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The Current Transcript for August 9, 2021

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

Five years after the killing of Colten Boushie, his mother is still waiting for an apology

Guests: Debbie Baptiste, Eleanore Sunchild

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You, the Japanese people, can be extremely proud of what you have achieved. On behalf of all the athletes, we say thank you, thank you. Thank you, Japan.

LAURA LYNCH: And with that, the Tokyo Games are done, delayed by a year. No fans, a nation that didn't want the games. This was, without a doubt, one of the strangest Olympics in history. In 30 minutes, what these games achieved and where they fell short. And.

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And it's rather embarrassing to kind of realise that, you know, that your house is kind of falling apart. And you didn't even realise.

LL: Jane McClair's house needed some help. But asking for it can be tricky. Lucky for Jane, she had a great neighbour who was happy to pitch in. Later, we'll hear how one good deed could go a long way. But we begin with remembering the life and legacy of Colten Boushie five years after his killing. Good morning. I'm Laura Lynch. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: On August the 9th, 2016, a young indigenous man, Colten Boushie from rural Saskatchewan, was shot and killed. The incident and all that followed sparked protests across the country and it reached the highest levels of power in Canada.

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VOICE 1: The words racism, the words reconciliation, being talked about a lot.

VOICE 2: And aggravating tensions between indigenous and non-indigenous communities in rural Saskatchewan.

VOICE 3: All white jury came out with a verdict of not guilty of Gerald Stanley, who shot and killed my nephew.

VOICE 4: This verdict, this acquittal, it sends the message that it's open season on indigenous people.

VOICE 5: Obviously, we don't think, we don't think it's a racial issue at all.

VOICE 6: There is now an independent RCMP watchdog report and it has concluded the police force did make mistakes during the investigation and also discriminated against Colten Boushie's mother.

LL: Today, exactly five years later, the case is still reverberating. A report by an RCMP watchdog found significant mistakes in how the RCMP conducted its investigations and renewing calls for a public enquiry into the mishandling of the case. Debbie Baptiste is Colten Boushie's mother. Hello, Debbie.

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: Good morning.

LL: Thanks for agreeing to speak to us today on what must surely be a difficult day for you. I'm wondering what you were thinking as you listen to that tape we just played.

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: It brings back memories that are really hard for me to. I can't get over the injustice that happened to my family, Colten. And to this day, we're still we're still battling against the RCMP

LL: and I want to talk about that, but I just wanted to ask you first, it has been five years since Colton was killed. How are you remembering him today?

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: With a heavy heart. The injustice that happened with my son in the courtroom and continues on with their RCMP, not accepting responsibility, refusing to give me an apology. And the messed up work they did. The [unintelligible]- and I just get overwhelmed when I think about what happened out on the ferry with the RCMP, which is really, I just feel a lot of anger in me when I have to talk about what occurred there.

LL: I'm sorry to bring this up for you again, but in March of this year, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission released its findings of its independent investigation into the RCMP handling of your son's case. And it did find you were discriminated against by the RCMP. Did that make you feel validated or was it was it a good thing to see?

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: Well, it's a good thing to see, but I'm still not happy with the report because I know there's more that they're hiding from us, they cover it up and we need to know this and we need, instead of the RCMP investigating themselves, it's time that the table turns and we investigate them.

LL: So what are you looking for then?

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: I want to know I want the police officers, the RCMP police officers, I want them to be all accountable for what happened out there and how General Stanley managed to get away with so much evidence that was- evidence that was- that they covered up, they helped him and we get away with murder.

LL: What does that mean? Would you like to see a public enquiry?

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: Yes, I would. The RCMP, what happened out there, you know, there was a 911 call the missing. The car came up missing, my son laid out there in the field, uncovered while it rained, evidence was washed away. The vehicle was uncovered, evidence was also washed away. I mean, just they're not, the RCMP, cannot be trusted if this is how they conduct their way of business.

LL: I should say to you, we asked the RCMP for a statement and we didn't hear back from them, but back in March when this report was released, the RCMP said, amongst other things, it is our hope that the report and the steps we have taken to implement the recommendations reinforces our commitment to transparency and accountability. I wonder what you think of that.

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: I also like to see Trudeau keep his word, he said he would have a follow up with my family, which has never which hasn't happened since we last spoke to him.

LL: I'm wondering at the end of all of this, how do you want people to remember Colton?

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: Want them to remember him. He was a kind hearted young man that wanted a future. He wanted a life, he had dreams, he was innocent. And that he was a victim in this crime, that Gerald's family did.

LL: Debbie Baptista, I'm sorry there's still so much pain for you, but I thank you for talking to us today.

DEBBIE BAPTISTE: Thank you,

LL: Debbie Baptista's the mother of Colten Boushie, she is in Battleford, Saskatchewan, Eleanore Sunchild is an indigenous Cree lawyer and and a member of the Thunder Child First Nation. She was the co counsel for the Bush family in the Gerald Stanley Stanley criminal trial. And she's also representing the family in a civil suit that's been filed against the RCMP. Hello.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Good morning.

LL: You just have a chance just now to listen to to Captain Gucci's mother, Baptiste's. She's still looking for justice for her son. I'm wondering, what's the top of mind for you when you think about the shooting death of Colten Boushie?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: I just think about all of the misinformation that surrounds the shooting death of Colten, still to this day. I don't think that people recall or some don't even know that he was sleeping in the back of the car when he was shot. He must have woke up when the when the warning shots so called warning shots were fired and jumped in the front of the of the vehicle to drive. Seconds later, he was shot in the back of the head. You know, Debbie talks about Colten being a kind, hardworking young man, he was, but also people need to know that he had no criminal record. He was not in a gang. He was not a violent person. He was indeed a victim. As Debbie said, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he lost his life. It's really a sad set of facts and still we see in social media and in in public perception that Colten and his friends were doing, you know, a crime. And the only the only thing that occurred at that farm is one of the occupants in the vehicle jumped on, jumped on a quad. Seconds later, shots were fired and Colten was killed. That doesn't justify killing. And that's what I hear from Debbie, and that's why it's so important that we do have a public enquiry. We call for that again and again and again, because there is so much misinformation about this case and what happened, not only what happened when he was killed, but what happened following his death. And unless people are reading reports and reading all of the media reports and taking everything into account, watching the movie, We Will Stand Up, they're not going to see the whole story. From the press release that the RCMP released on the day after Colten was killed, where it says where they said they were investigating a theft related crime, where a white life was lost, right to the decision of the government not to appeal when there were grounds on which they probably could launch an appeal. And we had sent a letter to Chris Murphy, another lawyer and I, to the Saskatchewan government, calling on them to appeal. So there really is a whole set of circumstances and facts that people don't know, that they should know. And people may say, well, it's five years, let it go, move on. But it really is a major injustice in in Canada. You know, it was a crime of the century, the trial of the century, people called it. And it really should not be forgotten.

LL: The civil suit that you filed against the RCMP, how likely is that to gain justice for the family?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Well, it will let out a certain set of facts when it goes to trial, people will see how the investigation was handled. Of course, the RCMP report story, the watchdog report stated that the RCMP erased communications that that happened on the day of August nine, 2006, between RCMP members for one. That's just one issue, but that's a really big issue. It will shed light and bring the family some justice, but by all means, not complete justice at all. Gerald Stanley still is acquitted of the murder of Colten Boushie.

LL: Can you outline for us what the major findings were of the report from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Well, the main one was how the RCMP treated Debbie on the day that he died by pulling up to her trailer, smelling her breath, asking if she was drinking, violating her rights. That was the main the main issue that they found. But as I said, they also found that they had erased communications of the members that occurred on that day. So there are so it's a really good report. I think that it's probably the first, I think, it's the first finding where they found that the RCMP actually discriminated against an indigenous person. I could be wrong on that. But I know that it is it is one of the first cases in Canada of that sort.

LL: Why isn't the report enough then? If you say it was it was so good and it recognised so much, why is there a need to do more in your mind?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Because there's more. There's other issues other than the RCMP in this matter. As I said, there was the whole decision of the crown not to appeal. There was how the crown, the Saskatchewan government treated the family. That's a whole different issue.

LL: It's more the entirety of the justice system you're looking at.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: It's the entirety of the justice system. It's a hatred that we've seen directed towards the family, the racism directed at them also through social media and the lack of the province to to pursue any hate crimes against anybody who was spouting out hatred on social media. It it's a whole gamut of issues in this case. And sadly, they're all about racism and discrimination and the equal treatment of indigenous people within the Canadian criminal justice system.

LL: Now, the report made 17 recommendations, and one of them was that all RCMP officers take an indigenous cultural awareness course. Is is that helpful? Is it enough?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: It's not enough. I mean, there, of course, is by no means enough at all. When you're talking about an organisation that that's based on-- that has a history of discriminating against indigenous people, a day or two of indigenous training session is by no means enough.

LL: Now, you have been practising law for more than 20 years and wondering what this case represents for you in legal terms.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: It really emphasised for me the injustice that I've seen in in my law practise and in the in the area where I practise law, sadly to say, the mistreatment of indigenous people in the criminal justice system is nothing new. And the systemic discrimination that I've seen as a lawyer within that system is troubling to me. It represents a really terrible mark on our history, but hopefully it doesn't happen to any other family again. And that's why I'm so honoured to work with Debbie Baptiste in the family of Colten Boushie in their pursuit of justice.

LL: I mentioned to his mother that the RCMP has said in the past that it hopes the report will reinforce the RCMP commitment to transparency and accountability. They didn't respond to us today, but they said that back in March. I'm wondering what your reaction to that is.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Well, my reaction is, if they're so transparent, why did they raise or delete or not keep the communications that occurred between the members on the day Colten was killed, in light of knowing that there was an act of civil suit before the courts.

LL: When General Stanley was first acquitted, you said at a press conference, I think we heard you earlier saying his acquittal sends a message. It's open season on indigenous people in Canada. Do you still feel that way?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: I still do.

LL: Why?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Well, there's been some cases of. For example, I met these water walkers who are walking for water across Saskatchewan and Alberta at one point in there. And these are women, women who are doing a ceremony for the safety and the preservation of water. It's really their own personal journey. And they're walking across this province, these provinces. Anyway, in one area, they actually heard about 12 or 13 gunshots from a rural farmer. And that tells me that people have the attitude that it is still open season on indigenous people.

LL: Well, I thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Thank you very much,

LL: Eleanor Sunchild is an indigenous lawyer and a member of the Thunder Child First Nation, she lives in Battleford, Saskatchewan. Cree, singer songwriter Iskwe wrote the song Little Star in memory of Cold and Bushy and 15 year old Tina Fontaine. This is Iskwe with little star.

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[Song]

LL: And that is little star based, a written to honour the lives of Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine. The CBC News is next.

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Julia Grosso from Vancouver to win it for Canada. Canada game. Canada gold at Tokyo 2021.

[Cheers]

LL: A huge moment for Team Canada, the women's soccer team taking gold in Tokyo. But while the games came with lots of highs and lows where they are worth it for Japan in the end. That's coming up in six minutes. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

The legacy of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics

Guests: Mokoto Rich

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, being a good neighbour means lending a cup of sugar, being a great neighbour means building someone a new house. But first, the Olympics are over. Was it worth it?

Speaker 2: [Music: Theme]

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VOICE 1: Ladies and gentlemen. The athletes of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

VOICE 2: You, the best athletes of the world, could only make your Olympic dream come true because Japan prepared the stage for you to shine. And now I have to mark the end of this most challenging Olympic journey. I declare the games of the 32nd Olympiads closed.

LL: And with that, the Tokyo Olympics are over. There were moments of glory, but the games were also marked by a year long delay, the worst Covid outbreak Japan has seen, and fears that bringing 80000 people together from all over the world might lead to super spreader events during the games and afterwards. Joining me now is Motoko Rich, Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times. Hello.

MOTOKO RICH: Hi.

LL: It's no secret that these games were deeply unpopular in Japan. I'm wondering what you, how you would describe the feeling of the people now that the competition is over?

MOTOKO RICH: Well, I think that the feeling some of the antipathy had subsided during the games, which is not surprising. I think there have been other host cities that have had problems before the games. And then once the festivities kick off, people start to focus on the athleticism, the sports, displays of sportsmanship, the big drama and, of course, the medal count. And Japan did quite well in the medal count this time around. So I think people got into it. They were watching it on television and they were even a little disappointed, some of them who had tickets, who would have been in the stands, but for covid. So I don't think by the time the games got off the ground that there was such antipathy. But there certainly were protesters who were out outside the stadium or in front of the prime minister's office. And there were people who are very concerned about the potential impact that the Olympics had on the spread of covid. It doesn't seem like there's a direct connection, being number of cases inside the Olympic bubble were relatively small, about four hundred and thirty five or six, which out of about forty two thousand people who had come in from abroad, is a relatively low positivity rate. But the question is whether, like you said, Japan is now seeing its worst covid outbreak with record setting cases almost every day is whether the Olympics itself kind of normalised certain kinds of behaviour and made people feel like they could let their guard down. So even though Tokyo was in a state of emergency during the entire games, people weren't really behaving as if that were the case. They were still going out about and having pretty normal lives.

LL: So what they weren't you weren't seeing them wearing masks. They weren't where they were congregating. What did you see?

MOTOKO RICH: No, no. That village of [unintelligible], perhaps. But everybody wears a mask. And, you know, I went to a restaurant the other night where, you know, certainly they close by 8:00 o'clock. They're not allowing people to order alcohol. So there are certain restrictions. It's not 100 percent normal. And wearing a mask right from the beginning has never been the political or cultural divide that it has been on the west here that that people would normally wear masks in Asia during the winter and when during flu season, people wear it when it's cold to keep their faces warm. It's sort of considered a social convention of caring about those around you that if you yourself are a little bit sick, you don't want to get them sick. And so that you cover your face with the mask, you also are worried about other people. You're not, you know, living in close quarters in Tokyo, riding on the public transit. People don't want to get sick. So wearing a mask has even before covid been a fairly standard norm. And then once covid, the outbreak became a pandemic and people were asked to wear a mask or downright required. If you want to go to certain places, pretty much everyone's messed up.

LL: Now you got to see some of the competition in person. What was it like for you watching from those mostly empty stands?

MOTOKO RICH: So eerie, I have to say, I mean, I had already experienced going to a soccer match in Japan before the Olympics where they had mandated masks, no one was allowed to drink alcohol. No one was allowed to cheer out loud. They were only allowed to clap. So I was used to a little bit of oddness at a live sports event. But to go to the Olympics, there just no spectators. So you're looking up at these in this, you know, many of them new venues built for the occasion or even if there had been around, you're just looking at rows and rows and rows of empty seats, and that's just really odd. And then you kind of hear sounds that you might not otherwise hear. Table tennis, you hear every smack of the ball on the table and every grunt of the player. In soccer. You could hear the chatter between players, although I went to a match where they were piping in artificially the sound of applause and cheering. And that was just really weird because I'm here I am staring at these empty stands and yet hearing kind of taped recordings of applause and cheer that, you know, it's just very eerie and a little bit sad and certainly bittersweet.

LL: I covered the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, and I do remember how very proud the Japanese were to show their country and their culture to the world. I'm wondering if there's a sense of that amongst the Japanese people. I mean, the games are being lauded for their level of organisation, if nothing else.

MOTOKO RICH: Well, I mean, I think a lot of people feel like they didn't get to show the country I mean, I was watching the closing ceremony last night and there was a segment where they had, you know, people in street fashion dancing, doing capoeira, doing double Dutch jump, skateboarding, doing a bit of stunt biking. And it was supposed to evoke a Japanese or a Tokyo park, you know, a little bit more activity they might see on a normal day in a park all at once. But I had the feeling watching it that like this is what the people who came for the Olympics didn't see. I was talking to the sports editor tonight and explaining to him where Yoyogi Park, the main park where a lot of this stuff happens is and it's not something that he got to see because he was in quarantine for 14 days. And it just seems a little bit of a missed opportunity for Japan that they really did want to show off their country and they haven't really been able to.

LL: And just finally, the Olympics may be over, but the Paralympics are set to begin in about two weeks. What are Japanese views toward that starting up and people coming in again?

MOTOKO RICH: Well, they haven't actually decided what they're going to do about spectators, I mean, obviously they've already been international spectators for the pandemic, but they haven't made a decision about whether they're going to also ban domestic spectators like they did for the Olympics. That's just finished. So I think people are waiting to hear about that. There probably is a little bit of wariness, like, OK, we're ready to be done with all of this. On the other hand, I think there probably are people who have tickets who will be interested to know whether they'll be allowed to go. And then there will also be questions for the organisation of it and how it's managed, because there are lots of different issues for Paralympic athletes, like whether or not they're allowed to bring assistance that they might normally have. And so I think there will be a lot of focus and attention on how normal those games can be given all of the protocols that are in place.

LL: Normal is just not normal anymore, is it?

MOTOKO RICH: No, there is no normal.

LL: Motoko Rich, thank you very much for your time.

MOTOKO RICH: Thank you so much for having me.

LL: Motoko Rich is Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times.

[Music]

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

How a N.S. carpenter learned to live life for others — and kept his neighbour from losing her home

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It was Christmas, I think, two or three years ago, and I was putting up Christmas decorations on my deck and went through aboard, my left leg, it was rotting.

LL: Yeah. But Jane McClair and Mill Cove, Nova Scotia, last year, Jane finally decided to get that old deck fixed in the cottage where she lives alone. And lucky for her, her neighbour experienced carpenter Kelly McCann wanted to do her a favour. Jane helps run the community's food bank, so he offered to give her a hand and fix the deck for free.

SOUNDCLIP

KELLY MCCANN: I came and looked at the deck and the deck boards. There were about 10 rotten boards out of her deck and I saw that the deck boards were just like, you could just take them off with your hands because they weren't screwed into anything and the boards underneath were rotten as well. So I said, Jane, you need a new more than just the new boards on this deck. You need a whole new deck. I was standing actually back there and I looked at the corner of the house and it was down about four inches. Because we that's weird, the people must have made a mistake when they put the siding on. It's all saggy. When I went and looked under there and Jane and I tore off your boards. It was just like it was rotten underneath there and the whole corner of the house was literally falling down. I was thinking, oh, boy, this might turn into bigger than just making a patio.

LL: Kelly McCann was right about that. His good deed was about to get bigger than he ever imagined. And as you're about to hear, that wasn't the only surprise he was in for. The story first aired on the show in December.

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KELLY: So, Jane, you need to get- we need to fix this, Ed. That's on your building because it's literally falling off. I don't know. I think I had to use her washroom or something. And there was a chunk of wood beside the toilet propped up. And I said, what's this piece of wood beside your toilet? She says, Oh, that holds my toilet up, because otherwise it tips over when I sit on it because the floor was rotten. And I said, Jane, how long have you been-? And she says, Oh, by the way, you can't- I came out and said, You can't flush the toilet. What's wrong with the toilet? She says, Oh, it doesn't flush. You just have to take some water from the bathtub and put it in the toilet to flush it. I said, How long have you been doing this for? She's, Oh. It's no big deal. I said, Jane, you should have said something that I could have given- you brought you a new toilet, for what it's worth, or got you a new toilet from somebody.

JANE: Things that I thought were very easy, fixed, you know, to be fixed. And, you know, I work, but don't make a lot of money as a teacher assistant. And, you know, we're supporting my children. And once they left, it just- the cost of living became a lot and it was difficult to get anything fixed. You know, I'll have that money soon, you know, and I'll do it later and later never came.

KELLY: I take a shower, she said, it showers for a while and then it just stops. The water stops coming out and it stops coming out for about three or four seconds. I think what's going to happen next and boom, the water comes back on again. This is wow. That's a surprise shower. That's fun.

JANE: And it's rather embarrassing to kind of realise that, you know, that your house is kind of falling apart and you didn't even realise.

KELLY: Myself and my wife and a couple other people started talking about what could we do, what if we slid the original house over and built an addition on the front of the ocean side and made proper sized windows in it because the original house didn't even have sensible size windows? If Jane ever had a fire, she couldn't even get out of the windows in the bedroom that she was sleeping in. By the time we talked to several, brought several experts in and said, can you look at this house? Is this a house we can move sideways? Can we do something with it? Can we reinvent it to make it? And it was just impossible. Then I said, you know what? Let's stop doing these plans because we drew dozens and dozens of plans. The most economical way to get Jane a new house was just to build her a new house.

JANE: They tore off the back of the house in the fall because it was not worth doing anything with. And the front was sold cheaply to a guy up the road like a shed. But it's right on the road. So I drive by my house every day when I go to school, which is really strange.

KELLY: People knew that, look at that, you can go to a new panel at a cut out of her house that was being demolished. My heart went out to Jane when on the very first day when I saw that, I thought, this is crazy. How can a person in Nova Scotia live in this province and people drive past every day and and, you know, we just are in our own little worlds and don't even notice that other people are in terrible need and they never would say anything, of course. They would never say anything.

JANE: I said, God, this house needs work and I don't know how I'm going to get it done. So it's in your hands. This is your house. You know, whatever you see fit. This is now what he has done for me. Amazing.

KELLY: She wants to give care. She does not want anybody to have to take care of her. She doesn't want to be a burden on anyone. And she felt that people in the community might feel that she was somehow falling short of being able to take care of her own affairs or manage her life or something. I said, no, I don't feel that way. I mean, you can't- you know, you're working like a dog. You're doing as good as you can. That's fine. Don't take it so personally. Because I was thinking I wish I had time to help Jane. But I'm just walked right off my feet as a carpenter building stairs, and I just have people calling me like constant stream of When are you coming to my job? When are you coming to my job? When I'm coming to my job. When I first talked about this, I thought that I could not financially survive without getting some kind of remuneration. So my first plan was I will try to manage this project and see if I could take a little stipend for my services. I didn't think I had, you know, 10 hours to donate to this project, really in my business schedule. Somebody put this Jane McClair brochure on their Facebook page because we made a little brochure to hand out to like 20 people and see if anybody is interested in helping out with this little project. So somebody put it on their Facebook page or something. I don't have Facebook. I don't know what that means. And so suddenly then the windows of heaven opened and things started really to happen, pop in a big hurry. And people on the radio on their way to Antigonish heard it and said, hey, we'd like to help you out. Can we give you an excavator? And people in B.C. who were, you know, friends of Jane's families said, hey, can we help out? You know, we'll buy you new appliances. And things just started to happen that way. So as far as people jumping on the project for a little tiny community that nobody even knows how to find, you know, it's gotten pretty big that way. And in some ways, I didn't want to burden down this little community right here with saying, hey, can we build a house for Jane? Because I was afraid. Some people say, well, what about me? Can you build a house for me, too, while you're at it? Well, yeah, I guess, get in line, you know. For best results apply in temperature 16 to 38, how about for second best results?

[Noise]

KELLY: Now, I wouldn't worry about that. I can't believe how many people are giving day after day after day of their own personal lives to come and help out that you would never expect, like the rebar queen. Joanne Eldership is a librarian that I met years and years ago and a librarian assistant. And she's a person that volunteered to keep Jane at her house. And I thought that that would be enough for her to keep her busy. She found out a technique for cutting this heavy rebar and she just boom.

JOANNE: I've cut a few pieces that I learnt today how to bend it.

PRODUCER: How old are you?

JOANNE: 66.

PRODUCER: And have you ever done that before?

JOANNE: No. And I found that my stance has to be like that. Oh, sorry. And then this piece takes muscle, you know, being old for muscle.

KELLY: I started driving down my own little road here, Highway 59, I would look to the left and look to the right and say, Whoa, did you see that? How sweet, Daffodil, that's what call my wife. I'd say, look at that shack there. And I know the person that lives in that shack. That should be our next project right there. So these things started to make me think you got to quit just living for yourself every day of your life and be thinking about how can I help someone else? People get lost in the cracks. Right. And now I've been here for and a lot of other people, not just me, by a long shot for literally. When do we start this thing? October. November. So I've been pretty much on this job, you know, almost every day for three months. And so far I haven't taken any stipend. And I still somehow survived and didn't even need to go to the food bank to get food yet. So I'm pretty happy.

JANE: I can just live there, I can be warm not having to worry about what's falling down or what's going to happen next, you know.

KELLY: My dream is that now she can be here and look out that beautiful window view of the ocean and be here for many years without worrying about anything falling apart.

LL: That's Kelly McCann in Mill Cove, Nova Scotia. That story aired on the show in December. At the time, Kelly hoped Jane would be in her new place in a matter of weeks. Well, if you've ever built a house...you know things almost never go quite as planned. Now, seven months later, Kelly McCann is still at it most days.

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KELLY MCCANN: I keep on saying every day, one day left one day for me. I'm just like the glass is always seven eighths full. So I'm an eternal optimist. So every day I go home to Sweet Daffodil and say, I think I've only got one day left of work. And people who are calling me to work would say, When are you coming to your job? I say, well, I just need a couple more days.

LL: now, though, for real. Kelly is putting the final touches on the house and Jane is starting to move in.

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KELLY MCCANN: I was here, working away late last night, trying to get a dry washer hooked up and a piece of plastic fell down the drain pipe. Two and a half hours of getting this stupid piece of plastic out of the drain pipe? So we made all our own drawers for this big pantry. Jane, are you going to sleep here tonight?

JANE MCCLAIR: No, no, I'm not sleeping here tonight, but we're moving stuff in. All right, here we go. Can we get it? Here we go. One mattress and there we go. I'm staying in the same place with Joanne. And, yeah, it's time to move in when it dragone past when I was hoping to be here and, you know, wasn't living in my own home. And then I broke my foot, you know, and then my car died, in January. So it was like, you know, that whole stress of getting a different car. And it was crazy.

KELLY MCCANN: I would say that's the biggest regret is how much pain it has put Jane through to get this house. Because even though it's like it's a crazy, amazing thing for her to have a brand new house, that she won't have to be constantly worried and calling people, can you come and fix this? Can you come and fix that? So when she can go into a new house that everything works right from day one and it'll probably be working well into 10 years or 15 years to give her that big freedom. But in the meantime, it's been a very tough year for her.

JANE MCCLAIR: My kitchen was like this big before, literally and very tiny. And this is wonderful. It's it's lots of room. There's lots of storage, and it's just amazing. Yeah, the bathroom has a nice vanity. Well, this is way better than my other bathroom. I feel like I'm at a hotel or somewhere luxurious. It's beautiful, like the workmanship and everything. And the whole design is wonderful. It's just really unbelievable. Wow, this is amazing.

KELLY MCCANN: You know, this is one person's life that's maybe going to be changed significantly for a long time. So I think people are always well, it's been a pretty tough year for from this whole pandemic thing. And a lot of people lost their jobs. And so this kind of a good news story is probably very uplifting for people. I think everybody I talk to when I'm trying to pitch for some, you know, eavesdropping or whatever I'm trying to going for, they say, wow, this is a great thing. I love what you're doing here. I love what you're doing. It's crazy, but I love what you're doing. Most people think I don't think that's even possible to accomplish that.

PRODUCER: But would you ever do this again?

KELLY MCCANN: Oh, yeah. I'm trying to I, I don't think I can do it this summer anymore, but next year I don't know about building a whole house. But there's this little house that every day when I go past this little old lady's house, she's about 85 years old and her house is just a wreck, just a wreck. Now, mind you, she's very stubborn and she likes her little wrecked house. Keep on asking, do you think your mother wouldn't mind having a new roof on that shack that she lives in or whatever. But a smaller project. I would definitely like to keep on doing small projects, smaller projects. Building a whole house. That's huge. I'm thinking that I just have to put in a little bit of trim right there and then I can work outside on that porch.

LL: Kelly McCann, what a great guy. He helped build a house for his neighbour, Jane McClair in Milco, Nova Scotia. That is our programme for today. Coming up next on Radio One is Unforecast. The show that dives into the culture and politics of what we put on our plates this week's host Samira Mohyeddin is talking about raising healthy eaters. Just what does it really mean to raise one? That's coming up on Unforked. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to The Current.

Monday 9 August, 2021 Full Transcript

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