were going to attack the Iroquois. Of course, the French are stronger than the Iroquois. If they sent an army over, and if they find him living among the Iroquois, he's a goner. He's going to get the full French trader treatment, which is really unpleasant.

CO: But he liked his life with that Mohawk community, didn't he? And that sets him apart right from the beginning from so many other Europeans, who had disdain for the culture, like the Jesuits who tried to convert them, or those who just tried to wall themselves out from the Indigenous people there. How different was he from other Europeans in his relationship?

MB: Um, I read I think pretty much everything that's been written by people of that period — especially the French — talking about Indigenous people. And Radisson comes across to me as the only French writer who actually likes them, who really gets the most people and doesn't look at them as people to exploit or people to save or transform. Radisson really likes them as they are. And the ideas of race don't come through in his writing at all. He never talks about the Mohawk as being different from him. In a sort of a racial way or cultural way, he just says that they do things this way. And so he does things their way. And he doesn't struggle against it. There's nothing in his writings where he's telling them to change. And when he does go back to the French, and eventually meets up with Mohawks because there's a piece that's made almost as soon as he leaves — which is another irony of Radisson. He's always asking Mohawks he comes across, how's my family? How's my mother? How's my father? And that's how he describes them. Here's stuff to take back to my mom and dad. He never goes back to live with them, but he certainly tries to keep that connection alive.

CO: We are talking with Mark Bourrie, who is in our Ottawa studio, and he is telling us about his latest book, Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. So Mark, after he returns back to European society in New France, key to his development at this point is a relationship — a business relationship — with a brother-in-law. And, of course, we know from our studying history in high school that the rally the courrier de bois — these adventurers who opened up Canada. What was his what was his real relationship with [the brother-in-law]?

MB: Well, the way we learned about it in grade seven, these guys were trading partners. And so you think well they're kind of the same, but for an author, [the brother-in-law] is a fabulous character because he is everything Radisson isn't. So all the things I said about Radisson were positive about First Nations, positive about life in general. You can say the opposite about [the brother-in-law]. He's really sleazy. He's not an honest person in the sense of his relationships with people. He doesn't get the Indigenous people. He doesn't like the Indigenous people. He does really culturally offensive things to them. Everything from the way he looked with a great big beard when they hated beards, to carrying religious pictures around and scaring people with them, to ripping them off and lying to them. There was an expectation of generosity. These two characters were always guests of people as they travelled. They were real literally babes in the woods. So everywhere they went, they expected hospitality from the Indigenous people. And it seems to me that Radisson was always willing to pay gift with gift. But [the brother-in-law] is the guy who hides everything, and says all our stuff is gone. We don't have any axes anymore for you. We don't have any copper kettles for your wives to cook with. All that stuff is gone now. But we're hungry. That's the kind of guy he is. He's the first person to go to. When anybody wants to do anything sleazy, They then go to [the brother-in-law]. Or if they want to accuse the two of them of something, it's [the brother-in-law] that gets accused of harboring traitors and planning to make counterfeit coins that he's going to use in this sort of Col. Kurt style kingdom that he's going to set up and in what they called North Florida — which was northern Manitoba of all places [both laugh].

CO: But I mean so [the brother-in-law] makes Radisson look warm and cuddly by comparison.

MB: He does.

CO: But Radisson is no sweetheart, is he? I mean, he is befriending Indigenous people. He learns their languages for goodness sake. But, at the same time, he's after something, isn’t he? He's a wheeler-dealer. What were the two of them trying to pursue?

MB: They’re after lint. When I give lectures at university about the fur trade, I bring my dryer lint filter in, and I explain that this is what they were after, the lint from the Beaver hide, not the hide itself, not the fur for a coat, but of the underlying hair makes a fabulous lint. And if you press it and put stuff in it, you can make felt, and you can form that into a hat. And these guys were in the lit business. And it was crazy valuable. So if you think of the beaver hat, and men don't wear hats anymore, but a hat used to be the equivalent of like a watch. So if they're wearing these big flashy Rolex or they're wearing an Apple Watch or whatever, it tells you an awful lot about them. And that's the hat was it. Everybody had to have one, and they cost a lot. Even the cheap ones were expensive. So that's the business they were in was getting the raw material for the stuff. And to do it, you had to get to the place where the furs were without going through too many people that you had to pay off. So Radisson comes up with this idea. Instead of going to Quebec City, and up the St. Lawrence, and up the Ottawa River, and up through the Great Lakes, and into the middle of the continent, we'll just sail on the back door at Hudson Bay, set up on the shore. Have the Cree people come to us; they’ve got the best for us. Put the stuff in a ship, send it back. It's genius idea. The whole Hudson Bay Company was founded on that little idea. But he crushes people, and he betrays people.

CO: You’re talking about Radisson or [the brother-in-law]?

MB: Radisson too. [he clears his throat] [the brother-in-law] doesn't get as many opportunities. Radisson betrays everybody by the end.

CO: And so you mentioned Hudson Bay and the Hudson Bay Company — which is, of course, well, as much as anybody, Radisson was the founder of the Hudson Bay Company. What is it that he thought he could accomplish?

MB: I think he thought he could make a lot of money for himself. They made a lot of money on their one big trip in inland. Like, a lot of money, and then they blew it. Radisson and [the brother-in-law] were not good with money. And he didn't see himself as an investor because he wasn't of the class of people, the right kind of people, that were allowed to be investors. So he only gets one share of the company, and they kind of lose it at one point. And eventually, they forget him. So what he was looking for was basically enough money to have a comfortable living. And he was willing to let all these various dukes and earls, really famous people of their time, ancestors of Winston Churchill, ancestors of the Queen today, basically make most of the money as long as he got lots himself.

CO: But he was a middleman, right? They were making a lot of money, but it was the Indigenous people who were doing the heavy lifting. They were bringing the furs, they were doing the hunting, they were feeding them and getting them to where they needed in order to make this money, right?

MB: Yeah. So what the Hudson Bay Company was was a bunch of people who went into a coffee shop once a year, ponied up their investment to buy all these tools and things to trade. People like Radisson took it over to North America. The Native people had done all this work all through North America gathering up the furs and lugging them up the Hudson Bay. And the fur trade was always really built on the sweat equity of Indigenous people. And then the ship would come back — if it came back — full of furs. And lots of times, the ship did not come in. There's a reason why they talk about your ship coming in. And if the ship came in full of furs, they'd sell the furs. And then all these people get back at the coffee shop and divide up the profits. That was it. It’s basic capitalism — coffee shop capitalism. The Hudson Bay Company in Radisson’s life didn't have an office. They didn’t have a set of records. That was why they could forget about him all the time. He had to keep going back and saying, by the way, this is my idea, and you promised this money. And they would be like, yeah, but that was like three guys ago who ran it. We've gone through all these governors and things. And eventually, he had to sue them for this paltry little pension.

CO: Okay, they exploit him. He exploits the Indigenous people who deliver for him. It's been well-documented, but always worth repeating, the effect that Europeans had on Indigenous people. The diseases that they brought into those societies, the weapons that they delivered, the technology that that turned war into a completely different activity in North America. But was Radisson aware of the effect that the Europeans were having on these people?

MB: I don't think he really saw it the way we see it. Because when he got there, most the big epidemics had gone through — at least the ones that happened in his time. I think he mostly saw it as going to visit people, and they wanted guns and axes and pots and pans and needles and a whole bunch of things that were really useful. So I think, in that sense, I don't think he saw himself as undermining them as people. He is an inadvertent sort of player in that regard. And also, at that time, the Hudson Bay Company’s plan was not to go in and then colonize. Not to take the Indigenous people's land or take over their fur trade routes. The idea at Radisson’s point is just to have forts along the coast. And everything inland belongs to the Indigenous people. It's only later when they start getting competition from the French, and then later from the Northwest Company that you get all these forts being built inland. And so there's a cascading thing that I don't think he was clued into. But, of course, he is part of this collision between two societies. And these Indigenous groups had been devastated, one time after another after another, just by disease. The impact just of those epidemics and of the trading along the coast would have caused… well did, revolution throughout North America.

CO: This is As It Happens, and w’re listening to Mark Bourrie, whose book, Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson is shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize. And we have him in studio in Ottawa. Mark, key to knowing this whole story, which would be completely unknown, everything you're telling us about relies on the fact that Radisson himself loved to write. He loved to record his swashbuckling stories. How extensively did he chronicle his activities?

MB: Well, one of the great things about the fact that Europe was such a mess in the 1660s, was that Radisson wasn't able to get out of England for about three years. So he’s sort of stuck there. And he made friends with the King. and the King himself was a swashbuckler. Like, King Charles the Second had been on the lam for years. His cousin Rupert was a pirate. And this is a court full of former refugees. And pirates and sleazes. And Radisson was paid by Charles to basically write down the first half of his story and he did. And I think he did it in a very honest way. The only part he left out was anything about women, except one. There's one instance when a woman makes a pass at him in the Iroquois country. But otherwise, I think he's very, very candid about the things that he did. He admits to things like cannibalism and murder and stuff, which you know are sins then, sins now.

CO: But what do you make of the fact that he's [she laughs] that he’s very, very sort of prudish about describing any sexual encounters he has, but completely open to discuss his cannibalism?

MB: I think I worked it out. And the thing was that he was looking for a wife when he wrote this stuff down.

CO: [she laughs] And subtractive to a wife that he's a cannibal?

MB: Well, no, no, no. This was for the King. And the court of Charles the Second, the King would have had a lot to say about who married who and that sort of thing. I don't think he wanted to admit that he was married to anybody. I suspect that he was married to at least one Indigenous woman. You literally could not trade with some of the First Nations in the interior unless you married somebody in the group. So I think he left all that out, just decided not to put that on the table. Nobody read the stuff except Charles the Second. And then it was stolen by Samuel Peeps, so eventually it found its way into the into the world. Yeah. So it took me a while to work this so why he wouldn't mention the sexual stuff. Because Charles the Second certainly wasn't a prude. Almost all of the nobility of England, all the Dukes who aren't royal dukes are descendants of his illegitimate children. It gives you a fairly good idea of where this guy was at.

CO: But if he was writing this stuff to entertain courts, and try to get support for his adventures to return to the new land in order to make more money. Why do you trust what he wrote? I mean, wouldn't he have been inflating his role and torqueing the stories quite a bit?

MB: Um, he does and he doesn't. And when he lies, it's really easy to spot. But what I found, sort of a rule of thumb for me, was that when he's talking in detail about something, he's telling the truth. And when he just mentioned something in passing, there's a pretty good chance he's lying. So when he talks about his trip along Lake Superior, he talks I went to this beach, and then there was a cliff, and then there was a cave, and then there was this and that. And I’m like, yeah, I've seen all that stuff, that's definitely there. But then when he says I then I went from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay and I came back. And he says that in about two lines. And I’m like, no, you didn't. You would have mentioned the rivers. You would have certainly mentioned the bugs because he didn't like bugs. He always complained about them. And lord knows, but in the Hudson Bay Basin, there's an awful lot of bugs.

CO: [she laughs] Oh yeah.

MB: Yeah. So he doesn't mention the weird topography of the north shore of Lake Superior with the flat top sort of desert hills that are there, which he would have said something about if he'd actually seen them. And then I found that he had this map, and it was it showed James baby right next to Lake Superior, and I went, oh, that’s it. He thought that it wasn't very far, so he could say that he just went and came back. So I mean it was easy to spot that one.

CO: Did he get any kind of recognition for his efforts? I mean, now we have as you mentioned there's the Radisson hotel chain. I think there's a Radisson county in Minnesota. There is a Coast Guard ship named after him in Canada. Films have been made about him. But did anyone recognize in his final days, was he celebrated for anything he had done?

MB: No, no, he had to sue to get his pension. He was he was forgotten. The reason we know about him. And it's just like the rest of his life, everything hangs on a feather tied by a thin thread to another feather. His writings survived because Samuel Peep stole them. That’s out of the Admiralty. And then he stashed with his papers. And then the in the 1800s, somebody was going to make wallpaper out of them. And they saw this incredible story, and it was picked up by American historians and published. So his actual English writings the first go around were published about 130 years ago in the United States. And, at that time, Minneapolis was forming, and they were looking for a founder. And they said, oh, that's our founder, Radisson. So the historians of Minnesota embraced Radisson. And then somebody named a hotel in Minnesota after the founder, Radisson. So that it becomes the hotel chain. So we have all this memory of Radisson simply because this one document didn't get wrecked 130 years ago.

CO: At the same time, we studied him in school. You mentioned Grade seven. I remember also in high school, we had a bit more on the courier du bois. But they were regarded, Radisson was regarded as an a heroic character, certainly romanticized. How do you see him?

MB: Um, when I talk to people about this, I say when you look at all the images of Radisson and all these other courier du bois, they're always standing in a canoe. And the Indigenous people are paddling. And there they're looking forward into the… you know, they're exploring, right? First off, if I get on a train from Ottawa to Toronto, I do not discover Bellville on the way, right? It's there, and everybody in Bellville knows it's there. And that's the way it was with these so-called explorers. These are people who their real skill is survivability, and the ability to ingratiate themselves with people who do all the work. It's how people from Europe first got into the interior of North America. And I suppose it's like prying out the first sardine in a sardine can. It does open up everything that's next. But they're no more heroic than anybody else. They're basically business people. They’re very brave people, and they're really interesting people. But to say that there's some sort of greatness to them, not more than anybody else who's sort of sticking their neck out.

CO: Your book is shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, and congratulations for that.

MB: Thank you.

CO: And we're going to hear results very soon. But what does that mean for you to get that recognition. I know this was quite a labour of love. [she laughs] This was hardly a lovable character to be exploring, but how do you how do you feel about being shortlisted?

MB: Actually, The two books I wrote before, one was on ISIS propaganda. And the other was on Stephen Harper's information controls. Radisson was a delight after that. So I'm like fine, this is really nice. And then all of a sudden, I get this picture of Margaret Atwood with my book. And I thought, wow! This is really something. It's a great pat on the head for me and the book. You just never know. I mean writing a book is such a solitary thing, and then you come out of your little hidey hole, and you have no idea how it's going to go, whether people get to love it or hate it, or even worse, not even know about it. So this prize has made a big difference in in that way. I'm going to miss the prize. It's the last year for it.

CO: And also, you know that someone wrote in The Globe Mail just recently questioning are there too many book prizes in Canada. Now, this one, which was one of the very few for non-fiction writing in Canada, now Noreen Taylor says it's reached its goal of promoting Canadian non-fiction. So what does that mean for writers like yourself? I mean, you're a lawyer. Keep your day job. But what does it mean for you?

MB: Oh, we could do a whole show on this. First of all, how many people have heard of my book? You cannot hear about Canadian books anymore. The system of actually getting the word out about books in Canada is so broken down. We don't have print media that's doing anything anymore except for a handful of writers. We have the CBC. And that's it. How many people have heard of my book really? It's a Canadian bestseller, but we still didn't sell enough that you could say that everybody in the town of Collingwood equivalent people had a copy of it.

CO: And you can't make a living in this country on books.

MB: Well, yeah, most people never could. And I've sort of learned to live with that. But the people like us — the five of us who are nominated for the Taylor Prize, who all did research books about other people — that's gone. We won't have that prize anymore. So Writers Trust and the Governor General's Awards are given out now to people who write memoirs. And there are academic prizes and academic jobs, which is really where accounts for the academic writers. But in the middle are the people who are doing what you've used to do or still do with your books. Would I do. What Robin Doolittle does. What Peter Newman does. What Pierre Burton did. Which is basically telling stories about Canada through researched, publicly-accessible history, and nobody cares. And nobody wants it. Nobody wants to pay for it. Nobody wants to give prizes for it. Nobody wants to give grants for it. So what the hell does that mean about this country? And how do we have a country that has a story, a life story, if the only way books like this get written is by me practicing law into the night so that I can afford to write these books? And if you want to look for a patron of the literary arts in Canada, take a look at my wife. She's a federal lawyer. And if it wasn't for her income, I couldn't write. And that's the only way that this works.

CO: You're not alone. That's played out across the country for everyone who's listening to this who’s writer knows your story.

MB: Yeah, and everybody thinks that the writers of Canada are subsidized with these big fat government grants. The writers of Canada are the people who are paying for Canada's identity.

CO: Just back to Bush Runner, What do you what do you want people to take away from this book? Now that possibly this prize gets you a bit more attention, people are talking about it. What do you want to take away from it?

MB: Okay. In terms of a personal thing, I love characters. I did journalism for a long time. I met all kinds of fabulous characters. And I think it's fun to tell the stories of characters. And it's fun to read the stories of characters. It's why we go to the movies, right? And there are these people who live these lives. You know Christiane Amanpour, or somebody like that, who've just seen everything. And Radisson was one of those people you just come across them from time to time. And they have good things about them. And they have bad things about them because they're human beings, and we're all like that. And telling a person’s story that way is a lot better than just looking for heroes and villains.

CO: And sometimes, a good yarn is just a good yarn.

MB: Sometimes a good yarn is a good yarn, yeah.

CO: Mark, good luck with the prize. Good luck with the book. And thanks for talking to us.

MB: I'll buy you lunch if I win.

CO: [she laughs] Okay, I’ll hold you to that. Bye-bye.

MB: Okay, bye.

CH: Mark Bourrie is the author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. It's published by Biblioasis — and has been shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize. That award will be handed out March 2nd.

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February 17, 2020 episode transcript

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