Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for June 28, 2016

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Doesn't matter what type of lifestyle she lived. It doesn’t matter who she was. She deserves just as much as anyone else, answers into her death. She deserves a proper investigation.

MIKE FINNERTY: For anyone who thought glaring irregularities in the way the deaths of Indigenous women were investigated in Canada was a historical problem, there is the shocking death of this woman's niece in Regina in January of last year. Nadine Machiskinic died shortly after falling down a hotel laundry chute. The police didn't even show up to examine the scene until more than two days went by. Today, our CBC investigation: Unresolved: Case closed or Murder looks at 34 suspicious cases where the authorities gave up and the families are left pleading for justice. In just a few minutes, updates with three of our investigative reporting team from across Canada. And coming up in half an hour, testing the limits of love.

SOUNDCLIP

After 37 years of marriage, my husband has decided to become a woman, a question that goes through my mind is: do I love him anyway?

MF: Our award winning documentary tracking how an elderly prairie couple deals with Jim's transition to Jacqueline. I’m Mike Finnerty, welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

Families of 34 missing or dead Indigenous women demand proper investigations

Guests: Connie Walker, Geoff Leo, Angela Sterritt

SOUNDCLIP

He's now two months and four days and he's starting to laugh. 12 pounds something, 12 pounds six ounces I think he is. Well he probably gained more.

MIKE FINNERTY: That proud mother was Patricia Carpenter captured in a video speaking sweetly about her infant son. The year was 1992, Patricia was just 14. The video was taken three days before her death, a death her family and a coroner's inquest say was never fully investigated. Her case is part of an ongoing CBC News investigation into the death or disappearances of dozens of Indigenous women, all cases in which the police said there is no evidence of foul play but the families of these women say the police investigations were riddled with problems and many fear their loved ones were murdered. While the federal government is expected to announce details of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls next month, it is not clear if the inquiry will look at such cases. We have three CBC reporters with us who've been working on new cases in this project. We will link to the full project on our site CBC.ca/thecurrent and we begin with Connie Walker from CBC's investigative unit. She joins us in Toronto. Connie, hello.

CONNIE WALKER: Hello.

MF: So tell us first of all about what you've been looking at in this new phase of the CBC's missing and murdered series.

CONNIE WALKER: Well, this is a continuation of our investigations into the unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada and in this particular investigation we identified 34 cases where families believe their loved ones were killed or murdered despite police rulings that deaths were accidental, or suicides, or no foul play suspected. And in some of the cases, CBC News has found evidence of unexplained injuries or suspicious circumstances for some of the women who were killed.

MF: And we're going to focus with you first of all on one of the cases you've been investigating. It's the case of Patricia Carpenter, we heard her there just a few minutes ago.

CONNIE WALKER: Yeah, it's a heartbreaking video. I mean, she's obviously a young mother, 14-years-old, so excited and happy to be there with her baby. We interviewed her mom Joyce and she told us that she went out for a birthday party and that she never came home, and you know, her mom Joyce is still trying to make sense of her death 24 years later and she still has so many questions about what happened to her daughter that night.

MF: How did Patricia die?

CONNIE WALKER: Well, she was found at a construction site in downtown Toronto and to quote the coroner's report, she was found very tightly wedged into a hole that was two metres deep but had a very small opening, like 22 by 23 inch opening, so incredibly small for a 200 pound woman to get herself into, and the construction workers that actually discovered her body that day said they felt it was would have been impossible for her to have just fallen into the hole.

MF: And what did the police conclude happened to her?

CONNIE WALKER: Well, police told her mother Joyce that she says that they thought that Tricia was reaching for change at the bottom of the hole, which her mother felt was obviously very highly unlikely, and she felt the police closed the case too quickly and ruled no foul play without doing a really thorough investigation.

MF: But there was a coroner's inquest, why was it called?

CONNIE WALKER: Well, in the coroner’s initial report, it said she died of asphyxiation, but it said the cause of death was undetermined, but it noted that there was no foul play shown by autopsy. There was also an interesting notation, she said that the coroner went on to say after much discussion with police they felt an inquest should be called so that's what happened.

MF: You spoke to Patricia's mother, her name is Joyce Carpenter and she told you about the coroner talking to her informally at the inquest into Patricia's death. Here she is.

SOUNDCLIP

She said you know, she says I've been through all of the information, everything, and she said that should have been a homicide. And I looked at her and I said what? And she said if the police had a done a better investigation, more thorough investigation, that would have been a homicide. There was no fingerprints done, absolutely nothing taken, nothing checked.

MF: That's what Patricia's mom, Joyce Carpenter says the coroner told her. What did the coroner's jury find?

CONNIE WALKER: Well, they found her death to be suspicious, but the inquest was unable to hear from key witnesses, which they felt that it was the police should have been able to produce those witnesses and they felt that there should have been more of an investigation. They didn't go as far as ruling her death a homicide, but they definitely said they found her death to be suspicious.

MF: And did the police go back to the case after all that?

CONNIE WALKER: We've repeatedly reached out to Toronto police to ask if they've implemented any of the recommendations the inquest recommended, or to even find out the status of Tricia's case after all of these years, but we have yet to receive a response from the Toronto police. We know that this is something, just from doing the bigger investigation, that police organizations across the country are looking into these cases where there are suspicious circumstances. We interviewed Clive Weyhill, who is president of the Association of Police Chiefs and he admits that some of these cases may not have been investigated thoroughly and says that he feels that the police organizations across the country should be open to having some of these cases reopened if families request it, and it's something that he hopes is going to come up in an inquiry. He's also chief of the Saskatoon Police and they investigated the disappearance of an Indigenous woman named Deline Bossi [sp?]and he fully admits that the police did not do a good job in her investigation; they didn't investigate her disappearance until it became a homicide and eventually he says that that case actually spurred them to change how they're treating missing person cases in general, but specifically for Indigenous women.

MF: And for the families, of course, it's the death but also this whole process and the frustration of it. How did, how is, I suppose Joyce Carpenter, Patricia's mom, handling it through all these years?

CONNIE WALKER: I'm always amazed when I speak to families. Just the resilience and the strength of that they continue to show in the face of all of this you know incredible tragedy. She's raising her daughter’s son, her grandson, now and she says she feels there's been this pattern, this ongoing pattern, that she may not have been as outspoken when Tricia died about this issue, but now she's very outspoken. She's calling for a national inquiry, attending various events to raise awareness about this because she feels something really has to change.

MF: Is there a feeling of growing empowerment now that it is being taken so much more seriously?

CONNIE WALKER: I think that there's been a huge shift just in terms of the amount of attention that this case has received, and it really has been the families that have pushed this issue into the spotlight and now it's not just the CBC investigating this, it's every national news organization across the country that is looking into this, so certainly things have shifted.

MF: Connie, thanks. Connie Walker is a reporter with the CBC's investigative unit. She was in Toronto.

SOUNDCLIP

It doesn't matter what type of lifestyle she lived. It doesn’t matter who she was. She was a human being and she deserves just as much as anyone else, answers. She deserves a proper investigation.

MF: That was Delores Stevenson. Her niece's death is another case CBC is investigating. Last year, Nadine Machiskinic was found badly injured at the bottom of a hotel laundry chute in downtown Regina. She died in hospital a couple of hours later. Her family believes foul play may have been involved, but they fear they may never know the truth because of a series of failures in the investigation. Geoff Leo is a reporter with CBC Saskatchewan. He's in Regina. Geoff, hello.

GEOFF LEO: Hi there, Mike.

MF: What do we know about how Nadine Machiskinic died?

GEOFF LEO: You start back at two AM on Saturday morning back in January of 2015, and it appears that Nadine was likely at the casino in downtown Regina, and that's where her casino club card was activated, that's how we know that, and we know that she actually crossed the street and went to the Delta Hotel. So on the other side of the street, this is about 3:20 AM, we know that according to surveillance video. She got into an elevator went up to the tenth floor, then a fire alarm was pulled on the tenth floor. A witness says a woman matching Nadine's description was then knocking on doors, yelling FIRE frantically. Not long after that, hotel staff found her at the bottom of the little hotel laundry chute. It was about four AM, then she died, as you mentioned, a couple hours later in the hospital.

MF: And Geoff, what can you tell us about her life?

GEOFF LEO: Well, we know she was a mother of four children, 29 years-old, she didn't have custody of them, though. We do also know that she struggled with drug addiction and her family says she also worked in the sex trade.

MF: What were some of the problems with the investigation, the police investigation?

GEOFF LEO: Let's start actually with the coroner's office. Nadine arrived at the hospital badly bruised, she had cracked ribs, she was unconscious, but the coroner's office didn't call police that day. In fact, they didn't call them the next day either. It took 60 hours before police were called in to investigate. According to a review of the investigation by the public complaints commission, when police finally did get back to the hotel and look at the scene where she was found, the scene had all been cleaned up. Police were told that likely all of her personal effects had been thrown away by hotel staff.

MF: Okay, so we’re several days after the fact and then the police do become involved. How did the police make out from there?

GEOFF LEO: They attended her autopsy a few days later, they received samples that were supposed to be sent for toxicological testing but instead of sending them away, police mistakenly put the samples in storage for six months. It was actually the coroner who figured this out when he went to see what's happening with that toxicological test and realized the samples hadn't been sent away. The police do admit that this was a mistake. That is not the only thing though about this investigation that raises eyebrows. The surveillance video I mentioned to you earlier, taken in the hotel lobby that night, shows Nadine getting on the elevator with two men. In an interview, police acknowledged to me that they didn't start looking for those two men until a year after Nadine died and they never did find them.

MF: How do the police explain the fact that they didn't look for those witnesses?

GEOFF LEO: The spokesperson said it was an active investigation but she pointed out to me that the Regina police is a busy police service and she told me, look we can't put a moratorium on other crime and like I said, they never did find those two men.

MF: What else stands out to you from the investigation?

GEOFF LEO: Yes, a couple other things. First, that witness that I mentioned who saw Nadine on the tenth floor, she was going knocking on doors, yelling about a fire, that witness offered police a puzzling detail, also has been unexplained. He said he saw two kids over her shoulder on the tenth floor that night. Police have no idea who those two kids are; that's another mystery that remains, and finally there's the issue of the autopsy report. The original autopsy report concluded that Nadine was too intoxicated to be able to put herself in the hotel laundry chute on her own, so that first report said her cause of death should be listed as undetermined, but the coroner's office asked for a second opinion from a toxicologist out of Alberta. That second opinion casts some doubt on the first saying it wasn't possible to be certain that Nadine was too intoxicated to have put herself in the laundry chute and it appears that the coroner in Saskatchewan gave more weight to that second opinion. He concluded that Nadine's death was in fact accidental and police have closed the investigation.

MF: Let's hear again from Nadine’s aunt, Delores Stevenson. She's advocating for her niece and here's what she's thinking of the investigation.

SOUNDCLIP

If that was a non-Aboriginal found in there, do you think that the same results would have come out of that? That's my question as well but I think I already know the answer to it.

MF: And that is an opinion, Geoff that comes up in a lot of these cases. So what is she doing about it?

GEOFF LEO: Well, she can't of course force the police to open or reopen their investigation but she says she's going to keep doing what she's been doing the whole time and actually doing it pretty effectively, asking tough questions, and making people's lives uncomfortable until she gets the answers that she says she deserves and the family deserves, and even says the public deserves now because this has become such a public case.

MF: Well, and so many of these cases now are getting attention but that haven't had attention in years, and what really stands out about this case is that it's from last year and yet there are so many irregularities and so many questions in it.

GEOFF LEO: That really is kind of the way I've been feeling throughout this whole thing. It's surprising at every turn. You know, usually when you investigate a story you start out with some seemingly outrageous fact and then you start learning new things over time, and then you go, I see what happened, I understand how that could have happened, but in this case it really has been just the other way around altogether. The more I learn, the more I'm surprised, the more I'm like they did what? How did that happen? And not just police, there's questions really all the way along puzzling the family and they say they're going to keep pushing for answers on them.

MF: Geoff, thank you very much.

GEOFF LEO: You're welcome.

MF: Geoff Leo, reporter with CBC Saskatchewan’s investigative team. He was in Regina. The CBC investigation is also looking into the death of Verna Simard. In 2011, she fell from a window at a hotel in Vancouver's downtown East side. Another Indigenous woman fell to her death at the same hotel a year earlier. CBC reporter Angela Sterritt joins us from Vancouver. Angela, hello.

ANGELA STERRITT: Hi there.

MF: Who was Verna Simard?

ANGELA STERRITT: So Verna Simard was a 50-year old mother. She had five children over her life and her two sons I spoke with tell me she was kind and loving and she loved helping people. I'm told she didn't like to see people hungry and would often pack bag lunches for those in need, but she was dealt a really tough hand in life. Her mother died when she was two years old and she became part of the notorious Sixties Scoop and was placed in foster care with a non-Indigenous family. She'd moved to B.C. in the Eighties in the hopes of getting a fresh start but since 1996, she was in and out of the downtown East side following a really rough year where she lost three relatives, and I'm told the last six months of her life was spent in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend.

MF: She was living at the Regent Hotel. What's it like, can you describe it for us?

ANGELA STERRITT: The hotel is pretty rundown. There have been public complaints over the years, many about a lack of maintenance, some residents have reported not even having hot water or heat over the winter, by all accounts this is a rough hotel to live in.

MF: What were the circumstances around her death?

ANGELA STERRITT: The coroner's report in recounting the hours before her death say her and her boyfriend were at the Empress Hotel, it's another pub in the downtown East side, and they'd had some beers. Witnesses who knew the couple said they'd had a loud argument at the pub and her boyfriend was asked to leave. They did leave together and went back to the Regent Hotel. It's not known exactly what happened in that room, but what the boyfriend said was that shortly before she fell, she had her legs dangling out of the window and had lost her grip, and had slipped, but others say they had actually heard an argument between a man and a woman right before she fell.

MF: And in this case, Angela as opposed to the case Geoff was telling us about from Regina, police did talk to eyewitnesses who saw her fall. You spoke to one of those as well, one of those eyewitnesses James Mickelson. What did he tell you about what he saw?

ANGELA STERRITT: So Mickelson, who was a friend of Verna’s, actually he was also living at the Regent at the same time as her. He actually still lives here; that's where we went to find him. He says as he was looking up through that window when she fell, he actually saw a pair of hands behind her out the window. There were actually multiple calls put into 9-1-1 but because there were so many varying reports, it was hard for the coroner to form a conclusion. Her death was originally treated as suspicious by police, but later it was determined that there was no foul play.

MF: One of Verna's sons, Jesse Ranville was at the national roundtable for families of missing and murdered indigenous women. Here he is describing the experience.

SOUNDCLIP

All the anger and all the frustrations and sadness that I was going through, all the grieving that I thought I had done, I hadn't done. I ignored it and everything being unresolved, I couldn’t talk. I was shaking, I had to sit down. That feeling has never come over me before where I was so sad and so angry at the same time that I couldn't stand.

MF: What is the family thinking of the police investigation?

ANGELA STERRITT: I spoke to Jessie Ranville, I also spoke with his older brother, Shawn Shabaquay. Both of them aren't too impressed with the police investigation. They say there were there were enough witnesses that they should have been able to come to a conclusion. They feel very strongly that there is a suspect that they should have looked into more closely. You know, Jesse in particular called it a joke investigation.

MF: And what are their hopes for the Government's inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women?

ANGELA STERRITT: That's one of the things that Jesse said that really put things in perspective for me, is that the reality of so many of these families is that their family member, in this case their mother, is never coming back. Shawn Shabaquay does feel like the inquiry could help sort of turn the tide in terms of a lot of the stereotypes that are placed on Indigenous women, in particular those who are struggling with poverty issues. He does really hope that those who have died tragically like his mom are dealt with a little bit more dignity and humanity.

MF: Angela, we were talking earlier with Connie about whether we may be getting to a place where police demonstrate a change in attitudes and I'm wondering how hopeful you are that the CBC's investigations into these cases, do you think the police will begin to now look further into some of these cases?

ANGELA STERRITT: You know what, I'm very hopeful. During this investigation that CBC is doing, I've been looking into another story. It’s the heartbreaking death of Mary Jane Hill. So, she died on the Highway of Tears when her daughter Vicky Hill was only six-months-old. The family, Vicki Hill, had told me they've never spoken to the RCMP, you know she says for 38 years she's been waiting for answers to find out what happened to her mother. A few hours after my last call into the RCMP, Vicki gave me a call and said the lead investigator is headed up from Vancouver to Prince Rupert today actually, Tuesday. For me, it's a small victory and I do have a lot of hope that our investigations are going to lead to answers for these families who've been searching for years.

MF: Angela, thanks.

ANGELA STERRITT: Thank you so much.

MF: Angela Sterritt, CBC reporter in Vancouver. For more information on the cases CBC has been investigating, visit cbc.ca/aboriginal, or find the link on our site cbc.ca/thecurrent and if you have any personal stories related to cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women or information about any of these cases, or other cases, you can email from our web site. Just click on the Contact link. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Extro]

'I want to be a woman': Rural senior asks wife for help transitioning to female

MF: Hello. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: theme]

MF: As Pride Month kicks into high gear around North America, we bring you a story of love and acceptance from one Prairie couple who, after nearly 40 years of marriage, thought they had discovered everything there was to know about each other. They were wrong. To protect their identities were not using their real names. This is Being Jacqueline. It's a documentary that's received several awards and it was produced by CBC network producer Suzanne Dufresne

SANDY: So now, let's do your lips. You might consider a little Botox. [laughs] You don't have much for lips. Okay. So we need to just put some pink on your cheeks... [rustling] ...if I can find some pink.

NARRATOR: Sandy digs for blush in her husband's make-up bag.

SANDY: Jeez, I might have to take some of this from you.

JIM: [laughs] Well, we can share.

SANDY: Yes.

NARRATOR: Jim sits on a dining room chair in the living room. He's wearing a stylish grey wig, black pant suit, and sensible heels. Sandy applies a light dusting of colour to his cheeks.

SANDY: Now, are you going to be wanting me to call you Jacqueline? Does that matter to you?

JIM: No, not right now anyways. Maybe later when I'm doing this full time, then we'll see. But right now I'm okay with whatever.

SANDY: Joli Jacqueline.

JIM: [laughs] Joli Jacqueline, yeah.

[laughter]

JIM: Well, we do think alike.

[laughter]

NARRATOR: Jim or Jacqueline? Him or her? They still haven't settled on the pronouns.

JIM: You're having fun, aren't you?

SANDY: Why not? You know, life is what you make it, right?

NARRATOR: But the significance of what's happening here isn't lost on either of them. It's the first time Sandy is seeing her husband dressed as the gender he identifies with, a woman.

JIM: I'm shaking inside, basically. So, I'm really, really nervous. This is the first time my wife has seen me with any of these clothes on and I really feel really nervous, but she's doing a good job of looking the part, or whatever. She's not disgusted yet.

SANDY: Well, what do you want to look like?

JIM: Well, I want to just....

SANDY: Just be passing?

JIM: Yeah.

SANDY: Yeah, okay.

JIM: I know I can't look normal, but that's the look I'm going for. [laughs]

SANDY: Well, no, you look normal.

NARRATOR: It's a new normal for both of them. Three years of testosterone blockers and hormones have done their work. Now at the age of 67, Jim's appearance has softened. Muscle has melted away, there are new curves in new places, and his skin is glowing.

JIM: I've lost, like, a lot of body hair on my arms and different things like that, that's all gone. I'm actually growing a set of breasts. My skin is very, very soft. But you know what? I really, I love the feeling. You know? I don't know. It's kind of stupid, but I lay in bed or whatever. I give myself a hug and, man, it feels good.

SANDY: It's crossed my mind a few times and think, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. You know, like, what's he going to look like? Or he'll be disappointed or, you know, whatever. That's bothered me, but I've been anxious for it, actually, anxious for him to get on his road and, you know, which means we can both start travelling now. It's a good thing. Yeah. I do have a little too much rouge on you. [laughs]

JIM: It's okay. It's evening wear.

SANDY: That's true, that's true.

[laughter]

SANDY: So you want to dance?

[laughter]

NARRATOR: Those tender looks and the gentle jokes, they're reminders that these two share a long history. It seems only natural that Sandy would be the one helping Jim on his journey to being Jacqueline, getting him on "his road," as she says.

[car engine rumbles]

JIM: Let's see if we can turn around here.

NARRATOR: But, understandably, it's been a road with some difficult, detours.

JIM: Well, the place hasn't changed any, anyways.

NARRATOR: For decades, Jim had to hide one fundamental truth.

JIM: We are at a storage rental place. I used this storage container in this place here for, probably, I don't know, between eight and ten years, and I would store the clothes that I used when I had to get dressed as a female. I was hiding from my wife, so I needed some place to store this. And then there was a hotel right next door that I used to use. I used to rent rooms in there. You know, get dressed and just, well, fantasize about what I could be. I always knew I was different. And I wish I had known when I was younger all the things that kids know today. Someone can explain to them actually what's happening, why they feel the way they do.

[Music: soft piano]

NARRATOR: Jim and Sandy met in high school in a small prairie town. As they recall, they didn't even like each other. Then one marriage a piece for both of them, they met again and things clicked.

SANDY: We were really soul mates. We read the same books. We liked the same poetry. We loved the theatre. We loved music. We had so much in common that it's really unfortunate that we didn't like each other in high school. Wasted a lot of time there.

JIM: We seemed to look at the world in the same kind of light, I guess. Yeah, we enjoyed each other. I don't know. Like, we were very, very, very close.

NARRATOR: And so Jim proposed, promising to share his life with Sandy. At least, everything he felt he could.

JIM: I've wanted to be a female ever since I can remember, like, eight, nine years old or whatever. I got caught once by my mother. She came home and I was dressed up in her clothes. And I thought I was going to die, but I think she was so embarrassed or whatever that she just kind of shuffled it under the rug and never brought it up. I was mortified.

NARRATOR: Jim learned to keep that part of his life secret.

JIM: What I was doing in those days is basically trying to block out what was bothering me and I did that for quite a while. The thing that was bugging me was in the back of my head. You know, I actually thought we could do this and I thought I could make it work.

SANDY: No one in their right mind, knowing him, would have ever suspected. He was always rough and tough and hard to bluff, big guy, muscles. He could lift a fridge and carry it across the room. Like, just, yeah, macho macho man, really and truly.

JIM: I fit the part because really early on I was hiding a big secret. So what I tried to do was I put out a really tough front or a tough exterior. And, yeah, I really fit the part. Actually, I probably wrote the part.

NARRATOR: And so their story grew. Jim and Sandy built a life together. They had a daughter and a successful business.

SANDY: My husband and I both worked together. We had a construction company. Yeah, we each had our duties and we performed them very well. Everything went really well.

JIM: But in the eighties, when the economy fell apart we lost a lot of money, like, over a million dollars overnight. We just... we were doing really, really well, but I wasn't listening to my soul mate. The economy was going haywire and she wanted us to slow down and stuff like that and I had a bunch of people working and I didn't want to lose them and then I was scared to slow down and then eventually we woke up one morning and the banks had closed up a whole bunch of our customers. They owed us all kinds of money and they were out of business.

SANDY: We lost our business and after that it just seemed like things never were the same again. My husband became a very angry person. My husband started taking jobs farther and farther away from home and eventually he left for several months. And just, yes. We had a wonderful relationship by telephone but in person it was totally hell.

NARRATOR: Sandy blamed the stress of losing their business on Jim's behaviour. There was talk of divorce.

SANDY: There would be hammering on the table, punching in a truck, things like this that were-- Or throwing a chair or things that were really quite frightening. He had, at times, spoken of suicide.

JIM: I had it all figured out. Yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about that.

SANDY: Throughout this, I was encouraging him to go to a counsellor to get this figured out, why was he so angry, what was going on and whatever.

NARRATOR: To her relief, Jim did take Sandy's advice. He began to see a counsellor, but she was in the dark about one thing.

SANDY: I didn't realize that the counsellor he was seeing was a sex change councillor. I didn't know that.

JIM: And they kept saying that I have to tell her, that it wasn't fair what I was doing and that was really gnawing at me. So the more it gnawed at me the more I would get mad at myself and when I was mad at myself I'd take it out on somebody else, kind of thing. And it just kind of blurted out.

SANDY: I believe it was Christmas day, he decided to tell me. And we were sitting in the living room by the Christmas tree and he said, "I want to be a woman."

JIM: Like, I wanted this life and yet I didn't want to lose her. And I was just completely frightened of what could happen.

SANDY: I was hurt and angry and... Like, why didn't you tell me this 30 years ago? Or why didn't you tell me this ten years ago? [sighs] What do we do now?

JIM: You know, I had a daughter and whatever and it was just... I couldn't-- I guess, I was just too much of a coward. I don't know why I didn't tell her before.

SANDY: Well, unfortunately, at that point in time, I talked to my daughter and she says she's still never forgiven me for telling her that but I think she wishes that-- I think she almost blames me for the whole thing. If I hadn't said it, it wouldn't have been true.

NARRATOR: I wanted to meet their daughter, but she's not ready to talk about her dad's transition with anyone. Two years ago, though, Sandy expressed her own fears in a letter.

SANDY: "After 37 years of marriage, my husband has decided to become a woman. He wants me to teach him to apply make up properly, how to dress, and how to walk. If he were someone other than my husband, I would be fine with this. He was/is my best friend. This is very emotional and at times disturbing. I know he has to do this or die. What about me, you ask? Whose trauma is worse? Whose condition is more urgent? A question that goes through my mind is, do I love him anyway? Or throw him by the wayside?"

NARRATOR: Since then they have decided to stay married, but live apart.

[door opens and shuts]

VOICE: Hi. Welcome to the Rainbow Resource Centre. How can I help you?

NARRATOR: Once a month, on a Friday night, a transgender support group meets here. It's a place for people to find a cup of coffee and acceptance. Frances is one of the counsellors. She has known Jacqueline for almost a decade.

FRANCES: Jacqueline would come for a little while and then she would disappear for a while. And then come back. Part of that was dealing with her job. She became slowly more and more relaxed and more comfortable with who she was and what she was. It's a very slow process and that's it with particularly with people, more senior people who are transitioning, because you don't transition alone.

NARRATOR: Frances transitioned from male to female years ago with the support of her wife and family.

Frances: I was one of the lucky ones. Most people who are coming out at the time I did virtually lost all of those things. And even today, there's still people who lose their jobs, lose their families, those sorts of things. We often tell people that you have to be mentally prepared to lose everything and be thankful with what you can salvage or maintain. People can be very angry that they are in the position and they can't do anything about it and they don't know where to go and it's very frustrating and it's scary as hell. And you're always dealing with something where you're deceiving people. You know, you're presenting yourself as male and you're not male. If you're walking down the street, it's not a problem. With people you care about, it is real problem. It's a real problem with your spouse. Just because with your spouse you not only have the moral obligation, you've got the emotional obligation to be honest, and that kills you.

SANDY: You missed a few hairs here.

JIM: Oh well.

SANDY: Now, put your glasses on and let's see what you look like.

NARRATOR: Back at the house, Sandy's husband walks to the mirror.

JIM: Ooh.

SANDY: What do you think?

JIM: Not bad. [laughter] I feel like Jacqueline. Just have to do something with my voice. So I really have to work on that.

VOICE FROM YOUTUBE VIDEO: I'm going to show you what my voice sounded like before I had voice coaching.

NARRATOR: Jacqueline checks out the internet for voice lessons.

YOUTUBE VIDEO: Okay, here we go. [deeper voice] Yeah, I don't think I can even go down as low as I used to. I definitely can't. It's really weird. [higher voice] But, no, because it hurts my voice now to go down that low.

JACQUELINE: Is my voice deep or is it not?

SANDY: Well, actually, you've been speaking quietly, like, gently, and so it doesn't sound as masculine.

JACQUELINE: My inner self, you know, that I'm really gentle.

SANDY: I know that. Yeah, so you are already on the right path.

NARRATOR: Jacqueline will have to walk this path publically for about a year, if she wants to take this transition further with sex reassignment surgery. Not everyone wants to or even can. For now, though, she's just enjoying this private moment with the few people who know her as Jacqueline.

SANDY: Say, "cheese!"

NARRATOR: To mark the milestone Sandy takes a picture.

SANDY: Ha! [camera clicks] There we go. Okay. Well, you may want this in an album afterwards.

JACQUELINE: [laughs]

SANDY: I think you look really cool, dear.

JACQUELINE: My wife is probably the best thing that's ever happened to me, period. I don't know how my wife got past the anger, but that's the kind of person she is. She will look at life from both sides, and her whole philosophy is like life is wonderful. You know, even the rough things that happen, life is still wonderful, you know. But she's seen different counsellors and different things like that. And I mean, we've had some tough goes, but she's a fighter. She really is.

SANDY: The thing is that with all of the hormone treatments he's who he was way back when, that soft, sweet person, the sensitive guy, the thoughtful person. I mean, I love him more now than I did before and we are probably closer now than we ever were. And I think eventually we probably will be two old ladies sitting in a rocking chair, holding hands.

[Soft music]

MF: You've been listening to Being Jacqueline, produced by CBC network producer Suzanne Dufresne. The Current’s documentary editor is Joan Webber. The documentary received the Gracie Award for Best Documentary, an RTNDA National Award for long feature, and just last week a bronze at the New York Festivals.

[Music]

MF: Now for a quick preview of a new CBC Radio program premiering tonight at 7:30 PM. It's called The Life Game and it combines an interview with improvisation to tell a person's life’s stories. Each week one person is interviewed on stage and that guest is joined by a team of improv actors who create scenes based on the stories they hear. Here's a sample of an upcoming episode with Kathryn Calder, the indie rock musician. She describes herself as a bit of a nerd growing up, loving board games, books, and harbouring a big ol’ crush for Prince William Take a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

BRIAN ANDERSON: Who was your first big crush?

KATHRYN CALDER: Prince William.

[audience laughter]

BRIAN ANDERSON: What about Prince William?

KATHRYN CALDER: His birthday is June 21st, 1982. And, if you recall, my birthday is June 17th, 1982. And so we we’re four days apart and he was like this cute British, like, private school kid and, because I'd read a lot of Roald Dahl as a child, I was obsessed with England.

BRIAN ANDERSON: I’d like to try a scene where we see this fantasy meeting between you and Prince William.

KATHRYN CALDER: Prince William, yeah.

BRIAN ANDERSON: We have a tool that's helpful for actors here. We have a little bell and a buzzer.

KATHRYN CALDER: Oh, okay.

BRIAN ANDERSON: I’ll hand those over to you.

KATHRYN CALDER: Okay.

BRIAN ANDERSON: If they're getting it right, if it feels like, yeah, that’s the way I would have acted or behaved, let them know with a little ding of the bell.

KATHRYN CALDER: Okay.

BRIAN ANDERSON: Try that out.

[Bell dings]

BRIAN ANDERSON: And if they’re off track, just push the red buzzer.

[Buzz sound]

ACTOR 1: Ah, so beautiful. The palace, it’s gorgeous. And the trees and the gr—Ahhh.

KATHRYN CALDER: [laughs]

ACTOR 2: Hello.

ACTOR 1: [gasps]

[bell dings]

[audience laughter]

ACTOR 2: I see you’re enjoying my castle.

[audience laughter]

ACTOR 1: Hi, I'm Catherine and I'm from Canada and we're four days apart, Prince William.

ACTOR 2: Uh, four days apart? I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What do you mean?

ACTOR 1: Well, we’re both Geminis.

ACTOR 2: Oh, I see.

[bell dings]

KATHRYN CALDER: She's doing better than I probably would have.

[audience laughter]

ACTOR 2: Well, that means we're, you know, born in the same month. [chuckles awkwardly]

ACTOR 1: Do you have royal horses that we could ride together?

ACTOR 2: Well, I'll have to ask a lot of security guards, but—

ACTOR 1: Don’t ask! We’ll get caught! And we’ll get in trouble together.

ACTOR 2: Oh, right. Quickly! Through my gate and there, up on! Seize the horse of your wish.

KATHRYN CALDER: [laughs] Yeah, sure.

[bell dings]

[audience laughter]

ACTOR 1: Let's double on one.

[audience laughter]

ACTOR 2: Well, this is something else. Over there, there's a 480-year-old tree for us to lay underneath and gaze up and seek its wisdom.

ACTOR 1: Yes.

[bell dings]

ACTOR 2: Here, lay on my tweed jacket.

ACTOR 1: And I have a novel with me that we can read together.

ACTOR 2: Is it about someone being grounded?

[audience laughter]

ACTOR 1: Yes, it is.

ACTOR 2: Those are my favourite type of novels. I'm… I’m sad, you know.

ACTOR 1: Oh?

VOICE 3: Well, my mother's just passed.

ACTOR 1: Of course. How rude of me to forget.

ACTOR 2: It's all right. Would you like to play a board game with me?

[audience laughter and applause]

MF: Tune into The Life Game on CBC Radio tonight at 7:30, 8:00 PM in Newfoundland and parts of Labrador and check out their website at CBC.ca/thelifegame. And that's our program for today and we'll leave you with a look ahead to a story about the growing tension between progress and preservation in communities as older houses are being torn down. Writer Carol Adderson takes us to a West Side Vancouver home being demolished, for today's last word. I'm Mike Finnerty. Thank you for listening to the summer edition of The Current. We’ll see you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

So, I've been watching this house for about four months. Why it's so important to me this issue? I'm a writer and I see these houses as repositories of narrative. They're built from old-growth wood which is a non-renewable resource, 26 per cent stronger than the wood we use today. It was logged by hand on the North Shore Mountains. In this very house that we're standing in front of, if you looked out from the upstairs window, out at the North Shore Mountains, you would be looking at the place where the trees grew that created the wood of the structure you were standing inside. So, there's this, like, embodiment of this connection between nature and the world we build that we lose when we destroy all these homes that are made of all-natural materials and replace them with synthetic ones. In addition, to these materials and the craftsmanship come the stories of all the people who have ever lived in the house, all the subsequent owners, their memories. And when I do the research for the Facebook page I always put the first owner and the occupation, if I can find it, because that gives people the sense of story. You build a plastic house that's going to stand for 30 years, replacing these homes that could go on for hundreds of years, you wipe out the narratives. To me, it's kind of a form of censorship.

[Music: theme]

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

June 28, 2016 full episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode