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The Current Transcript for February 24, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

ELEY WILLIAMS Dictionaries were more than just lists of words and definitions. They had these histories and these biases and even these ignorances.

MATT GALLOWAY: The British writer Eley Williams loves language. Her new novel is about the power that comes with how words are defined from the perspective of someone who slips made-up words into dictionaries. Inside the world of mountweazels in an hour. And yes, that is a real word. We start, though, with Canada and the United States, neighbours on decidedly better terms. Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. And this is "The Current".

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Marc Garneau on China and Trudeau’s first bilateral meeting with Biden

Guests: Mark Garneau, Emily Rauhala, Vassy Kapelos

MATT GALLOWAY: Joe Biden says America is back. Sounds familiar. Well, yes, Justin Trudeau said the same thing about Canada after his election in 2015. And so if America is back, and Canada is too, does that mean we have each other's backs again? Staying true to tradition, Biden made his first foreign visit as president to Canada this week. Virtually, of course, trade relations, border regulations, China and climate change were all on the agenda. And so predictably was talk of the great friendship we share.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We're facing tough times, there's no doubt, but we're not facing them alone. Canada and the United States are each other's closest allies, most important trading partners, and oldest friends. And we stand united to beat this pandemic and build a better tomorrow. And I know our bond will grow even stronger.

JOE BIDEN: United States has no closer and no more important friend than Canada. It's the shared spirit of our people that's going to ensure ours is a future of hope and opportunity. And when we work together, as the closest of friends should, we only make each other stronger.

MATT GALLOWAY: Marc Garneau is Canada's foreign affairs minister. He was at the bilateral meeting yesterday. Minister, good morning.

MARC GARNEAU: Good morning, Mr. Galloway.

MATT GALLOWAY: The prime minister said yesterday before this meeting started, it's nice to work with an administration that isn't working to pull all references to climate change out of final communiques. We'll speak about climate change in a moment. But just broadly, how happy is your government to see Joe Biden as president?

MARC GARNEAU: I would describe the atmosphere yesterday in this exchange as warm, as very productive, and businesslike. And we are certainly very, very happy to be engaging with the United States on a whole range of topics that are important for Canada, but also for the United States. So a very positive first meeting.

MATT GALLOWAY: Does it feel like a relationship has been renewed?

MARC GARNEAU: I would say that the initial signs looked very positive. It is certainly clear that President Biden will be doing things differently from the previous administration, perhaps in a more traditional way that Canada was used to a number of years ago. And where the United States is assuming a position of leadership with respect to global challenges, but also very interested in working in a constructive manner with its neighbours.

MATT GALLOWAY: One issue that you're looking for leadership on is China. Two Canadians, as you know, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig are still in detention in China. What did the U.S. government commit to doing to help secure their release?

MARC GARNEAU: Well, the prime minister brought up the subject of the two Michaels, which, as you know, has been extremely important for Canada and again, a priority. And pointed out that we, of course, are a country of the rule of laws and [00:04:38]we respect our obligations, including an extradition treaty that we have with the United States, but that this had been a very painful experience up to now. And we in Canada were very concerned and wanted to try to see if we could get the two Michaels back to Canada. And I believe the president was seized with this because I think he made remarks about it afterwards after the meeting. it was very important for us to make that point. And I think that that point was made based on what the president said afterwards.

MATT GALLOWAY: Did he make any... did he make any commitment, though, to help secure their release?

MARC GARNEAU: We did not discuss specifics about it, but the president indicated very clearly that he understood how important this was to Canada.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just a final point on that. I mean, is the involvement in the United States, in your mind, essential to get these two men released?

MARC GARNEAU: I believe so. I believe so because it's all interrelated. We, of course, respected our treaty obligations and detained Meng Wanzhou. And so that, of course, was because of our relationship with the United States. So, yes, they play a part.

MATT GALLOWAY: The relationship with China is top of mind for so many people. You abstained from the vote earlier this week on calling China's actions against its Uighur minority a genocide. You abstained, along with other Liberal cabinet ministers. Mehmet Tohti is the Canadian representative for the World Uyghur Congress. He hasn't heard from his family in China since 2016. Take a listen to what he said yesterday on this program.

MEHMET TOHTI: We have been sending wrong message to China. Basically, we are justifying that Chinese abduction tactic is working. We avoid from angering China. So what is the result? China increased pressure. So it's time to increase our leverage against China if we are serious about to get back to two Michaels and other detained Canadians.

MATT GALLOWAY: He says it's time to increase pressure on China. One of your own MPs, Sameer Zuberi, echoed that yesterday, saying, we've got to walk the talk. Are they wrong?

MARC GARNEAU: We have been very, very clear that we're extremely concerned with what has been reported coming out of Xinjiang. And we take allegations of genocide extremely seriously. And that's why we have been for some time insisting that China should allow independent experts to go in and to investigate, so that we can get to the bottom of this. And we will continue to work with our international partners on this extremely important question.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is the abstention by the prime minister and his cabinet giving the right message, though? I mean to China in particular, when one of... many of your own MPs have said that stronger action needs to be taken?

MARC GARNEAU: Well, I think it's a very important event that occurred in parliament two days ago. Parliamentarians had the opportunity to express themselves on this extremely important issue. And we as a government, and we have that responsibility, will take into account the vote that occurred two days ago. But again, as I say, as government, we have the very important responsibility of making a decision about this. And we want to get to the bottom of it. We believe it's important for China to allow independent investigators, the United Nations Human Rights Council and experts, to look at the situation in there. They, of course, are vehemently denying it. We have all sorts of reports that indicate that some very serious things are happening. We need to get to the bottom of this.

MATT GALLOWAY: Let me just ask you, finally, just a couple of more questions about what was discussed yesterday with the U.S. president. One is the issue of a Buy American policy. He's, Joe Biden, is sticking with a protectionist trade policies of his predecessor. Were you guaranteed any exemptions for Canadian businesses who are being hurt by these policies already?

MARC GARNEAU: Well, we very clearly expressed our concern that Canada could be unintentionally sideswiped by a Buy American policy whereby our integrated supply chains would be interrupted. And this could actually have a negative effect not only on Canada but also in the United States because Canadians know that every product that we sell to the United States typically already has some American content in it because the goods flow back and forth in putting together products in... in our country that we then export to other places, including the United States. So that's how tightly our supply chains are integrated in. And the classic example, of course, is the automobile industry. So we made that point very, very forcefully with the United States. They understand that they have not finalized their Buy America and where Canada fits into it. But they have told us that they will consult us as they move forward. And we'll have the chance to express any concerns that we have.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just finally, those goods move back and forth across the border, and the border remains closed to all but essential travellers right now. What would it take to reopen the Canada-U.S. border?

MARC GARNEAU: A mutual agreement that we both feel that things are under control enough, or that we have really reliable quick tests that will allow us to loosen the border controls. At this point, we've just gone through, hopefully for the last time, another surge in COVID. We're coming down, but we're definitely not out of the woods. And both countries, and you've heard President Biden speak about it, is for him, that's his top priority. For Canada, it's our top priority. So we're going to be cautious, and we're going to work mutually together. Because, you know, in Pre-COVID times, there would be about 400,000 people crossing the border every day between our two countries. We now have to make sure that we don't let things get out of control, and we're going to take a very cautious approach.

MATT GALLOWAY: Marc Ganeau, good to speak with you this morning. Thank you very much.

MARC GARNEAU: My pleasure.

MATT GALLOWAY: Marc Garneau is Canada's foreign affairs minister. For more on that bilateral meeting, and some of the issues that were raised, we're joined now by our national affairs panel. Emily Rauhala is a foreign affairs correspondent for The Washington Post. Vassy Kapelos, host of "Power & Politics" on the CBC News Network. Good morning to you both.

VASSY KAPELOS: Hi, Matt.

EMILY RAUHALA: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: Vassy, you heard Mr. Garneau talking about the tone there. I mean, you know, in some ways, this is a big reset for that relationship between Canada and the United States. How important was it for Canada to have this first bilateral meeting with Joe Biden's presidency?

VASSY KAPELOS: I think it was very important, and I think almost as much as it's a reset, listening to his words, and the prime minister's and president's last night, it's almost like a rewind back to what the relationship was like four years ago. Yes, there are irritants. Yes, there are always going to be cleavages between the two countries. But it seems like there's a level of optimism about the way in which those will be dealt with. So, you know, that the terms he use, warm, productive, businesslike, you could tell that the White House had kind of a plan going in of what they wanted to emerge with, this sort of blueprint of how things will work going forward. So at a high level, yeah, I think the tone is very different. There's definitely a reset. As far as details, though, not maybe unsurprisingly, not a huge amount of meat on the bone at this point, maybe later, about what that actually means in tangible terms going forward.

MATT GALLOWAY: Emily, what's actually accomplished at a meeting like this?

EMILY RAUHALA: Yeah, I think... I think Vassy's absolutely right. It was... was signalling about the state of the relationship, the improved relationship. And I think that was... was good news to both audiences, those watching from Canada and those watching from the United States. In terms of the specifics, they kept it pretty peppy, pretty upbeat, focussing on areas of cooperation like climate, working together on COVID-19 and really sort of steering clear, for now, of the issues that are more contentious. You know, we didn't see by America directly addressed. We didn't see the question of vaccines coming from the U.S. to Canada and a few other things that... that seemed to be absent from my read. But I think the goal was, you know, setting a new tone, moving forward, and... and signalling, frankly, that despite the fact that they were all gathered, virtually wearing masks in the middle of the pandemic, that, you know, things are moving forward.

MATT GALLOWAY: Vassy, let's talk for just a few moments about China. You heard Marc Garneau there speaking about how he believes in many ways that the U.S. involvement in the story of two detained Canadians in China is essential if those Canadians are going to be released. What do you think Canada would be looking for in terms of action from the United States?

VASSY KAPELOS: Oh, that's a tough one. And I'm glad that you asked about that. I was actually really struck first by what the president said last night. It was probably the most specific thing that came out of the remarks from the president following that meeting. So he said that human beings are... that both Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are human beings, and human beings are not bargaining chips. And that the US will help Canada secure... will do everything they can to help Canada secure their release. So that's a pretty specific statement naming the two, you know, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, is a significant thing. But I thought your question to Minister Garneau about tangibly, what does that mean, and how… how exactly might that work with the United States was pretty revealing. He said that he... the prime minister brought it up, that it appears the president is seized with this. But the specifics, we did not discuss specifics. I think that is pretty interesting. I don't know at what point they do start discussing specifics or what those specifics look like? It's hard to see at this point if, in fact, the you know, the Canada is committed to the court process playing out how maybe the deal has to be struck on the U.S. Side or the Justice Department has to drop its case. [15.1s] But there's been reporting on how that was a possibility at one point and no longer seems to be on the table to the same degree. So I'm not sure. Does it mean that the president brings it up with his Chinese counterpart? He had a long conversation already. We don't know if he brought the case of the Michaels up. So I think, again, that's an area where there's... there's a lot of accountability around what exactly does Canada want from the United States in this instance and what is the United States prepared to do? Those questions, though, the statement is very significant. I think those questions are still unanswered.

MATT GALLOWAY: The other issue here, Emily, is... is the issue around what's happening in China itself. The U.S. State Department under Donald Trump declared the treatment of the Uighurs a genocide. The vote happened in the Canadian parliament, where parliamentarians voted for that as well, although the Liberal cabinet ministers and the prime minister abstained from that vote. Joe Biden hasn't yet used that word to describe what's going on in China. Why do you think that the Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau would be reticent to do that?

EMILY RAUHALA: Yeah, it's quite interesting. As you mentioned, Joe Biden has not himself said the word, but of course, his very top deputies, including secretary Secretary of State Blinken, have. And, you know, increasingly, the statements that we're getting from the U.S. government suggest that the position of the U.S. government is, in fact, that what's happening in Xinjiang is a genocide. So there's some sort of signalling game going on in terms of the leaders themselves. Perhaps it has to do with a relationship with Xi and moving forward with that sort of direct level diplomacy. But, yes, I think, frankly, the... the what happened in the Canadian parliament, the sort of domestic nuances of, you know, abstention in the parliament and the government are probably lost on the international audience. And the messaging from Canada from an outside perspective was...was rather confusing. I was surprised not to see more on that issue in the readouts from Canada and the United States. You know, the Biden administration has made rallying allies like Canada to work on China a priority. They've signalled that it's something that they want to do. And yet, we saw very little in terms of specifics of what that would look like. And as Vassy noted, very specifics even on the issue of the Micheals, which has, you know, is not a new issue. And it has been going on for two years. And yet, two years in, more than two years in, they're not talking specifics even behind closed doors. That struck me as quite odd and revealing.

MATT GALLOWAY: Vassy, Emily mentioned some of the irritants that perhaps were not discussed as richly as perhaps people may have expected. One of them the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline. The decision to cancel the permits angered many people in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Is that as you just said and done?

VASSY KAPELOS: Probably, is my guess. From the Biden perspective, from the Biden administration's perspective, there certainly doesn't seem to be any give there. There was no mention of it in the readouts nor the remarks. The only mention, actually, I thought that was pretty revealing of the energy sector and the energy sector as it currently stands, not sort of the ambitions that both governments have when it comes to renewable energy, which... which was mentioned as well. But was the prime minister bringing it up at one point. And we kind of had a split screen playing at the time. [chuckling] And Joe Biden had been nodding very furiously at all the comments until this one, [laughing] which I'm not saying read anything into it. But it was kind of funny to watch when the prime minister talked about energy security and in a continental sense. And, for example, the energy that Canadians supplied, that Canada supplies, to the United States. Clearly, the prime minister made a mention of it, but nothing more substantial came out publicly from the meeting. And I think the concern moves, not you know, there is still, of course, lingering concern around Keystone. But like your question poses, I have the sense politically, it's dead, at least from the perspective of the United States. Beyond that, there's these two other pipeline projects, a little different in nature. They're not... they're not new projects like this extension would have been, Line 3 and Line 5. They face a lot of political opposition in the United States as well. So the conversation kind of moves to, well, what is the Biden administration's stance on those? What are they prepared to do? What kind of pressures do they face from the same constituencies that were opposed to Keystone? And so we still don't have any answers on that either. And it didn't seem like there was a more detailed discussion on it. There could have been. Obviously, we don't know every detail of the two... of the two hours. But there's nothing that came out of that meeting where Joe Biden was saying, you know what, I'm... I am very interested in this this continental energy... this idea of continental energy security. And don't worry about Line 3 and Line 5. That statement was not made.

MATT GALLOWAY: The other issue, and obviously it's linked very closely together, Emily, is the issue of climate change, and Joe Biden saying that he is going to take through his nation a leadership role in tackling the climate crisis. What expectations? We just have about a minute or so left. What expectations do you think Joe Biden has of Justin Trudeau on the climate file?

EMILY RAUHALA: Yeah, in terms of concrete measures, you know, they... they spoke about having a... a new ministerial about shared goals, about working together. I think we still need to wait and see what that looks like in practice? And what level of commitment the Canadian side might be willing to make? I will note on the on the climate stuff that, to me, it showed something broader about the way that some of these thornier issues were pushed aside and a focus on shared goals. And I'm interested to see, you know, as the months go forward and this relationship between Biden and Trudeau develops, whether we'll see some of those points of contention hashed out in a more public way.

MATT GALLOWAY: Whether the honeymoon period of this relationship wears off, in some ways?

EMILY RAUHALA: I suspect that it will eventually.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's good to speak with you both about this. Thank you very much.

VASSY KAPELOS: Thanks, Matt.

EMILY RAUHALA: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Emily Rauhala is a foreign affairs correspondent for The Washington Post. Vassy Kapelos is the host of "Power & Politics" on CBC News Network. Well, your CBC News is next. And then.

STEPHANIE HUG: I've been in counselling on and off since I was six. And the amount of healing, and the lengths that I've gone in three months is amazing.

MATT GALLOWAY: We'll bring you part two of our series on psychedelics. Many people are calling this a new frontier for mental health treatment. We'll focus in particular on the drug ketamine, and how it's being used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly in those who have been at the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. I', Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current" on CBC Radio One. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

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We look at a ketamine-assisted therapy study

Guest: Shannon Dames

MATT GALLOWAY: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current".

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MATT GALLOWAY: Still to come, the secrets hidden in that dusty old dictionary that's sitting on your shelf. But first, how psychedelics could help to treat mental illness.

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MATT GALLOWAY: This week, we're bringing you a special series, "Psychedelic Therapy, New Hope in Mental Health Treatment". Those looking for new hope are the thousands of Canadians with depression, anxiety or PTSD who are not getting relief through existing treatments. Now, new research is exploring the potential of psychedelic drugs. And when they're used under supervision and together with psychotherapy, the results seem to be promising. My next guest is leading research into ketamine-assisted therapy. The trial's first participants were health care workers, some dealing with the mental health fallout from being on the front lines of the covid-19 crisis. Shannon Dames runs the program. She is a professor of nursing at Vancouver Island University and a resilience researcher who runs the Routes to Thrive program. Shannon, good morning.

SHANNON DAMES: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: For people who do not know of this drug, can you just describe what it is and how typically it's used?

SHANNON DAMES: Yeah, so we're using ketamine. It's considered an anesthetic. However, for decades now, they've used it in combat. They use it in E.R.s. They're now using it with mood disorders.

MATT GALLOWAY: And how are you using it?

SHANNON DAMES: We use it to treat treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. When used in a certain dose and mode of delivery, it has a psychedelic-like effect, meaning kind of mind-loosening. So it's really to address barriers that are preventing people from living well.

MATT GALLOWAY: You talked about the history of it, that has been used for... for 50 years. How often has it been used within treatment for mental illness? Is this relatively recent?

SHANNON DAMES: It is, yeah, so it's well-established south of the border. They've been running ketamine IV clinics now. It's been considered one of the most important discoveries in depression in the last 50 years. So there are some people that kind of go in, and they get the ketamine treatment via IV, and then they're out the door. And a lot of the effects are more on that kind of biological end. And then there's another way to use ketamine where it's done IM or sublingual, which is a smaller dose. And it's more a therapeutic process where it has both the benefits on the biological end. But [00:02:56]more pointedly, we're working with releasing kind of past narratives that are no longer helpful or a kind of trauma-stuck energies like trauma that's in the body that people are having a hard time getting at in an ordinary state of consciousness.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mentioned in the introduction you started working with health care workers. Tell me a little bit about why that was the cohort that your project began with?

SHANNON DAMES: Well, we know that we're in a pandemic. And the pandemic is compounding what we already know is a stressed population. So health care workers, front line workers, first responders, generally, there's a lot more tendency to have to turn ourselves off in order to tend to others. So when you're working in trauma-laden, high-stimulus environments, trauma-stuck energies that we are unable to release, they build up, and they create a whole lot of mental health conditions.

MATT GALLOWAY: You've used this phrase a couple of times, trauma-stuck energies. What does that mean?

SHANNON DAMES: Yeah, it's... I consider I'll speak maybe for myself, and how we use it within the program is trauma is really past events, hurts, past wounds that have come from past events that have not been healed fully, that energy, when it can't get discharged through emoting, gets stuck. And it literally creates like an out of tuneness in the body, a noisiness in the body. And when you have a very noisy body, you can't go in and self-soothe because it's too threatening.

MATT GALLOWAY: And so how would therapy using ketamine address that?

SHANNON DAMES: Yeah, so it is a really different mode of therapy. I think when some people think of therapy, they're... they're thinking of talking about the narrative that led them to this place. And it isn't like that with ketamine or with other psychedelic therapies. The focus is really about going in. So we... we have a three-month program where we really teach people kind of how to be their inner therapist, right? How to self-soothe like we were born to do but we've kind of lost our capacity to do. And then with that, they go into these sessions, right? So they go on like a two-hour journey inside, and they revisit all of those thoughts, all of the stuck-energy areas because they aren't threatened by it. Ketamine separates you from a sense of threat. And some people go through one's life and kind of revisit old stories and have an opportunity to shift their orientation to it, like maybe a more empowered orientation or really seeing it for what it was. Other people don't have much narrative at all going on in the session, and it is just a relief. And they leave that session feeling different.

MATT GALLOWAY: So for those health care workers who come into the session stressed, feeling anxious, dealing with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, what were the results of the program when they went through this therapy?

SHANNON DAMES: The results have been unbelievable, quite literally. We've never seen anything like it. Our team has been doing this for a long time in a variety of avenues, and we've never seen anything like this. We had 100 per cent of those that came in with PTSD, screening positive for PTSD on the PCL-5 came out of the program screening negative. Generalized anxiety disorder, depression, like across the board, 100 per cent significant improvements, significant and clinically meaningful improvements. And... and many leaving considered cured because they now screen negative.

MATT GALLOWAY: Cured?!

SHANNON DAMES: Yeah, cured.

MATT GALLOWAY: Wow!

SHANNON DAMES: Yeah, it's a strong word. And we believe in our program that we all are whole. And we all actually have the technology and resources within us and around us. If we can learn how to access those and a lot of that is done in community and through relationships. And with that remembering of who we are and our wholeness comes wellness.

MATT GALLOWAY: What did they tell you about about how they felt when they came out of this?

SHANNON DAMES: Yeah, I mean, we've had just an enormous amount of positive feedback around how it's impacted people's use of substances, you know, with some literally just stopping, relationships with their children and their partner changing, just a renewed sense of joy in life, and not even remembering how long it's been since they felt that way, feeling like a sense of belonging for the first time in their lives. It's... and, you know, like that was our first cohort. It was almost like it was like riding a magical bus [laughing three months, just watching all of that happen. It was just like miracles. And we're heading into cohort two realizing like, OK, this one's bigger! And we are hoping that the results are going to be as fantastic. And we'll see. But we're feeling really, really hopeful.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is this a one-time treatment or do they need to go through it on several occasions or on a regular basis?

SHANNON DAMES: No, it's a one-time deal. We don't look at the ketamine as the medicine. We look at it as a facilitator. So the medicine is really understanding unconditional, positive regard, like receiving it, embodying it. It's self-compassion. That is what is healing people. And the ketamine is there's oftentimes people are unable, unable, disabled from connecting inwardly. There is too much trauma there. The nervous system just shut them right off when things get dicey. So the ketamine is enabling people to connect. And it's more about staying grounded and staying connected to a community. We also have an alumni group that enables people to stay in that kind of healing field. And really, that's the medicine right there.

MATT GALLOWAY: This has been described... you use that phrase, as treatment-resistant conditions. How do those who are involved in conventional or, you know, more traditional, I say traditional in terms of Western medicine, treatment options. How do they look at something like this?

SHANNON DAMES: Honestly, I haven't had anybody come to me, you know, with data or anything saying, you know what you're doing isn't the right path. You know, I am almost waiting for that to happen. But I think we are at a place in history where it's time that we look beyond the biomedical system that really has been failing many. We are in a mental health crisis. Fifty per cent by the time we're 40 have experienced a mental health condition. I think the reason I haven't had a lot of blowback is because I think everybody feels the need. It's time that we go to these research-based, innovative therapies that have been around, they're safe, and the research is telling us they work.

MATT GALLOWAY: You used the word blowback. I mean, there has been blowback to the use of ketamine in these circumstances, perhaps not specifically with you. But, I mean, there are psychiatrists who said that this is unscientific, that it's dangerous, that there haven't been the standardization elements or the human trials necessary to show that this actually works. Is there scientific evidence to show that this works?

SHANNON DAMES: In the realm of ketamine, we have a lot of evidence. And we know on a safety end, it has been very well-vetted and researched. We're also seeing on the mental health end that both ketamine and MDMA, and psilocybin are some of the best curative rates of these mental health conditions that we've ever seen. Do we need more research? Absolutely! Do we need more research in the field? Yes! And the only way we're going to get it is by enabling these programs, which are deemed safe on the biological end, right? And are clearly helping people. So let's fund... let's fund research to make sure that the research is moving right alongside these deliveries.

MATT GALLOWAY: I guess the question is whether the deliveries are moving ahead of that research? That that's been the concern is that some of this is ahead of those data gathering exercises to ensure, to your point, that this is safe and that it's also clinically effective. Do you worry about that at all?

SHANNON DAMES: I do. Oh, my gosh. You know, I look at the history of psychedelics, and I think we have to be very, very, very careful. I think having ethics involved very early in a lot of these processes needs to be a priority. There are a lot of vulnerabilities when you're working with these kind of medicines and non-ordinary state subconsciousness. It's a whole new level of vulnerability. And having people in safe environments with safe people is imperative. So in that way, I think we have to be very, very careful. And it's not just about physical safety. You know, we are entering into spiritual realms with some of these medicines. And this is the time to really like, you know, lift that veil and explore how to do this in the safest way possible.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is your sense, just finally, that this could lead to publicly-funded options in terms of treatment for... for people who might be living with treatment-resistant mental health issues?

SHANNON DAMES: I think it is an ethical imperative. If you look at the stats of what's happening, who's at risk right now, how many deaths are happening right now in this area of mental health, and then you go and look at the research around what are the best chances of meeting these needs. If that... if we can't connect those dots, you know, it's like, come on, it's there. It's right in front of us. And it has to happen now. This is like a pandemic. It is an echo-pandemic. So it doesn't mean we move ahead too fast and that it's unsafe. That's not an option. We have to move at the pace of trust, and safety, but it also doesn't mean that we drag our feet.

MATT GALLOWAY: Shannon, it's great to talk to you about the work that you're doing. I really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.

SHANNON DAMES: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Shannon Dames is a professor of nursing and resilience researcher at Vancouver Island University in British Columbia. Next, meet one of the participants in the Roots to Thrive program. Stephanie Hug is an operating room nurse. A warning, her story includes a discussion of sexual abuse and suicidal thoughts.

STEPHANIE HUG: My home was very loud, lots of yelling. My mom not having the tools that she needed because she was so young to, you know, raise emotionally healthy children. There was substance use and some physical, emotional abuse. And bills were hard to pay, so we ended up bringing a border into the house, which came from just an ad in the paper. So I would have been six when this happened. You know, when my parents would go out to the pub and stuff, he would look after us. And then started to groom me, and eventually, this led to a sexual assault happening.

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STEPHANIE HUG: There was a lot of shame around it, and it seemed like it was this damaged part of me. So I grew up my whole life being afraid that, you know, if people found out about it, they would think less of me. So there was this thing kind of boiling underneath that made me feel like I was not good and bad and over-performing so that even if that stuff was found out about me, I would still be seen as worthy.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: Some nurses thrive, and some nurses do not. We have 50 per cent of new nurses leaving the field within the first five years of nursing due to burnout, and I knew I was at high risk for that.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: This this way of being in my life, this anxiety, this hyper-vigilant state, if suddenly, you know, seminal come up behind me or there might be a lot of noise, and I would jump, you know, that jump, that startle, the aftermath of that was terrible. You know, the shame that I felt. And how is this still a problem? And do people know? And it just it was exhausting. I had it done years of therapy. I had tried different medications, I exercised, the positive self-talk. You know, I had tried so many things. But I just felt like this is just going to be my life. I'm going to be anxious, sad. I'm going to have these, you know, driving home, well, maybe I'll just kill myself. Even though that's not what I want to do, but it just that thought coming in, like, I just kind of felt lost. There was no end in sight of this terrible way of feeling.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: So, coming into the Roots to Thrive program, on session one, we do a medical check-in where they do our vital signs. We do a mental health check-in of where we're at. And then there's an opportunity for us to go out in this garden outside that's overlooking the ocean and get smudged, which was beautiful. Then we go back inside, and they have a room set up for us with mats all laid out and really beautiful blankets. Then, we go through, and we talk about our pillars of strength, what we have that's going to carry us through this psychedelic experience we're about to have.

[Music: Ambient].

STEPHANIE HUG: The first session was a lozenge, and it was slow, it was a slow-build. And I don't know, for anybody that had smoked pot, it sort of felt like I had smoked a really heavy indica, and then immediately laid down. Like, it felt dreamy and warm and comfortable.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: Once we take the medicine, immediately, we put eye masks on, and we are... it's all internal. So it's not we're going to talk about what's happening as it's happening. We're seeing stuff in the room change. It's all internal work.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: I found myself seeing me when I was about maybe a year-and-a-half, and I was at my grandparents house just playing with like a bucket of water, knowing that, you know, small children and animals, these things are loved simply by being. They don't have to do anything to deserve our love. We see them and we love them. So seeing this child, which was me. And loving that adorable little child, but then this... this knowledge came where I suddenly knew that me and this child have the same heart, we're the same person. And I am just as deserving of love now as I was then.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: The second session took place a week after the first, and with that one we could do an intramuscular injection.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: Right away, I could just feel my soul, my psyche, I don't know if you've seen "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"? But like, I just like shrunk down immediately to this, like, teeny tiny essence of being that was then inside of myself. And it was like I felt free to just run around and explore every corner of myself. And then there would be these kind of soft realizations of, wait, is that my hand? Holy crap, I have a hand? Like, what is that even for, and then I'd kind of drop back into myself. And so once I sort of relaxed into that, I found myself on this bus or a train or a trolley, but some sort of vehicle. And some friends were there. And we were going through this sort of I don't know if it was like a tropical desert kind of place, but I knew that we were going through somewhere beautiful to somewhere beautiful, is the sort of knowing that I had.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: With this session, I also got quite sick, and I think it was that I took my mask off, so just the the motion of it all, I just I felt really ill. And I also wonder if perhaps I asked too much of myself?

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: The third session I remember seeing, but I wasn't really seeing, us all in the room on our mats, and I can also see this sort of energy, this mist that's kind of coming out of all of the participants. And it's just sort of their essence, their soul, suddenly starts swirling with this sort of red, warm, glowing, sparkly energy that is my heart, my love. And then suddenly, they became two hands that were holding. And then that image expanded, and it was these two little girls that were in this open field. And they just kind of looked at each other, and... and smiled and said, let's go. And they went off and ran together.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: Just this sense of like it's all going to be OK, no matter what happens, I love me, I trust me, I am safe inside of me. I'll be OK.

[Music: Ambient]

STEPHANIE HUG: Since completing Routes to Thrive, I have noticed that my inner-monologue is a lot kinder and not so rampant. It used to just be like uncontrolled chaos in there all the time with the underlying negativity. And now, it feels more blissful and more kind. I haven't had that... that sort of well, maybe I should just kill myself for months. And that itself is amazing. My depression score, it went from 21, which is severe, to eight, which is mild. My PTSD score went from 44, signifying PTSD is evident, to 17, no PTSD evident. And my anxiety went from 16, which was severe generalized anxiety, to seven, which is mild anxiety. And that's in three months. I mean, I've been working on this stuff. Like, really, I've been in counselling since on and off since I was six, and I just the amount of healing and the lengths that I've gone in three months is amazing. I just hope that this medicine will reach the people that are feeling hopeless. Because it's going to save lives. It's at least saved mine already.

MATT GALLOWAY: Stephanie Hug was a participant in the ketamine-assisted psychotherapy study at Vancouver Island University. Tomorrow, we will conclude our series with a focus on psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, their promise, as well as some words of caution. And remember, if you or someone you know needs immediate mental health support, including if you're having thoughts of suicide, you can call Crisis Services Canada, at 1-833-456-4566. Coming up after a regional update, it turns out that dictionary tucked away on your shelf may have some tall tales to tell. I'll speak with the author of "The Liar's Dictionary", Eley Williams, coming up next. I'm Matt Galloway. We're back in 90 seconds. [Music: Theme]

And British author Eley Williams explores the power of fake words

Guest: Eley Williams

MATT GALLOWAY: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". Have you ever heard the verb al na sheraz to force one's self to fantasize? Now, If you heard that and you're scratching your head, thinking, I actually don't know that word, there's a good reason why, it's because it's not actually a real word. It might be useful now, though, in the midst of this pandemic winter that seems to be dragging on and on and on. Fake words like that are at the heart of "The Liar's Dictionary". It's the debut novel by the British writer Eley Williams. This is a book about love, language and identity, and it's wonderful. Eley Williams, hello.

ELEY WILLIAMS: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Congratulations on this book. Thank you.

ELEY WILLIAMS: Thank you. It's... it's a strange time to be celebrating in the midst of lockdown, but I'm very glad to see it out in the world and internationally out in the world.

MATT GALLOWAY: And this is something that has been cooking for a while. I mean, in part, this was based on your PhD thesis. Then, there are the short stories. And now you have a novel. The thesis inspired by something called mountweazels. What are mountweazels?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yeah, that's right. So mountweazels is a name given to fictitious entries in dictionaries. And those are real things. They are in real dictionaries and encyclopaedias. And they're basically fake words and fake entries that have been included in the text of a dictionary, for example. Really, there is copyright traps. So, for example, if you're writing a dictionary and I'm writing a dictionary, they both should be pretty similar because words are words are words. However, if you've inserted one of these fake words into your dictionary and it pops up in mine, it'll be obvious to everyone that I've pirated the text of your book. And so these fake words, these fictitious entries, exist to really trap would-be pirates. And for me, I was always just fascinated by the idea of these made-up words, really nestling and surreptitiously having this life, this creative energy, in a book that we take as granted to be trustworthy, to be factual. And there was kind of a tension there between trustworthiness and creativity that I, as I say, fascinated by and focussed on for this PhD. The novel kind of bloomed out of that.

MATT GALLOWAY: I think a lot of people will be first hearing about mountweazels in this conversation and in reading this book. When did you first learn about them?

ELEY WILLIAMS: So I first came across the word mountweazel in an article that appeared in The New Yorker, I think, in 2005 by Henry Alford. And he had come across the first the progenitor of the mountweazels, that is Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, which is an entry that appears in a 1975 encyclopaedia. And as you can imagine, it's an entry about this woman named Lillian Virginia Moutweazel. It says that she was born in Bangs, Ohio, in 1933. And then, tragically, she died while on commission for Combustibles Magazine while in an explosion. And just, as you can tell, it sounds like it could be real, but it has this wordplay. It has this fictional [chuckle] kind of cohesiveness to it and satisfaction as if it's a little short story. And just the delight that clearly had been taken in creating this this potted fiction of this made-up woman with the full knowledge that this was a short story that would never be read because no one was ever really going to look up who Lillian Virginia Mountweazel was because she doesn't exist. That idea of the delights that someone had taken in making up a word just really resonated with me. [chuckling] This this kind of idea of nonsense and a bit of mischief, really, being part of a creative act where you least expect it. It enthralled me as an idea as I read this article, and I jotted it down and ended up looking up the history of fake words and dictionaries and when dictionaries go astray.

MATT GALLOWAY: The novel tells a couple of parallel stories. There's Mallory, who's a contemporary woman whose job it is to uncover the mountweazels that are hidden in this Victorian-era dictionary before it's published online. And then there's Peter Wincetworth, who in 1899 hid those fake words in the dictionary. What does he get out of creating these words and, you know, as you say, sliding them in surreptitiously?

ELEY WILLIAMS: I think with Peter Winceworth, I wanted to create a character who he's quite ground down by his job, he's overlooked at his job, he will be anonymous in terms of his contribution to the dictionary. No one really looks up the names of lexicographers when they want to use a dictionary. And by making up these words, it's his way of having some agency, having some creativity, having some assertiveness that only he is able to enjoy and know about. And in a way, that's how he's able to have a legacy that if these fake words make it into the into the text of the dictionary, no one will ever see them. But they will have a currency. They will have a history to them forever. And so, yes, his his fictional insertions are really his way of trying to make his mark on the world because the rest of his life is really quite downtrodden and quotidian. And he hopes for more than that.

MATT GALLOWAY: Let me ask you about some of the words that he invents. I love this word. And in some ways, people... if you squint, it feels like a real world or it looks like a real word because you can imagine the word actually meaning what it doesn't mean. But but that it could mean, casiculation.

ELEY WILLIAMS: That's right.

MATT GALLOWAY: What does that mean or not mean?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Well, I hope I remember correctl! That is the act of walking through spider silk.

MATT GALLOWAY: Fantastic!

ELEY WILLIAMS: Oh, great! [Matt and Eley chuckle] And I mean, again, with that kind of word, we've all... we all recognize that feeling. And either with... if it's first thing in the morning, a kind of horrified stickiness [chuckling]. And maybe it's peculiar enough to not require a word for us all to know and to have a currency in society. But it also reveals how there are these gaps in language, even though there are shared experiences. And I am drawn to... to thinking about this kind of lacuna, those gaps in language. And so many authors have in novels and in poetry sought to fill those with words of their own creation. And there's the online Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which you may have heard of, that this written by John Koenig. He's coming up with words for obscure sorrows that we all would recognize but don't quite have a word for. And, yeah, it was... it was great fun coming up with words and coming up with recognizing where there are these these absences, these gaps that might be filled.

MATT GALLOWAY: Let me ask you about one more, Mamonsomnet, which means to dream that money might make anything possible. [Eley chuckles] It's a word that should exist in some ways, right?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yes. And I like the idea that it might take off, you know? [laughing] You and I have been broadcasting it out to the nation, and maybe it will be one that has a currency in the same way that mountweazel now has a usefulness as a word. Maybe we can... we can take up the mantle and pass it amongst ourselves.

MATT GALLOWAY: How did you become curious about language and words? I mean, did you grow up in a house of books? What was that... what was that for you?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think I grew up in a house where there was always a dictionary, not necessarily to hand in every room, but we were familiar with turning to a dictionary if we didn't know what a word meant or if it felt unfamiliar. And that sounds very everyday, and it was very normal for us. It's strange now that if I think about how often I use a dictionary, it's honestly probably once a year if it wasn't for research purposes. I'm going to look up a word that I'm not familiar with via my phone. I'm going to use Google. I'm going to use Wikipedia. And I do miss, in a way, the... the tactile and kind of haptic nature of using a dictionary and kind of getting lost in the pages of a dictionary once your... your... you've got it cracked over your knees.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, aside from, you know, building up a great vocabulary and being able to win at Scrabble, what did you get from... from browsing a dictionary?

ELEY WILLIAMS: I think in part, in answering that question, one of the dictionaries that we had at home was Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. So it's... it's not a standard dictionary in that it gave, you know, a monolingual account of the English language, but it was a dictionary to do with idioms and with stock phrases or with sayings that you might hear but not necessarily understand. Say something like to win hands down at something. We all know what that means, but we don't know why it's phrased in that way. And I hope this is right. But that comes from horse racing. So you're so confident that you can win, you can put your hands down, no longer be holding the reins. And for me, this idea of language being something that I was, you know, had a kind of passing familiar with familiarity with and was able to understand much of what was being said to me, but for that being kind of a superficial understanding of language. And that it had these strangenesses that had lost some of their specificity and had lost their metaphoric meaning. It just proves that dictionaries were more than just lists of words and definitions, that they had these histories and these biases and even these ignorances that were particular to their editors. And I guess that's always something that's... that's stayed with me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me more about that. That's one of the themes that runs through this novel, are the biases and again, the real people with real biases and perspectives and lives that they lead that are involved in helping to shape these dictionaries. Because there are words that are considered legitimate. There are words that are defined and owned by certain communities and certain people, and then that can change over time. Why was that something that you wanted to dig into?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think for me, a dictionary had always seemed, I supposed because I didn't really think about it too much, but it always seemed synonymous with authority, as something quite rigid as a... s a text, AS something unimpeachable [chuckling] and monolithic in a way. And I kind of thought of people that worked on them or that created them, curated them as also having these qualities. In Britain, we have kind of Dr. Johnson is, I suppose, the grand figure of lexicography, his 18th-century dictionary. And this idea of quite a dry, austere, prodigious man. But, of course, once you start reading his dictionary, learning more about him is full of these eccentricities and idiosyncrasies. You know, one of the inclusions in his dictionary from 1755 is, is trollmedanes. And that's not a word most of us I think are familiar with.

MATT GALLOWAY: No!

ELEY WILLIAMS: And to be honest, Johnson wasn't familiar with it either. He defined that in these terms, of that word, I do not know the meaning. And this idea of someone setting out to include all words in English, but not necessarily to define them all. This idea of collecting language in order to complete a set and register as much as possible is quite different from the idea of someone being correct all the time or someone being the authority on what language means. And I think that, as you say, what one might hope for if a perfect dictionary could ever exist, would be that it, yes, is authoritative, that it is informed, but that it's done with generosity, with clarity and is inclusive. It isn't looking to be a way of seeing language as a competition and someone using it well and someone using it poorly. Of their being slang words which are bad and proper English, standard English, which is better. That language is something more vivid and vital than that that relies on... on change and mutability. So I think that this this putative and maybe impossible idea of the perfect dictionary would have to be one that could be updated, that could reflect changes both in time and in meaning of words. And that they're... because they're made by human beings, one would have to admit that they're always going to be flawed in some way.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, you see now dictionaries, including words like the second gentleman, for example, or BIPOC, being added to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. And in in the novel, Mallory gets these wild, crazy, threatening phone calls from a man who's angry because the dictionary is changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions. I mean, is that the suppleness of language that you've talked about, that idea that... that over time it can become more generous, that the definition can become more generous, that it can evolve and not just be locked in one period of time?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I... I think so. And... and also to acknowledge that sometimes language does have a certain rigidity to it and does encapsulate a certain moment of time. And that that can be comforting because it means that something is clear and demarcated and you can kind of apply it in an informed way, but that that can be weaponized in many ways if it's too rigid, if you cleave to that word as if it was possible to only have one definition or one precise application of that word. That can actually be a way of trying to exclude other people or not letting yourself recognize how things must change, and how words must change if they are to remain meaningful. For example, with the Oxford English Dictionary, in recent years, the Junior Oxford Dictionaries, which is slightly different to the OED, and in a recent edition, the editors decided to get rid of words like acorn and the fruit blackberry and replace it with the noun blackberry meaning type of phone, and include Apple as in the brand. And those are two kind of maybe obvious examples. But the idea that those other words had to be deleted for those to be... for those new tech words to be included, it does seem as if language is being scrubbed a little and not allowing that one's expectations for what a young person would have as a vocabulary could also include acorn, could also include blackberry alongside new words. And certainly in the novel, as you say, the way in which marriage as a word in the modern world has to be different to the way in which it was defined in England in the 19th century. It is not valid to say that it is a union between a man and a woman. And to take umbrage at that change of definition is to be having something like a sinister nostalgia for a society that is conservative and fixed rather than possibly allow for new possibilities of better possibilities.

MATT GALLOWAY: In the novel, Mallory is in a same-sex relationship, but she struggles, and she talks about this, and this comes out a number of times in the book. She struggles to find a word that she really feels expresses her identity. One of the reasons why we turn to dictionaries is because we're looking for a word. What is that right word? Have you ever felt underserved by the words at your disposal?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Hmm, good question. I suppose that rather than feeling underserved, those strange moments of recognition that come when you hear a word that describes a situation or a feeling or an emotion that you didn't even know needed to be defined for you. I'm reminded of a panel in a "Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel, where the protagonist, she, Alison Bechdel, is looking in the dictionary and sees the word queer. And she suddenly realizes that all the definitions of that word in some way apply to her, even if it's talking about strangeness, even if it's talking about how it's an 18th-century slang word for a thief. And she's able to apply it to her father and.... and his gay life that was secret at the time. And it's not that she then resents the dictionary, but rather realizes that there is this richness, both of language and of life, that is just sometimes a page away, and you're never shown which books to turn to or which pages to leaf through. So I suppose to answer your question, rather than feeling that language has undeserved me, that this pursuit of finding ways to define yourself and ways to define experiences can be exhausting, [Matt and Eley chuckle] but it can also involve curiosity. And it can also involve energy. And that's something to... o cherish and to treasure.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, there's a line in the book about how a dictionary might be like reading a map or looking in the mirror. And I'm just wondering, in your own life, having been surrounded by words, when that has felt familiar?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think it's interesting that everyone writes in their own way, but some people, you know, they say, I want I want to grow up, and I want to be a writer. That somehow feels very different to say I want to grow up and I want to be an author. But when we say author, are we talking about authority? Are we thinking about the responsibilities that come with authorship, or are we using it as a synonym for writing? We are implying something about the relationship between yourself and the text, and the reader. Or are you saying that writing can be writing for writing's sake? And just the idea of this complexity sometimes being lost on me because I fudge words together is something that it means I have to slow down my thinking quite a lot. And I think in the novel, part of what I enjoyed was having characters that were similarly tentative with language that often mishandled language or misused language or see it being misused when they're meant to be in these positions of authority on how it is used correctly. And I suppose in a way there was some ventriloquism there. [both laughing] Having those characters muddle their way through, rather muddle-hededly and learning about what was possible for me and my relationship with language at the same time.

MATT GALLOWAY: Whose job do you think it is to to take care with the language that we use or misuse? I mean, there's this phrase fake news that's being tossed around right now in Australia. The dictionary there, Macquarie, said that this is the word of the decade in many ways. Words can... can, I mean, they have meaning, and they can have real effect, and they can be damaging and create all sorts of chaos if they're deployed in certain ways and in certain venues. Who is it that should oversee that?

ELEY WILLIAMS: It's a tricky one. I think it's interesting to see how different bodies and... and indeed countries have tried to think about that. So I suppose most famously in France, they have the academy, which comprises of a kind of an elite of lexicographers and people who are very well-versed and educated in certain cultural French values. And that would seem like a way of almost providing the most informed committee for patrolling language. But even I suppose, in using that word patrolling, I am tentative about the way in which language can be policed and that any one person or any one legislative body could be seen as the arbiters of how language is being used correctly or incorrectly. And I suppose ideally something like a open-source but vetted way of ensuring the lexicography is useful, ensuring that a dictionary can be consulted so that someone can clear up maybe an ambiguity about language, but also to register that that ambiguity existed for them, so that there is this sense of I like this idea of a map being possible, a mapping of language as inscrutable as much as it is communicative. I think that could all be part of lexicography. But it be quite a big book if it was printed. [chuckling] So I think maybe that's where the digital comes in.

MATT GALLOWAY: What about in the commons? I mean, I'm not sure whether you spend any time at all on Twitter. And if you don't, congratulations. But if you do, [both chuckle] you'll know that there's a lot of policing of language that happens there. Are you comfortable with the way that that happens?

ELEY WILLIAMS: It is... I am on Twitter, so I do not deserve any congratulations on that point. [both chuckling] And I... I really don't know the answer to that. I think that often through online communities, people are able to have that moment that we discussed before of recognizing words for themselves that they may not have come across before, and they're able to align themselves with the. And using that that richness, that new richness of vocabulary recognition. But if the flip side of that is people either hyper-correcting or applying labels to other people and kind of barricading oneself in with words, there's a selfishness there. And this is defensiveness there and... and I suppose also weaponization. So I... I think that there must always be playfulness with language and allow for play and curiosity. Otherwise, I think that, yeah, it is about walls going up and things being inscribed rather to didactically that runs counter with what I think is... is marvellous and marvelling about language.

MATT GALLOWAY: Can I ask you about one more word? And that is, baby, you and your wife just had a baby.

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yes, we did. A whole one. [chuckling]

MATT GALLOWAY: Congratulations.

ELEY WILLIAMS: [both chuckling] Thank you very much. Yes, he's 12 years old... 12 years old! gosh, that would be a long time! He's 12 days old.

MATT GALLOWAY: Twelve days old!

ELEY WILLIAMS: Yeah, he's still... I must say his grasp of languages is not yet what I hope it will be, but we're getting there. [laughing]

MATT GALLOWAY: What has his life been like for you? I mean, you have a novel that comes out, and then you have a baby in the midst of a pandemic. What has life been like?

ELEY WILLIAMS: As you say, the pandemic aspect has meant that we haven't been able to introduce him to as many people as we would have liked. And getting hold of various things in a rushed but measured way has been an interesting experience. The word interesting being used generously there. [both chuckling] But it has... it has meant that I've probably had less time to look at the news and probably have been all the better for it.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is there anything in the life of a writer that would prepare you for this moment of, I mean, the cliche is that a writer, you know, works in her or his small room and shuts themselves off from the rest of the world and focuses on this great work of literature and then out it goes. And we're all stuck now at home, and we can't get out. Is there anything that would prepare you for the moment that we're in right now?

ELEY WILLIAMS: Um, what's important for me about writing is that it is an active expression and communication. So to remember that while to write, you do have to scramble occasionally to get time to yourself and space to yourself, do remember that you can make a voice note on your phone when you go for your state-mandated work. [chuckle] You can doodle for half-an-hour while on a Zoom meeting. And if your thinking is based on curiosity and thinking about about playfulness, that's entering a state that is creative and... and that can be a way of energizing that part of you that maybe might be a little bit more sequestered or chaotic because of lockdown.

MATT GALLOWAY: This is a wonderful novel, and a lot has happened to you in the last few weeks. [chuckling] Congratulations on all of that. And it's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

ELEY WILLIAMS: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Good luck.

ELEY WILLIAMS: Have a lovely day.

MATT GALLOWAY: And you. Bye-bye.

ELEY WILLIAMS: Thanks, bye-bye.

MATT GALLOWAY: Eley Williams is the author of "The Liar's Dictionary", also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. What about you? Have you ever felt the urge to invent a new word, maybe a word that doesn't exist, but a word that you think should exist to kind of express a certain feeling or experience. The word that came out in that book, casiculation, that idea of walking through spiderwebs, doesn't exist, but it seems perfect in many ways. So we turn this over to you, send us your very own mountweazels, words that don't exist, but that should exist. You can email us: thecurrent@cbc.ca. Or find us on Twitter, we are: @TheCurrentCBC. That's it for "The Current" for today. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's "q". To. Power speaking with Meredith McNeil. You know her from "Bareness von Sketch". She and Adrienne C. Moore will be speaking about their new very funny CBC series, "Pretty Hard Cases". Tomorrow on "The Current", our series, "Canada's Road Ahead" pulls into Sudbury, Ontario. For months we have been told to stay home. For people experiencing homelessness, that order isn't simple... or not even possible, really. In Sudbury, a group of volunteers saw gaps in the services available to people, so they started working to fill those gaps. At first, it was handing out water bottles and granola bars. Now, the operation has evolved. And we'll leave you today with a glimpse at what those folk in Sudbury have been up to. Tune in tomorrow for more of the story. I'm matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to "The Current", and take care.

MELISSA BELANGER: I'm Melissa Belanger, I'm part of a grassroots effort just helping our homeless in our low-income families. We started doing pop-up giveaways about September, early September. So anyone is invited to come in, obviously COVID protocol. So here is just obviously, our coffee station, nice hot coffee and some warm baked goods. Over here, they can grab a sandwich, they can also use the washroom facilities here, definitely important. So even the businesses downtown, our volunteers even would come down here for four or five hours at a time on a Sunday and have to hold it, right? [chuckling] There's no washing facilities open to the public. And we can do a clothes exchange, so they can drop off their old clothes, take new clothes and we'll launder them. We do it because we... just once you see it, you can't unsee it. The agencies are working hard, but they're also there's a lot of parameters with the COVID and stuff. So we just wanted to be where they couldn't be. We wanted to fill the gaps.

February 24, 2021 Episode Transcript

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