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The Current Transcript for January 16, 2019

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

My family landed in the town of Antigonish with a group, they came all together to help sponsor a Syrian family, unknown family. Who does that? Who spend three months or four months of his life sponsoring and donating and fundraising to bring somebody he doesn't know?

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, it turns out thousands of us did. Four years after arriving in Canada as a refugee and then setting up a chocolate company whose story has travelled around the world, Tareq Hadhad became a Canadian citizen yesterday and he's here in under an hour. Also on the way, with the bushfires in Australia still raging, there are concerns about the viability of one of the country's star inhabitants: the koala, the solution that some people are suggesting, move the animals to New Zealand.

SOUNDCLIP

I care more, I think at best, the koalas harm and the whole system. We should care about all of the species in those systems, not just the koala.

MG: Could the cute koala become an invasive species? The view from Christchurch in 30 minutes. Plus, a conversation with the essayist Leslie Jamison about empathy, obsession and what sobriety is brought to her writing. We begin, though, with changes to Canada's medical assistance in dying law and the very personal stakes and a long awaited review. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

Fear of losing access to medical assistance in dying put 'panic' in woman with terminal cancer, says son

Guests: Mike Cormier, Jocelyn Downie, Trudo Lemmens

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SOUNDCLIP

Two and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. I am grateful to live in Canada, a country where I can choose my death. But the law has forced me to play a cruel game of chicken. I would like nothing more than to make it to Christmas, but if I become incompetent along the way, I will lose out on my choice of a beautiful, peaceful and, best of all, pain free death. That is why I've decided to leave this week on November 1st. People like me who've already been assessed and approved, are dying earlier than necessary because of this poorly thought out law.

MG: Audrey Parker was just one of the people calling for change to Canada's medical assistance in dying law. She died in 2013 with the help of a doctor, but wished she could have waited longer. Ever since this law was introduced in 2016, there have been calls for change. Well, the law is now under review. Canadians have until the twenty seventh of January to give feedback through an online survey, and the website is apparently having a hard time keeping up with the response. Mike Cormier, his mother, Carolyn Zachary, had an assisted death on New Year's Eve, and Mike is with me in our studio in Toronto. Good morning.

MIKE CORMIER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: I'm sorry for your loss.

MIKE CORMIER: Thank you.

MG: Tell me about your mom.

MIKE CORMIER: My mom was a - I describe her as a fierce mother. She was a single mom at the age of 22 with two children. She put herself through nursing school and she was 30. I helped her learn the metric system. She saw a lot of things as a nurse. She became a little disenfranchised with what she like to call the pharmaceutical system and opened her own holistic skin care practice and retired from that in 2012, due to deteriorating health issues.

MG: When did you know that your mother was, well, I mean, perhaps beyond the deteriorating health. Was it something specific?

MIKE CORMIER: Yes. This specific issue arose on December 3rd when she called me at 5:00 in the morning and told me she had to go to the emergency, which was odd because she real had an aversion to hospitals. We found out on the very next day that she had an incurable aggressive cancer.

MG: Oh, my goodness.

MIKE CORMIER: Yes.

MG: And that must have become as it was, a huge shock. I mean, that timeframe.

MIKE CORMIER: It was very shocking. We went there thinking maybe she'd be having her gallbladder removed. And on the 5th, we were meeting with the palliative care doctor.

MG: What do you remember about that time? If anything, I mean, I would imagine it's just like a blur.

MIKE CORMIER: It is a blur. But that part is clear to me. My mother indicated that she she didn't want to receive any treatment and the doctors concurred that it wouldn't have been very useful.

MG: When did you learn that she wanted a medically assisted death?

MIKE CORMIER: Well, specifically, I learned on December 4th, but she's indicated all along to us, my sister and I, that if her quality of life was not good, she was unable to be independent fully, she always wanted us to, quote, pull the plug.

MG: As a son, how do you process that?

MIKE CORMIER: We had years to process that. It's definitely different when it's real and looking you in the face and voice. The harder part to process for me was that she was dying soon. And so I like to tell people that she didn't make the decision to die soon. That was made for her. She just wanted to have a little bit of control over that.

MG: And so she was approved for a medically assisted death. But there was some concern that she could lose that, right?

MIKE CORMIER: Yeah, that was that was probably the most stressful thing for my sister and I and my mother, I would say, you know, as her symptoms worsened, the palliative care doctor indicated to us that this new symptom might mean the possibility of a blood infection, which could cause fever and confusion, which may affect her eligibility. That kind of put a panic in us. You certainly don't want to end the life prematurely. However, the thought of her losing that eligibility and suffering for several more months possibly and slowly deteriorating just seemed like a tragic outcome.

MG: Did you speak with her about it?

MIKE CORMIER: We did. We are very open about everything.

MG: What did that mean to her, that possibility that she could lose that approval?

MIKE CORMIER: It meant panic for her. She was so adamant that this is-- she did not want to live a life of dependence and a joyless body. And so it was one of the reasons she called them on December 27th. And she wanted to get through Christmas with us and her grandchildren. And it was one of the reasons. On December 27, she called and said she was ready to get a bed at the hospital.

MG: And just to be clear, I mean, if she had become, as you say it, through the blood infection and she became confused, how then would that lead her to lose that right to MAID?

MIKE CORMIER: So the day of the procedure, they are interviewed by by the doctor performing the procedure.

MG: The patient.

MIKE CORMIER: Yes, that's right, mother. My mom was interviewed. The questions are very detailed and comprehensive. And if she wasn't able to satisfactorily answer those questions, she may not have been deemed to have the mental capacity to make that decision and would have been ineligible.

MG: What was it like for you in the days, the hours in the lead up to that final assessment? I mean, there's a lot that's riding on that.

MIKE CORMIER: Yes. And it's a weird feeling. You mean to sort of be rooting for your mom to pass an assessment that's going to lead to her death immediately. However, when you know so strongly that this is what she really wants, you are, you're hoping she passes and she can go peacefully. I mean, the emotions are all over the place. My sister and I were in the room and we had some laughs with my mom that morning, you know. And I think the thing that comforted me most was that realization that she isn't deciding to die. That decision was made for her. She just wants to go peacefully with some dignity. So it was it was surreal.

MG: Relieving when that- when she passed that--

MIKE CORMIER: It was. It was relieving. And then another layer of sadness, because this is it.

MG: What do you remember? And say as much as you want. Because it's incredibly personal. But what do you remember about New Year's Eve?

MIKE CORMIER: Well, the saddest day was almost the day before when my sister called me saying, mom's got it. They'll have a bed for mom today. And, you know. So they they said they had a bed for her and it's, you know, it was a reality. And we're just kind of in this weird limbo. So finally at five thirty, I got in touch with the doctor and he explained that the bed would be ready in the evening and the procedure would happen the following day. And we just spent some time and had some breakfast. And met the doctor around noon who was the doctor performing the procedure. Then they proceeded to ask my mom questions and quite a lot of detail and it felt good for me to see my mom have that mental capacity, still so sure, this is what she wanted to do. And then the doctor said, well, you're eligible and we'll be back when the drugs come from pharmacy and we'll perform the procedure in about an hour. And then, you know, you have your last hour left with your mom.

MG: What did it mean for you when it was done? I mean, it again, it's incredibly sad. But to know that your mother had had that agency?

MIKE CORMIER: I wasn't sure how it would feel. But when the procedure was done, it felt good. It felt incredibly peaceful. And it felt like the right thing. And I feel like my mother is happy with how everything went.

MG: Which speaks to the stakes that are at play here. That's conversation.

MIKE CORMIER: Uh-hm.

MG: Mike, I appreciate you telling us the story. And again, I'm sorry for your family's loss. Thanks so much. Mike Cormier's mother, Carolyn Zachary, died on New Year's Eve with medical assistance.

SOUNDCLIP

Look, we proposed legislation in 2016 knowing that this would be part of an evolution. We have always been trying to strike a balance between the autonomy of individuals with a real fear on the part of a number of different Canadians who saw themselves as vulnerable in the legislation or from service providers who felt that perhaps we needed some safeguards.

MG: Justice Minister David Lametti. Well, there certainly are some difficult issues when adjusting a law that dictates how and when Canadians can die. Jocelyn Downie is a professor of law and public policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and Trudo Lemmens is a professor of health, law and policy at the University of Toronto. Good morning to you both.

TRUDO LEMMENS: Good morning.

JOCELYN DOWNIE: Good morning.

MG: Jocelyn, I want to ask you about this legislative review, but first, how common are stories like the one we just heard and the panic that Mike Cormier's mother, felt in the lead up to this, knowing what she had to do to be able to be eligible for this procedure.

JOCELYN DOWNIE: So we don't have exact numbers on that, but we certainly have a lot of reports from family members and also MAID assessors and providers that this is a real concern for people. It's causing a lot of anxiety.

MG: The review is happening because a court in Quebec all but struck down what's known as the reasonably foreseeable death criteria for medically assisted dying last year. What is reasonably foreseeable mean exactly?

JOCELYN DOWNIE: That's the million dollar question. When it first came out everybody wasn't sure. Over time, we've evolved interpretations of the law. And I would say the dominant interpretation right now is that your natural death has either sufficiently close in time or you are now on a predictable trajectory toward death. In other words, there is a predictable cause of death ahead for you.

MG: And what does having that clause in the law mean for patients who choose medical assisted death?

JOCELYN DOWNIE: It means that a group of people do not have access to medical assistance in dying who would like it, who are experiencing enduring and intolerable suffering. So people like the plaintiffs in the case in Quebec that led to all of this. So Truchon and Gladu, these are both individuals with very significant physical disability, but they didn't- they're natural deaths weren't predictably close in time, nor could anybody say what their cause of death would be. So they were denied access. They had extreme life circumstances that caused them enduring an intolerable suffering, but they couldn't access MAID because of the reasonably foreseeable criterion.

MG: And so I want to bring Trudo Lemmens in in just a moment. But if you eliminate that criteria, what does it mean for Canadians?

JOCELYN DOWNIE: It means that an additional group of people will have access. The people who would have had access under the Supreme Court of Canada decision called Carter that gave us made in Canada. It struck down the prohibition on assisted dying. And it was broader. It did not include this element of reasonably foreseeable. So this is giving back. Striking down recent be foreseeable is giving back access to MAID, to people who were effectively given access to it by the Supreme Court of Canada. And the biggest groups are people with physical disabilities or mental disorder as their sole underlying medical condition. Those two groups are precluded by reasonably foreseeable, largely precluded, not entirely true. And this will open it up.

MG: Trudeau Lemmens, what do you make of Ottawa's plan to amend that law so that people, as Jocelyn is saying, who aren't facing imminent death, would still be eligible for this procedure?

TRUDO LEMMENS: You know, let me start by making a clarification on what Jocelyn said about the situation before the legislation. The Supreme Court annulled an absolute prohibition on medical assistance in dying, but it obviously diligently to. And it actually gave an explicit time to the legislature to enact legislation that would introduce stringent safeguards to protect people who are vulnerable. So, yes, de facto, the Supreme Court struck down an absolute prohibition, but it didn't say how the legislation had to look like. So the reasonable for foreseeable death criteria was introduced to protect, indeed, vulnerable people. But the law also explicitly stated that the goal of the legislation was to protect the equal value of the life of people who were elderly, ill or disabled, and to promote suicide prevention as an important public health goal, which remains an important public health tool, notwithstanding the fact that we legalized some form of medical assistance in dying as an exception to the criminal code prohibition on killing another person.

MG: In doing that, has it exacerbated suffering, has created unnecessary suffering?

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes. So we have indeed technical issues and issues of of people who have said have been assessed for medical aid in dying and who should have access to medical aid in dying according to law. But we're worried about losing capacity. But we also already received reports of people whose family members have died with medical aid in dying and who have a traumatic experience about the fact that their family members were suffering from depression. There is a case that I was alerted about of a man who was suicidal and shortly after received medical aid in dying. So under the current legislation, there are also concerns about issues of safeguards. Issues about potential errors that we should look at.

MG: Well, and part of this if you widen the criteria; imminent death could also allow people with chronic treatment, resistant medical illness to be considered for a medically assisted death. Is that a good idea, Trudo Lemmens?

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes. So there is disagreements about what that will mean about what risk of error is that will increase in the context of often a broadening of medical aid in dying. But we have to realize that it's setting up a system of state supported ending of another person's life through the medical system, which confirms actually that chronic disability or mental illness, suffering from a chronic mental illness, or simply having a variety of ailments as an elderly person are in and of itself a sufficient basis to ask and to have a confirmation that your life is no longer as worth living as if you would not have these particular condition.

MG: Jocelyn, what do you make of the concerns that Trudeau has raised, particularly around the need for safeguards as we re-examine this law?

JOCELYN DOWNIE: I think there's a need for safeguards, but I think we have those safeguards. What we need is in the law and we need to apply the law. We need to ensure that people have appropriate training. There are professional standards, that there is oversight, but we don't actually need this criterion of reasonably foreseeable. What it does is it prevents certain people from exercising their autonomy who should have that ability. And we can protect the people who need to be protected without the provision reasonably foreseeable. And by taking it out, what we're not doing then is protecting people from themselves, which is really stigmatizing and discriminatory toward people with mental disorders and physical disabilities.

MG: Trudo Lemmens. There's also concerns that you've raised around people being able to make advanced directives outlining their wishes. Just briefly, what's your main concern when it comes to those advanced directives?

TRUDO LEMMENS: Yes. So the issues that we heard in the documentary before, in the interview before, I think are not the kind of the main challenges that we will face when we brought if we would broaden the legislation to advance requests for medical aid in dying. There is also a desire of some who are diagnosed with a condition like Alzheimer's to know that they will have access to medical aid in dying when their cognitive abilities decline.

MG: And what's wrong with that?

MG: It's understandable. So I from a personal perspective, I've seen very close to my family members who have gone through that process. It's a devastating process for the people who who are living with that and for the family members. But we have to be very cautious about what that means. If we say that a person can now, in a written advance request say that their life should be ended at a certain period in time when they lost their cognitive abilities. But how will that be implemented? How will we decide that the person is now in a state of unbearable suffering? Will we practically will we set the person down when the person is still among us and we have, which frequently happens in the context of Alzheimer's, that, yes, there is cognitive decline, but there are moments of joy and pain, moments of self-interest that have changed over time. The person is little, no longer him or herself. It is no longer to say no simply on the basis of an advance request to death. So the concern is there, how will we implement that and what does it tell us for people who are in and of itself are already suffering from cognitive decline, that we send the message that we as a society can decide that we will end the life of a person who is still among us, but who has cognitive decline?

MG: Jocelyn how just finally, how do we strike this balance? Because there are real concerns about making sure the patients, as we said, have agency, but also that there is protections there.

JOCELYN DOWNIE: Absolutely. A really important distinction to draw here is from the kind of case that Mike talked about and Audrey Parker talked about and then the kind of case that Trudeau is talking about. There's a group who have been found to be eligible for MAID. They meet all of the criteria already and they are fearful of losing the cap. The access to me. They may be refusing pain meds in order to retain their capacity, in order to retain their ability to have it. Or like Audrey, dying earlier than they would. That group is what's being considered right now. And I think that we can deal with those. They don't raise the same kinds of personal identity issues, the other issues that Trudo's raising and what we do is we say, okay, let's allow those now and then let's put the bigger, more complicated issues of advance requests when you have not yet become eligible for MAID. Let's put that into the five year review that's going to start in June and have time for a much longer public consultation about that. But I think the first kind that we've been talking about this morning is very clear and there are real harms associated with not having access in those kinds of circumstances and we can fix that.

MG: More on this certainly to come as the review continues. Jocelyn, thank you.

JOCELYN DOWNIE: My pleasure.

MG: Trudo, thank you very much.

TRUDO LEMMENS: Thank you.

MG: Jocelyn Downie, professor of law and Public Policy at Dalhousie University. Trudo Lemmens, Professor of Health Law and policy at the University of Toronto. We'd love to hear from you on this. If you have experience with the legislation as it exists right now, or perhaps you want amendments to that legislation. Get in touch on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC or cbc.ca/thecurrent. CBC News is next. Coming up, a conversation with Leslie Jamison about obsession and more. We'll hear from her coming up. This is The Current. My name's Matt Galloway. Stick around.

Petition calling for koalas to be introduced to New Zealand met with skepticism from ecologists

Guests: Andrea Byrom

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, you might know him as the Syrian refugee turned chocolatier in Antigonish. Right now, you can add a Canadian citizen to Tareq Hadhad's resumé. The newly minted Canadian is my guest in ten minutes. But first, the story of the Kiwis and the koalas.

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SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Koala in pain]

You want to would put him on the blanket and bring him out of the pot stuf. Be careful his claws.

MG: Oh. It breaks your heart there. The Australian animal lovers rescuing a badly burned koala, just one of the many videos showing injured animals and a habitat destroyed by those devastating bushfires. This week, the Australian government pledged something like 50 million dollars to rescue and protect wildlife affected by these fires. And that includes koalas, which are at risk of being classified as endangered. In neighbouring New Zealand, people want to help by bringing the koalas there. A petition started by a group calling itself the Koala Relocation Society already has more than 11000 signatures and it's growing. Andrea Byrom is an ecologist and director of New Zealand's Biological Heritage National Science Challenge. We've reached her in Christchurch. Andrea. Good morning.

ANDREA BYROM: Good morning.

MG: When you heard of this idea, what was your initial reaction?

ANDREA BYROM: I had an interesting reaction as an ecologist. I completely understand where people are coming from. The images, as you see it in your introduction, have been gut wrenching and horrifying. And just like the next person, I was really quite horrified at the scale and the magnitude and the devastation of the fires in Australia. And we all want to do something to help. But I know from experience and from my personal research that bringing species to other countries and introducing them into places where they haven't been previously is never a good idea.

MG: People have suggested in light of this petition that if you introduce koalas to New Zealand, an area that they're not native to, they could become an invasive species. Is that your understanding?

ANDREA BYROM: It's always hard to predict how and when and whether an animal or an introduced species will become an invasive species. Sometimes they don't. And so by definition, invasive means that they start to cause problems for humans or for other parts of the other native flora and fauna and the ecosystem. And we don't really know how big that impact would be. And that's part of the problem. A lot of due diligence would need to be done on something like that. New Zealand has very strict regulations about bringing in new species. It's one of the strictest regimes, biosecurity regimes in the world because we have a lot of things that we want to protect.

MG: Have there been issues in past where species have been introduced and created and caused problems?

ANDREA BYROM: Yes, we've had lots of species here in New Zealand go extinct due to the introduction of particularly mammals that are a problem in this country, but not in other countries. For example, in New Zealand, we've actually got Australian brushed tail possums. They were introduced here in the 1800s for the fur industry. And likewise we actually have weasels and stouts from from Canada and from Europe. And we also have numerous other species. Rats and mice are actually invasive here in this country. New Zealand only had three species of bats as native mammals on our land. But apart from that, we didn't have any native mammals. So birds are our thing and we want to protect them.

MG: And what did you say came from Canada? What animal came from Canada?

ANDREA BYROM: Well, actually, your weasels have come here. And so we have your- the beautiful animals, Canadian weasel.

MG: I'll take your word for it.

ANDREA BYROM: The absolutely wonderful little predator and Canada. Really respect them. But unfortunately, over here, that's become a problem. They eat lots and lots of not only our native birds, but also beautiful lizards and insects as well. Some of our big insects are actually quite iconic in their own right.

MG: How would the weasel get from Canada to New Zealand? That's a long way.

ANDREA BYROM: They were introduced by humans again in the 1800s. And people thought to do this partly for the fur industry. And in the case of the mustelid family, which weasels are in. The reasons were, the idea behind that was that perhaps they could control the rabbit population which had been introduced from Europe and already become a problem here. So people have tried these sort of ecological experiments in the past and feel like that's never gone well.

MG: If you those are all very serious issues. If you put them aside, if you can, do you think that the koalas could potentially survive in New Zealand?

ANDREA BYROM: Well, it's very hard to know the answer to a question like that. New Zealand does not have eucalyptus trees or species, which is the main food of the koala as a native species. But what we do have is introduced eucalyptus for the forestry sector. It's what the koala petition is aiming for is to bring the koalas to New Zealand to eat those trees. So I would say the chances would be reasonably good.

MG: If the situation with the koalas in Australia were to get worse. And people have talked about the possibility that if these fires continue and people are worried about the fires on the habitat of koalas, in addition to the koalas themselves, and that then it could wipe out their food supply if that were to get worse. Do you think that New Zealand should seriously consider this proposal, even though there are those potential problems that you've laid out?

MG: I mean, obviously, if it came to that really critical stage, that's where the zoo sector does come into play. So, for example, if you get to the point where you have to make the decision to bring animals into captivity, and that's never good, it's got to be a last ditch decision. And my view, my personal view is that we should be focussing on rehabilitating systems in Australia and setting up policies and practices that enable Australians to do that. You're right. There's been a large amount of habitat lost in Australia and we should all be worried about it, not only for the koalas, actually, but because humans are dependent on these systems, too. And I think that's the harsh reality that's really hitting home in Australia right now. But it should be hitting home for all of us. We should be protecting and rehabilitating systems and putting funding into these in such a way that koalas can live in their natural habitat.

MG: I mentioned that there are something like 10000 signatures already on this petition and people have left comments as well. I just want to read a couple of them for you. One is 'do the right thing and bring the koalas to New Zealand. It would be devastating to lose the koala'. Another one is 'koalas are too precious to become extinct. We have the resources, so let's hope help our Aussie brothers out. It's worth a try'. Do you think that we can get, and you could get, too hung up on the idea of the species being invasive and that in in the grand fight that people in Australia and right now that that is a distraction from trying to save the species?

ANDREA BYROM: Yes, I mean, that's a really good question. Human judgments about species and where they live, where they live and whether they're invasive or not is always going to be exactly that. Just a human judgment. But again, I keep coming back to I care more, I think, about the koalas home and the whole system. We should care about all of the species in those systems, not just the koala, because as a whole system that's what supports the koalas. It never goes well when you isolate a species away from its whole ecosystem. So to my mind, I think that the people mean well. And it's always really important to acknowledge that people want to try and do something to help. But if each of these people that have signed a petition just donated the price, for example, of a cup of coffee, I think it would make a huge difference to rehabilitating a lot of wildlife species in Australia and their natural home. So you're right. As humans, we can get a little bit too hung up on some concepts, but at the same time, the concepts that we should be focussing on is ecosystem rehabilitation.

MG: Do you think part of this is about the fact that the koalas are really cute animal and that it's easier in some ways to focus on that than to your point, focussing on the larger systemic issues?

ANDREA BYROM: Yes, and definitely as an ecologist, I always feel that like on the one hand, I do get a little bit frustrated when I say that because I always say a species is part of a whole system. But on the other hand, I think it's great that people care. And I think if the koala is a flagship for the other problems that this whole situation has highlighted, then that's a really good thing. We should be sitting up and paying attention to the plight of the koala and all the other animals and all the other plants and all the functional parts of the system that we don't think about, like this soil productivity and so on that had been impacted in this terrible situation.

MG: I just want to end there. We're on the other side of the world and watching this, for us, has been awful and heart wrenching and devastating. What is it like for you? This is your work. And to see this closer than we are, I mean, obviously you're not right next door, but closer than we are, what is it like for you to see the scale of these fires and what they're doing?

ANDREA BYROM: As an ecologist, I was absolutely horrified because I think it's a really important link to make between climate change and biodiversity loss. We were personally impacted in New Zealand as well. We've actually had a lot of smoke from the Australian bushfires. It's affected the light. And this summer we've had quite orange light. We've had some sunsets that we would rather not have had. Thinking about the devastation across the ditch is we call it.

MG: I appreciate you talking to us about this. It's so personal for so many people. And that's why I guess when people are signing this petition and asking for greater efforts to try and save this population. Andrea, thank you so much.

ANDREA BYROM: You're welcome. Thank you.

MG: Andrew Byrom is an ecologist and director of New Zealand's Biological Heritage National Science Challenge. She was in Christchurch.

[Music]

New Canadian

Guests: Tareq Hadhad

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Tarik Hadhad.

[Applause and cheers]

MG: Tareq Hadhad that is the sound of your citizenship ceremony. Congratulations and tell me about that moment. What was it like?

TAREQ HADHAD: It was a big moment. I would never forget it. I think it's life changing, transforming, magical. It will certainly never forget the time and the time when I was taking the oath of citizenship and my name was pronounced and make the certificate of citizenship is a message from Canada to all of those around the world who were fleeing war and persecution and coming here to build a better life for themselves. You are welcome and you're home.

MG: Speaking of Tareq Hadhad, he settled in Canada in 2016, one of thousands of people who fled the Syrian civil war and is now, as you heard, a Canadian citizen made a bit of a name for himself, starting a chocolate business at home, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, which soon became one of the community's biggest employers. We will get to the chocolate in a moment. You used the word magical to describe that ceremony. Why that word?

TAREQ HADHAD: I think it was beyond belief. What I had seen here or there from support for all Canadians from coast to coast to coast. The messages they have received, even on Twitter from the prime minister last night when he when he tweeted about it and all the MPs the premier, my family, friends, everyone, that they have had an impact on my life here in this country till this moment, I say thank you and I am so grateful to them. You know, I have not attended a ceremony before because I wanted to keep that feeling until they have my citizenship. I would be attending ceremonies as a practice as a Canadian citizen. From now on, at least twice a year. To get that feeling back and watch the joy on the faces. It's nothing but joy. I'm not sure when was your last ceremony that you attended, but I really recommend that everyone is [unintelligible] to go and watch how much pride in the eyes.

MG: You're absolutely right. They are incredible ceremonies. And I always tell people, even if you were born in this country or maybe you went to a ceremony decades ago, that you have to go because of exactly what you're describing. What was the moment that mean, aside from them announcing your name, what was the one moment that stands out for you?

TAREQ HADHAD: You know, when I was taking the oath, the last part of you is that I will fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen. And this is certainly an honour. You know, when I was officially like, you know, when you finish the oath with the word Canadian citizen, then you know that this is real. The country since moments when you're coming in, they don't tell you that you don't belong and they don't tell you that there's anything that you can't do because you are part of this amazing fabric since moment one. I mean, when I arrived in Canada, there was no restriction for us to do anything that we wanted. The only thing that we could do is we couldn't vote in the elections until we became Canadians. But as permanent residents in this country, we had the same rights like anyone else. And they think the right of mobility and freedom, was incredible and has really shaped our success story that has come to this point.

MG: One of the neat things about the ceremony is what happens to yourself, but also the people who are around you. What did you notice about the other people who were also being sworn in as Canadian citizens?

TAREQ HADHAD: There were so many people actually around me that they have really in and learning a lot about this country. And the most pride that they had in their eyes were for to see their kids growing up in a safer place and in a better country that has opportunities for everyone, supports all of these kids and futures has been remarkably fund them. Like one of the people who are sitting beside me in the ceremony - I'm not sure if you have seen some of the videos - but there was someone sitting me standing with his wife. They are from India. They have been in this country for a good time. And they were when they knew that they were eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship, they said, he said to me that he was over the moon because he really wanted to change the life for himself and his wife before he had any kids. So I think that gives a lot of messages. That the most pride that we've seen in the eyes is that this country is peaceful, is one of the greatest nations on earth, and they think it's the second largest country in the world. So that is a place for everyone to create their own opportunity.

MG: Just briefly, for people who don't know the story, how did you end up in Antigonish?

TAREQ HADHAD: The community in 2015, after the picture of the Syrian kid, Alan Kurdi, who washed up on the shore, they were shocked and they had fundraised to bring a Syrian family that they don't know. They have raised enough money to bring a family over the same size of my family. And they applied to the Canadian government. It was a random choice. And I think our size of family just match their donation. And that's how we ended up in Antigonish. I showed up in Toronto in 2015, knowing nothing. That's where I will be. And they told me that it's in Nova Scotia. I arrived in Nova Scotia. I know nothing in this province. And then I knew that this is an amazing place where people have come together with a great heart and welcoming arms. And they just wanted to change a life of someone. They knew that we are all humans, in the end.

MG: What has kept you there in the community?

TAREQ HADHAD: It's part of giving back. It's part of being grateful and it's that I enjoy every time I walk on Main Street when I know I have a big family of 5000 people and that's the size of the town. I know that my family feels safe and they know there is an opportunity for us to create something different out of it. And that's how, you know, this story has ended up on an international platform that has changed mine, not only in Canada or North America. We have seen it in Europe. I have been to France. I've been to the you and make and I am going to Australia soon. And, you know, people are watching you as you are seeing that the impact does not rely on the size of the community as much as the intentions to support and lend a hand to lead to success.

MG: You started this chocolate company. It is a huge success. And to your point, the story of the company goes all around the world. Why chocolate of all things?

TAREQ HADHAD: Everyone loves chocolate.

MG: Well, yes.

TAREQ HADHAD: No one argues on that. So, you know, we wanted to create something brings you lot together and create happiness. And it's an extension of our heritage that we brought here from Syria. You know, my background is in medicine, but my dad, my family had a chocolate company that lasted for 30 years before the fact it was exploded and bombed in the war in 2012. So, you know, being in the business for so long has given me that the ability to transform his business ideas to fit in any community we go to. And when we came to Canada, we felt that we really need to spread this happiness to our community members and hopefully to the nation. And if you remember, there was an interview we have done at the airport in 2016 when my family arrived back to me, and we told that interview, we will build a chocolate factory in 15 years, maybe. Because, you know, we arrived here we only with our talents and skills, we didn't know how long it would take us. And we started making chocolate in two months in the home kitchen and we moved out of it, too. Now we have a size of company of 55 employees.

MG: Home is such a tricky thing, and I'm sure that where you are feels like home, but you also left your home as well. And in that, what do you miss about your home in Syria, if anything?

TAREQ HADHAD: There is a lot to miss. Everything that has happened in our lives from- losing family members was the hardest part. But, you know, there are some memories that will not be forgotten. Walking in the ancient city of Damascus and smelling the Jasmine, after the rain. And going and seeing my grandma having a hot cup of tea with my friends and her. All of these stories that we hear. There is a lot to miss. Syria is a great country and Damascus is the oldest city in the world. It's one of the oldest cities in the world. And I'm certainly proud to be, you know, had the birth in Syria as much as I am here a proud Canadian by choice, for sure.

MG: These days, when people become officially Canadian citizens are days that people remember for the rest of their lives. And so how will you mark the 15th of January do you think, in years to come?

TAREQ HADHAD: Yes, as I mentioned, I will be attending a citizenship ceremony. I will be sharing stories of new Canadians and sharing their hopes and dreams and futures, and hopefully I will be able to make an impact in someone's life in this country. You know, we have got people touched our lives and just made an impact. So hopefully part of our announcement, as in the company, to hire 50 refugees by 2022 and to mentor and support by marketing and distribution for 10 businesses started by refugees. In January 15th of every year coming forward starting in 2021, we will make an announcement about that protest and we will be sharing some of those stories of the people that, you know, they have come to Canada to see where their journey is leading them.

MG: Congratulations again and welcome. And we're lucky to have you. Tareq, thank you.

TAREQ HADHAD: Thanks a lot, Matt. Appreciate it.

MG: Tariq Hadhad is the CEO of Peace by Chocolate and a New Canadian he is in his home of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. While I have time. Let me tell you about a story that's coming up on The Current tomorrow. It has quite the book title in Defence of Elitism: Why am Better than you and you are Better than Someone who didn't Buy this Book. Journalist and self-proclaimed elitist. Joel Stein joins me to talk about elitism in the era of Trump.

SOUNDCLIP

When Trump won the election, I got very freaked out because, you know, a member of the elite hadn't lost the presidency probably since Andrew Jackson. And I was legitimately really scared. I'd been scared after Brexit. I've been scared about your Ford brothers up there. And what I came to realize that night of the election was that this this wasn't about racism. This wasn't about economics. This wasn't about sexism. Those things matter. This really was a new world we were living in, kind of the old idea of the two parties in America and many countries just doesn't matter anymore. It's now elitist versus populist. It's the cities versus the rural areas. And everything is being realigned that way. And if people can't see that, I think they can't solve the problem.

MG: Defending elitism, sort of. And the sort of it's important. That's tomorrow on The current. And the news is next. Coming up in our next half hour, Leslie Jamison's latest book is a collection of essays, part journalism, part memoir, all focussed around the themes of obsession and longing. It is fantastic. She's my guest coming up in about 90 seconds. Stick around. My name's Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

Leslie Jamison on obsession

Guest: Leslie Jamison

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Whoosh]

MG: At first blush, it could be the sound of the wind. Listen again, though, and you'll hear a whale song.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Whoosh]

MG: Not just any whale song, though, the sound pattern is similar to the call of a blue whale. But at a much higher frequency, the mystery behind that sound has gripped the imagination of people right around the world. Leslie Jamison tells that story of obsession and others like it in her latest collection of essays, Make It Scream, Make It Burn. Leslie is the author of The New York Times Best Sellers, The Recovering and the Empathy Exams. Leslie, good morning.

LESLIE JAMISON: Good morning, Matt. Good. To be here.

MG: It's great to have you. Let me start with that sound that it's the sound of 52 blue. What is the story of this whale?

LESLIE JAMISON: The story of 52 blue, which is still ongoing, actually, is the story of the whale who ultimately became known as the loneliest whale in the world. As you said, his. Song was first discovered by these naval audio engineers, once a set of Navy hydrophones had been kind of decommissioned from tracking Soviet subs that after the end of the Cold War and they heard this song that was unlike any whale song they'd ever heard. And once their results became public, people became obsessed with this this elusive whale and his song for a couple of reasons, that his song was different from any other whales and that he was always tracked travelling alone. I was interested in telling not only the story of the whale himself and how he had been discovered, but really the stories of people who had become obsessed with him and why they had become obsessed with him and what sorts of meanings they projected onto him.

MG: Tell me more about that, because to your point, people became obsessed with this.

LESLIE JAMISON: Well, I think and I'm very interested in in getting at the insides of people and the mysterious insides of people through these things that they get consumed by and can't let go of. So, you know, I tell the story of a Polish tabloid photographer who got dumped by his girlfriend and became very attached to the whale as a sort of mascot of heartbreak and ended up getting a massive tattoo of the whale - that I can show you, many, many photographs of, if you're interested - across his back. I tell the story of an Irish Union organizer who sort of restarted his life in middle age and for him, the whale was a mascot of endurance. I really got quite close to one woman who was recovering from a coma up in Harlem. And for her, the whale was simultaneously a symbol of loneliness and a symbol of what it might mean to be resolutely, adamantly independent.

MG: Why did people projects so much onto the whale? There's a line that somebody says that the whale is everything. What was it about this whale that allowed them, you know, not just to get the tattoo and to write songs about it and to create art inspired by the whale, but to project all of that onto this thing.

LESLIE JAMISON: I think there were a few elements at play. I think for starters, the whale was simultaneously vivid and distant. So it is an immediate image of this whale, all alone in the vast ocean. You can picture it. You can kind of get attached to that image. But the whale was far enough away that we didn't really know that much about him and that not knowing made it easier to project sort of everything onto him. I also think there's something about whales. You know, Moby Dick is obviously the original white canvas of a whale who comes to stand for lots of different things to lots of different people in the Melville novel. But I think whales are simultaneously so huge and powerful and that with this particular whale, there was a sense of vulnerability living alongside that huge, massive power because he was always alone, because he was a little bit different. And I think those veins of vulnerability made him a more appealing source of obsession.

MG: What were you more interested in, the whale or that sense of obsession?

LESLIE JAMISON: I hope my ultimate interest was within the obsession, which I became a participant as well as documenter of. Anybody who knows me during the 18 month span, you know, pro 2013 to 2014 when I was working on that long piece, knows and was subjected to listening to like a particular song that had been inspired by the whale. Everybody in my life was hearing a lot about the whale. I myself was coming out of a long term relationship. And so I think that idea of solitude and what could be done with solitude became quite moving to me as well. And so when I was writing about these people who are obsessed, I wasn't writing about them as a kind of clinical anthropologist. I was writing about them as kindred spirits in a way.

MG: How do you land on this? I mean, you have written a lot about obsession and things that people become obsessed with, whether it's running incredibly long distances, whether it's the whale, whether it's a mysterious skin condition or the idea of reincarnation. How do you end up landing on what you become obsessed with?

LESLIE JAMISON: So there are lots of paths to my subject. Sometimes they're personal. So in the case of the ultra-marathon that this brutal race through the Tennessee wilderness that you mentioned, I it first came on my radar screen because my brother was running it and he has now run it, run it and not finished it many times.

MG: Which is kind of, in some ways, points off the race.

LESLIE JAMISON: Yes, exactly. Did not finish it. Other pieces come to me through editors and editors approached me with a lot of ideas that I don't take. So I think it always comes down to the question of whether I feel both a deeper level of connection to the story. And usually that deeper level of connection comes from feeling like I can tell both the surface story of the whale of families who believe their kids were reincarnated spirits from the past. There's that story that I can report out on the tangible level. But for me to really take the story on, there has to be some sort of deeper questions that I feel like that surface material is granting the access to. And that's ultimately my entry point into the story.

MG: How do you define that? I mean, the idea of obsession, because it's not just a fascination. It's not a preoccupation. It's something that's deeper. And it's not just about time either. It's something that goes beyond that. What's the definition that you apply to that?

LESLIE JAMISON: I think for me, part of what I come back to you in thinking about what makes something an obsession is that it feels as much a part of a person as the external realities of their lives. So their family life, their job life, their daily commute, their home where they live. You know that this obsession, if you would ask that person like, who are you? Like, what makes you who you are, what makes you tick? That this obsession would be just as much a part of that answer, maybe even a bigger part of that answer than those external realities of their daily pragmatic life. It's almost like if every person is a sort of, is a version of like the surface of the earth or a kind of geologic crust, then the obsession is the fissure that opens in the earth. And it feels like that fissure can deliver me to something deeper and more molten and stranger inside of them.

MG: You could dismiss some of the things that people are obsessed with. There's a piece in the collection about a couple who believes that their son was Second World War pilot and his past life. And it could be easy to say, well, that's odd and kind of put it off to one side. You don't do that, though. Why?

LESLIE JAMISON: The reincarnation piece was a good example of the fact that there was a reality happening there no matter what. So maybe their son was the reincarnation of a World War Two fighter pilot, in which case that was a reality that was happening. But even if you were to somehow, which would be impossible, I think totally disprove the possibility that he was a reincarnated fighter pilot. There's still a reality of what's happening there, which is that a family has constructed an entire sense of identity around the soul of their son being the soul of this pilot. And that's become a big part of their sense of who he is as a person. It's become a big sense of for him, of who he is as a person. And it's become a big part of their family narrative. So it's for me, it's impossible to dismiss because whatever the truth of the reincarnation piece, there is a truth happening there of the stories that this family has been telling themselves and kind of constructing their lives around.

MG: As a journalist, are you comfortable with that? I mean, you talk about this in the pieces as well; the line that you may or may not be crossing. It's not as though you believe their story, but you don't completely dismiss it as well and you almost believe it. You find yourself almost aligning with what it is that you're saying.

LESLIE JAMISON: Right, yes. So I think my I think my understanding of my role as a journalist in relation to their story was that I had to pursue that angle of how does this story of reincarnation align with the facts that we can see or the scientific frameworks we do have. But at the same time, it also felt like to me, an even more compelling part of my role as a journalist, was to really investigate what the story had come to mean for the family and to be as honest as I could on the page about my own subjective investments in the story; why I felt defensive of this belief in reincarnation, why I wanted to sort of make a case for a belief in reincarnation as suggesting something beautiful about a human understanding of the soul, even if we couldn't back it up with physics. For example, when I'm writing about reincarnation, I'm also early on and 12 step recovery and actually a lot of the ideas that were appealing to me about 12 step recovery were also appealing to me in the vision of selfhood that reincarnation suggested. And so I put. Kind of bias on the table, because I think I'm telling a story of my encounter with a phenomenon, and that's a part of that story.

MG: It's also about encounters with people. Tell me a little bit about the photographer that you meet in one of these pieces, Annie Appel?

LESLIE JAMISON: Yes. Another another instance of obsession. And in this case, they think both identity and time, the passage of time, have a have a lot to do with her obsession. But Annie is a photographer who has been photographing the same family in Mexico for almost 30 years, taking many, many trips to spend many, many weeks in their company. A lot of her method involves getting close, both emotionally and literally, so that she can show up enough times to be present for the shots that are ultimately going to be the ones that kind of crystallize some truth for her. But I was really interested in her photography as an art practice. But I was also really interested in her emotional investment in that work and the way that she kind of wasn't able to let go of it.

MG: What did you learn from her obsession?

LESLIE JAMISON: A couple of things. One, that the same things that make a creative process beautiful and profound can also make it wrenching and difficult. So I think for her, part of what I loved about the photograph she had created of this family was the fact that they existed over 30 years, the fact that they seemed saturated with the intimacy of these bonds. But I also saw the ways that, you know, first of all, there was a kind of pain embedded in her relationship with them because she was exposed to the injustice of their poverty, the extent of their suffering, not that their lives were entirely composed of suffering, but they held a lot of difficulty. And that, you know, for her, there was a real ongoing pain in becoming so close to them. And so I think that double edged sword quality of like, the same thing that makes something strong can also make it hard was very true in her obsession. And I also really felt that. Her obsession was an instance of the ways that love can sharpen our sight rather than always blunting it. I think sometimes we have these narratives that like love makes us blind. Right. Like, that's a cliché that we sort of stopped seeing somebody once we love them. But I think for her, she loved the people she was photographing. I mean, that's certainly, that's the language that she uses, that she loves these people. And it's the language when I interviewed them. It's the language they use about her as well. But I think for her, love was a clarifying force as well. It allowed her to see them in these very intense, very textured, very detailed ways that allowed her to pay attention to these small moments in their lives that other people might have looked over, other photographers might have ignored, and to find truth in those small moments. And I really loved that idea that love could be a clarifying force, not just an obscuring one.

MG: There is a profound sense of empathy, not just in her photographs, but in terms of how you write about that relationship as well. What does that word mean to you now, Empathy?

LESLIE JAMISON: So I think, you know, my first essay collection was called The Empathy Exams. And it was really interested in exploring both the possibilities and the limitations of empathy, so the ways that it's this almost following that kind of Beckett imperative of fail, fail better, that empathy will always fail in some ways, like we will never fully know, imagine, feel the interior of another person. But we can keep hurling ourselves against that impossibility. And something really useful can happen in that continued hurling. And I think in lots of ways I think of this collection as not only an extension of that examination of both what can be beautiful about empathy, what can be beautiful about Annie's photographs as an expression of empathy, for example, the ways empathy can, I think, work productively in the journalistic process. But I also am really kind of leaning, I think, even more heavily into that imperative and the moral imperative of minding the gap as well, recognizing all the ways we won't be able to fully understand or relate to each other. And that I think we do each other kind of violence when we forget that gap. And I think coming to an overly simple conception of empathy threatens to forget that gap.

MG: How important is that or how informed is that by the time we're in right now? Where people are shouting at each other and there's not a lot of understanding and there's this belief maybe that you can try and understand everybody, but maybe you can't because people are so split apart.

LESLIE JAMISON: I think I think both parts of the definition are even more important now. So I do think, you know, it's been a major component of so much liberal infighting over the past three years. But I do think it's deeply important to try to understand where people far away from you geographically, politically, socially, where they're coming from, because otherwise we're just trapped in the silos of our own.

MG: Is Las Vegas a good place to discover people and meet people who perhaps are completely different from you? It seems that- there's a great piece about Las Vegas, and I've always wondered about Las Vegas as kind of a place where it seems like the whole world is there. What do you like about Las Vegas?

LESLIE JAMISON: Yes, Las Vegas really is a great place to meet people who are quite different from you because maybe at the very least you have the common denominator of, you know, a blackjack table between you. I do think I think that's a great way of describing Vegas, that it's in a way trying to hold the whole world. Literally, you walk down the Vegas strip and you see Paris and New York and Venice and, you know, whatever it's supposed to be and you know. So I do think there's a way that it's reaching for so much and it's maybe a version of multiple kinds of truth. I think it's very easy to call Vegas fake, but I think that misunderstands a lot of things about Vegas. The strip. First of all, isn't the entire truth of Vegas. There are many, many people who have spent their whole lives in Vegas and never go to the strip. You know, so it's like to say that that front is the entirety of the city as a misunderstanding of all the people who are living and working and just, you know, showing up to take their kids to school every morning. But I also think there's a a truth in all the people who come to Vegas that there is some deep longing at play in their desire to come to Vegas. And what is that longing? What do you mean? A deep longing? A deep longing, a deep longing to, on a basic level, introduce some kind of pleasure and their lives to like have fun. Like Vegas is the ultimate representation of what it means to have a good time. And, you know, again, you can be sort of disgusted by that as a being a massive capitalist enterprise. And that's fair. That's true. But what people what individual people bring to that city in their desire to just have a good time, like there's something really profound in that to me too. A I think people have the right to seek pleasure and to and to look at Vegas as a kind of beacon that can tell us something about what people want, what how people imagine, what pleasure might look like. And I think, for example, the ways that Vegas holds the whole world, what does that tell us about pleasure? What people long for? I think people long to be somewhere else. They long to be somewhere different from the places where they spend their ordinary days. And that's something that the Vegas strip sort of teaches me when I look at it.

MG: You write about being in Vegas and being sober, and that would be a bit of a head scrambling experience, I think, for most people, given what you see on that strip and you've written extensively about sobriety and about addiction and recovering and beyond. There's this idea that there's some sort of connection between dependency and creativity. Is that a myth to you or is there something to that?

LESLIE JAMISON: So when I was coming of age as a writer, I very much grew up on these ideas and these kind of mythologies of the drunk genius and the kind of rogue artist whose self-destructive tendencies were intimately bound up with his ability to create beautiful art. And my book, The Recovering, was a sort of long reckoning with what happened to those set of ideas in my mind when I got sober and my own attempts to find a supplementary or an alternative set of myths or don't turn instead set of stories, I guess, about the kinds of creativity that writers had discovered when they got sober or aware and recovery in those. I'd heard the stories of the drunk writer. I hadn't heard the stories of the sober writer, although in fact there are quite a few of them. And so I think is it is it a myth that there's a relationship between dependency and creativity? Not entirely, because there's certainly a relationship between pain and creativity. I mean, people make beautiful art out of painful experiences and addiction, alcoholism. Often that pain becomes a kind of driving engine that writers are working from. I think the myth, at least the myth for me that I had to really contend with, was that addiction had some kind of monopoly on the creative process or on being a creative engine. You know that people can make creative work from other spaces as well. What are those spaces look like?

MG: You'll often hear from musicians who have heard those same stories and they perhaps have come through addiction, find themselves on the other side, and they'll talk about something that they have gained as a musician or that they've gained as a performer. What do you think that that you've gained as a writer in sobriety?

LESLIE JAMISON: So for me, sobriety was a lot about waking up, which is not to say that I was asleep for the first part of my life, but that alcohol really gave me this way to check out of experience and to check out a feeling at a sort of shut something off in my head in a way that I found a lot of relief in. And so when I was sober, I was, you know, in the beginning, very painfully awake. I was aware of everything I was feeling and I was aware of, you know, I almost felt even more physically aware of the world I was aware of, like light and cold. And it just felt like the world was very, very palpably present. And I think that was a struggle to just show up for everything, to show up for every feeling, to show up for the world, to show up for other people. But there's also a lot of richness in being awake and being aware. And so for me, it actually was quite a natural thing that sobriety would ultimately create a deeper kind of creative energy, because it was it felt like a tune. And it felt like being present in the world rather than always trying to kind of flee it. And from that presence, there was just a lot to notice and a lot to say.

MG: Tell me about writing and maybe this comes out of it of that moment but in writing at length, we live in a time now where people are consumed with not just brevity, but all the things that they should be reading that they haven't read because they're stocked up on their phones. You look at things in seconds, not in minutes or hours. What do you love about writing long and writing essays?

MG: So, first of all, I guess I should say I'm glad we can have lots of different kinds of writing in the world in the same way that maybe I was saying earlier, I'm glad that we can have lots of different kinds of journalism. Because I think we need first responders. There's a lot happening right now that is really difficult to make sense of. And I'm really grateful that there are people out there who are going to turn around an op-ed in 24 hours, because I want to read it and I want to know. I want to sort of have those Virgil's who are gone through hell. I get a more immediate clip. But I myself feel like the most useful things I have to offer anyone rise out of letting myself think about something often for years before I put out some piece of writing about it. And I do think it's important to also preserve space for that sort of long term thinking and researching. And, you know, even with a very personal essay, I'll probably spend two or three years on it, which is not to say I'm not doing anything else for those two to three years, but that I'm giving it time to percolate, giving it time, giving myself time to revise the stories I've told myself about myself, which I think is really important, giving time a chance to just complicate my perspective. I think we all have those easy what I call a cocktail party versions of our lives and what's happened to us. And sometimes sitting with a piece of writing for a long time is a way to get underneath that cocktail party anecdote version and let the truth be more complicated. So ultimately, I think whether I'm writing into my life or away from my life, part of the virtue of time just comes back to letting something be as complicated as it needs to be, and sometimes it takes years for those other layers of complexity to emerge.

MG: Is it hard to let those pieces go after two to three years of thinking about them?

LESLIE JAMISON: Often it's actually right about time. You also can reach a saturation point with a piece, you know. I mean, I'm never going to let the whale go. Like I'm happy to talk about 52 blue until the end of time. And I still sometimes listen to that song I was obsessed with when I was writing about him. So, you know, and I still sometimes speak to subjects from pieces that I'm finished writing. So in a way, I never let go.

MG: So aside from the whale, what are you obsessed with now?

LESLIE JAMISON: I have spent a lot of the fall obsessed with the photography of Gary Winograd. There was this beautiful exhibit of Gary Winograd's colour photographs up at the Berkley Museum that I was going to with my daughter, who is a toddler. Gary Winograd, you know, in the 50s and 60s took photographs of, you know, Coney Island, the streets of Manhattan, rest stops across American highways, like often public spaces where ordinary people were just living their lives. And I think his photography is yet another way. I have engaged an ongoing obsession with ordinary people, ordinary lives, ordinary moments, banal places, banal experiences, and how much all of that ordinariness, how much profundity and meaning it can hold.

MG: This is a wonderful collection. And it's a real pleasure to talk to you about obsession and other matters. Leslie, thank you.

LESLIE JAMISON: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to talk to you as well.

MG: Take care. Bye bye.

LESLIE JAMISON: Bye.

MG: Leslie Jamison is an essayist and the author of The New York Times best sellers, The Recovering and the Empathy Exams. Her latest book is called Make It Scream, Make It Burn. That is it for our program for today. Coming up on CBC Radio and its Q. Tomi Adeyemi is the author of the bestselling novel The Children of Blood and Bone. It's fantastic. She has a new book out. It's called Children of Virtue and Vengeance. It's the sequel. We'll hear all about it when she speaks. Tom Power coming up on Q in just a few moments time. Leslie Jamison mentioned that she was obsessed with a song or writing about obsession when it came to the whale, 52 Blue will leave you with that song today. Tune Inspired by the Whale. This is Andy Othling and Migratory Patterns. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Talk to you tomorrow.

[Music]

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