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The AIH Transcript for November 11, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

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

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Over and out. A pro-democracy lawmaker is expelled from the Hong Kong legislature, prompting today's mass resignation of his colleagues. He says he pledged allegiance to one country, two systems, and he'll keep fighting for that.

CH: Fight or flight. A man who runs an airline in Newfoundland and Labrador tells us why he believes Canada's national carriers deserve our understanding — and a big bailout.

CO: Killer bee killed. Experts in Washington state say they destroyed a so-called “murder hornet” nest just in time — after finding dozens of future queens.

CH: Found in translation. For decades, Canadians have receded “In Flanders Fields” to mark Remembrance Day. And now, a Dakelh translation of the poem helped celebrate Indigenous veterans who were written out of history.

CO: Face riffed. A Spanish painting conservator is down in the mouth about her country's latest botched restoration: a statue that began as a beautiful woman, and now resembles a cartoonish Donald Trump.

CH: And... when Irish ears aren't smiling, the trailer for a new Hollywood movie set in Ireland is not getting great reviews across the pond, where Irish critics are speaking poorly of how the poorly accented actors speak.

CH: “As It Happens”, the Wednesday edition. Radio that suggests if it ain't brogue, please fix it.

Part one: Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker, murder hornet queens, Spanish art restoration

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker

Guest: Dennis Kwok

CH: Hong Kong's pro-democracy lawmakers took a stand today. Then they walked out. All 15 lawmakers resigned en masse after four of their colleagues were disqualified and expelled from the Hong Kong legislature. The expulsion came just after China's parliament voted to allow the Hong Kong government to expel legislators who are deemed to be supporting independence. Dennis Kwok is one of the pro-democracy lawmakers whose disqualification led to the mass resignation. He is a former Civic Party member of Hong Kong's Legislative Council. We reached him in Hong Kong.

CO: Mr. Kwok, what did it mean to you to see all your colleagues resign in solidarity with you?

DENNIS KWOK: I'm very moved by their principal stance. I believe they want to show the Hong Kong people that this is no longer an institution which is worth them serving in. And they would like to take a principled stance. And I welcome that.

CO: This is because — they did this because — you and the three others were going to be we're being kicked out of the legislature. Can you tell us why Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, was going to have you and the others removed?

DK: You know, I find this very strange because back in August after they cancelled the election, they said that they want to extend the term for one more year. And, you know, now all of a sudden they say, oh, we cannot serve anymore because of X, Y and Z. You know, I just cannot read what is in their mind and what they are thinking about.

CO: But can you tell us what reasons did Ms. Lam give you when she said that you were to be removed?

DK: Oh, because they say that we have breached your oath. They are saying that we have, you know, not uphold the basic law, which is the constitution of Hong Kong. But I'm sorry, but I don't find those reasons convincing at all. I think we have to uphold the basic law. We have tried to make one country, two systems work. And I'm very sorry that things have turned out the way it is. But we have done nothing except uphold the basic law throughout my tenure.

CO: So the claim was is that you would not pledge allegiance to the city and its laws, and that would include the National Security Law. But the National Security Law appears to be in conflict with the Basic Law, which is the one you believe is the one you're responsible to pledge an oath to. Is that right?

DK: Yeah. When I took the oath of office, I pledged allegiance to allegiance to the Basic Law and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. And I still do up to this very moment.

CO: And the Basic Law calls for one country, two systems. And that is what you are faithful to?

DK: Exactly. One country, two systems, not one country, one system.

CO: Now, we've seen a lot of moves by Carrie Lam and the Chinese government recently to limit opposition voices. What does this latest decision concerning the four of you, what does it signal to you? Because we've spoken with other pro-democracy activists and lawmakers in Hong Kong who believe that this is each time, each stage of this has been the death knell for democracy in Hong Kong. What does this now represent to you?

DK: I think this represents that they can no longer tolerate opposition voices within the Legislative Council, which is supposed to be an independent institution. Its duty and function was to keep a check and balance on executive government, and I think they are no longer seeing that way. I think they are seeing that from now, at this point onwards, the executive branch of the government has the power over all others, which is a very sad development for Hong Kong.

CO: With the resignation, though, of these 15 pro-democracy lawmakers within the Hong Kong legislature. Does that mean that really the entire legislature is now dominated by Beijing-supporting legislators?

DK: Correct. That is the position.

CO: And what is the peril of that, given the laws that they could pass in favour of Beijing?

DK: Well, you know, they could pass any laws they want anyway. I think the Hong Kong people has no illusion whatsoever that this legislature would be independent lawmaking body. I think that is definitely over.

CO: You're a long way from the elections since they have been postponed — they say because of COVID. So what are the possibilities here for any kind of representation from pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong?

DK: You know, I think a lot of my colleagues will go back to the local districts and the local communities to work from the grassroot levels. I think the Hong Kong people's aspiration for a free society and a society based on the rule of law will not diminish in any way.

CO: It won’t diminish, but do you feel a fatigue? Are you worried that --

DK: Oh, yes.

CO: OK.

DK: I mean, this is a very difficult time for us, especially for those of us who love Hong Kong as it was, a free society governed by the rule of law. You know, we, of course, feel very sad about this.

CO: And what will you do personally? I mean, you were born in Canada. A lot of activists, a lot of pro-democracy people are considering coming to Canada or going abroad because of concerns of being arrested. And a lot of Canadian people in Hong Kong are considering coming home. Do you think you'll stay? Do you see a point when you might have to depart?

DK: You know, no one likes to leave their hometown, right? I was born in Canada, yes. But I grew up in Hong Kong. Like many fellow Canadians, we've grown to love the place very much. And, you know, Hong Kong is home to 300 thousand Canadians. I have a lot of friends who, you know, of course, they’re thinking about leaving, but they don't want to leave because this is home. And it's very hard to leave your hometown.

CO: Do you have Canadian citizenship that would help you to come to Canada if you had to?

DK: I have given up my Canadian citizenship because of this job.

CO: So you don't have that protection?

DK: Sadly, I don't, no.

CO: Mr. Kwok, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

DK: Thank you very much.

CH: Dennis Kwok was one of the pro-democracy activists who was expelled from the Hong Kong legislature. We reached him in Hong Kong.

Murder hornet queens

Guest: Chris Looney

CH: Last month, a high-stakes extraction mission took place around Blaine, Washington, near the British Columbia border. Local government experts descended on a tree, where they came face-to-face with...Asian giant hornets. They're better known by their bone-chilling nickname: "murder hornets." The team was able to collect hundreds of living specimens that day, as they destroyed the nest. And this week, we have a better sense of what exactly they found. Chris Looney is a scientist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture. We reached him in Olympia.

CO: Chris, do you think of anything other than murder hornets these days?

CHRIS LOONEY: [chuckle] I do, but it takes work. I have been dreaming about these little crazy things for months now, chasing them, being chased by them, having them crawl around in my house. Yeah, it's time to move on to a different animal.

CO: [chuckling] But now people have been awaiting your report on this. What have you learned about these creatures?

CL: I think we learned, preliminarily, that they were more than capable of establishing a nest. The nest looks like it was on the normal trajectory for the species and that it was about to start dispersing lots of new queens who hopefully, from their perspective, would mate, overwinter and then establish new nests next year. And then the maybe the surprising thing we learned, although not, you know, unexpected, but it was a little bit unexpected, was that there were nesting in a tree. We were really hoping they would be in the ground because that’s much less complicated. But going back to the literature, about 20 per cent of the time, they might be in trees. So, you know, there you go.

CO: And how many queens did you find?

CL: There were 76 living queens crawling around in that nest. And then there were another 108 pupae. And it seems like almost all of them were queens as well. So potentially up to 200 queens dispersing from there.

CO: If they had done that, and you've taken that nest out, would they each have established a new colony?

CL: Certainly not. We can't really predict how many would have. But based on data from their native range, mating success can be as low as 30 per cent. So, you know, what is that... 140 right away that don't get to start a new nest. And then that 30 per cent that does successfully mate has to overwinter. They have to not be killed during the overwintering or be stepped upon by somebody. So there are a lot of things that would lead to a lot of attrition. So only a subset of those would have established nest. But it's still a subset too many.

CO: And we've also learned that they simply do not respect international borders. And they are, of course, being identified in British Columbia as well, in Canada.

CL: Indeed. You know, and we're actually not sure where all of the populations we're dealing with came from. An additional genetic analysis suggests that there might be two introductions, the one on Vancouver Island from Japan and the one in the United States from Korea. But those were based on pretty thin data. It may turn out that they really, really all came in through a major port. We just don't know.

CO: And what is so troubling about these particular hornets?

CL: The most immediately troubling thing is that we know that they are honeybee pests. They are predators of honeybees. And given the right circumstances, they can completely obliterate a beehive relatively quickly. We don't know what the other ramifications they might have for our ecosystems. We don't know if they would turn out to be an invasive species that would change the way ecology functions here. It's really hard to predict that. And the safest bet is to simply do our best to keep them from establishing.

CO: But given that honeybees are already struggling for many reasons, some of which we don't know, this is pretty serious for that species, isn't it?

CL: Potentially, right? Yeah, why add one more thing for honeybee keepers to deal with? You know, they probably won't rise to the level of environmental pollution or parasitic mites or pathogens. But, you know, we could be wrong. They could just go to town and feast like crazy on the relatively large apiaries we have in a lot of North America.

CO: How difficult is it to actually find these nests?

CL: That was really challenging. It probably was the most challenging part of this entire process. In both British Columbia and Washington state, we are not confident that we have tools that are really good at detecting them at low densities. So we’ve saturated the landscape with traps, but the traps are essentially mimosas hanging in a tree. There's probably lots of other things that could attract the hornets. We relied on public reports and that's what actually led to this. But that was just the first step of actually finding a hornet. Next, we have to figure out where does that hornet live? This is an animal that can forage easily eight kilometres. That's pretty far to run across the ground after a thing. So we used these radio tags and it turned out that they worked, but it was touch and go until we were positive.

CO: And I understand some of the high tech equipment you were using included dental floss?

CL: [laughing] Exactly. Refined by years of hygiene. You know, we had to choose between gluing a tag to the wasp and gluing is certainly something that is done with lots of insects. It didn't seem to work very well for us. And then there was some concern that it might interfere with the flight dynamics of the animal. The other option was to tie it, which they've been using in the United Kingdom, in Europe quite, quite successfully on this other species. We wanted a string that would kind of have high friction. And so that's why I ended up choosing dental floss. I think next year we'll use Teflon thread, which is a little bit more robust, equally friction-laden, I suppose, and hopefully harder for a wasp to chew off.

CO: OK, that's a little unknown trick. Now, there's a picture of you from last month when you were destroying the nest. You’re wearing quite the kit there. Can you describe that suit? Looks something like a scuba suit, something like a spacesuit.

CL: I'm going to go with spacesuit. So the wasps, these hornets have a stinger that is a lot longer and stronger than your typical yellow jacket or honeybee. So they will go right through typical beekeeping suit. Our safety team ordered these kind of special wasp-proof suits from Amazon, it turns out. And they were thicker and have these like two layers of mesh that are designed to maybe lock the stinger up. I mean, basically taking every precaution we can to avoid being injured or stung while we're dealing with these nests. They were horrible. I mean, they were uncomfortable and restricted movement. They look ridiculous. And no offence to the suit designer, I felt very much like I was in a B science fiction movie. [CO chuckles] But they did the job. We didn't get stung. [chuckling] So we are looking for something that's a little bit more fieldwork friendly than those.

CO: Huh, well, we spoke with a British Columbia top beekeeper, who said that these hornets are getting a bum rap by being called murder hornets, that they really were not likely to kill people, that that's something that is being exaggerated. Would you agree with him?

CL: Yeah, he is absolutely right. The risk is real for people that are allergic or people that are unlucky enough to fall into a nest and have angry hornets sting them before they can get away. But for the vast majority of us, we will never have to worry about that.

CO: Chris, it’s good to talk to you. Thank you.

CL: My pleasure.

CO: Bye.

CL: Take care.

CH: Chris Looney is an entomologist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture. He's in Olympia, Washington.

[Music: Horns!!!]

Spanish art restoration

Guest: Julia Betancor

CH: Look out, Monkey Jesus. Things are about to get ugly... uglier. If you need a reminder of what I mean by "Monkey Jesus" — back in 2012, a woman in Spain tried to restore a fresco of Jesus Christ. But in the process, she turned his divine visage into something distinctly simian. Fast forward to this week — and let's visit the town of Palencia, Spain, where a statue on an ornate, 20th-century building depicts a smiling woman surrounded by livestock. At least that's what the statue used to depict. Now the face looks like... a piece of swiss cheese, or Mr. Potato Head, or like your kid's really bad finger-painting of a face. Julia Betancor doesn't know what to think. She's an art conservator in Madrid. We reached her there.

CO: Julia, how did you react when you saw this news again of this botched art restoration?

JULIA BETANCOR: I mean, this is like somebody like a handyman or handywoman, whatever, trying to figure out how to replace something or whatever.

CO: OK, so just for people who can't... because it's radio, they can't see it. But the original is a sculpture in stone of a smiling woman next to some animals. But now it appears to be some people say it looks a bit like Donald Trump, or it might be the creatures from Star Wars, [JB laughs] or a cheese-induced nightmare, someone said. [laughing] how would you describe the face of this creature?

JB: What I have to tell you, because I was following a little bit this news, I was talking with people around, so this intervention was made ten years ago. This is not a new thing.

CO: Huh, so nobody noticed it until now?

JB: Sadly, that's the funny thing. [both laughing] And suddenly, appears a funny face from Trump. So I think it's just to try to be on the news.

CO: So it can't be modelled on Trump because it's from some time ago. But it looks a lot like a cartoon character, doesn't it?

JB: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, maybe the handyman who was working in the top of the ceiling has a problem and he rebuilt as he knows. So maybe underneath, you can find the proper one, or I don't know, maybe he was drunk, or who knows? [both chuckle]

CO: OK, but this is yet another example, right? We covered the story back in 2012 when a woman decided she was going to help restore this face of Jesus Christ in Borja. Most people say it looks, well, it looks like the face of a monkey, not the face of Jesus. And so there seems to be a trend toward these cases of botched restorations.

JB: What we thought about this restoration that is not a restoration. This is like a bad intervention from somebody who has not skills and capacities because this woman did it with her best intentions, this woman, Cecilia, who became famous, did it. And at the beginning, she was really embarrassed. But now, she's more famous in Borja. So everybody wants to do the same. I mean, we have plenty of art pieces. Our cultural heritage buildings, institutions, you know, we grow up underneath. We have a Roman or Greek periods. So for us, it's normal. It's quite easy to have access to art pieces.

CO: And as you point out, what happened with the “Monkey Jesus” as it's called, 50 thousand people went to visit that church. And now they have key rings, and T-shirts, and teddy bears, and mugs. And they made a lot of money off of this bad restoration. Do you think that's why there are so many of these now, that people are trying to attract tourists to see bad restorations?

JB: Yeah, it's a phenomenon. I mean, it's a unique moment. And after that, everybody want to emulate. And like you mentioned before, you know, everybody want to do the same.

CO: There's so many of them you mentioned around everywhere. But in Spain, you've got all these efforts to restore your wonderful antiquities. They paint over the statues, sculptures with garish colours. What does that mean for you? Because you are a serious restorer. What do you make of the fact that there is all this bad restoration?

JB: It's a matter of education. It's a matter of respect. It’s a matter of the people who really have, I mean, the power and management of the institutions. They don't want to pay properly the professionals. You know, it's easier to be somebody who has some kind of skills than pay a proper one. But it's like if you want to go to that doctor or like a chairman, you know, if you pay with peanuts, you have monkeys.

CO: And what are your own personal experiences with these restoration's? What's the worst example you have seen of a bad restoration?

JB: So maybe the worst thing that we saw are when the people remove their old painting layer when it's totally irreversible, or maybe when you see people trying to cover or treat the structure of the object itself.

CO: And what about, is there an example of a horse painting or a horse that is --

JB: Yeah, that was the worst, maybe. I think it was from the I don't know if it was from the 17th or 18th century. And this lady took it out at the studio and she removed all of the stone or the good. So what she does is a totally irreversible, and that is the worst thing when you kind of go back.

CO: And so what did it look like when she was finished?

JB: Like, you know those things that goes around and the kids go up?

CO: Oh, Like a merry-go-round, like the horses carousel Sacto.

JB: Carousel! Exactly! [chuckling] that’s the name.

CO: Well, Julia, we'll leave it there. And I hope that you're able to get involved in a few more of these restorations so they don't go bad again. But there's good to talk to you. Thank you.

JB: Thank you very much indeed. Have a good day.

CO: You too. Bye.

JB: Bye, Carol.

CH: Julia Betancor is an art conservator in Madrid. That's where we reached her. And to get a good look at this unfortunately restored statue in Palencia, Spain, go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

Bad Irish accent movie

SPEAKER: [A woman yelps] Tell me you like my hat.

SPEAKER TWO: You're not wearing a hat.

SPEAKER: Say it! So you like my hat!

SPEAKER TWO: [yelling] You're not wearing a hat.

SPEAKER: [yelling] Say it. Why can't you say it? Why can’t you say you like my hat? Why can't you say you like my suit? I’ve earned this.

CH: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, in the movie "Far and Away". A film that was intended to be an epic, but is remarkable only for the epic failure of Mr. Cruise's Irish accent. It's probably still the worst in film history, by at least a shillelagh's length. But the accents in the newly released trailer for the upcoming movie "Wild Mountain Thyme" have still left Ireland reeling — in a manner of speaking, and because of a manner of speaking. The movie stars Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, and Christopher Walken. But you could say — and I'm sure everyone involved will say — that it's like Ireland is another character in the movie?

SPEAKER: Welcome to Ireland

[Music: Quaint folk music]

SPEAKER: Once upon a time, there were two farms, the Muldoon farm where Rosemary lived, and right down the road was my farm, where my son Anthony asked his thorny question at the stars.

SPEAKER TWO: Why did you make me so?

SPEAKER Rosemary Muldoon, [a horse cries in response to a whip crack] we started with love.

SPEAKER THREE: With these green fields, and there’s us, whatever that is. It holds me here.

SPEAKER THREE: Oh, when he says those things.

CH: You get the idea. And of course, that's just the trailer. The whole movie could be fantastic. But so far, the response from Ireland is not promising. The Irish Embassy in the U.S. tweeted, diplomatically, "To be fair, Irish accents are hard (we struggle with them at times)." Less diplomatically, Irish Times film critic Donald Clarke wrote, "What in the name of holy bejaysus and all the suffering saints is this benighted cowpat?" And the Dublin Airport Authority tweeted, "There's fashion police, grammar police, we even have airport police. Is there such a thing as accent police? If so somebody better call 'em." Tough criticism. Especially since Jamie Dornan is actually Irish. But among the hundreds of critical, mocking tweets, one stood out as especially damning: Dublin's National Leprechaun Museum tweeted, "Even we think this is a bit much."

Part two: Airline bailout, Austrailia new mammals

Airline bailout

Guest: Patrick White

CH: Ottawa is heading into bailout talks with Canada's airline industry. But there's one condition: customers must get refunds. Hundreds of flights were cancelled because of the COVID pandemic, and a lot of Canadians are still waiting for their money back. In the meantime, the big carriers want money to stay afloat. Business has tanked since the pandemic hit in March, and airlines are posting huge losses, laying off staff, and cancelling dozens of regional routes. That worries Patrick White. He runs a small regional carrier, EVAS Air, out of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. And that's where we reached him.

CO: Patrick, why do you think Canada's big airlines should get a bailout from Ottawa?

PATRICK WHITE: Well, Carol, it’s a really good question. And first of all, I would kind of changed a word of a bailout because it's such a negative connotation of some company that failed to do what it should have done to be successful and someone had to bail them out. But I know your question is designed around, you know, should the federal government invest in to the national airline system to protect the networks for Canadians going forward? And the answer is absolutely, they should.

CO: Bailout is the word you use when there are businesses that are in trouble and they need financial assistance, they can't do it on their own. So you don't feel that there's no way they can survive if they don't get this support from Ottawa?

PW: Carol, you know, the airlines perhaps can survive in some faction, some small piece of its former self. But the thing is, is that the national airline system, as it shrinks, will only be a shadow of its former self. So while we may have a couple of national airlines, but so small that they will fail to meet the needs of our nation when it comes to connectivity and rural connectivity across the trunk of the airports from Vancouver to St. John's.

CO: So you think that if they don't get the support, then the airline industry, the national airlines, will not survive? At the end of this pandemic, we won't see the big carriers like Air Canada and WestJet.

PW: Yeah, that can happen. And if you just do the mathematics there and see how much companies are losing per day, and kind of project out how long that can go on. So you know, where that drop-off point is, carol, and where the end becomes or where the dog brings up on the chain is hard exactly to say. But, at the end of the day, you can be assured that the national airlines cannot sustain these losses for indefinitely.

CO: Did you say where dog brings up on the chain?

PW: I'm sorry, Carol. [CO chuckles] I grew up with the dog, and so that that's coming from a real old fellow. So sometimes as the dog were getting close, he'd be running and so excited to see ya that he'd bring up on his chain. So poor analogy, Carol.

CO: [laughing warmly] I'm picturing it, so it must be a good analogy. But of course, you know what the issue is, is that a lot of Canadians think, well, why should tax dollars be going to the big carriers when they haven't bothered to refund the money that they kept when they cancelled flights during the pandemic?

PW: Yeah, absolutely. And on a personal level, I can understand people saying that and thinking that. And remember, you know, airlines failed to be the most beloved companies. I mean, we interact with them. And, of course, there's all kinds of issues that people have from delays and lost bags, and they have a long memory of that. So to some degree, our biases are to say, oh, the darn airlines. But, at the end of the day, the federal government engages with the airlines. If they want this national airline network to survive, like the other G7 countries, you know, America put in 61 billion. I think Germany did 14 billion. So, you know, if we're going to maintain the national airline standard that we've become accustomed to, then somehow or another, sure, we're going to have to bail out the network. Whether we bail out the companies, we're going to have to make sure that there's enough liquidity within the national airlines to service across the country.

CO: Right. But the other countries, though they've done a bailout, and many are saying, well, Canada is kind of late to the game in helping out its airlines. In Europe and in the United States, they are required to give those refunds to people. And now it appears that's what Canada, the Canadian government is saying, Ottawa is saying we're not going to give a bailout to the airlines unless they give up those refunds. Do you think that that's fair?

PW: Yeah, you know what? It's certainly fair for the government to make that requirement. But, at the end of the day, if the airlines and so on have to pay out X and X impacts on their ability to maintain the network, well, the government will no doubt find that right amount of money that deals with that and X as well.

CO: Just I want to ask about your own carrier, EVAS Air, out of Gander. How has business been since COVID hit?

PW: We've been extremely busy in the cargo piece of our business, Carol, and as well, of course, we operate air ambulance aircraft. And because of the reduced amount of flying in the network flying, then the charter business has picked up. So we're in a pretty good holding pattern, waiting to see what in fact is going to happen. And I have an extreme interest in the national side because we're a regional airline. We need a national airline to connect to. So if the national airline goes away, then it'll belike a puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle of hodgepodge regional airlines trying to connect. So we must have a national airline system, right? And I would really, really, Carol, if somebody is listening for the federal government, for the love of God, could you please make sure that you sit down yourself in a room with these airlines and don't come out until you have a deal? It's time to get this done, Carol

CO: And what do you worry would happen if Ottawa doesn't get it done?

PW: Oh my, Carol, don't be talking. Listen, I have knots in my gut. And I've watched this airplane business for a long time. I've been in it since I had acne and I was a youngster. Someone can get better numbers than me, but 80 to 90 per cent, or some really large number of the Canadian population live within 100 miles of the American border. Now, if you understand this aviation industry and the huge critical mass of aviation capacity that sits there in the United States, it would be like opening up a small crack in the dam. If we lose our Canadian national airline system, you open up a crack in that dam. And that capacity from the US would flow into Canada, and that will be the end of any national Canadian-owned national airline system. There's a lot of pieces to it, Carol.

CO: All right, Patrick, we will leave it there. And may your dog never bring up on its chain.

PW: [laughing] Thanks very much for your call today.

CO: Bye, Patrick.

PW: Bye-bye now.

CH: Patrick White is the head of EVAS Air. He was in Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. We requested interviews with Air Canada and WestJet, but both declined. You can find more on this story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Music: Country guitar]Turnbull news war

CH: Malcolm Turnbull is accusing Rupert Murdoch and his Newscorp media empire of culpability for climate change. Mr. Turnbull is the former Prime Minister of Australia. He blames his political demise on what he says was targeted coverage from Mr. Murdoch's Australian outlets. Earlier this week, Mr. Turnbull appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program "Q+A" alongside Paul Kelly, the editor-at-large of Newscorp's The Australian. An audience member asked Mr. Kelly about bias at the paper. Here's some of what followed.

PAUL KELLY: We have many publications that are dedicated to promoting the cause of climate change and radical action on climate change. So that's okay. Is it? It's okay to be a propagandist for one side, but if one is a critic or skeptic about some of these issues, that's not OK.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Now, what you've just what you've disclosed is the fundamental problem that the company you work for and its friends in politics, like Trump and others, have turned in this issue of physics into an issue of values or identity. Now, saying you believe [audience aplaudes] saying that you believe or disbelieve in global warming is like saying you believe or disbelieve in gravity. You've turned something that should be a question of engineering and economics into undiluted ideology and idiocy. And we are paying the price in delayed action to address global warming. And your employer, Paul, has got a huge share of the blame for this. It is a shocking legacy.

PK: I think you exaggerate the impact that we have.

MT: That's what Rupert always used to say to me. He’d say, ah, we don't have a very big audience. We're not that influential. Talk to Lochlan. Look, I've had all of that flannel for years. The reality is News Corp and Murdoch have done enormous damage to Western democracy, and in particular to the United States and Australia, and in particular on the subject of global warming. You know, we had 12 million hectares of our country burnt last summer. And your newspapers were saying it was all the consequence of some arsonists. And James Murdoch was so disgusted, he disassociated himself from the family business. Now, what does that tell you? How offensive, how biased, how destructive does it have to be, Paul, before you will say, one of our greatest writers and journalists, It's enough. I'm out of it. I mean, how long will you keep apologizing?

[crosstalk]

PK: Malcom, how dare you tell me what I should do in terms of my career.

MT: I'm asking you... I'm asking you to speak to up.

PK: You’re lecturing me.

MT: I am lecturing you, yep.

PK: About what moral position I should take.

MT: Yep, how dare you do it. I dare to do it. And I'm saying to you, Paul, it is about time that people that work for the Murdoch organization speak up and say publicly what they say privately, speak up and do what James Murdoch had the courage to do and clearly too many of the employees do not.

[clapping]

CH: That was part of an exchange between former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Kelly, the editor-at-large of The Australian, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program "Q+A".was part of an exchange between former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Kelly, the editor at large of The Australian on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program. Q A.

[Music: Ambient]

Australia new mammals

Guest: Kara Yougentob

CH: If you imagine a cross between a flying squirrel and a possum — with maybe a dash of Ewok thrown in — you might be able to picture the greater glider. The hollow-dwelling, tree-top loving marsupial is one adorable creature. But researchers recently discovered it's actually three adorable creatures. All this time it's been believed that there was one kind of greater glider when, actually, there are three. Our greater glider knowledge has been tripled due to the work of researchers in Australia -- though, truth be told, the discovery was a bit of an accident. Kara Yougentob is an ecologist at The Australian National University. We reached her at home in Canberra.

CO: Kara, how did two entire species of these creatures go unidentified for so long?

KARA YOUGENTOB: That's a really good question. We actually knew that there were greater gliders there the whole time. We just didn't know that they were different species. We thought that they were all one species with potentially two subspecies. But it wasn't until a Ph.D. student named Denise McGregor, who I’m co-supervising, undertook a study to look at relationships between body size and climate. She was testing something called Bergmann's Rule, which says that animals in other places tend to be smaller. And we thought the greater glider would be a great species to work on this question with because we thought it was all one species and it had a huge distribution and very big differences in body size, which in hindsight probably should have indicated more than we thought it did. So she went and she collected some animals from the far northern extreme of the distribution and also from the south to take some measurements. And she also took small tissue samples. She didn't hurt the animals, but when she caught them, she could see that they looked very different. And she sent the tissue samples away. And sure enough, they were profoundly different. And so she came to us with this information and we were just like, OK, we need to rethink this. [laughing]

CO: OK, so are they just different species because they are just different sizes? Or do they look different?

KY: They do look different. The ones in the south are about twice as big as the ones in the north. And the central species is somewhat intermediate. Their ear shapes are so different. And their fur is slightly different. So the ones in the south, they kind of look like Persian cats. They're super fluffy, kind of long, thin wispy fur. And then the ones up north have a much denser, shorter fur that is a different colour, again, from the ones in the south. And the ones in the south come in different colour more, so they can be all black or black or white, whereas the ones up north appear consistently kind of this shimmery brown colour.

CO: All right. So it may be more difficult for a layperson to tell the different species of great gliders. But I'm sure to a great glider, it’s pretty clear who is in the family and who isn't, right?

KY: Yeah, I think that they definitely know. [chuckling] And they probably have other differences in their behaviour and things like home range that we're just starting to learn now through that PhD student who did some of the first studies to look at differences in home range and landscape use between the northern and southern species. But we still know almost nothing about that central species. So at the same time that we were working out that the animals in the north and the south weren't the same, a separate group of people put out a new edition of “Gliding Mammals” — a book that talked about different species of gliders in the world. And they proposed, based on the conversation they had with someone who'd been spending their life studying museum specimens that there are actually three species. But there had been no published evidence at that point to support or deny that claim. And they gave a location where they thought the third species might be. And our PhD student saw this and said, can I go there? I want to see what's there. We were like, absolutely, go there. And so she went there and she caught some of those animals. She took very small tissue samples that didn’t hurt them and then released them again, sent that away for genetic analysis and that was indeed the third species of greater glider. So they were right. So we essentially were able to test the proposition that there were three species and there were.

CO: OK, so why does it matter that there are three species of greater gliders?

KY: Well, the one species of greater glider that we knew about for so long, it has been experiencing some alarming decline. It used to be one of the most abundant arboreal mammals in Australia. And over the last 30 years, in places where it was being studied closely, it’s experienced declines in the order of magnitude of like 80 per cent of its population. So people are really concerned about this animal. And then the fire season happened last year, which you might remember was just horrendous for Australia, and, you know, it was the worst that the world has ever seen. And it burned huge areas of forest all along south-eastern Australia. And so we were worried about that animal. When you think that it has a distribution that goes all the way up north to the tropics, essentially, you're thinking, well, at least there's some of that animal's habitat that wasn't impacted by fire and, you know, there's less developed areas over there, maybe it can hold on. But when we found out that that was indeed a separate species, all of a sudden the conservation concern is amplified because we know that it doesn't have that large distribution that we thought it had. And most of its habitat has been impacted by fire, as well as logging and development. And it's also sensitive to climate change. So recognizing that there's multiple species, each with a smaller distribution than previously assumed for the single species lets us know that we need to get our act together and do something to make sure that we can keep these guys around in the future.

CO: What is it you like so much about greater gliders? I mean, the name sort of gives away some of what they're capable of doing. Just describe these animals.

KY: They are intensely cute. They look like something that Jim Henson, the late puppeteer, would have created. They're like little Muppet Furbies. They're super chill, calm animals. You know, they eat a diet of eucalypt, which isn't super nutritious. So they don't have tons of extra energy. And they just seem very quiet and thoughtful because they aren't running around like mad Gremlins, like the sugar glider that most people know better, which are also absolutely adorable. But when you're trying to study an animal, if you have something dashing through the trees, it can be very hard to watch and follow, whereas the greater glider is much slower-moving and isn't going to run away when you come and stand underneath it. And at the end of the season, when the two gliders get together to make a baby glider, you often see them in the top of the tree canopy, sitting next to each other with their long tails intertwined, which is just, you know, the sweetest, kind of most romantic thing with the glider silhouetted against the night sky. And not enough people knew that they were even out there. So I'm so glad that they're finally getting some recognition because it played second fiddle to the koala for too long, and they're just as wonderful.

CO: And now we know there are three species of them.

KY: Yes! Now they're even greater. [CO laughs] So, yeah.

CO: Kara, it's super great to speak with you. Thank you.

KY: Thank you so much.

CO: Bye.

KY: Bye!

CH: Kara Yougentob is an ecologist at The Australian National University and part of the team of researchers that discovered two new species of arboreal marsupials. She was in Canberra.

Dakelh “In Flanders Fields”

Tim Cook feature

Guest: Tim Cook

CH: "Saving Private Ryan". "Letters From Iwo Jima". "Schindler's List". "Dunkirk". All among the world's most celebrated war movies. All about the same war. The deadliest in human history. And one of its most memorialized. But very few of the myriad movies, books, and stories that are told about the Second World War are Canada's stories. Despite the fact that more than a million Canadians served in that conflict. Nearly a tenth of the country's population at the time. That has long puzzled Canadian military historian Tim Cook. Why — of all its wars — Canadians have traditionally been reluctant to remember this one. The one he refers to as the "Necessary War." In his new book, The Fight for History, Tim Cook tries to answer that question — along with a number of others about war and remembrance. He recently sat down for a feature interview with Carol, from Ottawa.

CO: Tim, in your book, you have described a baffling reluctance among Canadians to recall or even own the story, the role we played in the Second World War. For you, did writing this book leave you any less baffled?

TIM COOK: It did, I think. I think I have a better sense of the ways that we remembered and forgot and then remade our understanding of the Second World War. Every book I write, and this is my 13th, I have a question that I try to answer. I wrote a book on Vimy, and it was a bit the opposite. It was, why do we still care about Vimy one hundred years later? Why is it on our twenty dollar bill and our passport? But I also thought, isn't it strange that we didn't talk about the Second World War in the same way? We didn't build a Vimy Memorial. It doesn't seem to have the same hold on our imagination. And through, I guess, years of research and thinking about this and talking to veterans and looking at our cultural products, I try to offer some clues to that in my book.

CO: But as you point out in your book, that well, and you've said this in other books, that Canada's history is in war, as other nations are, that we're not an exception to that. But more than others, the Second World War shaped our nation, didn't it? The foundation of the modern Canada was really transformed and affected by World War Two. So why do we not see that? Why is that not within the national psyche?

TC: Yeah, and I think you're right. We had one-point-one-million Canadians serve in uniform, just to remind listeners, from 1939 to 1945. That was one in ten Canadians, an astonishing contribution. Our home front production. We were a food nation that fed Britain. Our munitions, fighting around the world, contributing to what I have called the necessary war, a war that had to be won against Hitler and the Nazis and the other fascists. And yet, very quickly, we forgot about our contributions, or we stopped telling that story, and why is that? Well, we didn't do a good job in embracing our history. Other nations were doing this. They were writing histories. They were producing documentaries. They wrote novels. They had feature films. They built memorials. Canada didn't do that. We didn't do that because we were moving forward into the prosperous half of the 20th century. The war forever changed us. It saw us urbanized and industrialize. We saw the emergence of a social security net, the baby bonus, to help all of those millions of babies being born. But what we didn't do was look back and reflect upon what we had done in that terrible struggle to victory.

CO: You gave a list of ways we could do that. Other nations do it all the time with books and novels, feature films. But you mentioned also memorials. And that's really quite significant as you point out, you lay out quite well in your book how the idea of having a Second World War Memorial in Canada was resisted. And that gets into the politics of how we defined our role in World War Two, or it defined us. [soft chuckle] Why didn't we get that memorial built?

TC: Yeah. Of course, there is always a politics of what we remember, what we celebrate, what we commemorate. And of course, most of our history is left behind, and we occasionally return to it. But something like the second war, as we were just talking about, the incredible impact on Canada, well, why didn't we build a national memorial in downtown Ottawa? And in my book, I uncovered this story of veterans who came back. Of course, we had 55 thousand wounded. We had 45 thousand killed, but a million veterans were returning to their communities. And through the Royal Canadian Legion, they said we need a national memorial. Now, the government of the day, Mackenzie King's Liberals, who had taken the country through the war, were baffled by this. We had only built our national memorial, the one that's in downtown Ottawa today in 1939, and unveiled before the war. And they just couldn't imagine why we would need to build another memorial. And there was also a debate among Canadians about how we should mark the war in our communities? And Canadians overwhelmingly said we want utilitarian memorials. And these were memorials that were libraries or hockey arenas or gardens, and they were places of laughter and life to remember those who had fallen in the necessary war. And that wasn't wrong, except that the Legion and other veterans said, well, they're not sacred places. If we build a memorial tennis court, well, no one is going there to bear witness to the fallen. And they argued within several decades that these memorial hockey arenas and gardens would be forgotten. They would lose their sacred nature if they ever had them. And that's exactly what happened. And so we were left in Canada without a separate national memorial to the veterans and the service and sacrifice of Canadians and World War Two. And I uncover that in “The Fight for History”. In fact, I have a drawing and plans of the memorial that would have been built in Ottawa. And yet, never happened.

CO: But you do remind people there is absolutely an extraordinary place, probably one of my favourite places in Ottawa, which is the chapel in the Peace Tower that has the big book, the books, in fact, of those fallen who have fought for Canada and with Canada. It's an extraordinary place. It is probably one of the most profound locations in the country and so few people know about that. What is it about that place that makes it so special? And why don't we have more of that?

TC: Indeed, you're right, the Peace Tower, which itself is a memorial, of course, our parliament buildings burnt down in 1916 during the Great War. And in rebuilding parliament, we built the Peace Tower. And they housed the Books of Remembrance to this day, books to our fallen, which number over 118 thousand Canadians. And in the many wars of the 20th century and peacekeeping operations and peacemaking operations. And it is a place, I agree, that every Canadian should visit. It's very powerful. But I guess to think about it, of course, it is very much linked to the Great War. There are carvings on the walls of Vimy and Ypres and the first book, of course, was the Great War Book of Remembrance. And I would suggest that it's the same in our memorial landscape. If we think of Remembrance Day, of course, first marked in 1919 as Armistice Day, the Poppy, John McCrae's poem “In Flanders Fields”. The two minutes of silence, our National Memorial in downtown Ottawa, Vimy Overseas and Beaumont-Hamel. They're all linked to the Great War. And I argue in the book that why the Second War isn't as prominent in Canada, even though it probably should be because it changed us more fundamentally, is that the Great War, the trauma of those 66 thousand Canadians who were killed, we were struggling to make meaning of them and their sacrifice, and we built the memorials to that generation. And so really, it's fascinating how even today, even though we've added the names on local memorials, or we've added the dates of other wars to the national memorial, it is still steeped, I think, in the Great War.

CO: You're listening to the Remembrance Day edition of “As It Happens”. I'm Carol Off. I'm speaking with Tim Cook, who is the author of a new book, “The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering and Remaking Canada's Second World War”. I was thinking when I was reading your book, Tim, of something that if you remember the movie mogul from Hollywood, David O. Selznick, who said once that if there are movies to be made in Canada or about Canada, people will be sent into Canada to make them. And the idea that somehow we don't tell our stories, others will do that for us, how has the story of World War Two been written that is somehow excluded Canada from the narrative?

TC: Yeah, we haven't done a good job in telling our story of the Second World War, and maybe we could extend that to much of our history, although my book is about the Second World War. And one of the things that I have explored is how we know our history. And I'm a historian and I've written books and I wish everyone read all the books published out there. But we know that it's really popular culture often that shapes how we understand. In this case, I'll just say war. And films have a tremendous impact. And think of “Saving Private Ryan”, which just opened up a generation to understanding the experience of combat in World War Two. But, of course, Canada landed on D-Day. We were there with the Americans and the British, shoulder-to-shoulder. We bled for that victory landing on Juno Beach and pushing inwards. And yet, we're not part of that story. And if we go back a generation to “The Longest Day”, another a really epic film that shaped the memory of the Second World War, again produced by Americans telling the American story. I recount in the book how the Queen's Own Rifles, one of our storied regiments in Toronto, which landed on D-Day. When that film, “The Longest Day”, came out in 1962, they marched and had a celebration and marching bands and they went to see it as a unit, the survivors. And they came out so very disappointed because Canada was barely mentioned there. And I think we could keep rhyming off film after film, and television productions, and “Band of Brothers”, and other iconic film productions, I suppose, that that really tell the story of World War Two. But Canada has rarely been there, we have not produced the same films and television shows, and I'm aware in the book that we don't have a Steven Spielberg and we don't have the great amounts of money that Tom Hanks and others can access. And yet, we haven't tried very hard. And as a result of that, for 50 years, our contributions in the Second World War were much diminished.

CO: You mentioned also just, well, besides the problems of money or resources, which hasn't affected other countries of our size, it's always been the discussion as to why Canada doesn't have more of our stories told. But you mentioned in your book, the Battle of the Atlantic, Canada's role in Italy, D-Day and the liberating of Europe. All these it's rich material, isn't it? I mean, even if you don't want to do the celebration of war, as other countries do, we have stories to tell, don't we?

TC: We certainly do. And I think that's a theme that runs through the book, “The Fight for History”, the title was chosen, of course, we all struggle over our titles, don't we? But for that one, I see it as the contested nature of history, the struggle to tell our stories, but also the fight against apathy. And it's very clear in our significant contributions, you just mentioned a few there, 100 thousand Canadians serving in Italy. Most Canadians don't know that. Six years in the Battle of the Atlantic, which kept Britain in the war, our merchant Navy veterans who were seen as civilians during the war and had to fight for their veteran status, landing on D-Day, fighting through Normandy, liberating the Dutch. These were significant contributions from Canada. And yet, I think, as you have said, we didn't do a good job in telling these rich stories. And I often wonder about the millions and millions of Canadians who have a genealogical link. And we had a million veterans who survived the war. And there are millions and millions of Canadians who have that link. And yet, even then, we seem to have done a poor job in telling our story.

CO: You do point out, though, when we do tell the story, we tend to tell the story of failure. And you give an example, “The valour and the Horror”, which is a documentary series that was on the CBC. There's so much to talk about in that. Well, we won't dwell on that saga too much, but enough to say that that was an example, and you give others of how we turn our stories on their heads and look at the worst aspects of our roles in war. Why do you think we do that?

TC: It's quite surprising, I think. The unspooling of memory, the ways that we tell our history, the stories that we focus on, this is quite unique in this book and in explaining and exploring this. And I argue by the 50s and 60s and 70s, we had left behind our contribution in World War Two by not doing the things that we've already talked about. But, of course, Canada was also changing. Our society was changing. When we thought of war in the 1960s, it was very much through the lens of anti-war and Vietnam. If we did think of conflict, it was through the peacekeeping and symbol idea. And I'm very proud of our peacekeepers. I know how hard it is to be a peacekeeper. I've talked to veterans my whole life. But by the time of “The valour and the Horror” in 1992, we had reduced our story to one of defeat and disgrace. If Canadians knew anything, we focused on Dieppe, to the detriment of, for instance, six years in the Battle of the Atlantic or Clearing of the Shell, perhaps huge campaigns. In “The valour and the Horror”, again, not to dwell too much on it was a three-part series shown in 1992, a really significant engagement with World War Two, and veterans welcomed it until they saw it. And then again, it focused on defeat and disgrace. And they were furious. They were outraged. They thought they had been betrayed.

CO: And CBC learned a great deal about what to do and what not to do in filmmaking from that. But one of the things that you mentioned in the book is when you there are movies that get made in the United States, “The Great Escape” being an example which distort the history in favour of creating these heroic myths in order to lionize the successes and even exaggerate them or completely distort them. And that Canada's tradition has been to be skeptical, to avoid that. And maybe just talk a bit about what “The Great Escape” did, and what it left out and put in. And maybe is that really where we want to go?

TC: Well, it's a great question, and one I've struggled with. Is there something inherent about Canada and Canadians that we are skeptical? That we don't want to tell our story? That we, you know, we bump into someone and say sorry. And, you know, all of those myths that we talk about. And yet, for a long time, I think one of the challenges in the Second World War, as we call it in Canada, was the way the Americans think of World War Two. And they see it very much as “The Good War” in quotation marks, a war that really showed American exceptionalism, that revealed how the United States had won the war, when in fact, we have a much greater sense of the role of the Soviet Union and now, of course, Russia in how they fought the Germans on the eastern front. But I think one of the elements here is that Canada was overshadowed. So all of those things we've talked about of not telling our stories and not building memorials and even not teaching this history is that when we did have the history, like “The Great Escape”, the Steve McQueen movie, you know, which I've seen many times with the famous motorcycle scene, and, well, there were actually Canadians at that prisoner of war camp. Canadians were involved in that escape. And yet, the film wrote them out. Another, maybe even one step further, “A Bridge Foo Far” to use another film, where not only are we not telling our story, but it's being erased by other countries. And it's not just one or two cases. It goes on and on. And when you begin to pull these together, I begin to see patterns emerge and the arcs of the story and much of it is self-inflicted. These are self-inflicted wounds.

CO: There's one story that you talk about that I think many Canadians don't know or have forgotten. It's not an extraordinary story that would be able to tell part of our history without having to celebrate or lionize war. And that's the strange story of the Nazi war criminal, Kurt Meyer, who ended up in Dorchester Penitentiary for a while before being returned. And what you describe in the story, and I want you to tell us a bit about Kurt Meyer, is how Canada, how its attitude after the war, well, that's all done. Bygones be bygones. Let's just let this slide by. Tell us a bit about that story?

TC: Yeah, well, Kurt Meyer was a Nazi general, he was a hardcore Nazi, he had fought on the eastern front throughout the war. He publicly claimed to executing women and children, men, old and young, in the terrible fighting on the eastern front. And then he and his unit, the 12th SS, moved to the western front and they fought the Canadians through Normandy. And the 12th SS was unique. And so far as they were the Hitler Youth, these were generally teenagers, 16, 17, 18-year-olds who had grown up almost their entire lives in the Nazi regime, and who imbibed that evil ideology. And Kurt Meyer and other veterans of the eastern front led them to fight against the Canadians, and they thought they would drive the Canadians back, Third Canadian Division that landed at Juno Beach on the 6th of June. There was tremendous battles on the 7th and the 8th where the Canadians were driven back but held their ground. But during that period, the Canadians who were captured as they were overrun by overwhelming forces, they were interrogated and they were executed. And we now know that 156 Canadians were executed on the battlefield. A shocking figure. And after the war Meyer’s division, the 12th SS, was annihilated during the course of the war, largely by the Canadians. But he was captured and he was tried. And the Canadians built a very strong case against him, testing some of the new principles that were playing out at Nuremberg that commanders were responsible for the actions of their soldiers if they involved breaking the rules of law, as was clearly the case here. And in the end, a number of senior generals sentenced him to death. And then in a bizarre twist, it was overruled. And he was sent to Canada, where he lived for almost a decade in Dorchester Prison, and then was returned to Germany and then set free. And I talk about Meyer in a number of ways, but he's really a symbol of how we banished the memory of the Second World War and how the Cold War, of course, because West Germany was a part of NATO. And they exerted pressure on Canada to see Meyer released. And this too, the story of the Cold War, is another factor in how we forgot about our contributions. Because unlike after the Great War, where we had a decade before the Depression, after World War Two, Canada was moving forward into a period of prosperity. And then, of course, the Cold War that defined almost the next five decades.

CO: You're listening to “As It Happens”. I'm Carol Off, and I'm speaking with Tim Cook, and we're talking about his new book about the Second World War, “the Fight for History”. And Tim, you know, there are those who have argued that the issue because some of the things you're saying in this book have been discussed elsewhere about the national psyche, and that Canadians do not regard themselves as being a warrior nation. That we go to war, we fight war, we're courageous, but we don't celebrate the victories. We just move on. Do you think that's actually kind of the essence of this, is that we don't perceive ourselves as warriors?

TC: I think yes. And one of the interesting aspects I uncovered in this book is that our memory is always changing. And I think we understand that. What happened during World War Two doesn't change, but the meaning changes over time and each generation comes to it with a different set of ideas. And that makes sense. And in the 60s and 70s and 80s, we very much had embraced, as we've talked about before, the idea of a peaceful nation, of a nation of peacekeepers. Yes, we may have been forced to go to war at times, but we don't embrace it. We don't have warriors. Now, of course, I'll point out as a military historian, we fought six wars in the 20th century, the South African War, the Great War, the Second War, the Korean War, the Cold War, Gulf War in 1990, the Kosovo bombing mission in 1999. Of course, there's Afghanistan. The 19th century is defined by warfare. The 18th century again changes us into a British colony, Indigenous warfare before that. So we may be a country that embraces the concept of peace and peacekeepers, but we have a lot of war in our history. What I argue is for about 50 years, we've paid very little attention to what we had done and to our veterans. And then something changed, and that was the key anniversary, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. And it came just a few years after “The valour and the Horror”, that really low point where veterans felt betrayed and ignored and silenced. And they returned to Europe and surprisingly, they were greeted as liberators of old, these aged warriors who had brought freedom to the French. And in 1995, when they were welcomed back by the Dutch, it was shocking. The Europeans who had been liberated by Canadians, they had not forgotten. Even though Canadians had forgotten, and I argue from 1995 forward, we have done a better job in telling our history, in commemorating what we did together as Canadians, in bearing witness to the terrible losses. And that, too, is a part of this story over the last 25 years.

CO: Do you think that's also led to or perhaps contributed to the idea that we can fight. That we've seen in the 90s and the past two decades that Canada has been engaged through more than that decades through Afghanistan. We have been engaged in combat. We have gone and we have fought. And we have lost a lot of people in the course of those conflicts. And that maybe there is a shift in the Canadian understanding of our own world?

TC: I think so. And I think that's part of the story I tell. And you know only so well the early 1990s, where really that traditional personae and peacekeeping died, and it died in the battlefields of Rwanda and Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. And that happens during “The valour and the Horror”, and I think sets the conditions for 1994 and 1995, the fiftieth anniversary, which I then see us as really the return. And certainly, the war in Afghanistan that went on for so long and defined so many, so many lives in Canada and families and really forced us to confront, I think, some of our happy myths and stories that saw us as this peaceful nation. We were forced to go through a very difficult period there. And the stories that we tell, they obviously are impacted by the society in which we live in. And I think things have changed. I think, ironically, the 1960s generation that were pushing back against their parents, they are now often the ones out on Remembrance Day. They are the ones gathering, many of them whose parents may have served or been affected in World War Two, who have lost their parents are now bringing those stories forward. And so there's a cycle here I find interesting. And I want to make it clear to listeners that I don't believe we should or we have to write heroic history, stand behind the flag, my country, right or wrong. No, that's wrong. We need to explore the past. We need to engage and understand the good and the ill, the warts and all. But often we seem drawn just to the warts. And I think a fuller, richer understanding of our history is absolutely crucial. It helps us to know who we were and it helps to ground us in the present. And perhaps it gives us a way forward.

CO: In your subtitle, “Forgetting, Remembering and Remaking”, as we remake our knowledge, our sense of the Second World War, even our sense of ourselves on the international stage, how do you want Canada, how do you want Canadians to regard and to think about and to remember World War Two?

TC: I think it is a war that forever changed us. It's a time when Canadians understood this death struggle that was happening in the world. It's a time when English, Canadians and French Canadians and new Canadians and Indigenous Canadians came together from every part of our country to support the war effort. There were those who were left out. There were those who were prosecuted. There were attacks on civil liberties. There was reprehensible action against Japanese Canadians in the forced relocation from the West Coast. And yet Canadians contributed, served, sacrificed, bled for that victory. And I think now in the 75th anniversary, this year, 2020, this very strange year, it has been muted by COVID, as so much has. And yet, perhaps as we go forward here, we need to reflect upon what it will mean over the next five or ten years when we lose those remaining eyewitnesses to history. What will that do to our history? I suspect that some other historian or writer will look at my book and perhaps add on the next ten, 15, 20 or 25 years as our history is always changing and evolving, our interpretations clash and are contested. And yet, I think if there's one point I want to make in the book, it is it is our history. It is our job to tell it. It is our job to face the past, the good and the ill. And it is our job to teach other generations moving forward of what we did together.

CO: Tim Cook, it's good to speak with you. And thank you for this book.

TC: Thank you very much.

CO: Bye-bye.

TC: Bye-bye.

CH: Tim Cook is the author of The Fight for History, published by Penguin Random House. He spoke with Carol from Ottawa.

November 11, 2020 episode transcript

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