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The AIH transcript for July 28, 2025

For more episodes of this podcast, please click this link.

PAUL HUNTER: Hello, I'm Paul Hunter, sitting in for Nil Köksal.

TALIA SCHLANGER: And I’m Talia Schlanger, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[theme]

TS: Tonight:

PH: Not on the best of terms. A Swedish member of the European Parliament says a new trade deal between the EU and the U.S. is going to be hard to deal with.

TS: For whom the bridge tolls. After Prime Minister Mark Carney makes big cuts to tolls on the Confederation Bridge, a senator from P.E.I. who has been pushing for this move for years tells us why this should be just the beginning.

PH: You could think of it as a medical breakthrough. Faced with a staffing shortage, a hospital in Yellowknife asks doctors across the country what it would cost to get them up north for a shift in the ER?

TS: Not local, but definitely organ-ic. On the anniversary of Bach's death, we hear from a fan of the composer in Little Rock, Arkansas who's playing a special organ performance at his church tonight.

PH: Pretty songs with bite. We remember Tom Lehrer, the darkly comic musical satirist who became a voice of the counterculture.

TS: And...Surely you joust. We reach a 79-year-old jouster who showed off his skills in an international tournament this weekend in Alberta.

TS: As It Happens, the Monday Edition. Radio that's worth a second lance.

[theme]

Part 1: U.S.-EU Trade Deal, NWT Hospital Shifts, Jousting Competition

U.S.-EU Trade Deal

Guest: Jörgen Warborn

TS: When Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen announced a new framework trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union over the weekend, they agreed on one thing: it's big. Huge, even. After negotiations in Scotland, the pair agreed on U.S. tariffs on EU goods of 15 per cent. That’s half the 30 per cent import tax rate the U.S. president had threatened to implement starting on Friday.

SOUNDCLIP

URSULA VON DER LEYEN: So, I'm very much looking forward to the discussions we will have now. Our staff have done some of the heavy lifting, but now it's on us.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

UVDL: And you're known as a tough negotiator and dealmaker.

DT: But fair.

UVDL: And fair. [chuckling all around] And what is in front of us --

DT: That's less important. [chuckling]

UVDL: If we are successful, I think it would be the biggest deal each of us has ever struck. So, I'm very much looking forward to it.

DT: Sure, ever struck by anybody. That's true.

TS: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. President Donald Trump, cheering their new framework for a trade deal. But not everyone in Europe is celebrating. Jörgen Warborn is a member of the European Parliament. And a spokesperson on trade issues with The European People's Party. We reached him near Gothenburg, Sweden.

PH: Jörgen, France's prime minister has called this a dark day for Europe. Do you agree with that?

JÖRGEN WARBORN: Yeah, I would say so as well, and maybe a dark day for international trade as well. I'm not too happy with this deal. I hope that the European Commission can continue to negotiate to get something better out of this. It worries me for a number of reasons, but one of my main concerns is that I actually do not see that this is compatible with the international rules-based trade order that we have, the rules that the World Trade Organization sets up, and I think that would complicate things and trading with other partners. Of course, the U.S. accepts this, but I think we should trade a lot with other such as Canada, by the way. So, we should work much closer from the European Union with Canada to make sure that we have a rules-based trading order that has been really good for citizens across the globe the last couple of decades.

PH: I do want to talk about Canada in a moment, but just still with the EU. Do you think the EU caved? Did it give in too easily on this?

JW: So I've not been part of the negotiation. It is the European Commission that negotiates, and it's probably very hard to know the exact situation for the negotiating staff. But, of course, it is disappointing that we now will be hurt by 15 per cent in tariffs. That is not what I expected. I think that is an unfair deal. And, of course, if you take the other side, what the commission argues, of course, is that we made sure that it's not 30 or 40 or 50 per cent tariffs.

PH: Yeah.

JW: Some businesses might, and some businesses might also say it's too unpredictable. We don't know if the tariffs will be 15, or 30, or 50, or something else in the future. So, we will skip the U.S. market entirely. But in the long term, then we know that, both from experience and from theory, that in the longer term, if you have high tariffs and you protect your businesses, that means that competition will decrease. And that means that consumers once again will have to pay higher prices. So, in the long run, it's not good for U.S. either. And that's why I'm sure eventually they will stop with this tariff. Probably not under the Trump administration, but in the future, I'm absolutely certain about that. That's what we have learned from U.S. administration that has tried tariffs since before.

PH: You mentioned Canada earlier. I mean, in this country, we've been watching from the sidelines as Trump has made these deals with other countries, the U.K., Japan, and, of course, the EU. What can trade negotiators for Canada take away from these deals?

JW: I believe that Canada and EU and other like-minded countries should start to work much more together now. We have a trade agreement since a couple of years back, 2017 I think it is, the CETA agreement. And it is really time to have a look at the agreement and see where we can deepen and widen it to make sure that we have even more trade among each other. Because when it's harder and tougher to trade with the U.S., both for you in Canada and from us in Europe, then we have to find other markets to diversify our trade. And that is also, that will hurt the U.S. as well, of course.

PH: Do you think it's a done deal for the EU? Is there still time to carve out something better?

JW: Yeah, it's not a done deal. There is still things in the writing to be negotiated. It's not totally finished. And once you have done this, which we expect we'll be able to, this we will be able do in the near future, in a week or so probably, then this is only a framework agreement. And then, you start the real negotiation that might take us to a free trade agreement further down the road.

PH: I wonder, you know, there are those who would say that the way to de-escalate is to appease Donald Trump in the moment and kind of make promises for down the line and pledge, you know, spending or whatever it takes to allow Donald Trump to say that he has prevailed. And that then, everybody can move on even though things may be different down the line. Would you agree with that?

JW: You know, it's hard to tell what is the right strategy, actually. Is it this way that the European Union and the Commission has chosen, or is it a more hardliner approach, setting up tariffs against the U.S. and taking the fight with them? And, you know, honestly, I don't know, but it doesn't really feel good with this deal as it is today as a European, I have to say.

PH: Thank you, Jörgen. Very thoughtful. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us.

JW: Thank you. My pleasure.

TS: Jörgen Warborn is a member of the European Parliament. And a spokesperson on trade issues with The European People's Party. He was near Gothenburg, Sweden.

[instrumental]

NWT Hospital Shifts

Guest: Courtney Howard

TS: The process of bidding is common in auctions, in the game of bridge, and for those eyeing government contracts. Less so, in the medical system. But faced with empty shifts at the Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority asked qualified medical professionals across Canada to do just that. Or more accurately, it asked them: how much would it take to get you to work a shift in the emergency department? And doctors from across Canada answered with their bids...filling up shifts and averting a staffing crisis that had the ER at risk of closure. Dr. Courtney Howard is an emergency room doctor in Yellowknife and president of the Northwest Territories Medical Association. We reached her in Yellowknife...just coming off a night shift.

PH: Dr. Howard, before this bidding process, what were you expecting your summer in the ER to look like?

COURTNEY HOWARD: Well, I'm a locum here, because I do a lot of other work. And I had, nonetheless, volunteered for quite a few shifts in July. And looking at the schedule, there were many times where I could see my name on for a given day and nobody after me. And I can tell you that handover is very important in emergency medicine, both for the doctors and for the patients. And that was a bit of a frightening type of schedule to look at.

PH: And please explain locum. When you say locum, what do you mean?

CH: So, locum-tenant physicians are physicians around Canada who don't have a single employer, but who go to where the work is, to where it works for their schedule. I do policy work and research with other organizations, so I don't have a full-time contract here. Although certainly, contract-based physicians are the life and blood of any location, particularly here. And ideally, what we want to see is really strong, good working conditions for docs who live here on a permanent basis, who have signed up, know the community. For myself, I live and have lived for 14 years in Yellowknife, but I locum just to give myself more flexibility, and it was the locum physicians that we were aiming to get up here in this initiative.

PH: So, in terms of the staffing crisis at the Stanton Hospital, how bad is it?

CH: Well, it's been bad, and this is part of a national challenge. I was just checking with the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians today, and they estimate we're short more than 1,500 ER doctors across the country. The challenge up here is that we are the only hospital serving about 20 per cent of the Canadian landmass, so an area larger than France and Spain combined, and we just don't have the option to close.

PH: So, then comes this idea for a bidding process. Can you explain how it works?

CH: Sure. So, I really want to give the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services credit for coming up with a really interesting policy experiment. So, what they did was they said, okay, well, we're going to have two different bidding sort of periods. And they put the email with the empty shift out to our pretty extensive list of locums who've been up here before and said, hey, make us an offer for these shifts. What would it take you to give up your vacation, or maybe hand over a different shift to somebody in an urban centre where there's more docs around to then come up here to the north and see what happens? And so, there was a time-limited period where they were accepting bids, and then they sort of threw all the bids to see what would make the most sense to accept. And it turned out that we managed to fill the essential shifts in July and most of the ones in August.

PH: Is it as simple as saying, name your price?

CH: Well, that's kind of what they did. I don't think they expected giant, crazy bids. We get a thoughtful, humanitarian-minded, service-oriented group of docs up here, for the most part. We live far away. It's an underserved population, and I'm proud to say I work with some of the best doctors I've ever worked with up here. And, in fact, we get some incredible locums as well. They're people who care. So, we were mostly saying, hey, you know, sometimes it can take two days to get here from, you know, Nova Scotia. What would it, what, what's worth it to you to put your name forward for a shift? And I think that they found that they were mostly reasonable offers, and that still allowed the shifts to be filled.

PH: So, you say it worked. But I wonder if it's only a short-term work in the sense, I mean, the health authority, I think, has put out a press release saying that they weren't planning to use this in an ongoing kind of way. So, is it just a band-aid, or when you say it worked, did it?

CH: Well, I think, I view it as a policy experiment. And I think that we probably need more of those in health care because sometimes there's a real stasis and a hesitancy to try something new, especially if you're going to commit to it on an ongoing basis. And so, I think this was a really smart way to, A, fill emergency need, and also to gain some really important information about the market. So, what they're doing is using the information from the term to essentially inform the work moving forward. And I'm, as president of the NWTMA, we're moving into a bargaining round this fall, where we'll use this information as we put forward what we think could work for a permanent contract for doctors up here. And so, to have used this as not only a way to create a short-term solution, but to inform the creation of more long-term solutions.

PH: How do you ensure there isn't kind of a two-tier pay system, those who bid and have their bids accepted, and those who just get regular money?

CH: Well, I thought they did this thoughtfully. They essentially said that if a bid was accepted for a day when people were already working, they would increase the amount for those locums proportionately to the percentage increase over the regular daily wage for the accepted bid. So, the imperative for me now, as a local doctor who leads the medical association, is to make sure that this gets translated into equity for the permanent doctors.

PH: But you also underline the real ongoing problem is simply that there aren't enough ER doctors or doctors broadly in the north, right?

CH: Yeah, and the community you live in is a very important part of the overall health status of a given person. We know that primary care is really the foundation of our healthcare systems, but community-based emergency departments are really important as well. And so, that's what we want to see prioritized. I don't think that the answer is to move to ever more centralized places and big centres; we lose a lot. And we want to keep that. So, I think there's important discussions going on at the national level about, you know, how we train enough doctors quickly, what kind of models in terms of different professions adding in to all contribute and work at the top end of their scope of practice can achieve the best outcomes, so that we all can feel good about going to work in the emergency department, and also feel good about the emergency departments that our families need to come to when they get sick, too.

PH: Well, it is indeed a fascinating experiment. Thank you, Dr. Howard, for making the time for us today. Bye-bye.

CH: Bye.

TS: Dr. Courtney Howard is an emergency room physician in Yellowknife and president of the Northwest Territories Medical Association.

[‘90 movie music?]

Jousting Competition

Guest: Darrell Bossley

TS: Over the weekend, in the hamlet of Westerose, Alberta -- about a hundred clicks south of Edmonton -- there was a summer gathering. Not a rodeo, not a fishing derby, not a meat draw. Not even a picnic. No, this was something else entirely. This was the Pigeon Lake Medieval Madness International Jousting Tournament. And among the jousters was a legend in the sport: 79-year-old Darrell Bossley. We reached him in Foothills County, Alberta.

PH: So, Darrell, what's the trick to being a great jouster?

DARRELL BOSSLEY: Oh, I wouldn't know. I've never been one, but I try hard.

PH: [chuckling] What's the trick to jousting, then?

DB: It's a love of animals, a love a sport, a love of adrenaline. Dressing up in a tin suit, every young boy would like to be a knight when he grows up, or a firefighter, or a jet fighter pilot. Not excluding the girls, there's some very good lady jousters. But, yeah, it's, I'd say, the adrenaline, the excitement.

PH: And you literally get on a horse, grab a big stick, and, like, race down and try to hit the other person with it?

DB: Yeah. Basically, you've got a 12-foot-long pokey stick. [PH chuckles] You get on the horse via a ladder. And as I get older, the ladder gets higher, the horse gets shorter. But, you know, it's one of those things. But no, you're dressed in your armour, and your armour is essential because it protects you. Without it, you can only joust once and then you'd be called a shish kebab. [PH chuckles] But, You know, you're on your horse, you're in your full armour, you stand at the end of the tilt, which is the fence you run down, your squire is talking to you all the time because you can't see very much, and you can't hear very much, and you cant feel very much because of all the armour. And he'll tell you what the other guy's doing. You're watching the other fellow; when he's ready, he'll hand you the lance, you salute, which is lifting the lance up, and then you charge. And the idea is to break your lance on your opponent.

PH: It sounds brutal.

DB: No, it's not. I'm a suck.

PH: [chuckling] What's the suit of armour like? Is it like a thick, heavy, I don't know, like a suit of armour, I guess? [chuckling]

DB: No, the armour, if you look at any medieval picture, the armour is actually an exact reproduction of armour of the 14th, 15th century, to the point where my armour will study a knight, in this case Sir Fitzherbert, in 1480 England, and he looked up every scroll, tapestry, painting, and the effigy of that knight and studied his armour very, very strongly for a fair long time, then he reproduced that armour to fit me.

PH: Interesting. I bet that's part of the fun of it all, the historical accuracy.

DB: Well, all the rules are the same as well. You know, the rules, the gear, we even ride live horses. You know, it's all the same as it was. So, yeah, that's the excitement of it; you are reliving history.

PH: So, you put on this suit of armour and a helmet, you get the big three-metre lance --

DB: Three-point-six, but close, yeah.

PH: Three-point-six, forgive me. You race down, you to try to get the other guy, and you're how old, remind me?

DB: Um, just over 21, a little bit over. [PH chuckles]

PH: How much over?

DB: Uh, 79.

PH: Seventy-nine! [chuckling] Have you been --

DB: Not far over. I'm not good at maths.

PH: A smidge over. How long have you been doing this?

DB: I've been a horseman all my life, but I've only been doing this since 2012.

PH: How old were you then?

DB: I retired at 66, I retired at 65, and saw this, and that'll do me.

PH: What made you do that of all the retirement projects on Earth?

DB: While you work, and you think when I retire, I'm going to make that, when I retire, I'm going to do that, when I retire, I'm going to fix that. Then you retire, and you realize you've got three lifetimes' worth of work lined up. I teach martial arts; I specialize in weaponry, and have for a long time. I've done martial arts for 55 years. I've been a horseman all of my life, so you put weapons and horses together and this is just totally natural. And I love the adrenaline.

PH: Yeah, that's very key. So, you're in Alberta. You were in a tournament, the Medieval Madness.

DB: Yes, I was, yes.

PH: How did it go? What was it like?

DB: Well, it rained Saturday night, and made it dangerous for the horses Sunday, and Slippery. Because, you know, in principle, we do this because we want to do it, and we love it. The horses do it because they trust us, and they're asked to. So, you've got to return that trust, and if it's dangerous for the horse, well, you don't do it. You go on the principle. There's plenty of humans in the world, if they kill a few of us off, it doesn't matter, but you don't want to hurt a horse. [PH chuckles] So, the Saturday went very, very well. We did the jousting on the Saturday, but we couldn't continue on the Sunday, so we just displayed the armour, showed it to people, let people put it on, and, you know, they got a good feeling out of that.

PH: Please tell me that you won in your age category.

DB: I won in my age category, yes. [laughter behind him]

PH: [chuckling] I can hear laughter in the background. So, you're retired now. You have a black belt in karate, I think, right? You were a buffalo hunter? You were a bull rider?

DB: Yeah. But I'm actually the third-highest ranked in the world association I'm in in karate.

PH: And a blacksmith, and a horseman, as you've said, but this?

DB: Well, you can't get bored and sit around, can you?

PH: [chuckling] Well, bored is one thing, getting yourself hurt is another. Like people, like back in the old days, people got killed doing this.

DB: Yeah, well, we try to avoid it. We tried for, like, maiming, not killing.

PH: [chuckling] What are you going to do next?

DB: I was thinking of a jet fighter pilot, but I don't know how it'll go.

PH: [chuckling] Well, listen, Darrell, I don't know what to say other than good luck with wherever you take things next.

DB: Thank you very much. Take care.

PH: I appreciate it. Bye-bye.

DB: It was very good talking to you.

PH: Likewise. Bye-bye.

DB: Bye.

TS: That was Darrell Bossley, Australian jousting legend, speaking to us from Foothills County, Alberta.

[surf rock]

Part 2: Confederation Bridge Tolls, Bach Anniv. Organist

Confederation Bridge Tolls

Guests: Percy Downe

TS: If you've driven to Prince Edward Island -- or off it -- you've done it by way of the Confederation Bridge. An impressive, unmistakable, nearly 13-kilometre long expanse of concrete and steel that opened in 1997. It cost a pretty penny to build, and has been costing its users a pretty penny to use ever since. But if you're crossing that bridge this Friday, it will cost you $30 less than it does today. As promised on the campaign trail, Prime Minister Carney announced today that the bridge toll will drop from $50 to $20, along with big reductions to ferry tickets.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK CARNEY: This is big, you know, it's big money. Combined, this is going to save users approximately $100 million. And that's $100 million that can go back into our economy year after year. Savings that will get funnelled back into local businesses. That will catalyse new investment and forge deeper connections.

TS: Senator Percy Downe of P.E.I. has long advocated for the reduction or out-right elimination of the tolls. We reached him in Charlottetown.

PH: Senator Downe, you've been pushing for this for years. How did it feel today to finally hear a prime minister say the words you've been waiting for?

PERCY DOWNE: Well, it was wonderful. It's long overdue. And it's very beneficial not only to Prince Edward Island, but to Atlantic Canada.

PH: What have you heard from islanders over the years that's made this such a big deal for you? I mean, how have they been affected by the tolls?

PD: Well, the history of this is when Confederation Bridge was built, it replaced a ferry service that was somewhat reliable. But in the winter, people were caught in ice, there was delays, and so on. Everybody was pleased to get the permanent crossing, Confederation Bridge. And people understood there was a long-standing user-pay policy for federal transportation infrastructure, and islanders were quite pleased to pay a toll. What happened was, in 2015, the government reversed that long-standing policy and announced the new Champagne Bridge in Montreal, which was also owned by the government of Canada, as is Confederation Bridge, would have no tolls. And at that point, islanders said, hey, what about us? Why did we get to pay $50 to cross Confederation Bridge, a bridge that cost $1 billion to construct, and the Champlain Bridge in Montreal is over four billion, and it's free. And both bridges are owned by the government of Canada. That's grossly unfair.

PH: What was the sticky point? Like, why was this so hard to get past?

PD: Well, the reality is that for some reason, Justin Trudeau, who announced that the Champlain Bridge Bridge, which was to have tolls, would not have tolls; he announced that in the middle of the 2015 election. He then won that election, kept his promise, took the tolls off Champlain Bridge and we put our hands up down here saying, whoa, what about us? We don't begrudge Montreal having a toll-free bridge, but we're being hit with this excessively high toll. And he refused to do anything about it. Now, Prime Minister Carney, and to his credit, Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader in the recent federal election, both announced that they would take action to correct this problem. And today, Prime Minster Carney, who won the election, took that action.

PH: But what changed? Why wouldn't Carney, in your view, just maintain the status quo?

PD: Well, I think Carney and Poilievre both recognized the regional unfairness of it. Canadians were being treated differently depending where in the country they lived.

PH: Pierre Poilievre went even further, didn't he? And he said he'd get rid of the toll altogether. Is that something you'll be pushing for, or is the $20 good enough?

PD: Well, what Pierre Poilievre said is he would eliminate the toll on Confederation Bridge, and he would study the seasonal Wood Island ferry. Well, there's a problem there. When people hear study, they weren't quite clear on what that would mean. And people were afraid that would close the seasonal ferry service. The seasonal ferry service is critically important as a backup if anything ever happens to the bridge. Otherwise, we'll be like the blockage of Berlin. People will be airmailing food into us. So, we need to keep that ferry service going. And the $20 toll will allow that to happen. It reduces it from over $50 to $20, and that's a substantial drop on the bridge.

PH: So, you think people are going to be, are good with that?

PD: I think people are good. Everybody would like for it to be free, but keeping the Wood Island fairies, people understand that has to continue.

PH: So, there are some, such as Alex Whelan of the Fraser Institute, who argue that lifting the toll or even lowering it is a mistake, right? He says tolls mean that people who use the causeway are the ones who pay for it. And reducing the tolls just passes the cost of maintenance, et cetera, onto everybody instead of just the users. What do you make of that?

PD: Well, as I said at the beginning, there was a long-standing user-pay policy for federal transportation infrastructure that was changed in the middle of the 2015 election. Once that policy changed, then others were at a disadvantage, like Prince Edward Island, and that has been corrected. If there had been a toll on the Champlain Bridge, even if the toll, I think at the time the toll was to be $2 to $3, given the volume of the traffic of that bridge, as opposed to the Confederation Bridge in Prince Edward Island, that would have been fair and reasonable. But there was no toll. So, had they put, if the government had put a toll of $2 on the Champlain Bridge, I would have not had an argument, I would not have a complaint, because it was user fee, user pay. But now, when they took the tolls off, we had a strong argument that we were being discriminated against.

PH: Fairness is the basic argument, in other words. Is this a happy day for you?

PD: Very happy day. I'm pleased that Prime Minister Carney and Pierre Poilievre have both recognized the regional unfairness, and both worked to address it. And it will be good for the economy here. I meant, you know, just before the pandemic, I had somebody in the agricultural industry tell me they spent $66,000 on tolls getting the products to market. That's a competitor in Kapolei, New Brunswick did not have to pay. I heard from hundreds of islanders who, we're a small province. They have to go outside the province for medical care, particularly with their children. They were paying that $50 constantly. One parent was usually with the child in Halifax, other parent was going back and forth on weekends, and so on. It was a horrendous financial cost to those people. And that has been greatly reduced today. So, yes, it's a very good day.

PH: What do you think it's going to be like on Friday? How busy do you think the bridge will be this weekend?

PD: [both chuckle] That's a good question. I don't know. Maybe we'll have a lot of people coming in from Moncton to enjoy our beautiful beaches and food, so that would be good.

PH: Be careful what you wish for. It's going to be bumper-to-bumper traffic.

PD: Yeah, well, it's always busy in P.E.I. in the summer, and we want more people to come in February and March.

PH: [chuckling] Senator, thank you so much. Enjoy the traffic, enjoy the business on the weekend, and henceforth.

PD: Thank you. Talk to you later, Paul.

TS: We reached Senator Percy Downe in Charlottetown, P.E.I.

[nylon guitar]

Speed Camera Study

TS: People drive over the speed limit all around the world. And all over the world, people debate the merits of speed cameras. But a new study out of Toronto Metropolitan University and the Hospital for Sick Children has found conclusively that -- at least in school zones -- they can make all the difference when it comes to slowing drivers down. Dr. Andrew Howard is the head of orthopedic surgery at the hospital and the study's lead author.

SOUNDCLIP

ANDREW HOWARD: The faster the cars were going in the first place, the greater that reduction was. So, if you looked at cars that were going 20 kilometres above the speed limit, that went down by 88 per cent. So, you get rid of that excess kinetic energy, you make a much safer place for kids to walk.

JILL DEMPSEY: And that was in direct relationship to understanding that the cameras were in these school zones?

AH: If the cameras were in the school zones. We took care to measure the speed of vehicles before the cameras were there, of course. Measured with speed tubes while the cameras were there to make sure it's not a measurement error, measure after the cameras are gone to see if there's any residual effect, measure when there's a warning sign only to see a warning signs helps, and it didn't. And measure with the camera during the warning period sometimes as well. And without the camera writing tickets, the presence of box doesn't help either.

JD: I would assume that there's a direct correlation between the severity of a child's injuries in terms of the rate of speed of the vehicle that hits them?

AH: It's not just a linear curve. It's a curve that goes up. So, for a pedestrian struck at 60 kilometre an hour, the risk of fatality is 90 per cent, or more. For a pedestrian struck at 30 kilometre an hour speed, it's 10 per cent, or less. These reductions that we're seeing are actually life and death reductions in some circumstances. And when you have a child pedestrian struck by a car, a broken leg is about the first thing that happens. The difficulty is that the faster that car is going, the more that child is either going to wrap around or be projected by the vehicle. And so, as well as that injured leg, you start to get internal injuries, internal bleeding, chest and abdomen immediately life-threatening. Or if you have a strike against the vehicle, or a strike against the road further away, then that's where you get these traumatic brain injuries from which children don't always recover, you know, well and completely. And this is where prevention again comes in.

TS: That was Dr. Andrew Howard, speaking to CBC Toronto's Jill Dempsey on Metro Morning, earlier today.

[R&B]

Aggressive Seagulls

TS: The ever-looming possibility of Canada Post strikes has many people worried about the possibility that their deliveries could be disrupted...again. But some in Rimouski, Quebec are already dealing with a different kind of disruption. Their home deliveries have been paused -- thanks to aggressive seagulls. Fortunately, Vanna Willerton has an explanation for the birds' behaviour...and a theory about when it might stop. She's the executive director of the Rimouski Bird Observatory.

SOUNDCLIP

VANNA WILLERTON: It obviously can be a real inconvenience, and can be scary. Of course, gulls are quite large birds. So, for people getting swooped or attacked, and for certain people, for example, and this is happening around retirement homes, for example, that can be more than an inconvenience. Of course, as people, not everyone can walk more than a kilometre to go get their mail. But I would say for those people that this is a fairly short-lived problem. So, gulls are, of course, dedicated parents, and this kind of aggressive behaviour is being seen really in their nesting period, which is almost over. So, I would advocate for a little bit of patience. It shouldn't last more than another couple of weeks before everyone goes, all the gulls go back to the coast early August.

ALLISON VAN RASSEL: Where are they building their nests exactly, because what I'm understanding is that these are residential areas. A lot of people are living there, but the gulls are building their nest in that area. Tell me a little bit about that.

VW: Yeah. So, of course, historically, gulls would be building their nests on rocky cliffs. And as the areas that they've been used to, maybe there's some habitat loss, maybe the areas they're used to nesting in don't have as much diversity in the marine ecology, maybe loss of fish and crabs due to human activity. They're having to adapt. And so, we're seeing them come in inland a little bit more and finding refuge in places that can remind them of their normal nesting habitat, so maybe along window ledges and on roofs next to chimneys. And herring gulls and black-backed gulls, which are the most common ones in the area, their numbers have really crashed in the gulf. Especially around Anticosti and Côte Nord. The population is down to a third of what it was in the late '90s for the herring gull, and down to quarter of what it was for the great black-backed gull. They're having to kind of adapt to new situations. Here in the St. Lawrence estuary, it's actually a bit of an exception. So, here, the decline is only about 15 per cent. So, obviously, this area is a refuge for gulls in a region that's otherwise less hospitable to them.

TS: Vanna Willerton is the executive director of the Rimouski Bird Observatory. She spoke to Allison van Rassel on the Quebec CBC program, Breakaway.

[Clavier-Ubung III by Bach/Classical]

Bach Anniv. Organist

Guest: Colin MacKnight

PH: Colin, we just heard a bit of the German Organ Mass. How are you feeling about playing it in its entirety?

COLIN MACKNIGHT: You know, I'm excited and I'm also nervous. I've never played it all the way through like this. And actually, this is the longest performance that I've ever done that's all me.

PH: [chuckling] Oh no!

CM: So, I hope my, uh, my brain stays sharp.

PH: [chuckle] Have you been exercising?

CM: [chuckling] Yeah, actually, I have. And I've been trying to work up my stamina, too, playing through the whole piece, sometimes in one sitting, like I'll have to do tonight.

PH: Wow! How, or why did you choose this collection in particular to mark the anniversary of Bach's death?

CM: Well, there's a number of factors. So, throughout this whole year, I've been playing the complete organ works of J.S. Bach, which totals about 18 hours of music. And most of that I've been doing in these 30-minute lunchtime recitals every Wednesday. And then, I've taken a summer break. And I thought, well, Bach's death anniversary falls in the middle of summer. This would be a really good summer project when things are a little bit calmer in my life. And so, the exception to the 30-minute recitals is tonight's concert at 7 p.m., Clavier-Ubung III, which is Bach's largest cycle for the organ, it's about 90 minutes and it has 27 pieces. And I thought, gosh, what better way to celebrate Bach and commemorate his death?

PH: And what's the crowd like during the lunch hour performances that you've had?

CM: You know, in 18 concerts, we've had over 1,000 people come to these recitals. And so, I've been really thrilled with the response. And, actually, it's been much greater than I expected. Uh, and it's a really eclectic group. We've got everything from homeschooled kids, to retirees, to working people on their lunch break. We even have a one, um, girl who's a chorister in our children's music program. She has been to every single one of the concerts.

PH: No way! [chuckling]

CM: Yeah!

PH: Do people come up to you after? Do they, do they tell you why they came?

CM: Yeah, I talk to the audience afterwards, sometimes beforehand, too. And, yeah, I mean, there's a whole variety of reasons that people are interested. I mean, one is just Bach's music is so incredible, you know, forget about the organ for a second. Hearing Bach every week, what could be better? And I think another thing that's really captivated people is that all of these concerts, including tonight's concert, we've put up a projection of me playing the organ. Uh, which is neat because so many people, they don't realize what goes into playing the organ, and how physical it is, and how my feet can be flying all over the place. And we have three or four keyboards, and we're pressing buttons. And it's, um, it's quite a visual instrument, even though it's often out of sight. And so, often, people's response is, gosh, I had no idea what goes into playing this instrument. How cool.

PH: So, when you think of Bach, what do you think of? What is moved within you? How do you feel?

CM: Many things. Well, first, I think greatest composer of all time. I think that's actually a pretty non-controversial statement. I also, it makes me think of sort of a musical form of architecture, because sometimes people talk about Bach's music on this spectrum of the intellectual to the emotional, and I think that's total nonsense because if there's a spectrum, it means you're choosing one or the other to varying degrees. And Bach just maxes out both. His music is so cerebral and brilliant, and it's also got so much heart.

PH: Do you remember the first time you ever heard Bach?

PH: Does it not blow your mind that 275 years after his death, here we are having this conversation, here you are playing his music, here are so many millions of people still enjoying what he created centuries, literally centuries ago?

CM: Yeah, it is amazing. I particularly am amazed when I think of it from Bach's perspective, because there's a little bit of evidence that Bach was kind of concerned with his legacy, but I think it's fair to say that he had absolutely no clue that he would become arguably the most important person in Western music.

PH: I think you've taken a break through the summer months, right? But once you get back to it, how much longer you got to go until you've done all 18 hours?

CM: So, I have done 18 30-minute concerts so far. So, right now, before tonight, I am at the exact halfway point, which means I have nine hours to go. Now, tonight, I'm going to knock out another 90 minutes of it. So, then I'll have seven-and-a-half hours to go, which I guess is 15 30-minute recitals. And so, those will go September through December. And then, if my math is right, it'll be done.

PH: Oh man, you ever get tired of it?

CM: You know, I do. On the other hand, this project has actually, I think, been a lot more joyful than I expected. I think it's fair to say I wouldn't be an organist if not for Bach.

PH: Thank you, Colin. I appreciate your time.

CM: Thanks very much.

TS: Colin MacKnight is the music director at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Little Rock, Arkansas. That's where we reached him.

[horns!!!]

Ichiro Suzuki HOF

TS: Ichiro Suzuki will go down in history as one of the greatest baseball players of all time. That was cemented last night, at his official induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The first Japanese-born position player in the MLB; he played 19 straight seasons in the majors and stacked up an impressive collection of accolades and records. All of which culminated in him having the second-highest vote percentage in Hall of Fame history -- tied with Derek Jeter. The inductees are voted on by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, and Mr. Suzuki was just one vote shy of unanimous selection -- something he is...quite aware of. Here's some of his speech.

SOUNDCLIP

ICHIRO SUZUKI: Baseball taught me what it means to be a professional, and I believe that is the main reason I am here today. Not because my skills are better than others; 3,000 hits, or 262 hits in one season are achievements recognized by the riders. Well, all but one view. [boos, laughter, clapping] And by the way, the offer for that writer to have dinner at my home has now expired. [clapping, whistling] Today, I am feeling something I thought I would never know again. For the third time, I'm a rookie. But please, I'm 51 years old now. So, easy on the hazing. [laughter] I don't need to wear a Hooters uniform again. Going into America's Baseball Hall of Fame was never my goal. I didn't even know there was one until I visited Cooperstown for the first time in 2001. But being here today sure feels like a fantastic dream. Thank you. [clapping, cheering]

TS: That's Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki speaking at his induction ceremony last night.

The AIH Transcript For July 28, 2025

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