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The AIH Transcript for November 27, 2017

Hosts: Helen Mann and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

HELEN MANN: Hello, I'm Helen Mann, sitting in for Carol.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight

HM: Violent partner. The International Criminal Court plans to investigate U.S. and Afghan agencies for possible abuses in Afghanistan. But our guest believes Canada's role should be considered as well.

JD: Extra, extra. That doesn't mean another copy of your daily paper — it means that after a deal between two media giants, dozens of Ontario newspapers are now considered superfluous, and will be shut down.

HM: The strong unsilent type. Three years after an assault that left her without her legs and badly damaged her vision, Marlene Bird has died. And tonight, our guest remembers her “feisty, determined” friend.

JD: Baby it's cold inside. When she took her infant son into a meeting, a Japanese politician was kicked out. And, as she'll tell us, that is why she is fighting to change attitudes about working moms in Japan.

HM: A rolling stane gathers new masses. Presenting “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stane”, the first book in J.K. Rowling's series about the boy wizard, translated into the Scots language.

JD: And… the worst laid plans. We will hear excerpts from some of the nominees for this year's “Bad Sex Awards” anyway, which are really more erratic than erotic, and more “get on with it” than “get it on”.

JD: As It Happens, the Monday edition. Radio that has a hard time reading some people's body language.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: ICC: Canada Afghanistan, Marlene Bird bit, Harry Potter translation

ICC: Canada Afghanistan

Guest: Craig Scott

JD: If Craig Scott gets his way, a prosecutor with the International Criminal Court could soon be investigating whether Canada was involved in war crimes. Professor Scott teaches law at Osgoode Hall, he's also a former NDP Member of Parliment. He's heading to The Hague this week to deliver evidence to prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Ms. Bensouda is the ICC prosecutor who announced last week that she wants her investigation of alleged torture and other abuses in Afghanistan, to include not just the Afghan government, but also the US. Craig Scott wants her to add another name to that list. We reached Professor Scott in Toronto.

HM: Professor Scott, why do you think the International Criminal Court should include Canada in its investigation into Afghan war crimes?

CRAIG SCOTT: I believe that at the first level, it should do so because it's already identified an agency of the Afghan government: the National Director of Security, and an agency of the U.S. government: the CIA as having almost certainly engaged in systemic practices of torture. And we transferred individuals to both of those agencies ourselves. So I see no principals or legal reason that Canadians who may knowingly have participated in transferring folks to those two agencies knowing that they might well end up torture should not themselves also be part of the investigation.

HM: You are planning to present evidence directly to The Hague about these allegations. I'm wondering what that evidence includes?

CS: The first thing I should say is I've already sent them a brief that’s 100 pages long that includes a fair bit of evidence on let's call it the “knowledge environment”. What decision makers in Ottawa, and sometimes in the field, would have known, and why this raises questions about why they nonetheless transferred. I mentioned in a few places that there's information that I would prefer not to reveal in a public document. It includes things like the role of our intelligence agencies, especially inside the military, and the overall purpose of some detainee transfers being to generate intelligence that would assist not just Canada, but other actors in the field. And knowing that interrogation using torture is used to produce that intelligence is part and parcel of what the ICC prosecutor should look into. I also talked about a practice known as forgive how this might sound: “pucking”. “puc” for person under control, and there's lots of evidence that I've dug up in the last three years to suggest that there may well have been a category that was kind of off the books category called “puc’, person under control. That meant that captives of Canada were passed over to mostly the Afghans without any record keeping system, and without reporting to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had the role of following up on people once they've been transferred to Afghanistan. Those are just two examples that I will deposit, and I'll also let them know a little bit about key witnesses.

HM: As you know Harjit Sajjan the minister of defense, who did three tours in Afghanistan, has already decided not to hold an inquiry into the allegations you raise. He said that Canadian troops did their duty under the Geneva Conventions. Snd he is quoted as saying they served with “absolute credibility”. How do you respond?

CS: Well, I’ve a couple of things. One, it's a very general statement that is never backed up with an analysis of what law and what people he’s talking about. Secondly, it does something that I very much regret that he does. He continues the Harper government line of talking about our soldiers as if the issue is the people at the frontlines who were the final stage of our chain of transfer. The issue is not our soldiers who fought bravely, and many of whom probably had pangs of conscience when they were asked to hand people over given what they might have heard in rumours about what might happen to them. The issue is the command chain, and there has been absolutely no investigation. If the minister is putting this stuff out in a way that he wants people to understand that somehow or other all of this has been looked at. It has not been. So it's a very general kind of rhetoric. It's not at all different from what the previous government put out, which makes it a bit disappointing because, in the official opposition, it was the Liberals who brought forward a motion at the end of 2009 to have a commission of inquiry into the detainee transfer. And now that they're in government, they've been stonewalling, in some respects, more aggressively than the Conservatives.

HM: Why do you think that is?

CS: It's really, really hard to say. Obviously, one gets in government, and one sees different imperatives, and maybe the liberals realize how much would be opened up by an inquiry. And they may well know that there's a lot of material they would much prefer that Canadians not know.

HM: If the prosecutor were to include Canada in her investigation, what could be the potential implications for the Canadian men and women who served in Afghanistan?

CS: Well, I think the focus of the ICC, and the prosecutor made this clear when she issued a statement to say she was going to take this step, is on what she calls the “most responsible for the most serious crime”. And any international system court always wants to focus on those who have the most responsibility and the most impact. And that's talking about chain of command. We’re not talking about ground level soldiers or military police, who were the final folks to have to pass people over. My guess is having talked to some vets, they would not at all regret this investigation because many of them had heard rumors and known enough about the dangers of what might happen to people who get passed on that they deeply regret it, and if not resent it being put in the position of having to be the ones to do that.

HM: You have been pursuing this issue seeking some kind of an inquiry for years now. Why is this so important to you?

CS: It's a good question. First and foremost, the possibility that we as Canadians, and in our name, Canada ran a system that with a minimum callous and a disregard for what could happen to people at the hands of torturers is for me just a profound justice and rule of law issue. At the same time, my commitment to this as something that needs to see the light of day has just deepened. Watching a decade’s worth of resistance obstruction, and action that seems to amount to cover up on the part of government. There's been such a blow taken to our parliamentary system and to some extent our court system, showing our complete inability to get to the bottom of something as important as this. I would have preferred a commission of inquiry as the ultimate approach to this. But the government, both governments, have just taken that away as a possibility, and we're at the end of the road. I think it's time for the ICC.

HM: Craig Scott, thank you for talking to us.

CS: Thank you so much for the interest.

HM: All right. Bye bye.

CS: Bye.

JD: Craig Scott is a law professor at York University's Osgood Hall, and a former NDP Member of Parliament. We reached him in Toronto.

[Music: Piano]

Marlene Bird obit

Guest: Donna Brooks

JD: Marlene Bird was a survivor. A survivor of abuse at a residential school. Of a life lived on the streets. And three years ago, the survivor of a vicious attack in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan — that left her partially blind, and led to the loss of both her legs. Her story shocked the country, and eventually led to a 16-year prison sentence for her attacker. Today, Marlene Bird's family announced that she had died in hospital in Prince Albert. She was 50-years-old. A few months after her assault, Ms. Bird spoke to the CBC's Duncan McCue as part of a TV documentary. Here is part of what she had to say about her attacker.

SOUNDCLIP

MARLENE BIRD: Why did he do this to me? Why would he do that to a woman? That where it comes from a woman? Why. Would he want to try and kill me? I don't mean to have self-pity, but I miss my legs. I hate depending on other people, but I have to now.

JD: That’s Marlene bird in a documentary on “The National” in 2015. Donna Brooks was a friend of Ms. Bird. She is also the head of the YWCA in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

HM: Ms. Brooks, first of all, I'm very sorry for your loss.

DONNA BROOKS: Yes, thank you.

HM: How did you come to know Marlene Bird?

DB: I came to know Marlene after she was brutally attacked, and we advocated and worked with her at the YWCA in Prince Albert. And I got to know her for the feisty individual that she was. She wanted her story told. She wasn't afraid to tell her story. And that allowed us to get to know each other.

HM: I understand you actually first met her in the hospitalist as she was starting to recover from this terrible attack? What were your first impressions of her?

DB: I liked her. I met her in hospital. I thought here's a woman who's been brutally attacked. I kind of knew of her before that. I knew she’d had a hard life. In the hospital they were trying to pressure her… not really pressure her… they were doing the best job they could. They were trying to find a place for her in Saskatoon. She didn't want to be in Saskatoon; she wanted to be in Prince Albert. You know that’s where her home was. We did what we could to help her get back to Prince Albert.

HM: She spoke in that clip we just played about the difficulty she was having dealing with what happened to her, which of course, is so understandable. What did you see of that struggle in the time that followed?

DB: Well, Marlene always had a very…. from what I knew before I met her, she also had a very independent streak. And the loss of her legs really took away her independence. So the one half of her still wanted to go out and be with her friends, to be with the people that she'd always been with, but because she had lost her legs, she then had to rely on her common-law, and she had to rely on people around her. And that was a real struggle for Marlene.

HM: She, as you said, wanted this story to be told to the point that she asked for the publication ban on her name to be lifted. Did she explain why she did that?

DB: When I talked to her, she wanted that done so that people knew, that it wasn't just swept under the rug, that people knew that happened, that does happen to people, that happened to her. Unfortunately, brutal attacks like that happen to numbers and numbers of women, in particularly aboriginal women across our country.

HM: The brutality of this attack, I mean she was set on fire and left for dead. She did struggle, as we mentioned, she had a problem with alcohol, and that continued later in life. Did she speak of that?

DB: Yes, yes, she was very forthcoming. She did not hide her problem with alcohol. Alcoholism is a disease, and it can be a really hard disease to beat. In her heart, she wanted to beat that disease, but she just couldn’t. She just was never quite able to beat that demon.

HM: You mentioned her partner, Patrick Lavallee, what is he going to do now? How big a loss is this going to be for him?

DB: Well, Marlene's has been a part of Patrick’s life for a long time. I'm not exactly sure how many years, but after she was attacked and released to the hospital, he never left her side. He was always with her, and he's the one that took care of her, we could see them all the time around Prince Albert, there'd be Patrick wheeling Marlene, and so yeah, he's going to fee a huge loss. He's been with Marlene for about 20 years maybe. And he’s going to suffer that loss hugely. I hope he stops by one of our YWCA facilities, and we'll do what we can for him.

HM: You mentioned how well-known she had become in the community. What effect do you think she had on those people, and what impact is the loss going to have as well?

DB: You know what’s funny? You know I was thinking last night through all this, her impact was twofold. The impact of what happened is us all wanting to fight for Marlene had such a positive impact. But then sometimes we’d get frustrated when Marlene struggled with her demons. But what it taught, or what it taught me anyhow, was that it's not our place to judge. When you know we kind of rallied as a community, we're going to you know get Marlene into rehab, and we're going to get her beautiful apartment, and blah, blah, blah, but that wasn't our choice. You know Marlene still wanted to live the life Marlene lived, and we had no right to convince her to do anything different. We just needed to respect her dignity and say OK, you know? But what happened was because she lost her legs, to live her life became such a struggle. And so the emotions were twofold. Absolutely, you felt compassion, you felt very bad for what happened to Marlene, you felt enjoyment sometimes when her kids were visiting her and she was in a good mood, but sometimes you felt like really frustrated with if you know if she went off drinking, and then you had to deal with her because then maybe her mood wasn't so good. So there’s a whole variety of emotions that went with it.

HM: And she was in constant pain, or at least discomfort for the rest of her life after this incident.

DB: Oh absolutely, not just physically, but emotionally as well.

HM: She said she chose to forgive her attacker.

DB: Yes.

HM: Why do you think she did that?

DB: Well, I think he did it for a couple reasons. One is to help her heal, but Marlene was not a vengeful person. She was not a person that hated other people. My guess is that it was her human nature to forgive. And it was also her way of trying to heal.

HM: What do you think you'll remember most about her? Is there a moment, a characteristic, something that will stay with you?

DB: Her feistiness will stay with me. She was feisty, and she had this little smile on her face. And she was very independent. If she was going to do something, she was going to do something. She wouldn't hesitate to get in her scooter and drive halfway across the city to get to where she had to get to, snow or whatever. She was very feisty, but with a real smile on her face, and I won't forget that.

HM: Thank you very much for sharing your memories with us. We really appreciate it.

DB: Oh, no problem at all.

HM: Bye bye.

DB: OK. Bye bye.

JD: Donna Brooks is the head of the YWCA in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We reached her in Prince Albert. Marlene Bird has died in hospital, after suffering multiple organ failure. She was 50-years-old.

[Music: Spanish guitar]

Harry Potter

Guest: Matthew Fitt

JD: Here's a little ditty that many of you will recognize in just a few notes.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: That song that continuously echoes in my head. It has done so ever since Harry got his letter. Still waiting for mine.

JD: This is from the "Harry Potter" films which are, of course, based on the novels by J. K. Rowling. The books have been translated into numerous languages — everything from Afrikaans to Welsh. And now, you can add one more to the list. Last week, the Scots-language version of the first book in the series came out. It's called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stane". Matthew Fitt is the translator. We reached him in Glasgow.

HM: Mr. Fit, the reviewer in The Guardian writes that you're Scots version of the Harry Potter is better than the original, and that you have, quote, “applied a defibrillator to Rowling’s flat-lined text, and made it come alive.” What do you make of that?

MATTHEW FITT: That was very embarrassing, flattering and I was very grateful to the reviewer for at least giving my version of the translation such a good writeup. I don't agree with the journalist who wrote that because I do feel that this story, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is one of the most gripping pieces of fiction that I've translated, and I enjoyed reading it and translating it. And I also enjoyed reading it 15 times in order to get the translation right.

HM: We know this book was a phenomenon around the world. This is the eightieth translation of it. What has the reaction been like?

MF: It's quite breathtaking really. I think there's a kind of a full circle because J.K. Rowling wrote the book largely in Edinburgh, famously in cafe The Elephant House. When she was writing it, of course, she was writing in English. And Hagrid has a different kind of speech, but it's all English. But when she was writing this in Edinburgh, there would have been Scots language all around her and spoken by people in the cafe and people wherever she was working in Edinburgh, so it would have been there. I don’t think it informed the language of her book, but certainly in terms of location, Scotland features in the imagery.

HM: I have to get you to read us some of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” in Scots. Can you pick a passage?

MF: I'd love to, yeah, perhaps the very opening, which is an extremely famous chapter.

MF: [Speaking Scots].

HM: I caught part of it, but not all of it. I have to admit. Can you give us some of the names and words in translation? Like how do you say Dumbledore?

MF: There's a famous area of Edinburgh called Dumby Dykes. And so for me, Dumbledore was infinitely Dumby Dykes.

HM: How about Quidditch?

MF: That was tricky because I looked at other translations, and I was hoping that German — Scots is a Germanic language — would give me some inspiration. But it's Quidditch in German. I also understand Slavonic languages. The Slovak translation of Quidditch is Metlobal. And metlo is a broom. And so what the Slovak translators had done is broken down the game itself. So I did the same thing as the Scots word for a broom is a Besom. And I'm speaking to you from Glasgow, a besom in other parts of Scotland is a broom, but also a very cheeky person. And so I sort of ignored that. And so Besombaw and baw is the word for ball. Besombaw is Quidditch in Scots.

HM: Just to clarify, Scots is not Gaelic. You're talking Lowland versus Highland language, right?

MF: Yes, Scots is a Germanic language, and Gaelic is a Celtic language. Scotland’s very rich in terms of its language and linguistic heritage. Scots is spoken by 1.6 million people, the last census — for the very first time — recorded the number of Scots speakers. And one-an- a-half-billion or so checked the box “I speak Scots”. So from a country of five million, that's a considerable number.

HM: You told National Public Radio in the States that you were persecuted for speaking Scots in the past. Tell me about that?

MF: Yeah. I was talking to some children today in Cambuslang about this. Yeah, I was belted and received corporal punishment for using Scots in the classroom in the 1970s. The belt corporal punishment was banned in the ‘80s. I was talking to some children today, and sadly, they are not physically beaten, but they are often reprimanded and then told in uncertain terms that they should not use these words. It’s fewer and fewer children who are being told this, but there still is a residual resentment and antagonism towards the Scots language. But it is changing, and hopefully, the sooner the better.

HM: You said already that you really admire Rowling's writing, and find this book really compelling. But why did you want to work specifically on this one?

MF: I think I've been in training for a number of years for this one. I run a children's imprint called Itchy Coo with the writer James Robinson We've translated that Roald Dahl, Asterix and also David Walliams. And each book has got bigger and bigger. I think also in terms of sstatus, if we're trying to raise the status of the language the children speak and adults speak Scotland, there's no better way than to represent the language in a book like “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone”. It’s not just a UK novel, this is a global novel and for it to be in Scots as well can only add to the esteem of the language. And hopefully, add to the esteem that children feel about themselves as Scots speakers in our country.

HM: It's a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much.

MF: No problem at all, Helen. Thank you very much.

HM: Bye bye.

MF: Bye.

JD: Matthew Fitt’s Scots version of the first Harry Potter novel has just been published. We reached Mr. Fitt in Glasgow. And if you'd like to read more about some of his other translations, visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Jazz]

Shania Twain

JD: In Shania Twain's music video for her song "That Don't Impress Me Much," she's rocking all-leopard print, from boots to bikini. One might describe that look as "vamp." And when she came out at the Grey Cup half-time show last night, on a dog sled, in a red rhinestone bodysuit and faux-fur jacket, accompanied by Mounties, you may call it "camp." And, for the record, fabulous. But Montreal Gazette sports writer Herb Zurkowsky had another word for it. Last night, as Twitter celebrated her performance, he tweeted "Shania looked like a tramp." Twenty-one minutes later, he tweeted a kind of apology, in the sense that it contained the word "apologies", quote, "Sorry folks. Didn't mean to offend anyone about Shania Twain, but way too much makeup and should have dressed more conservatively. Apologies." That didn't impress anyone much, at all. After last night's fumble, Mr. Zurkowsky deleted those tweets and issued two more apologies, these ones unreserved.

Part 2: Papers closing, Bad Sex Award

Papers closing

Guest: Nathan Taylor

JD: This morning, almost 300 Canadian journalists arrived at work, ready to report the news. Unfortunately, the big story today was that they no longer had jobs. Postmedia and Torstar announced that they were swapping ownership of more than 40 newspapers. And then the two media companies said that most of those papers would be shut down. Ontario was hit very hard. It lost three dailies, and dozens of community weeklies. Nathan Taylor was regional editor of the Orillia Packet and Times, the Barrie Examiner, the Innisfil Examiner, the Bradford Times, and the Collingwood Enterprise Bulletin...all of which have been shut down. We reached Mr. Taylor in Orillia, Ontario.

HM: Mr. Taylor, It's a tough day. How did this news hit you personally when you heard it?

Nathan Taylor: Probably about the same way I think as it had all of my colleagues who were affected today. It was it was one of shock and sadness.

HM: Did you see it coming at any point?

NT: No, in in the newspaper business we don't fool ourselves. We know that it is going through extremely tough times. But we're going to work every day not thinking about will this be our last day? We go in thinking about what's happening today, and what we're going to put in the paper tomorrow? So there was really no way to prepare for something like this.

HM: You mentioned the effect it's having on your colleagues. What's the mood? What are you hearing at the offices of the Orillia Packet and Times?

NT: I'm really proud of my colleagues and my staff for the way they've handled it. They’ve handled it very professionally, but clearly, disappointed.

HM: Did Torstar explain to you why it was shutting down your papers?

NT: No, and I'm still you know I'm just back home now, after being at the offices in Barrie and Orillia, and I haven’t myself had time to go through all of the reports. I'm not completely sure what the rationale was, and I'm not sure what the company's plans are moving forward.

HM: The closures they're going to have an enormous impact on news coverage across Ontario. What do you think people in those communities are going to be missing now that your papers don't exist?

NT: Well, as much as I hope something can come in and fill the void, what you get at a daily newspaper — not just the dailies, but the weekly papers in Simcoe County as well — you get in-depth coverage of things like city council. Every week, we go over the entire agenda, and we try not to miss anything. And I mean that goes for the Police Services Board, School Board, County Council, all of these different organizations that need impartial oversight. I'm not ready to say that is going to disappear. But I also don't think there was anybody in in our markets who covered it as an intensely as we did.

HM: Can you think of a story that you worked on that might not have come out if it were not for your local newspapers?

NT: Yes, actually the one that comes to mind it was when our previous City Council attempted to hire one of the mayor's friends and campaign advisers as the chief administrative officer and city manager. It didn't say in the documents who it was they referred to him as “Candidate C”, but we were able to find out who it was and we printed that story — and a series of them, as well as opinion pieces, all of which we submitted with our National Newspaper Award nomination submission. And, as a result, they ended up not hiring him. And that was one of the things where we had a team of people who saw the story, and knew something wasn't passing the smell test, and it got results. And it was really a victory for I wouldn’t say just journalism, but for transparency in a small city like ours.

HM: You've said to me that you're not ready to give up on that council coverage altogether. That you hope something might come and fill the void. What are you thinking?

MT: I don't know at the moment what could fill that void? I really hope that the other journalists in this area realise that there is a big voice that's missing from the media landscape, and really keep an eye on on our local politicians, and keep reporting the facts.

HM: What are you hearing from your readers today?

NT: People are shocked in Orillia. I mean the Packet has had a presence here since 1870. It was the go-to. It was it was the newspaper of record in town, and they seem to be sharing our thoughts, and our emotions right now. They're upset, and they're not sure I guess exactly where they're going to go for the news that they came to the Packet for? They certainly do still have options, and again, that's where I hope that the rest of the media in the area will recognize that, and give our former readers what they deserve.

HM: 1870, that's a really long legacy.

NT: It is, yeah. Actually, it was the Orillia Packet was founded in 1870, and there was also the Orillia Times, and those two publications merged in 1926. And we've been publishing the Packet and Times daily since 1953.

HM: You know you lost your job today. Have you been able to give any thought to what you might do next?

NT: No, I think it's something like I said earlier you don't plan for, despite knowing that things like this are a possibility. So I haven't really thought about my next step yet.

HM: Well, it's a real shame. I wish you the best of luck in your future. And I thank you for telling us what's happened to your community papers.

NT: Thank you. I appreciate your concern as well.

HM: All right. Goodbye.

NT: Take care.

JD: Nathan Taylor lost his job today as the regional editor of five Ontario newspapers — some of the dozens that were shut down today. We reached Mr. Taylor in Orillia, Ontario. And this afternoon, the Competition Bureau said that it would be undertaking a review of the transaction between Postmedia and Torstar to swap and close the newspapers.

[Music: Rock]

Listener Response: Apricot kernels

JD: Turned out that particular bag was not his bag. On Friday's program, we brought you the story of a man who treated himself to a bag of apricot kernels from a health food store in Montreal. And after snacking on about 40 of them, Brendan Brogan's friend told him that apricot kernels are actually kind of poisonous. Sure enough, there was a warning on the back that read "Caution: Do not consume more than 2-3 kernels per day." Mr. Brogan ended up in the hospital being treated for cyanide poisoning. Well, Mr. Brogan is not the only one surprised that the kernels are poisonous, nor is he alone in his opinion that, quote, "Selling them like nuts is nuts." After hearing his story, we heard from you. On Facebook, Shelby Raymond commented, quote, "They should have a warning label on the front. I know that when I buy snack foods, I don't read all of the little print on the back of the package. Plus, now that I'm older, that small print is dang tough to read!" I hear that. Christine wrote to say: "Brought a bag of these back from China. I'd bought them from a man at the side of the road, splitting the shells open with a brick. I figured it was a thrifty way for him to make some money. The word for 'apricot kernel' and 'almond' seems to be the same in Chinese (at least colloquially), so I thought nothing of eating them by the bagful. I suppose I'm lucky that the bitterness kept me from eating too many at a time." And finally, Cecelia Klassen commented, "So if someone starts sprinkling apricot kernels on your salad… be scared. Be very scared!" Thank you for all your emails, tweets, your comments. And if you did miss that story, it is on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Piano]

Bad Sex Award

Guest: Frank Brinkley

JD: You labour for hours, days even, consulting the thesaurus, trying to strike a balance between tasteful and torrid. And then you're nominated for an award that reduces your vulnerable, painstaking efforts to a punchline. The shortlist for this year's Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award has been announced. We've spoken about this award before on this program — very carefully, so as not to disturb you during your dinner time. And so as to make sure we're not kicked off the air. So this year, we thought we'd let one of the judges do their own dirty work. We reached Frank Brinkley in London, England.

HM: Mr. Brinkley, this is an award show that readers wait for with bated breath. How do you find this year's novels compare to past contenders for bad sex writing?

FRANK BRINKLEY: They compare pretty favourably I think. I made a joking remark to a journalist that I thought there was plenty of good sex out there. And that's been slightly interpreted this year to mean that maybe the sex is getting better. But I think these are pretty bad passages as well, and can kind of hold their own against some of the past passages.

HM: So when you say they compare favourably you mean they're pretty bad?

FB: Yeah, yeah, I think one of the difficulties about talking about bad sex is that good and bad seem to get turned upside down. And we even have this with the judging, the judge will say oh, that's good! And we have to say hang on do you mean good-bad, or good-good? You know should we not be considering this passage? Is it actually good? Or is it bad? So yeah, we kind of are aware of the ambiguity there.

HM: Remind us of what you're looking for? What constitutes a poorly written sex scene for the Literary Review?

FB: There are a few sort of different hallmarks that we might look for. So looking for hyperbole or florid use of language, where description sort of goes out of the window. Or also, sometimes you get anatomical confusion in the sort of the race for the author to make it the best possible sex ever — sometimes where bits are going stops making any sense. And then underlying that, I think this is more male writers. Sometimes there's an aim for the sex to be the most perfect, most wonderful you know certain organs to be bigger than ever. We keep an eye out for that because the fact is not all sex is brilliant all the time. And some very good sex writing is not about you know happy sex, or the best sex ever. But it is really realistic writing.

HM: Read us a passage if you will from one of the seven shortlisted books that that struck you as particularly good or bad as the case may be?

FB: How about this one then? This is from “The Destroyers by Christopher Bollen. On the stone porch, in hot mountain air, we grapple with our clothing, which in the darkness becomes as complicated as mountaineering gear; her black shirt around her neck, mine unbuttoned. Our shorts and underwear slid to our ankles. We seemed to be moving at Avalanche-speed, and also, unfortunately, with Avalanche-precision. I think I'll stop there. I mean it goes on for a little while.

HM: I think that’s enough.

FB: So this is a great example of the somewhat hyperbolic language, and also, this fantastic image in the middle about moving with avalanche-speed, but also, unfortunately, with Avalanche-precision, which I suppose means without any precision at all. But as a reader, you end up and hang on, wait, so what’s that avalanche-precision? It sort of takes you out of the scene almost immediately. You're trying to work out what's going on there.

HM: But it’s kind of funny, no? I mean is it possible that the writer’s like making a joke, and kind of in on it?

FB: Yeah, it is possible. And the judges spend a lot of time talking about that because if a scene is intentionally funny and you're laughing at it, then the writer is being incredibly successful. They’re achieving thier aim. We had this last year where there was pages upon pages of almost bad sex in one novel, and we said hang on, I think it's meant to be humorous. And at that point, suddenly, you go oh, the penny drops.

HM: You know looking at the nominees I can't help but notice that most of them are men. You mentioned the tendency of some male writers to be very hyperbolic about the quality of sex. Is there usually more representation from male writers?

FB: Yeah, historically, there have always been more men than women. Some women have won the award in the past, and we have had some nearly 50-50 shortlists. But in a way, it's not something we worry about too much because sex is sex. But I think there certainly is a certain type of male novelist who is very confident and willing to write about anything and feels no qualms in describing sex scenes. And maybe thinks yeah, was a good scene I wrote there. And we're quite happy to point those people out with the Bad Sex Award. Wilbur Smith’s on the list this year. And he's just sort of I suppose a repeat offender. He seems to not worry at all about inserting these completely over the top scenes into his novels.

HM: But you know he's a really best-selling author, so maybe you know they don't seem to mind that. How about the writers themselves? How did they react to this award?

FB: In all sorts of different ways. Most people I think just ignore it. And then we have other writers… we actually have on our noticeboard in Literary Review we have a letter from a very successful writer who's been nominated and won all sorts of prizes. You’d know the name, but I'm not going to say their name. But the email says oh my god, I've just found out I had been nominated for the Bad Sex Award. This is the only literary award I want to win!!! We went Oh, amazing. And then there's a follow-up email from about two minutes later saying sorry, my agent told me that I shouldn't want to win it. So can you ignore that previous email? I mean we do say that it's a bad sex scene in an otherwise good book. So we're trying not to say that the writer is rubbish, just that maybe they've dropped the ball on that one scene.

HM: Is there an awards ceremony?

FB: There is a ceremony, yeah. Because the award is a spoof literary award, the ceremony is a bit of a spoof literary ceremony. So all of the pomp and circumstance you might expect from a literary award we've done away with all of that. Normally, there's some sort of celebrity to present the award. And normally, the writer doesn't turn up, or certainly within the last couple of years, they’ve not dignified us with turning up. So the award is accepted by someone in their absence, and then we get on with celebrating it being nearly Christmas and that sort of thing.

HM: Frank, thank you very much for talking with us. Appreciate it.

FB: That's quite all right. Thanks for your time.

HM: Bye bye.

FB: Bye bye.

JD: Frank Brinkley is one of the judges of the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award. We reached him in London, UK. And the winner of that award will be announced this Thursday in London.

[Music: Ambient]

Tommy Keene obit

JD: Many of us have that one musician we love, and we think they should have been huge — but they weren’t. Someone who might even seem cooler to us because they weren’t huge, but they just kept on making great music. For a lot of people, that artist was Tommy Keene. From 1982 to 2015, he put out album after album on several different labels. None of them were hits. That had to have been frustrating. But as he once told an interviewer while he was in-between labels, quote: "This is what I do, and I'm still gonna do it. I'm not gonna quit or give up because no one will sign me." Unquote. Tommy Keene died last week, "unexpectedly and peacefully in his sleep", according to his website. He was 59-years-old. If you've seen an obituary for him, you've seen that he played "power pop". What that means is concise, well-crafted songs, usually guitar-driven. It also usually means a tough sell — because it's too complicated to be straight pop, and too poppy to be alternative. He did almost made it, though. In 1984, his EP "Places That Are Gone" was a huge critical success, and sold well for an independent release. And over all those subsequent albums on different labels, he cultivated a small but dedicated fan base that fell in love with his smart, heartfelt, often hopeful songs. And they reflected the man who wrote them. As he once said to the Washington Post, "I'll entertain the idea all the time of 'god, how much longer can I keep doing this?' At the end of the day, I always want to go back in and make another record and try again and see if I can do it this time, see if I can crack it."

Part 3: Yuka Ogata, Alouette satellite, “complicit’ word

Yuka Ogata

Guest: Yuka Ogata

JD: Yuka Ogata is a municipal assemblywoman in Kumamoto, Japan. She's also a mom, to a 7-month-old baby boy, named Dogen. Last week, she was hoping to combine those two duties, when she took Dogen to work at the Municipal Assembly. You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal: after all, in 2017, we've even seen an MP breastfeed her child in Australia's Parliament. But Yuka Ogata was not met with the same acceptance. We reached Ms. Ogata in Kumamoto.

HM: Ms. Ogata, when you walked into the assembly’s chamber with your son, Hhw did the people in the room react?

YUKA OGATA: They looked surprised I think, and some of them were smiling at my baby.

HM: And after that what happened?

YO: After that, a staff rushed to me, and he told me please don't do this. And the chairman followed, and also, the chair of the assembly management committee came to me as well. They surrounded me, and they told me to leave the chamber with my baby because they cannot start the assembly me being there with my baby.

HM: Why did they say that? What was the problem? Was your baby misbehaving? Was there any reason he was disruptive?

YO: No, he was very quiet. He was just sitting in my lap. He was very happy, and that was part of the reason I did it because he's a very happy baby, and I was confident he wouldn't cry or make noise. And the assembly was going to be for 50 minutes or so on that day.

HM: So what reason were you given by these men for leaving? Why did they want you to get out?

YO: They didn't give me any reason that time. They were just telling me to leave. And then I didn't leave. I told them I am a counselor with a baby, so I will attend the assembly with my baby. They just kept saying we cannot start with this situation, so let's go outside and talk.

HM: So did you eventually leave with your baby?

YO: Yes, I did. They kept on saying OK, let's go outside and talk it over. So I decided to do that.

HM: And when they talked it over with you, again, did they give you a reason why you couldn't be in the chamber with your son?

YO: There were several members there. They were all male older… more senior males. One of them said the chamber is a sacred place, so the baby shouldn't be there.

HM: A sacred place?

YO: Yeah.

HM: Have any other legislators that you know of in your area or in Japan, any other women taken their babies into assemblies?

YO: No, no my case was the first I think. But someone of the National Diet — a female member — tried. But then she was stopped.

HM: At the parliament, yeah — the Diet. Did you have other child care options available to you? Or was this a deliberate choice?

YO: It was a deliberate choice because my baby is still too young, and I’m still breastfeeding my baby. And I need to be with him to breastfeed him, or to nurture him.

HM: Were you also making a point?

YO: Oh yes, definitely. What I wanted to say was that when I reported that I became pregnant, I had a talk with staff, and I asked them to support me so that I can balance my work and raising a baby. The response I received from them was that balancing work and child-rearing is my personal issue. I told them I would like to bring my baby in the assembly, and then they told me no. Then I requested that there should be daycare ready for the visitors, as well as the staff who is working in the council building. And they said no. And then I suggested OK, maybe there should be just at least there should be a staff to care for children or babies. They kept saying no. And then they kept on saying that I should deal with those things personally. But then I felt that OK, this is exactly what a lot of people who are raising children in Japan right now face at their workplace.

HM: The declining population in Japan is an issue. And Prime Minister Abe says that he's trying to get more women into the workforce to try and combat that. So given your experience, what needs to change to make that possible?

YO: Well, there are so many things. But what I'm trying to do is that we need many more women who are raising a child to be in decision-making or policy-making positions. And I the only one female raising like small children in my council. And actually, it's the first in the history in my city. So I'm really, really doing my best to make it easier to be a council member, and to raise children without sacrificing our children.

HM: Ms. Ogata, thank you very much for telling us about your experience. I appreciate it.

YO: Thank you very much.

HM: Goodbye.

YO: Bye bye.

JD: Yuka Ogata is a municipal assemblywoman Kumamoto, Japan. And that is where we reached her.

[Music: Jazz]

Royal engagement

JD: How do you convince someone to become part of the British royal family? That’s a tough one! But, according to Prince Harry, you find a special woman who doesn't have much idea at all who you are, you take her camping. And then, after a year-and-a-half of dating, you let the corgis sniff her over. As you have no doubt heard on the news, Prince Harry and American actor Meghan Markle announced their engagement today. Here the pair are speaking to the BBC about the evening they decided to get married.

SOUNDCLIP

PRINCE HARRY: It happened a few weeks ago, earlier this month, here at our cottage — just a standard, typical night for us.

PRINCESS MEGHAN: Just a cozy night. What was I doing? Just roasting chicken,.

PH: Just trying to roast chicken.

PM: Trying to roast a chicken. And it was just an amazing surprise. It was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee.

PH: Of course.

REPORTER: Was it an instant yes from you?

PM: Yes, as a matter of fact, I could barely let you finish proposing. I was like can I say yes now?

PH: She didn’t even let me finish. She was like can I say yes now? Can I say yes now? Then there was hugs, and I had the ring in my finger, and I was like can I give you the ring? She say oh yes, the ring! So it was a really nice moment. It was just the two of us, and I think I managed to catch her buy surprise as well.

REPORTER: How did you first meet?

PH: Yes, we first, we were introduced actually by mutual friend. It was through her, and then we met once, and twice back-to-back two dates in London last July.

PM: Yes. And then it was I think about three maybe four weeks later that I managed to persuade her to come and join me in Botswana. And we camped out with each other under the stars. We were kind of jolly for five days out there, which was absolutely fantastic. So then we were really by ourselves, which was crucial to me to make sure that we had a chance to get to know each other.

REPORTER: Have you met the Queen?

PM: I have, yes — a couple of times.

REPORTER: What was that like?

PM: She's an incredible woman.

PH: And the corgis took to you straight away.

PM: That’s true.

PH: I’ve spent the past 33 years being barked at. This one walks in, and absolutely nothing.

PM: Just laying on my feet during tea. It was very sweet.

JD: That was Prince Harry and his fiance Megan Markle, speaking to the BBC earlier today.

[Music: Pop rock]

Alouette satellite

Guest: Randy Atwood

JD: It was like looking at fireworks in slow motion. That's how people in Alberta and Saskatchewan described what they saw in the sky on Friday. And yesterday, the U.S. Strategic Command confirmed that those fireworks were actually "space junk" burning up as it hurtled out of orbit, and fell towards Earth — remnants of a rocket launched earlier this month. When we shared that story on Twitter, we pointed out that the sky above us is filled with space debris — some of which has been around for decades. And in response, the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, Ontario reminded us of one piece of space junk that's still up there: the Alouette, Canada's first Earth-orbiting satellite, launched back in 1962. And Randy Atwood says it’s never going to come back down. Mr. Atwood is the executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. And ee reached him in Toronto.

HM: Randy Atwood, what was the Alouette’s original mission?

RANDY ATWOOD: Alouette had a science mission. It was placed in a very high orbit — about a thousand kilometers above the earth — and it was looking down on the upper atmosphere. The part we call the ionosphere. And the purpose was for long distance radio communications, they bounce the radio signals off of the ionosphere. And this was important back in the late 50s-early 60s. The days when we didn't have communication satellites or anything like that. So it was a way to learn more about the ionosphere so that you know this large country Canada we could keep in contact better through radio transmissions through the ionosphere.

HM: So why was it switched off after 10 years?

RA: Probably because they were done with it. It was only supposed to last three months. So a satellite back then for it to last 10 years was amazing. I'm sure they thought it would have broken, or the batteries had worn out or something like that. They launched Alouette Two and Alouette Three — some more sophisticated satellites — in the ‘70s, so it was a successful program. And our first satellite in space.

HM: Yeah, what generally happens when they switch a satellite off? What happens to it?

RA: Well, once a satellite is done — depending on how high it is — it can last in orbit for decades. I mean 55 years ago, Alouette was launched, and it's still up there. And there's no sign of it coming down. A lot of the early Vanguard and Sputnik satellites — some of the first satellites that were launched — were very, very small. And the rockets pushed them up to an altitude where they're up there still.

HM: So NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command — we're told thousands of pieces of debris in space. Scientists actually can predict when some satellites may come back down to earth. Is there any chance we'll see Alouette burning up in the sky one day?

RA: I doubt it. The reason a satellite comes down out of orbit is essentially it slows down. Up where Alouette is, there's literally no atmosphere for it to slow it down. So it's probably going to be up there for many hundred years.

HM: Wow! Now, is it so high up that you couldn't see it through a telescope?

RA: I just looked at it or looked at some information this morning about it, and it'd be easy to photograph through a telescope with some of the sensitive cameras that we have today. You just need to know where to point the telescope, and when to take the picture.

HM: When these satellites do re-enter, what causes them to burn the way that they do?

RA: It's essentially just the speed and friction with the atmosphere. These satellites are traveling at eight kilometers a second, and I guarantee you that if you were able to run down the street at eight kilometers a second there would be a big flash and very little, I’m afraid, of you left. It’s kind of morbid, isn't it?

HM: Unless I was a superhero.

RA: Unless you're a superhero, right? The Flash does that all the time. So essentially, when a satellite hits the upper atmosphere, say the rocket body that burnt up over Saskatchewan, they're very flimsy. They're made to be as light as possible just to hold fuel and engines. Once it hits that atmosphere, it begins to break up and the friction begins to heat it up. Essentially, it puts on a real nice light show as it breaks up into thousands of little pieces.

HM: If I were ever lucky enough to see one of these fireballs you know re-entering, could I tell just looking at it whether it was a satellite or a meteorite?

RA: Yes, you could. Actually, I saw an American-Russian rocket stage enter several years ago. If you've ever seen a shooting star or a meteor, it's essentially, a whoosh. It takes literally a second. So it's the kind of thing that if you saw a meteor, and you went wow, there's a meteor! And your friend turned to and where? It’d be gone.

HM: Right.

RA: So it's literally a second. The rocket stage that I saw re-enter, essentially, was traveling across the sky about as fast. It appeared to move as fast across the sky as an airplane. And this glow, or all of these burning pieces, was all traveling about the same speed, and they were glittering red and green. And you could see them breaking up, and some would flash into flame. It was it was quite a light show. But actually, it kept going, going, going and the whole assemblage of glowing, fiery stars set over the horizon for me. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see because these are very rare. And also, they're very difficult to predict. You know scientists have a pretty good idea when something's going to re-enter. But if they are off by 20-30 minutes, well these things travel at eight kilometer a second, so they just can't predict it that easily.

HM: Right. Well, given that is there any danger to us here on Earth? You mentioned they incinerate, but do pieces actually ever hit down?

RA: Very rarely. No one's ever been hit by a satellite. I think a cow was killed in Cuba in the early ‘60s by a falling satellite or something crazy like that. But pieces rarely make it to the ground because a lot of these things they're built to be light, as they re-enter, they break apart and burn up in the atmosphere.

HM: So you say you've seen the original Alouette through a telescope. If you could see it up close — it's more than 50 years old now — what do you think it would look like.

RA: Well, if you could see any detail on it would probably look the same. It wasn't all that big, it was something that you could fit in at the back of an SUV. But they had these very interesting antennas that were rolled up like scotch tape, and they were metal. And as they were unfurled, they actually turned into a tube. So they called them “STEM”. And this was this is a great naming convention that they had back then: a Storable Tubular Extendible Member. That's what scientists called these. But this is the great Canadian invention. And they used it on the Gemini and Apollo moon missions because you know this antenna you could roll it up to be about the size of your fist, and it would extend out 20-30 feet, and it would be an antenna. So I'm sure they're still out there right now. There’s, essentially, nothing to have changed the way Alouette looks after 55 years.

HM: Well, it's interesting to hear all of this. A lot of it I had no idea about myself. Thank you for talking to us.

RA: My pleasure.

HM: Bye bye.

RA: Bye now

JD: Randy Atwood is the executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. And we reached him in Toronto. And if you are curious to know what Alouette and all those antennae look like, we've got lots of photographs up on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Country]

“Complicit” word

Guest: Jane Solomon

JD: The word was "xenophobia" last year. Before that, it was "identity". And today, www.dictionary.com announced that this year's word of the year is "complicit". The site says the word is, quote, "indicative of larger trends that resonated throughout the year." Unquote. Jane Solomon is a lexicographer who was involved in the decision. We reached her in Oakland, California.

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November 27, 2017 episode transcript

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