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The Current Transcript for March 9, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from protests in Mexico]

MATT GALLOWAY: Anger on the streets of Mexico, as tens of thousands of women protest gender based violence in that country. On average, ten women are murdered in Mexico every single day. Today, the morning after International Women's Day, women there are going on strike and we'll hear why, coming up. Also this morning, the latest from Italy, where a quarter of the population is locked down and people are asked to stay a meter apart from each other in hopes of preventing the coronavirus from spreading even further. And later.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds of birds chirping]

MG: Spring is indeed in the air across parts of this country. In an hour, why the nature writer Richard Louv thinks we need to strengthen our relationship with the natural world, especially now. We begin though with another sign of spring weather, the melting snow and the rising floodwaters across Canada. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Floods a growing concern for lakeside communities

Guests: Stephanie Robinson, Darrin Canniff, Blair Feltmate

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Mother Nature has been against us.

VOICE 2: That's what's causing it. The lake is getting closer and closer, right?

VOICE 3: Yeah, the spring, the spring storms are coming up. The March and April and it's just going to just rip hese places, the rest of them, apart.

VOICE 4: The firemen give us a paper. He said the dike could break because of the wave coming over.

VOICE 5: Like I say, this is my home. This is not my cottage. I do not have another home.

VOICE 6: They told us to be out by the 9th of March. Pack everything and go by the 9th of March. I got no place to go.

MG: Pack everything and go by the 9th of March. Well, that is today and that deadline is here and residents can no longer go home to Erie Shore Drive. That's a lake shore community in southwestern Ontario, but it could very easily be any street near a body of water in Canada. We'll talk about that bigger picture in just a moment. But first, let's stay in Chatham-Kent, Ontario. The municipality is under a state of emergency amid fears that a dike might break. Stephanie Robinson owns a home there, a home that she can't live in. Stephanie, good morning.

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. What was it like for you having to pack up your belongings and getting out of your house?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: Honestly, it's just been, it's just been overwhelming and very emotional for myself and my neighbours. The whole road, it's just we've been, we've hardly been given any time to react. It's just been a, it's just been terrible, really. Truly.

MG: You can you can hear it in your voice. How did you find out that you'd have to leave?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: Well, I found out on a week ago Friday there was a council meeting in Chatham that announced a state of emergency.

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: And it just, it shocked all of us because there was, you know, no flooding on the road. There was nothing happening at that time. And they told us, you know, we had just a week to prepare and grab our belongings and leave. And you can imagine myself, I'm a new homeowner. I have a fresh, new mortgage on that home. I'm also a single mom of an eight-year-old boy, you know and I just purchased that home recently. And yeah, so we're starting our life over there. And now we have no no home to move to because our local government has cut off access to our properties so we can't get in to even maintain our properties. Yeah, just one week to get our belongings and leave and with no compensation. It's just been a complete nightmare.

MG: When you bought the place, was there any sense that there was a risk of floods? That this could happen, that you could be forced out because of high water?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: Well, we did have a major storm back in August on that road. There was a large storm. It did affect mostly the east side of Erie Shore Drive. It was my understanding that the west end where I am, there was very little damage or flooding. So I was OK. I had a property, you know, a guy come in and check things over and everything looked really, really good.

MG: So the inspector didn't say that this is a place that could be at risk of flooding or something like that.

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: That's right. He did not indicate that. No. So, yeah, this is just been, this could financially cripple me for a very long time or worse, bankruptcy. So it it's scary, you know, there's a lot of unknowns at this time.

MG: And do you think you're going to be able to get back into the house?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: We don't have access to our properties, you know. No, I don't believe we will. Our local government wanted to put a permanent closure on the road and then at the council meeting and they did change to a temporary closure. But no, we are, their intention definitely is seems to be to close the road.

MG: You say that this could ruin you financially. What do you mean by that?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: Well, I have a fresh mortgage on the home and there's no talk of compensation. You know, it's very scary. It's not just myself, but it's, you know, my neighbours as well.

MG: What's the mood like on the road? I mean, you talk about your neighbours and people I'm sure are in shock, but how else are they feeling?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: Oh, they're they're just a wide range of emotions. I mean, it's just, you know, we've been given a week to process all of this and it's just absolutely no time. You know, a lot of most of my neighbours have spent a lifetime on that road and to hear of that, you know, having two people in your life and one week and you know, you've made all these memories. And not only, it's just and it's financially assault, financial assault, because, you know, they have to find somewhere else. It's just, it's just been frantic.

MG: Where are you and your son going to go?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: You know, I decided that we're just going to stay up. My parents St. Thomas and I'm going to let him, I was considering, I was going to move over the March break. That's no longer going to happen. So we'd like to be back in Chatham-Kent. I have enrolled my son in the baseball program there and he's to start school in September. So I really honestly don't know. I don't know what we're going to do at this time.

MG: We're just about to speak with the mayor of Chatham-Kent. What would you say to him?

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: I just feel like this is an assault on our rights as property owners. And I just feel like there are, they're ignoring other simple opportunities that would not be as harmful to land owners. Compensation to help us during this very difficult time. Yeah, as you can imagine, being uprooted from your life. I mean, it's just a terrible thing.

MG: It is. I wish you the best of luck, Stephanie. And thanks for talking to us.

STEPHANIE ROBINSON: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Stephanie Robinson, a resident of Erie Shore Drive in Chatham-Kent, Ontario. Darrin Canniff has been listening in. He's the mayor of Chatham-Kent. Darrin Canniff, good morning to you.

DARRIN CANNIFF: Good morning.

MG: Stephanie Robinson says that her being forced to move out of her property with a week's notice is an assault on her rights as a property owner. What do you say to her?

DARRIN CANNIFF: Well, what we went through is an extremely tough choice. It was there's a no win situation in this. We had engineers report that was, that we received that said there's potential for imminent failure of the dike. And as soon as we received that, there's lives on the line from that perspective, we couldn't do anything other than close the road to fix it.

MG: If the dike were to break, what would happen to that area?

DARRIN CANNIFF: Well, first of all, the cottages along there, many of them would be flooded right out. And the only access to the cottage would be through water and I don't know when the access would happen again, as well as there were people at 1600 acres of property flooded behind it of various houses, farms. The other piece would be Eerieo, which is a community about 500 people would become an island because the road that they access would be underwater.

MG: Why would these people be given just nine days to pack up and leave a home? That seems like very little time.

DARRIN CANNIFF: Well, it's based on the report. We should have basically closed it immediately, but we realized we had to give the residents time. So we gave as much time as we could. We gave nine days from when we declared the state of emergency and to allow people to get their possessions and move out.

MG: Is nine days really enough for somebody? I mean, you heard the stress in her voice there. She's not sure where she's going to live, where her son's gonna go to school.

DARRIN CANNIFF: Well, when you start talking about people's lives? Yes, we had to make this call. If safety wasn't an issue, we would've given a lot more time. But safety, if that breached in the middle of the night, houses could end up right in the water and we just couldn't live with that.

MG: Are people like Stephanie ever going to be able to get back into their homes?

DARRIN CANNIFF: We are working as hard as we can to make to ensure that we can get them back into their places, give them some sort of access. Through phase one, which we're doing right now, construction crews have already started at 6:00 this morning. We are working real around the clock, probably about 14 hours a day, seven days a week to get those repairs done. Once it is safe, then we will be looking at Phase 2 of how we get a road structure back to them so that they have a road get back to their place.

MG: You heard, Stephanie doesn't believe that she'll be back there, a lot of the other neighbours don't. We've heard from a counsellor who told our colleagues at CBC Radio in Windsor that repairing, doing these repairs have cost something like $10 million and that's your entire infrastructure budget for the whole year. The sense is that this isn't going to happen, that these people are out of their homes for good now.

DARRIN CANNIFF: Well, there's a lot of things we're looking at as far as getting people access back to their homes. So I wouldn't share that same sentiment, that I feel that we're going to be able to come up with some way to get people back to their homes.

MG: She's still carrying a mortgage right now, as are other people, I'm sure, who live on that road and in that community. Are they going to be compensated for what's happening?

DARRIN CANNIFF: Currently, there's no plans to provide compensation. We have been providing emergency support as far as emergency housing, helping them move, sandbags, various other things.

MG: But beyond that, I mean, she said that she faces financial ruin because she has this brand new mortgage. Is there any way that she would be compensated from the municipality or is that something that you can't afford to do?

DARRIN CANNIFF: Well, it's we've got to, that's why homeowners would have insurance as well. But there's no plans for the municipality to start reimbursing people for this. We're hoping that it's going to be a very, very short in the short construction time for this over the next few weeks and we'll get moving on that.

MG: Is there the sense that this was coming? Should people in the community have known that their homes were at risk because of high water levels?

DARRIN CANNIFF: Well, certainly we're in a battle against lake right now. The water levels are record high right now. And that's part of what drove the state of emergency is the everyone looked and saw that the lake levels were they're right now. They're going to only go higher over the next few months and a breach will happen if the waves start pouring over the dike. Last summer, we declared a state of emergency for because of we were in fear of the dike was going to fail because there was two feet of water pouring over the dike. And the engineers said if that condition happens again, there could strong potential for a failure.

MG: The head of the Property Owners Association says that the municipality should have been maintaining that dike and over time they stopped doing that. As a result, the property owners along the road have been left on their own to protect the shoreline and now they're in the situation that they're in right now. Has the municipality dropped the ball on that?

DARRIN CANNIFF: No, we've been spending a lot of money maintaining the dike. The last state of emergency we spent over $500,000 repairing the dike and certainly there's been a lot of work done over the years on that.

MG: Who do you think, we're gonna speak more about this and just talk about what's happening across the country? It's spring and the water levels are high and the melt is beginning in some parts of the country. Who do you think is to blame for the high water levels?

DARRIN CANNIFF: Water levels are very cyclical. I've seen a report that shows the last hundred years. It goes up and down like clockwork and we're in a high phase right now, but this this is the highest we've ever seen. I don't know when it's going to stop, when it's going to turn over. I have no idea. I can't speak to why that happens, but I know that it does.

MG: I asked Stephanie what she would say to you. As the mayor of her community, what would you say to her about the situation that she and those residents find themselves in?

DARRIN CANNIFF: I would tell Stephanie and the residents that we are working as hard as we can to make sure that the dike is safe. First and foremost, provide safety to everyone and we're going to work as hard as we can to get her access back to her house.

MG: Darrin Canniff, I appreciate you speaking with us. You're in a real situation there. Thanks so much.

DARRIN CANNIFF: Thank you.

MG: Darrin Canniff is the mayor of Chatham-Kent. It's a lakeside community in southwestern Ontario, currently under a state of emergency. This is a story that's happening there, but it's a familiar story to people right across this country. Across the Great Lakes and right across Canada, people are bracing for flood season. Blair Feltmate is a University of Waterloo professor, head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation. Good morning to you.

BLAIR FELTMATE: Good morning.

MG: We've been hearing about record high water levels in the Great Lakes for the last couple of years. What's the situation right now?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Overall, what we're tending to see as a causal mechanism as to why this flooding is occurring is that over the course of the last 100 years, driven primarily by climate change, precipitation in the Great Lakes Basin has increased by about 10 percent. Overall, annual precipitation is up about 10 percent. And then in reference to extreme weather events, if you take the top one percent of precipitation, that deluges of rain coming down, those monsoon rains that people are getting these days correct towards the western end of the Great Lakes, the increase over the last 55 to 60 years is 37 percent more intense rainfall at the top one percent. And towards the eastern end of the Great Lakes were up about 70, 71 percent. More intense rainfall events. And so we're getting more rain coming into the basin. And then that combined with loss of natural infrastructure within and around the the Great Lakes, the fields, the forest, the wetlands that used to be there. We've removed over the period of the last 100 years, about 73 percent of the natural infrastructure that used to be there is now paved over or turned into some form of agricultural development. So when those rains hit those areas, it it tends to run off very quickly into the receiving border body of water, which again causes contributes to flooding.

MG: There's also this international joint commission that manages the regulates the levels of water in Lake Ontario, for example. New York state is suing this commission, saying that it hasn't done enough to prevent flooding on the shorelines on the American side of things. Is that manipulation of water levels to blame here as well?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Well, not on the Lake Erie end of the equation, because you're you're downstream on Lake Ontario, below Niagara Falls. And the International Joint Commission came up with a new plan in 2014 and then operationalized in 2017 that some people suggested that efforts made to to newly controller mint manipulate water levels in that particular Lake Ontario, that that contributed to flooding. But really, I think it was more coincident was just more extreme weather events happen, happened at the same time. I don't think it was an IGAC mismanagement.

MG: This is one community in southwestern Ontario that is up against it right now, but we know that that this could be a story that people will be hearing across the country. How common could that sort of flooding be coast-to-coast?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Oh, this is common and this is happening right now. The number one costs due to climate change in Canada by far is flooding and particularly residential basement flooding.

MG: And you pin that directly on climate change?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Correct? Yes. I mean, there are other factors. Like I mentioned, loss of natural infrastructure. But there's really four factors: climate change, loss of natural infrastructure, aging municipal infrastructure and aging house infrastructure. But right at the top of the list is climate change itself and indeed, for example, in the insurance industry for home insurance, insurance rates have increased 20 to 25 percent on average home insurance in Canada over the last five years, and 60 percent of that increases attributable to too much water in the wrong place. So flooding basements.

MG: We're going to hear these stories and again, we're focusing initially on Chatham-Kent, but you'll hear stories in the weeks to come from Manitoba, from British Columbia, about floods, floods that people who live there say it seemed to be getting worse. What do you do to mitigate and manage the damage of those floods?

BLAIR FELTMATE: There's a number of things you can do and in Canada, we haven't been sitting on our hands like we have pretty good ideas of what to do at the community level to mitigate flood risk. But step number one is for any community, and you don't have to be on the edge of a flowing water system or lake to do this. But there should be a process of prioritization to identify within communities where are your risky areas relative to flooding? That's number one, if any. And then when you identify them, municipalities should be looking at how can we use berms, diversion channels, holding points, cisterns, bio swales, permeable surfaces, structural features within communities to direct water, to safe locations or hold it back from areas that we're whereby. Otherwise it would be harmful. And then at the house level, there's a great number of things that people should be doing around their homes, both the outside of the property and in the basement itself to lower the probability that they will end up with a flooded basement.

MG: You could imagine that some people are listening. You talked about risky areas and they're thinking if you buy a home or you build a home that's on a shoreline that's near a lake, that's near a river that could be in a flood area, it's buyer beware in some ways. Is that a fair assessment?

BLAIR FELTMATE: It's a little bit of that, but quite frankly, anybody who purchases a home today, whether or not it's on the side of a flowing water system or a lake, they should be ensuring that before they close a house deal that they have a properly trained person on home flood risk assessment come in and do an assessment of that property relative to the chances of them realizing flooding down the road. Because now what's happening, we get deluges of rain, large volumes of water coming down. It's almost like a water bomb over a particular area that can flood people out independent of whether or not they're on some form of floodplain or not. So you want to make sure that that community is structured and anticipates the potential for that effect to happen and then that that particular house is as protected at least as much as you can possibly make it relative to basement flooding.

MG: To a lot of people, climate change still is this big abstract thing and they know about it, they're concerned about it, but it seems like it's in the distance. Just finally, does this, when it's happening in your neighbourhood, when it's happening in your community, does that change the conversation, do you think, on climate change?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Yes, absolutely. And generally speaking, I find communities have to be hit twice before they get religion on climate change.

MG: The first one, they can kind of write off, the second one.

BLAIR FELTMATE: Yeah, the first one, they think, well, maybe that's just our chance event. But the second time they've had a 1 in 100 year event happen in four years then they'll think, oh my gosh, you know, there's something really going on here.

MG: Blair, thank you.

BLAIR FELTMATE: You're very welcome.

MG: Blair Feltmate is a professor at the University of Waterloo, head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation. The CBC News is next. And then, women across Mexico are on strike today. They are fed up with sexism and attacks on women.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We're talking about a national emergency in femicides and then the president says, no, this isn't important. So what is important?

MG: A day without women. We will head to Mexico City and talk about the strikes there and right across the country. That's coming up in six minutes time. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

[Music]

'Femicide is the tip of the iceberg': Mexican women hold national strike to protest rising gender violence

Guests: Isabella Cota, Raquel Lopez, Maricruz Ocampo

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, you may love your goldfish or your cats, but that pet might be a placebo for quality time in nature.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We are instinctively reaching out to other species and I think there's a reason for that.

MG: Hear that reason, coming up in half an hour. But first, they're speaking up by opting out.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from protests in Mexico City]

MG: That's the sound of protests in Mexico City yesterday. Tens of thousands of women took to the streets wearing purple, the colour symbolizing International Women's Day. And they were denouncing what they say has become an increasingly violent country for women. An average of ten Mexican women were killed per day in 2019.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: This is very important because of the rights of the woman. We are in danger. I think almost all women have attack for some man in our lives.

VOICE 2: Once I have to run to my house because two men they were running back for me and I had escaped.

VOICE 3: I don't feel safe here. Like public transportation, when guys and man give me this sexual look and I don't feel comfortable with. Literally two months ago, one of my uncles kissed me and the first thing I thought, I'm getting in so much trouble, which has to be all the way around.

VOICE 4: I don't care if we have to wait three decades to be free. I hope my children and I hope my grandchildren to be safe and free. That's why I'm fighting today.

MG: Well, today, the protest went from noisy to silent. Women across Mexico are staying home from work and school to show Mexico what it's like to have a day without women. Isabella Cota is an investigative journalist in Mexico City. She joins us from there. And a warning some of what will be discussed is disturbing. Isabella, good morning.

ISABELLA COTA: Hi. Good morning.

MG: Tell me about the protest yesterday. What was it like on the streets of Mexico City?

ISABELLA COTA: The streets were crowded with women who were emotional and angry and full of energy. Across the country, women in the hundreds of thousands went out yesterday and everyone was just trying to get the government's attention. It was a really electric feeling.

MG: I mentioned in the introduction that alarming statistic, 10 women killed every day in your country. What are some of the specific cases that have prompted women to be out on the streets in these protests?

ISABELLA COTA: So the protest yesterday was really spawned by two particularly gruesome femicides. On February 10th, the body of a 25 year old woman was found mutilated and she had been skinned from head to toe. The boyfriend was caught. The photos of her body were taken by police and were leaked to the press, which really outraged women in Mexico. Five days after, not even a week, the body of a 7-year-old girl named Fatima, who was reported missing, was found in a plastic bag. She had been kidnapped, raped and tortured. And that also became a sort of iconic case. These two femicides really drove the protests yesterday as they became sort of iconic of just how dangerous it is to live in Mexico if you are a woman.

MG: Those are awful stories. We heard some of the women talking in yesterday's protests about how they don't feel safe in the streets of their country. When you speak with women in Mexico, what do they say to you? Not just about those specific stories, but about what it's like to be a woman in 2020 in Mexico?

ISABELLA COTA: You know, gender-related violence has a really wide spectrum. When you talk to women in Mexico, they're going to talk to you about how they can't get on public transport without being harassed, without being touched. They're going to tell you about how they are really worried when they walk down the street, even when it's in broad daylight, if they're travelling alone because they fear getting kidnapped or getting raped. A lot of women will tell you how even in the workplace they feel harassed constantly and, you know, their bosses have this claim over their bodies and they feel like at any point they're going to be sexually harassed or even raped if they're around men. The best way to describe it is in Mexico, if you are a man, you really have a certain privilege that a woman can only dream of, but there's another part of this that is, that it's just outrageous, which is every woman in Mexico that you know has a story about someone they know who was murdered by someone for gender motive, either the boyfriend or the uncle or the husband. And that is what makes this simply so inhumane. That's what it's like to be a woman in Mexico today.

MG: Is your sense that the strike that is happening today and the protests that happened yesterday, will that be a turning point? Will it be, people have called, for example, for a MeToo moment in Mexico. Is this going to change that conversation?

ISABELLA COTA: You know, it's interesting to call it a MeToo moment. The MeToo movement really did inject the Mexican women's movement with a lot of energy, and it injected women with the courage to come out with their own stories. But in reality, what women in Mexico are facing is so much bigger than just a MeToo situation. This is about being murdered. This is about the violence that is happening in our country, being reflected on women. Men are doing the ones, doing the killings in Mexico, even if it's for organized crime or for other reasons. Overwhelmingly, 90 percent of the perpetrators are men. So it's men killing them and men killing women. And this is a problem that women have. Now, this is no doubt a historic moment in Mexico. This will be the first all women strike in the country's history. This is the moment in Mexico where women unite and they they do something about being heard and being visible. We do hope that this will be a turning point. And we do hope that the government will feel such pressure that femicides will not go unpunished anymore, because 90 percent of them result in absolutely no conviction. So, yes, definitely, what we're hoping is that this is the turning point.

MG: Isabella, I appreciate you talking to us this morning about this. Thank you.

ISABELLA COTA: Thank you very much.

MG: Isabella Cota is an investigative journalist based in Mexico City. Raquel Lopez is one of the Mexican women striking today. She's 37 and works for an NGO and she is at home in Mexico City. Raquel, good morning to you.

RAQUEL LOPEZ: Good morning.

MG: Why are you going on strike today?

RAQUEL LOPEZ: Well, I really do hope that men we can start a conversation around their behaviours and the culture in Mexico that beats this climate and this situation of violence against women and how it gets to a point where this kind of violence is perpetrated against women without any repercussion. And it starts really with just the general culture of misogyny and disrespect and this idea that they have control over our bodies and the way they just undervalue women in general.

MG: We heard from Isabella talking earlier about how every woman in Mexico has a story about this. Every woman in Mexico knows somebody who has been assaulted or harassed or worse, but they themselves have their own stories. What is life like for you in Mexico? Do you feel safe?

RAQUEL LOPEZ: Not in general. We always have to take precautions and I think it's something that we experience since we are very, very young. We start to learn, you know, certain things to do. Never say that you're home alone. Certainly now, even as an adult plan your day around not being in the street, walking alone at night or in places that will be too, where there's not enough lighting or there's not enough people, not enough transit. I mean, I know I've been walking on the street and sometimes that's not enough because in broad daylight, I've had men come up to me and grab me, broad daylight with people around, getting out of the public transport. And once I was even walking with a friend and that happened to me. So it's really there's no way sometimes to know when you're going to face the situation, so you do what you can and you're constantly looking around youm aware of your surroundings, trying to avoid certain interactions, especially with men or when you have to be alone with a man, not to give any information. So it's basically just this constant state of being aware of your disadvantage and your vulnerability.

MG: Are you confident that this will change? That given the strike today, the protests yesterday, but also the attention on this, that at some point in time in the near future, you will be able to feel safer in your own country?

RAQUEL LOPEZ: I find it hard to be confident about that, but at the same time, this is why we're doing this, because hopefully sometime in the future or maybe for, you know, our daughters and our nieces, we can start to change this. I am hopeful, though, because I do see that the issues are being discussed more, especially around circles and people that would usually not discuss this. And so I'm hopeful that this will bring about at least more conversation and hopefully this will also be around a better response from the authorities, which for now have not really responded I think in a positive way.

MG: Raquel, I appreciate you speaking to us this morning. Be safe and thank you.

RAQUEL LOPEZ: Thank you.

MG: Raquel Lopez is in Mexico City.

SOUNDCLIP

[In translation from Spanish]

VOICE: I don't want the theme of this press conference to just be about femicides. It's very clear that issue has been really manipulated by the media. Those who don't like us take advantage of any circumstance to generate campaigns of defamation.

MG: That in translation as Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. And in case it wasn't clear, he does not support today's protest. Maricruz Ocampo is a feminist activist who's been fighting for women's rights in Mexico for decades. Maricruz, hello.

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: Hi. Good morning.

MG: The president has faced fierce criticism for how he has responded not only to the protests, but also the larger issue of femicide. Are you surprised that somebody who was elected on a left wing agenda has responded in this way to these issues?

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: Well, yes, we are very surprised because we were hoping, you know, with the election of a president who calls himself a leftist, you know, president was going to come and change what we've been living for for decades.

MG: He said that the feminist protesters oppose, in his words, the moral regeneration that his government is trying to promote. What is he talking about?

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: Well, you know, he's been promoting this idea of introducing conservative values. You know, like families are formed by a man and a woman or coming back to being a good people. And he's also revived this moral booklet that was printed in the 1930s and he's been distributing it around the country, you know, to call people back to the moral values of the past. So in this in this booklet, we are not mentioned once. You know, women are not mentioned. We are not taken into consideration. The booklet is even from before we were able to vote in Mexico.

MG: So when he says and we heard in that little clip there that he thinks, for example, the issue of femicide has been manipulated by the media, that he says that this is some sort of conservative plot to try to attack him. What's behind that? What is he trying to draw on?

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: I think the president has misunderstood the theme, you know the feminist movement. Because we're not asking him to do anything that we haven't asked before. This is not against his government, you know. In Mexico we have at this moment governors who are from the right, you know from the right stance, and the president is on the left. We're asking everyone because this is not just his problem. This is something that we're suffering all the time. Our governors, our mayors, you know our attorney generals are not paying attention to the problem. So every one of them is trying to use this woman's horrible thing that's happening to us, you know, two women killed every day against each other. So they're distracting the conversation towards politics instead of working towards really helping us, you know, to be safe on our streets.

MG: We heard earlier.

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: And I believe.

MG: Sorry, continue. Go ahead.

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: And I believe, you know, the president is not understanding that this is something that we have been experiencing for decades. You know, Mexican women have been murder in in in larger numbers every year, but this didn't start with him. You know, if you go back to 2007, you can actually see a spike in murders in Mexico for both men and women. So, you know, this is a great opportunity for him, you know, to show that his transformation that talks about so much is real and instead of that, you know, he's working against us, instead of working with us.

MG: You've been doing this work for decades and we just heard two women talk about how unsafe they feel in their own country and how everybody has a story. Every woman has a story about this sort of violence. Given that work that you've been doing, what's different about what's happening now? What's going on now do you think?

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: Well, I think that we're getting to a point where the younger women are understanding that they have rights. You know, that these are not favours that somebody is wanting to grant them, but these are rights that they can claim. And whereas before, you know, we were actually fighting for things that were just so basic as just being able to get to work without being asked if, you know, if we're going to get pregnant. Now, the girls are really under, they have really understood that this is a right and they're claiming it. And I think that's what makes it so hopeful in my mind to see them. You know, I was marching yesterday that's why I'm a little hoarse. And they were, where I live, you know, we were 10,000 women, you know, marching. And it was really inspiring to see the younger ones who are the ones organizing all of this. So I believe this is going to change our country. But it is really, we're in a situation where 66.2 percent of women in Mexico reported to have been, you know, to have suffered some kind of violence. 66.2 Percent, which is a really high number, you know. And so I really hope that we can lower that. You know, it's not just femicide. Femicide is just the tip of the iceberg of violence and discrimination. And that's what it shows, but we're fighting for every other right. You know, the right to get to work, for equal pay, the right to walk on our streets without being bothered, the right to get into a university, the right to do to actually just be us. You know, we're fighting for the right to choose because we don't have the right in Mexico to have an abortion before twelve weeks, except for two places in the whole country. Women in our country go to jail for miscarriages sometimes because, you know, they are accused of abortion. So this is not just femicide. Femicide is the tip of the iceberg. We're going for the whole enchilada like they say.

MG: Is your sense, the whole enchilad, in the last couple of seconds that we have, is your sense that a day like today, where it's a day without women and women will strike, that that will if not change the country, then certainly change the president's mind?

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: Well, I hope it does, you know, because it's calculated, 6.6 women will stay at home. So if that doesn't make you thinkt then I don't know, I don't know what it will. What will make you think.

MG: Maricruz, it's great to talk to you about this. Good luck. Thank you.

MARICRUZ OCAMPO: Thank you.

MG: Maricruz Ocampo is a feminist activist and human rights lawyer in Mexico.

[Music]

16 million Italians now under quarantine

Guests: Alexandra Mason

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

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[Speech from Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in Italian]

MG: That's the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte listing off the provinces currently under quarantine, including the cities of Milan and Venice. It comes out to something like 16 million people. The measures will be in place until at least the 3rd of April. All of this as coronavirus cases in that country jumped dramatically over the weekend. The number of deaths also rose to over 350. Alexandra Mason is an Italian-Canadian living in Vicenza in northern Italy. Alexandra, hello.

ALEXANDRA MASON: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How close are you to the quarantine zone?

ALEXANDRA MASON: About 20 minutes by car.

MG: And so when the leadership was going through the list of places that would be quarantined, did you think that the town that you're in would end up being under that umbrella?

ALEXANDRA MASON: Yeah, I was. I was surprised that we were so close. It made me think we might be next.

MG: How were people reacting to this news when it broke on the weekend that this huge quarantine would be put into place?

ALEXANDRA MASON: It was surprise and shock. Here, a lot of people have really resisted any kind of change, any kind of reaction from the government. It all started with the school closures and of course, parents having to deal with that. They thought it was ridiculous, maybe not having a global picture of the situation. That tended to continue on and people seem to often look at it from the difficulties that arise from their point of view. It's a little bit egotistical, but understandable as well.

MG: We saw these videos of they're on social media of people trying to get in like the last trains out of the north and kind of running through the train station. What do you make of that?

ALEXANDRA MASON: Well, honestly, that's upsetting to me. I find it to be thinking about oneself and not about, you know, what they're bringing to the south of Italy in terms of the potential damage that can be done to the healthcare system and their own families. So for me, it was frustrating, to say the least.

MG: Have you thought about leaving? You have family here in Canada? Have you thought about getting out of Italy and coming here?

ALEXANDRA MASON: Absolutely. It's something that my family immediately when it first came to Italy, they were calling me constantly, asking me to come home, asking me to go to the hospital, get tested and so on. And I understand perfectly well. I thought about it as well, very extensively, even these last days. But I'm trying to be rational, trying to keep my head clear, and I don't think it's the right thing to do.

MG: You mentioned that schools are closed. You have a young daughter. What is that like for her and what is it like for your family?

ALEXANDRA MASON: Well, she was very happy with the school closures at the beginning. All the kids were really psyched. Kids here are under a lot of pressure with the school system. It's very rigorous. And so for them, it's a little bit of a break. Now it's changing. We have a lot of online schooling to attend to. And so they're starting to really feel the pressure of that's. For me, I'm able to stay home with my daughter a little bit more freely than a lot of other parents. For many, it's a disaster because they tend to rely on their parents who are part of the aged population and so you want to avoid any risk and, you know, there's a lot of juggling going on.

MG: There are these calls for people to refrain from the usual kind of greeting with a kiss on the cheek. There have been talks about social distancing, about how far physically you need to be away from each other. Are people following the rules? Has that happened?

ALEXANDRA MASON: Yeah, they really are. For me personally, it was difficult at first. I continued to go in for the kiss. For example, I was at the butcher the other day and the first time it happened, somebody tapped on the window and said, hi Alexandra. I walked outside and went to give them a kiss and they no, no, we can't kiss. And then within two more minutes, it happened two more times. But then, you know, then you get used to it. We have to keep a meter of distance. And it's something that everybody's doing. We're just getting used to it. But it's a little bit sad because it's not normal. It's not just the kissing and the keeping distance, but it's actually, part of the culture here is a lot of togetherness. The social aspects of life here are very strong and that's more what is strange for people.

MG: The number of cases skyrocketed over the weekend. And as you mentioned, you're only 20 minutes away from this quarantine zone. Are you worried about what the next few days and weeks are going to hold?

ALEXANDRA MASON: Yes, I am. I'm not so much worried for myself. I think I'm probably strong and won't be affected too much, but I'm worried for the system, the health care system. From the very beginning, that was my concern because I understand the viral nature and the speed at which this is contaminating basically population. And I don't think that the health care system is yet capable of managing a high number of cases. So that's my concern. I read an article yesterday in one of the local papers here that they may have to start to triage and choose between who they keep in intensive care and who has the right to a machine in terms of getting assisted breathing. And that's shocking, but yet it's understandable. I mean, at the end of the day, if you have the chance to save a 25-year-old and an 85-year-old, they may have to start making those decisions. So that's really sad. Really sad. A little bit scary.

MG: Wow. Stay safe and stay healthy. And thanks for talking to us.

ALEXANDRA MASON: Thank you.

MG: Alexandra Mason is an Italian-Canadian. She lives in Vicenza in northern Italy. Coming up on The Current, Richard Louv is a writer focusing on humans and nature. He's written about this for years. Even he didn't know though, how strong that connection was until nature stopped him dead in his tracks.

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VOICE: And when I looked in that fox's eyes, it was like looking into another universe. I was stunned by what I saw in its eyes.

MG: I'm Matt Galloway More on what Richard saw, coming up next on The Current. We'll be right back.

[Music]

Close encounter with an octopus shows why our wild calling matters, says author Richard Louv

Guests: Richard Louv

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Richard Louv's new book is all about our relationship with animals. I'm sure, many of us have pets. He's talking about our relationship with all animals, even at a time when global populations are shrinking by something like 60 percent in the last generation. Richard has written about kids and their connection to nature in the wildly popular book, Last Child in the Woods. His latest is called, Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives and Save Theirs. Richard Louv is at his home in the mountains near Julian, California. Richard, hello.

RICHARD LOUV: Hi. Thank you.

MG: Thanks for being here. You talk in this book about something called "a neighbourhood of animals." So you're at home. Describe your neighbourhood of animals around your house.

RICHARD LOUV: That was a phrase my older son used when he visited us when we were renting a cottage up in the mountains near Julian. He noticed that the deer were coming up to the windows and the wild turkeys were coming up and swearing at me through the windows and the ground squirrels, which are a lot more interesting than they sound were entertaining us just outside the kitchen. And he called it a neighbourhood of animals. And that's one of the reasons we've ultimately moved up here where we live, not far from that cottage.

MG: Are they all good neighbours? I mean, any neighbourhood that you're in has good neighbours and then the bad neighbours.

RICHARD LOUV: They're all good neighbours depending on how you behave with them. I mean, we have a lot of mountain lions here, but for some reason, these particular mountains, they're kind of the Club Med for mountain lions. A lot of mountain lions come here to mate. We're not quite sure why, but they're everywhere and we have to be careful that walking at night. We've not seen one yet, but a lot of people up here have. Ticks are probably not our favourite neighbour, but one of the things I learned recently is we have possums here, is that possums eat millions of ticks, wood ticks every year. They may be helping reduce the possibility of tick borne illnesses for human beings because they eat, possums eat so many ticks, which I think explains their expression on their face.

MG: What about woodpeckers? Woodpeckers are fine?

RICHARD LOUV: You know we live in a woodpecker colony here and they're really funny. They're a little irritating because even though we have fire-resistant siding on our house that we bought and you can hear them in the morning every now and then banging on that and then swearing because they keep forgetting that it's not wood, but they're also dropping acorns between our walls from somewhere on the roof. So we have a roofer come in. So they can be irritating, but they're also really interesting. They raise their kids communally. They have a real complex language and real complex social structure and they're very funny too. So we like them.

MG: The fact and I want to talk more about this, but the fact that you know that much about the woodpeckers that are around you suggests a real sense of awareness and just being open to things that are around you. You start this book in describing an encounter that you had with an animal in Alaska. What happened?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, I was there with my son, who was working as a guide and I was staying in a cabin nearby and this was on a lake on Kodiak Island. And who's walking up to the lodge? It was almost twilight and I was not paying attention to where I was going. And I was looking at my wallet because my son was my guide. So I needed a tip. And Alaskan brown bears wandered through that camp a lot. And those are the biggest grizzlies. And you really kind of want to be careful about them. And I wasn't watching the path ahead of me. I was looking at my wallet. And then suddenly I stop in my tracks because there's this animal blocking my way. And these two really piercing eyes. Fortunately, it wasn't a bear. It was a very large Kodiak Fox. Some of the largest foxes in the world. And it was just blocking my path and looking at me. And now it's possible. It just wanted to be fed. But I checked with the lodge later. They weren't feeding their flocks or any foxes later. They may have, but not when I was there. And it wouldn't move. And I thought, is that fox rabbit? Is this a problem? And when I looked in that foxes eyes, I. Whether I was seeing something there or projecting it. From myself. It was like looking into another universe, and I was stunned by what I saw in its eyes. So after a while I stepped forward and it stepped aside and I kept walking up the path and it walked with me. I said, You want to go to the lines? I'm good. And if not living up to the lodge and then disappeared into the grass. And I thought about that for a long time. What was that? What was that experience that I'd had? And I'd had that to a degree when I was a kid and I started talking to people about that. They'd had that, too. Some of them were embarrassed to say that. But all of them had stories, stories about these amazing encounters with wild animals, as well as their amazing relationships and encounters with their own companion animals. And they had common denominators in their stories. And sometimes I was the first person they told the story to because they were a little embarrassed. They want to get accused of romanticizing or anthropomorphizing, you know, or to new agey or whatever. And and but they all felt this deeply. And these were people, everything from an oceanographer who had an encounter with octopus to people who had encounters with bulls. Even one scientists here was looking through a microscope at a paramecium and the experience changed him. What is that? What is that connection we have? And it's all around us. We have it often, but we ignore it most of the time and it can changes.

MG: And some of that is just in the telling of the stories as well. I mean, it's about the encounter and we've all had those encounters, but also, as you say, we'll tell those stories again and again for some reason and the stories take on a new life in the retelling.

RICHARD LOUV: You're right. And I don't pretend to know what the fox is thinking. I don't pretend to know for sure that they are communicating with us in some way. The fox, for instance, I finally decided maybe it was just telling me to pay attention, but which actually is one of the themes of the book in retrospect is pay attention. And yes, the stories themselves have value and many of the people, as they told these stories, would tell them again to somebody else. And again and one of things I said is that the more they told the stories, the more meaning they found in those stories. And that's what life is about, is finding some kind of meaning in our existence. And this is very old. This is part of our DNA. I mean, you know. All right. Our ancestors, thousands of years ago and even up to now in some societies would go out into the forest, whether they were collecting food or just expert, then they would come back to the campfire and they would tell these stories. Sometimes they would act out the stories. Sometimes they would use their body to become the bear that they were describing. And we still do that. You know, we do that on YouTube. You know, all of these strange encounters between unlikely animals, between talks and wolves and so forth. We're still telling those stories, but I'm not sure we understand how important those stories are for us. And I'm not sure we understand the new evidence, the scientific evidence about not only their meaning, but that we are being communicated to and we're communicating with them.

MG: You mentioned the oceanographer. His name is Paul Dayton. He was a grad student in the 1960s and he was diving off the coast of Washington to study starfish and on that dive, this happened.

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VOICE: Suddenly I was completely covered with this huge octopus. It was probably a good maybe three to four meters. It was a big one. Immediately, I wasn't too worried because I knew about them and I thought I would just disentangle myself from it, but when you go to feel an octopus, usually their arms are pretty soft, but when they don't want to be disentangled, it's like steel. You can't really deal with them and there were eight of them on me. And so now I started to get worried. And it had pulled my mask down, so I couldn't see. Now I had my regulator in my mouth, so I was able to hang onto that. But I couldn't see and this thing was all over me with its teeth behind my neck. And I struggled a little bit and then I realized I couldn't struggle. I would be losing oxygen if I struggled. So I just totally relaxed and let it pull me down. And eventually I thought it more or less relaxed a little bit just as I got my legs in a position where I could really push off hard and I really pushed off hard and immediately, as we left the bottom, the octopus started disentangling itself from me and pulled away, I could feel that And as I could get my mask cleared and could see, I saw its eyes just a foot or two from my eyes. And it was looking me in the eyes. You know, you can sense curiosity more than anything else. And we popped up to the surface, the octopus and I looked around and I had to obviously take a few deep breaths and get myself a little bit under control. The octopus, meanwhile, was rather gently disentangling itself and was free of me, still maintaining eye contact. We had eye contact the whole time and we lay there on the surface with my face underwater looking at the octopus. I put my snorkel in my mouth, so I didn't break eye contact and I guess it probably was more than fifteen or twenty seconds. It seemed like a long time. I sensed that the octopus was more or less saying something to the effect of oops, my bad, sorry about that. And I was more or less saying back to the octopus, well, no harm, no foul. And it didn't just swim away from me. It swam slowly in circles around me, still maintaining eye contact. And I thought this was one of the coolest things in my life. And I took a deep breath and the two of us went down until I could no longer go down. It was circling me and I was just sort of turning with it, just thinking with it. And finally, I ran out of air and I had to come back up. It was an interesting experience. I have to say I'm not religious, but it made me feel somehow spiritual connection with the animal. And after a while of lying there, I pulled myself together and swam ashore.

MG: Paul Dayton's an oceanographer and a marine ecologist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. Richard Louv, what do you make of that and his description of it being a spiritual encounter, something that happened 50 years ago, and he still speaks in this mystical tone as he describes what happened.

RICHARD LOUV: Well, first, I'm so glad that you called Paul and had him tell his story. That's one of the first stories in Our Wild Calling and I often tell this story when I give speeches and I see people squirming in the audience. And, you know, why would he do that? Why would he chase it down? That was the question for me. Why would he you know keep following it? And it's like he couldn't let go of that experience and he does call it spiritual. And remember, this is one of the most famous oceanographers among oceanographers, at least in the world. And I think he's older than 80 now. And he says if he told that story at a scientific conference, he might be chased out of the auditorium. Now he's joking about that, but not really. I mean, anthropomorphism is a real taboo or has been. But he says, you know, I'm too old now to care. I'm going to tell that story anyhow, because it has so much meaning for him and it changed the direction of his life. That's 50 years ago, he's still telling story.

MG: You have a line in the book that you say to protect anything, we have to know it and we have to love it. Is that an example of this? That he has a different perspective and ends up going in perhaps a different path because of what happened to him in that moment?

RICHARD LOUV: I think so. And Paul is also very articulate about what's happened to higher education when it comes to the traditional study of biology, zoology and field studies. A lot of those have disappeared from higher education in favour of microbiology and things that can produce commercial items in the lab with commercial forms of life in the lab. And he has students from UCSD, which is right up to the Hill from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, come down and they want to learn about they want to become a marine biologist. And he says they don't know about marine biology. They maybe know the names of a couple animals in the sea. And he's very disturbed by that and he thinks that higher education is pulling his father further away from our connection to other life.

MG: This book covers, I mean there's so many different elements of this and that's an example of an encounter in the midst of the ocean. There are also stories of our relationship with domestic animals in the book. Have a listen to the Heron Seniors Residents in Dorval, Quebec. This is a place where volunteers from Caring Paw's animal therapy bring Edward in for a visit.

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VOICE 1: My name is Marissa Benedict. I've been with Caring Paws for two years. My doggy, Edward Honey Bear, I also call him the dude, we became members and we've been visiting for over two years now.

VOICE 2: I'm a doggy person.

VOICE 1: Gene loves the doggys.

VOICE 2: Yeah.

VOICE 1: Gene would you like to give him a cookie?

VOICE 2: Oh, yeah.

VOICE 1: And look, look at that disappear. Whoops. All gone.

VOICE 2: You're so gentle, yeah.

VOICE 3: I'm Doctor Paul and I started this program 15 years ago and going to the hospital, I used to go through the emergency. You know, he was wagging his tail and going through the emergency people, is everybody's sad, everybody's anxious. And to see this dog and she was smiling and everybody started smiling. I mean it just changed the whole energy in the room. We all need love. That's all and they give it to us unconditionally. I go to a nursing home residence and there is a lady there. She's over a hundred or she was over a hundred. And she was dying. And they asked me if I could come and visit her in her room. She was really in the fetal position already. And they put her on, my little one she's five and a half pounds. And they put her on her bed and her eyes opened. And she smiled at the dog and she went back again. And the nurse told me she hasn't smiled for more than two weeks. The next day she was gone. But those are the things that really, really count. They feed your soul.

VOICE 1: And you thought t was about visiting people. It's about the cookies.

MG: They feed the soul. Richard Louv, what do you make of that? The idea that does those kind of interactions with animals can feed our souls?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, first, those are such beautiful stories. One question is, do wild animals do that for us? We know that dogs do this. In fact, animal assisted therapy, as it's called, is now one of the fastest growing forms of therapy for human beings. Some of it is organized, some of it is not, but it's growing very rapidly. People know this. People feel this and they possibly feel it more than ever, because I think that, you know, there's an epidemic of human loneliness that medical folks talk about now. A real epidemic. And they're now saying that loneliness, social isolation, may soon surpass obesity as a cause of early death. There are now more dogs than ever in North America. The city planner a few years ago for Toronto told me there are now more docs in Toronto than there are children. I don't know if that's still true.

MG: It seems like it some days, yeah.

RICHARD LOUV: But we are instinctively reaching out to other species, and I think there's a reason for that. I think our human loneliness. You know, there's a lot of reasons. A lot of people like to blame Facebook and so forth, anti-social media, etc., but I think that human loneliness and the growth of it is rooted in an even deeper loneliness, which in the book I describe is species loneliness. We are desperate now to feel alone in the world as individuals or as a species. Why else would we look for Bigfoot? I mean the cities, the urban parks that have the best benefits for human psychological welfare, happen to be the ones with the highest biodiversity, the most plants and animals. I don't think that's an accident. Again, I think we're desperate to feel that we are not alone in the universe.

MG: My favourite chapter in this book, perhaps, is How to Talk to Birds. And it's about listening and you made this comment earlier about paying attention in some ways. And you describe what's known as a sit spot. What is a sit spot?

RICHARD LOUV: That's an idea that John Young tells me about. John Young is an animal connection specialist in California who takes hundreds of people out to learn bird language. And the sit spot is something you don't need to have, of course, to do it. You just, you can do it in your backyard. You could do it in the woods down to, you know, at the end of the ravine. It's just a place you pick and you just sit there for a while and you wait for the animals to come back and you listen to the wind and you listen and watch. When I was a kid, I used to go down to a creek near my house. All the frogs, of course, would disappear as I approached and I would sit there for quite a while very still. And finally the frogs would start to pop back up and I watched them and feel their presence. Instinctively I did that. Most kids do something like that. But as adults, we need to stop and notice. We need to pay attention. And I think it's part of the complexity of this is that the more that science notes about the emotions and the communication ability of other animals, the more that human exceptionalism shrinks. There is what I call in the book, the oldest language. It's all around us. It's not a verbal language. Sometimes it is with birds, but often it's behaviour patterns. It's a whole set of characteristics that comprise what I call the oldest language and people are now studying this. And if you can imagine leading a life, this is a way to leave it lead a different type of life in which you feel that language all around you, in which you watch the woodpeckers, in which you come to know the animals of your neighbourhood, wild and domestic, and you're aware of how they're interacting with each other, that you're part of a network of another intelligence that's beyond us, but we're part of. And you know what happens to your loneliness? You know, the times, I in people in the book that describe this, that they've had these moments of almost transcendent connection with other animals and it is literally impossible to feel lonely during those moments. What if that was a way of life for us? I think that would have a lot to do with whether we slow biodiversity collapse, whether we slow the extinctions that are now happening. It has a lot to do with climate emergency. We have to be aware of these things both on a personal basis and on a species.

MG: Is that possible to to open yourself up to and you talk about this in the book, that sense of awe and that sense of wonder that kids have, that as adults we have driven out of us. Is it possible to have that in a time where everything moves so quickly? Where the device in front of me is constantly dragging me for attention, that there are so many other things to look at that stopping and being aware of what's around you, paying attention almost seems like a luxury to so many people.

RICHARD LOUV: You're right and I have trouble pulling away from the screen. You know, you have to stop. You have to pay attention. It's odd that, you know, after the book came out and people were asking me, what's the central message of the book? I realized it was pay attention, consciously make that choice. Pay attention to the life around you. And that's ironically, the introduction where I describe that fox. That's how I ended that introduction, which is maybe the fox was just telling me to pay attention.

MG: You see a direct line between the work that you did in calling attention to the nature deficit disorder that many of us suffer from in Last Child in the Woods to the work that you're doing now?

RICHARD LOUV: I do. You know, Last Child in the Woods defined, as you said, nature deficit disorder, which was a tongue in cheek phrase at the beginning that's now entered quite a few languages. The book is now all over the world and, well, you know, the shock of recognition of what was happening with kids. What we took for granted as adults when we were kids is no longer necessarily true. There's no guarantee that kids in the future will have that kind of sense of connection or wonder that many of us had as kids with nature. And it is fundamental to their psychological health, to their physical health, you know to our relations with other people. This is fundamental, this connection we have with nature around us, of which we are a part. Our Wild Calling is a deeper dive into one kind of nature, which is our fellow animals. And I think one of the reasons I think it was important to do this book is, you know, it's easier, many people have that connection with plants. I'm not necessarily one of them. I have more of a connection now than I used to. I admit in one of my books that I'm kind of plant blind, I prefer lizards. But I think, you know, there's no accident we have so many stuffed animals for kids. Kids naturally gravitate, are fascinated with other animals, whether they're domestic or wild. And we are to as adults. This is kind of a direct route into that sense of connection, looking into those eyes, as Paul Dayton did.

MG: It's a really powerful book and a real pleasure to talk to you. Richard, thank you.

RICHARD LOUV: Oh, thanks so much.

MG: Richard Louv's new book is called Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives and Save Theirs. He starts that book and we started that conversation with his interaction with those animals and that sense of connection that he had. Have you had one of those deep spiritual encounters with an animal? I think of the snowy owl that I saw a couple of weeks ago. And there it was and it looked at me and I looked at it and it feltm in the midst of everything that was going onm like a moment. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. You can find us on Facebook. Email your story to the website: cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. That is The Current for today. Coming up on CBC Radio One, it's Q. If you've been watching the show Nashville, you will know Lennon Stella. One of the stars of the program, makes her own music now. She's going to perform at this week's Juno Awards and you'll hear more about her coming up with Tom Power in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. We were talking about strikes earlier in the show and what's happening in Mexico today. Mexico is not the first country to see a day without women. In 1975, the women of Iceland also went out on strike, happened on the 24th of October. Women refused to work, cook and look after children. Women including Vigdis Finnbogadottir. She was Iceland's first and only female president. And we'll leave you today with her memory of that strike. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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VOICE: Yeah, we call it a day off, but actually it was a strike. But it was a day off because we managed to get the friendship of men to let the ladies and the girls who were working in these factories and all these institutions and banks, etc. to leave work at 3 o'clock and to gather in the main square of Reykjavik in the centre of all the villages in the country. This was an outstanding day with all these thousands of women who gathered and spoke, sang and proved that they are as well as men, pillars of society. Because the factories had to close, the banks had to close, and all these institutions had to close. Men only were at work, and it was not enough. Women have always been strong in Iceland because this has throughout the centuries been a country of fishermen and farmers. There is nobody who counts as much on women's work as fishermen do. But the tradition, the international tradition that a man is a stronge, well, this is also in our country. But we don't think that society has to be so much as it is.

Mar. 9, 2020 episode transcript

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