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The AIH Transcript for September 02, 2019

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

CAROL OFF: Hello, I’m Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

CH: Tonight:

CO: When the tide turns on you. As Hurricane Dorian's full force is unleashed on the Bahamas, I'll speak with a tour boat operator who's watching the storm from a relative's house — and fearing for his own.

CH: The touring inferno. Dozens of passengers on a scuba-diving cruise around California's Channel Islands are missing, after their boat catches fire in the middle of the night.

CO: Division of labour. A new lawsuit claims Denver officials violated a woman's right to medical care after she gave birth to a baby boy in a jail cell — alone, with no help whatsoever.

CH: The Maracle worker. A feature interview with Indigenous writer Lee Maracle, whose work unpacking the effects of settler colonialism has gone unrecognized by the people who give out the big prizes — until now.

CO: Rod and unreal. While hiking back from one of his favourite fishing spots, an Edmonton man finds a nifty-looking piece of petrified wood — that turns out to actually be a dinosaur bone that's millions of years old.

CH: And... amphibious vehicle. A new study suggests some people are transported to a happier place by using a toxic chemical squeezed from certain toads — although the toads confess to feeling a bit pressured.

CH: As It Happens, the Monday edition. Radio that doesn't need an add-a-toad adjustment.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: Hurricane Dorian hits Bahamas, Denver jail birth, Alberta man discovers dinosaur bones

Hurricane Dorian hits Bahamas

Guest: Keith Cooper

CH: Hurricane Dorian is ripping apart everything in its path — and it's still going strong. The worst storm to ever hit the Caribbean Islands is now headed for the U.S. Coast. Dorian has already battered the Bahamas. Video footage shows homes under several feet of water, cars flipped, trees uprooted, and residents desperate to be rescued. Officials say 13-thousand homes have been lost — and an eight-year-old boy is confirmed dead. Keith Cooper spends most of his days in the ocean, as a tour operator. Right now, he's taking shelter in Freeport, the main city on Grand Bahama Island. We reached him earlier today, as the storm was still hammering the city.

CO: Keith, how intense is this storm where you are right now?

KEITH COOPER: Well, considering that we're under Category 5 for this hurricane, the winds are just extremely powerful. Every tree is bending right now — including the coconut trees and the pine trees that I'm looking out of the out of the window at. The canal that the house is near, the water is like the ocean right now. If you can visualize waves in the ocean of about four feet, we're getting that kind of push from the wind and the pressure that's over us right now. So it's really mind-boggling to see how far I am away from the actual ocean to see water that looks like it's in the ocean. So it's really, really remarkable how powerful Hurricane Dorian has become, and is sitting right on top of us. And so we're just kind of waiting for this thing to meander along it one mile an hour. And it has been really quite a nightmare just sitting here.

CO: And that's it's so slow moving, isn't it? I mean it's been sitting over the Bahamas, and sitting over where you are. Well, it looks like on a map, you are in the eye of the storm where you are right now. And it's not moving.

KC: Yes, yes, yes. Right now, we are in the eye of the storm. You can’t imagine the mist of water that's in the year from all of the wind that's blowing up the seawater that's near the canal and the rain mixture.

CO: I presume nobody is going outside at this point?

KC: No one, if you are outside right now, you have to be insane, or a very brave fool. Because this is not the kind of weather you ever want to walk outside in. And it will blow you down. And a lot of the stories that I have seen and the pictures that I received on the island, we've had people out in Sweden Key, in the very eastern end of the island that had to be rescued. There were 15 people that decided to stay in the storm, and they had no idea that the surge was going to come into their homes and sweep it away. So now the government of the Bahamas has sent out the Royal Bahamas Defense Force to pick up people who should have known to leave their homes and reach safer ground. But, unfortunately, some people decide that they don't want to give up their home.

CO: Now, where are you that it's safe? Because it sounds like you're pretty tight and secure in whatever housing you have right now.

KC: Yes, I'm actually from the west end of the island — which is very low-lying, and probably submerged right now. But the home that I'm in is in the Freeport Leucadia resort area. I’m at my cousin's house. And luckily for us, the house is extremely well-built. It's standing up quite well the storm. We haven't had any damage in our immediate vicinity. But I can only imagine what the streets look like if I were to walk out onto the highways and go onto the main thoroughfares. I'm almost certain that there's going to be all kinds of fallen debris. So it’s probably going to be a nightmare just driving through the streets of Grand Bahama — because we know that the devastation is just unprecedented.

CO: What about your own house?

KC: Well, my home, when I left it in West End; I lived right on the water's front. I closed every window; we have shutters on the windows. The only thing that I'm worried about is water creeping in under the doors. Even though they're there sealed up, but you know still water will protrude inside the house. I'm almost certain I'm going to have water in there. But I'm almost going to be able to say this that the water will probably be up to my doorstep — if not above it — when I get to my house later on next week. Because, unfortunately, we won't be able to leave to go anywhere between here and West End because all the roads will be flooded probably anywhere from three to four feet deep, and you cannot drive a regular vehicle through there. Even a four-wheel-drive truck isn't going to make it.

CO: You already had quite a loss of your home and property back in 2016 with hurricane Matthew, didn't you?

KC: In fact, I lost everything that I owned at the time — even my vehicles. And because we did not know just how devastating that storm is going to be, unfortunately, I left all my belongings in the house. And when we came back, all the windows had come off of the home — they were completely destroyed. And water had retreated into every single square inch of the house. This time around, I did take everything out in advance of the storm. So I'm hoping that where it is stored right now that that facility or that building will not have had any issues of water coming in there. So I'll just have to pray that it's all good but I go back.

CO: Have you ever experienced a storm like this one?

KC: Never in my life have I witnessed anything so devastating and horrific. This is the most unbelievable storm I think that has ever hit the islands of the Bahamas. And for that matter, any Caribbean island over the last 25 to 30 years. This is really a devastating situation down here. All I can say is that we're going to need a lot of help from a lot of people. Because there's going to be it would be nothing left for anybody to claim once we have the storm settle down and it's past us and it’s moving up the coast of the United States.

CO: And what do you say to those people there who are bracing themselves? What advice would you give them at this point?

KC: I would advise anybody that hears this broadcast to leave your house. This storm is devastating. It will tear you apart. And it will destroy you. And it could possibly kill you. So heed my warning, leave and seek shelter in a safe place.

CO: Keith, I'm glad that you're in a safe place right now. And I really appreciate you speaking with us.

KC: It's been my pleasure. [breaking down] And I hope and pray that we make it.

CO: You sound really strong. I'm sure you will.

KC: We're doing the very best we can. We're going to handle it. We’ve handled it before. So we'll be okay.

CO: You have electricity?

KC: No, we have no power. We're only working off a generator right now.

CO: Your family is all with you?

KC: Yeah, I've got my cousins with me. I have no wife or children, so I'm very lucky [laughing]. But my pests are at the Humane Society, and even the animals on the island are being affected. The Grand Bahama Humane Society is being flooded. So I don't know what the condition is like over there. So the poor animals set a lot of the Bohemians have taken, [crying] we don't know how they are doing.

CO: What, are your pets? What do you have at the Humane Society right now?

KC: I have two dogs and a cat that are over there right now. I have a white dog, and I have a black and white dog, and a very beautiful black cat named Boogie.

CO: Boogie?

KC: Yeah, Boogie. Like in boogie down. [laughs]

CO: Keith, I hope that [the pets] are okay.

KC: Me too.

CO: I'm glad you are.

KC: We're gonna make it through this. We really are.

CO: Bye-bye.

KC: Okay, take care.

CH: Keith Cooper is a resident in Freeport, Bahamas. We reached him there earlier today, as the storm was still battering the island. For more on this, including some incredible footage of the storm, go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Sombre]

Denver jail birth

Guest: Mari Newman

CH: In July of last year, Diana Sanchez gave birth to a baby boy. But she didn't deliver her second child at a hospital. According to a new lawsuit, Ms. Sanchez gave birth alone in a jail cell with "no medical supervision or treatment." The suit claims officials violated Ms. Sanchez's right to adequate medical care — and, quote, "cruelly chose convenience over compassion," unquote. Mari Newman is Diana Sanchez's lawyer. We reached Ms. Newman in Denver, Colorado.

CO: Ms. Newman, your client was more than eight months pregnant when she was incarcerated in this jail. Can you just remind us what Diana Sanchez was doing there? Why she was there?

MARI NEWMAN: Diana had been charged with identity theft for cashing a check that belonged to her sister. She was sentenced to two years of probation. But she failed to satisfy one of the conditions of that probation, and so she was sent into jail.

CO: So they knew though she was pregnant. And was there a plan made? Did she know what would be happening when she was ready to give birth?

MN: There was no doubt whatsoever that she was pregnant. She had actually been examined by the medical staff onsite at the jail just the day before. The nurse who talked with her that day said that if she started experiencing contractions she should seek medical help immediately — which is exactly what she did the next morning.

CO: There is, of course, surveillance video of what happened on that day, and from the jail. Can you just tell us what we can see of what happened to your client, Ms. Sanchez, as she gave birth?

MN: Sure, and first, the reason why that there's surveillance video of this entire event is because she was actually in a medical observation cell. But what the video shows is that Ms. Sanchez is, for hours and hours and hours, in labour having contractions. Her face is obviously grimacing. The pain is very clear from her face. About an hour before she actually gives birth, Ms. Sanchez finally receives just the tiniest bit of attention. But it's really not medical care at all. All the nurses do is slide a thin pad under the door so that she can put this pad on her bed. I mean obviously that's not adequate medical care for a person who's about to give birth. It's about as effective as giving a Band-Aid to a woman who's giving birth to try to keep the baby in.

CO: And it's not like she was just in labour without telling anybody. How often did she try to let people know that she was actually in labour, and she felt she was about ready to deliver?

MN: Beginning just after 5:00 a.m., Ms. Sanchez started telling guards and medical staff that she was in labour. And that continued throughout almost six hours. So it's not as though there wasn’t ample opportunity for somebody to simply call 9-1-1.

CO: What should have been the protocol? What should have happened with her before she gave birth?

MN: Immediately upon Ms. Sanchez informing the staff that she had been having contractions, she should have been taken to a hospital. There's no reason not to have done so. But instead, what happened is she ended up at some point realizing nobody was going to help her. And she ultimately ended up pulling down her pants and laying down on the hard bench and giving birth all by herself.

CO: You can see the baby coming. She final push, the baby is delivered. Then did someone come in at that point?

MN: Yes, only after the baby was actually born that a nurse finally come into the room. But he ultimately picks up the baby and pats it on the back a little bit. Doesn't provide any of the most basic health care that is provided to every baby — no drops in the eyes to make sure it doesn't get an infection, no suctioning of the mucus from the baby's nose and eyes and to make sure that it can breathe. I mean just none of the basic stuff. In fact, they didn't even have a clamp in their medical kit to make sure that they could clamp the umbilical cord.

CO: Now, the jail says that they did make arrangements for her to be transported to hospital. They had requested a van that was going to take her to some kind of a facility. Was that not sufficient?

MN: Obviously it was not sufficient for them to order a non-emergent van because she ended up giving birth in the jail. But it was obvious from the outset that that wasn't adequate. The non-emergent van wasn't scheduled to come until a couple of hours later, after they had finished the administrative business of booking in the new inmates for the day.

CO: Was she taken to hospital after that?

MN: Eventually Ms. Sanchez was taken to the hospital, where medical professionals told her she was lucky she hadn't bled to death.

CO: Denver’s Sheriff's Department says that they have found nothing wrong with what was done —that's been the response. That they are going to change protocols, but they've found that that everything was done appropriately. What do you say to that?

MN: I'm simply flabbergasted by the notion that Denver says that when a woman gives birth all by herself with no medical care whatsoever in a dirty jail cell, they've done nothing wrong. If that's what happens when they do not wrong, I shudder to think what it looks like when they do make a mistake. I mean it's simply unthinkable.

CO: But they have said — and we contacted the Denver Sheriff's Department — they said that they have now changed policies to make sure that pregnant inmates who are in that stage of labour are transported immediately to hospital. What do you say to that?

MN: It's inconceivable to me that Denver didn't already have a policy that a woman in labour needed to be transported to the hospital. It's such an obvious medical need. There is no reason why they wouldn't have always had such a policy. The United States Constitution requires that all inmates be provided with adequate medical care. And so the fact that they didn't already have a policy is really unthinkable to me.

CO: Now your client is suing Denver for this. What lasting effects has giving birth in that jail cell had on Diana Sanchez?

MN: Well, as you can imagine, this was an extraordinarily traumatic event. I mean it's really every person's worst nightmare — something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. And it's just not really the kind of trauma that goes away. Ms. Sanchez has continued to have flashbacks, and to have severe emotional distress from this. It's something that that plagues her. And you know, unfortunately, what should have been the happiest moment of her life ended up being something that was an absolute horror for her.

CO: How's her baby boy doing?

MN: Hopefully, he's doing just fine. It seems like he's doing well. And I'm very hopeful that will continue. But I want to be clear about one thing: this time, it happens that Denver and Denver Health didn't kill anybody. But because they happened to get lucky and nobody died hardly means that they didn't do anything wrong. Their failure to provide medical care for Ms. Sanchez and her baby is really unforgivable. It's an obvious constitutional violation. But it's also a surprising failure just to treat a human being with the kind of humanity that we would expect from anybody.

CO: Ms. Newman, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

MN: Thank you so much for having me.

CH: That was Denver lawyer Mari Newman. In a statement to As It Happens, Denver Health — which provides medical care to inmates — said it would not comment on the case. But said, quote, "Our patients are our number one priority and we make every effort to ensure they receive the proper care." Unquote. For more on this story, visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Piano]

Alberta man discovers dinosaur bones

Guest: Myles Curry

CH: While hiking back from a fishing spot along the North Saskatchewan River last month, Myles Curry picked up what he thought was petrified wood. Which he thought was kind of neat, since he's collected a bunch of it over the years. But his find turned out to be a lot neater than he'd assumed. Also a lot older — tens of millions of years older. We reached Myles Curry in Bow Valley Provincial Park, near Canmore, Alberta.

CO: Myles, I know you've got you out fishing again today. So are you looking for any prehistoric creatures?

MYLES CURRY: [laughs] No, just the ones that are in the river. I'm sure they're pretty old, but not prehistoric.

CO: So two weeks ago, you were coming back from your fishing. And what caught your eye in the first place? When did you first see that made you stop?

MC: You know, it was a white texture to the top of the fossil that that really caught my eye. And it had a bit of a curve to it. And that just really just stood out in my head, and it’s like eh, that's not right. That's not a typical rock that you see.

CO: And so what did you think it was?

MC: The first thought that came into my head is this some sort of clay pipe or something like that? You occasionally find bricks and stuff like that in the North Saskatchewan River. But something in my head just hit my sense of curiosity. So I dropped my pack and walked back over and crawled between these two rocks and picked it up and I said oh yeah, no, this is something old for sure. My initial thought was that it was a full branch of petrified wood. You know in the North Saskatchewan, you find petrified wood all over the place. But I thought I had finally found a good sized piece. So just threw it in my pack and took it home.

CO: And then how did you find out what it really was?

MC: You know it was a combination between my neighbour and the Royal Tyrrell Museum. My neighbour, I invited him over to take a look at it. He's always interested in my finds. And he said yes, it looks like a bone. You know you could see some marrow sites — some little hole in one side. And he said that the shape of the curve of it looks like a bone. So I took some pictures of it, sent it to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and within just a day or so, they got back to me and said yeah, that's a dinosaur bone for sure, and that's probably a duck-billed dinosaur you've got there.

CO: Wow! Just describe what it looks like?

MC: It really does look like a leg bone. It’s really round and wide. And it slowly narrows and tapers down to a much more pronounced curve at the end. But at the top, it's got a indent and all of that. As soon as my roommate said it was a bone, I was like oh yeah, you're right. It wasn't even in my frame of reference that it could be a bone when I picked it up.

CO: And how big is it?

MC: Just probably over a foot long. It's broken into three pieces. And the people from the museum told me that those are recent breaks — so probably staying totally in place in the bank just up until a couple of days before I found it.

CO: And so they think it's a duck-billed dinosaur. And any sense of how old it might have been?

MC: They were saying between 60 to 85 million years old so like that's…

CO: That’s pretty old, yeah. [MC laughs] Okay, so the people from the museum went back with you to the same spot, right?

MC: Yeah, they did. They met me up on Friday to take a look at the spot. We walked down there, and showed them where I found it. Because it was in this one spot where there was a very steep cliff bank. And you could tell that there had been some erosion and some soften off on the cliff. So we took a look at it, and you know as soon as we were up there we started finding more bones. So we found some more pieces of the dinosaur bone that I found because it just connects right together. But we also found some pieces of what they suspect to be an Albertosaurus — which is in that tyrannosaurs family. The thing that was amazing is these people from the museum, they pick it up, they toss it between each other, they talked for under a minute, and they're like yeah, that’s a tailbone of a tyrannosaurs — probably an Albertosaurus. [CO laughs] And I’m just sitting there like wow! That's amazing!

CO: That's really exciting that you were able to spend some time with the staff of the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and learned about this. What did they tell you about this duck-bill dinosaur whose bone you initially found?

MC: They were pretty common in this area. They're herbivores, so they would eat all the bushes and stuff like that. And that their bones are fairly common. You know, it's fairly rare to find them in where we did. But they're in that whole formation. From Edmonton to Drumheller, you can find them.

CO: But if you were a finding the number of bones in that very spot, did they have any theories as to why that location would end up being the place where the bones landed?

MC: What they told me they suspect is that that's where a prehistoric river ran into the prehistoric North Saskatchewan River. And bones and carcasses would sort of end up in the sediment there. And so as the North Saskatchewan does it's continual erosion of those banks, these are just sort of coming out of the side of the cliffs.

CO: You went out fishing in the North Saskatchewan and there you were in a place where these dinosaurs roamed, where a prehistoric river flowed in there, where all of this happened millions of years ago. How did you feel that moment when you realized where you were and they sort of could paint this picture for you?

MC: Lucky that we had the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and that they've got staff out there who are just so willing to spend the time with people like me, and follow up on these leads. That's in-and-of-itself amazing. I was really happy to have that. But just wonder and awe. We have these great spaces, and you can get lost in the natural beauty. And I do that all the time. That’s obviously when I'm out there, but to also have this new level put on top of that where there’s this prehistoric story. And I've just been reading as much as I can and trying to find out about it. It just adds a whole new level to it.

CO: And what happens with the bone that you found?

MC: All fossil bones in Alberta provincial heritage resource. So you sort of put in an application, they get to decide sort of what happens with it. So you know whatever happens I'm happy with it. I've told my story, And I think I've gotten people excited about it. And whatever they decide I'm happy with that.

CO: And you said before that people like your finds, as you say, you have a good eye to finding things, so are you on the lookout for more?

MC: Always. You know you can always find stuff around there. It's really surprising in the North Saskatchewan around Edmonton. Like petrified wood is always time, I’ve had a buddy who found a piece of amber once. Who knows, you know? You just got to learn more and know what to look for, I guess.

CO: Well, MyIes, I’ll let you get back to fishing. It sounds like you’re in a pretty good place right now.

MC: [slight chuckle] Yeah, you know we're lucky here in Alberta with what we've got. And we just gotta do more to protect these spaces and expand them as we can.

CO: Take care.

MC: Thank you so much.

CO: Bye.

MC: Bye.

CH: Myles Curry found a dinosaur bone near the North Saskatchewan River last month. We reached him in Bow Valley Provincial Park, near Canmore, Alberta.

[Music: Show tune]

Snorting toads

CH: Back in 1994, in California, a guy named Bob Shepard was arrested for possession of bufotenine. A substance he'd painstakingly milked out of the glands of Colorado River toads, then dried, and then smoked. The police were confused. I can only imagine the toads were too. But Bob Shepard spoke highly of the result. Super- highly. A New York Times article from the time says, quote, "Mr. Shepard...told investigators that the difference between LSD and bufotenine was the difference between milk and whiskey." Unquote. So: it's extremely potent. And 25 years later, researchers have discovered squeezing the stuff out of toads can help humans squeeze more out of life. Bufotenine is in the venom the Colorado River toad. They secrete it from glands behind its jaws, to deter predators. So researchers milked the toads, dried the gunk out, turned it into powder, and gave it to 42 participants to snort. And a month later, some participants reported that they were more satisfied with their lives, less anxious, and less depressed after just the one dose of dried-toad-gunk powder. A couple of notes, though: first, only 24 of the 42 subjects checked back in — so nearly half the subjects seem to have taken a powder after taking the powder. Second, the researchers stress this is just, quote, "a preliminary indication of the impact of inhaling vapour from dried toad secretion," unquote. So don't go squeezing amphibians yet. They're not into it. And just because it worked for a few people doesn't mean you'll find it toad-ly awesome.

[Music: Electronica]

Part two: California boat fire, glacier film

California boat fire

Guest: Joe Belanger

CH: For those on board the Conception, it was supposed to be three days of soaking up the California sunshine, and diving around the scenic Channel Islands. But in the early hours of this morning, the diving boat anchored off the coast of Santa Cruz Island caught fire. Four people are dead, and 30 people are presumed dead. Five crew members managed to escape. Joe Belanger knows the boat well. He has been diving for the company that owns it, Truth Aquatics, for more than 40 years. We reached Joe Belanger in Huntington Beach, California, earlier today.

JB: Joe, these pictures of this boat on fire are very disturbing to see. It must be very much so for you to see them?

JOE BELANGER: It's pretty heartbreaking since I frequent the whole dive operation of Truth Aquatics. But in particular, that boat, and it’s the most recent boat that I've been on — just a week and a half ago. So yeah, it's heartbreaking.

CO: Did you know anybody onboard?

JB: I know the crew and captain. I don't know the manifesto yet of who's with the passenger list is, so I can't say.

CO: But it seems that the crew — at least five members of the crew — were able to get off the boat before it was engulfed.

JB: Yeah, they were able to get off. Mainly because they sleep at a different area of the boat than the normal passenger base sleeps — which is above deck.

CO: It was 3:00 a.m. when the fire broke out. Thirty-four passengers are sleeping below. Can you describe where they would have been?

JB: If you board the boat onto the main deck where the diving happens, they actually will walk into the galley — into the main structure of the boat — to the front, the bow. And there is a staircase that goes down into the hull of the boat. They're sleeping in there; they have curtains on the beds, and air conditioning vans that go into each individual bunk area.

CO: And they have had several days of diving and pleasure on the boat. So they're tired, they're sleeping. What would it have been like down there when they realized the boat was on fire?

JB: You know, speculating on what I've seen is the combustion, or the explosion would have had to be spontaneous, and big — something big first to prevent the crew from being able to assist in a rescue. So every diver at the end of the day is really pooped. Three, four, or five dives in a day really drains your body, so you typically are in a deep sleep. So that's point number one. Point number two, that deck where you're sleeping — the lower deck — is on the same level as the engine room. So whatever happened, if it was indeed like an explosion from the oxygen tanks, they do have oxygen — pure oxygen. If it did happen like that, the smoke would engulf more than likely that lower deck, making it hard to find your way out safely with thick smoke, pitch black at 3:00 in the morning, and the spiral stairwell built really for one person to go up and down.

CO: As you imagine what it was like and how people were trapped down there, did you ever have times when you were on that boat or any other boat… because there was so little scope for getting out. Did you ever imagine something like this? Did you fear that you might be on a boat that caught fire?

JB: We'll say it this way: Truth has always… I've never had on that fleet any incident that that put me in jeopardy. But most divers have that thought that hey, I'm down below. Boy, if something happens, I need to get out of here really quickly. And in their mind, they're planning you know how to get out of there. So through my career, it has always gone through my mind as what's the fastest way to get out of here if something happens?

CO: But what you're describing is that there's not many ways to get out. So do you think that the outcome of this could possibly be a review about how these diving boats are prepared for this kind of a possibility?

JB: Well, I know that all boats are built to a standard the Coast Guard has to sign off on. But I would say that the scale of what happened on this boat is far beyond the ability to get out. They just didn't have the ability to get out even if there was multiple escape routes just because of the accelerated pace of the emergency. So do I think it's going to change the industry? I think there will be some influence. I think that Truth Aquatics will cease their operations until they figure out exactly what happened. I think divers are going to think twice, and question whether they want to jump on a boat. I think over time that will subside a little bit. But right now, there's probably going to be a review of what happened. Is there any design changes that could prevent or reduce the carnage like this? Certainly, all of that is fair game, and all of it should be considered by any dive operation who is feeling the pain of this and has relatively confined sleeping quarters.

CO: Just finally, the place where they were anchored it would seem off of Santa Cruz Island and spending the night there, they're still calling this at time of we're talking, they're still saying the 34 people are presumed dead. They're still looking to see if anyone survived who may have made it to land. They're only getting about 18 meters off the coast. Do you think it's possible anyone could be found yet alive?

JB: I would say that it's very slim that they're going to find anyone alive on the shore because they would have done that by now. That the swim to shore was short, so I just think the probability of finding anyone at this point is not too good.

CO: It's a terrible tragedy, and we'll be following this story. Joe, I really appreciate you speaking with us. Thank you.

JB: Great. Thank you very much, Carol. Appreciate it.

CH: Joe Belanger is a longtime diver with Truth Aquatics. We reached him in Huntington Beach, California. After we spoke with Mr. Belanger, the Coast Guard released a mayday call they received from someone on the boat.

SOUNDCLIP

COAT GUARD: on channel 16, what is your position, and number of persons on board over?

[Sound: A crackling radio, but you can hear a man saying that he can’t breathe.

CH: That was part of a mayday call the Coast Guard received from a passenger aboard The Conception this morning. Four people are dead and dozens presumed dead after the diving boat caught fire off the coast of Santa Cruz Island, California.

[Music: Sombre]

Bendy streetcars

CH: They look like two standard Toronto streetcars stuck together, with an accordion-like middle part that allows the whole, long thing to turn corners. To most passengers, they're the bendy ones. But officially, they're "articulated streetcars". And they've been a fixture in the city for decades. But after today, those old streetcars will truly be a thing of the past: the Toronto Transit Commission is retiring the last of its so-called "A cars". Curt Richards is a streetcar operator. He shared his affections for the big, bulky, bendy vehicles with "Metro Morning".

SOUNDCLIP

CURT RICHARDS: They're kind of intimidating in the beginning because they're very heavy, and the pedals are very stiff. so there are the hardest ones to operate. So yeah, I remember how I was a little bit intimidated by them. But they become so familiar and become a part of you because you're so involved physically to make them work. I remember early on in my career, I had knee surgery. And when I went back to work, it was great, it [Nil Koksal laughs] was like an elliptical machine pumping those pedals. and my knees were back in shape in no time. But they get into you. They have personalities. You know each one has little quirkiness. Sometimes the back door would take a little bit longer to close with some of them. The gong with a little bit different tones. And I love them or hate them, they just kinda became a part of you.

NIL KOKSAL: I can really hear the affection you have for them in you. It's like a long-term relationship.

CR: It is a relationship [deep laughter]

NL: There are days where you love each other and there are days where you do not. But I bet you have some great memories?

CR: Yes, back in the day when to stops weren’t automated, we had to announce them. And I'm a musician, so I used to sing them melodically. It used to just come out that way. [singing] Broadview, Younge Street, and people loved it. So there was a couple on car well, they weren’t a couple yet. They met each other, and they were talking about the singing. And they were having a good time, and the street car was pretty joyous. And they connected. And a while later, they came back and said they got married because of my singing the stops. And they introduced each other because of the A’s.

CH: That's streetcar operator Curt Richards speaking to "Metro Morning" guest host Nil Koksal about Toronto's articulated light rail vehicles, which were retired today.

[Music: show tune]

Glacier film

Guest: Dustin Schroeder

CH: Scientists knew the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica was thawing. But they had no idea how fast it was happening. Now, thanks to some old film reels, some equipment bought on Ebay, and one passionate radio glaciologist, researchers have a new understanding of the severity of the problem. Dustin Schroeder, and his colleagues at Stanford University, published their findings on the glacier today. We reached Mr. Schroeder in Stanford, California.

CO: Professor Schroeder, where did you find these film reels? I mean is this something that was in a shoe box under someone's bed for 40 years?

DUSTIN SCHRODER: No, these film reels were stored at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge — which is both a research institute and a museum. And they had they had stored the film in around a thousand canisters in their archive.

CO: But the data you have been able to mine from these films is extraordinary. Why did no one do that before?

DS: I mean people did extract amazing things from the film data. In fact, it's sort of the foundation of my field of radioglaciology. Early on, when this film was first recorded, people would go and physically look at the film reels through an eyepiece. And that's where many of the discoveries that were foundational to our field were made — sub-glacial lakes, what the shape of the continent itself is like. What really changed in this effort was the fact that we digitize all of it so now anyone can access it, and scroll through it as fast as clicking a mouse as opposed to having to go to Cambridge ,find the right film reel, go into the archives, take it out, load it onto a viewer, and then sort of hand wind it.

CO: Wow! of course, what's important about this is being able to see what effects climate change have had on the Antarctic, and on the Thwaites Glacier. What doe your comparison tell you about that that you couldn't have learned before?

DS: I mean I think one of the key things, as you say, is trying to understand how the ice sheets as a whole, and Thwaites, in particular, are going to respond and are responding to forces from climate. One of the challenges is you're trying to make those projections over say the next hundred years in the case of the International Panel on Climate Change. And prior to our study, you were looking at data that spanned sort of one or two decades. And what this allows us to do is see this change of that ice shelf over, in this case, about 40 years. And it will allow modellers to look at and understand and reproduce that change, and that will give us more confidence in our capacity to make projections into the future. And in particular, this case where we see that there is more thinning in specific parts of the ice shelf that gives you a much finer scale process to observe understand model and reproduce than the sort of average measurement you got from satellite altimetry over the whole area.

CO: And is it alarming to see?

DS: I think for me, the fact that we were lucky enough to get this snapshot of sort of one of the most dynamically changing parts of one of the most important potentially unstable glaciers gives me a lot of comfort and hope that we will get those numbers better, and will be able to make plans and take actions as a society.

CO: You saying that you're lucky enough to get this but this was luck that led you to this, is it? I mean this was an extraordinary act of research. As a glaciologist, it must have been quite something to be able to get hold of these reels, and to actually go into that dusty archive and start to examine them.

DS: Yes. I mean I guess when I say we're lucky, I mean that we were lucky for how good the scientists and engineers who planned that original survey were. There really is not much coverage in this area of Thwaits — which we now know is so important. The effort to scan it was yes, a tremendous effort. I went to Cambridge with two art historians, and we were there for a couple of weeks staying in the sort of Harry Potter dorms, and reeling the film manually by hand using these sort of hand-wound stitching film equipment that I was buying off of eBay — competing with like hipster filmmakers to get this equipment. And so yeah, that was a massive labour. But it was also you know I think a real privilege to be tactilely touching and archiving and preserving sort of the foundational measurements of my field. I mean that's inspiring, and I think many scientists would feel as lucky as I did to have that opportunity to really help preserve the history and foundation of the thing they've dedicated their life to.

CO: and you can see that the signature — the fingerprints, more-or-less — of the people who had collected this at this date in the first place — sometimes, with bits of scotch tape or notes written on it. What was it like to see the work of those colleagues who couldn't have imagined how important this data would be to us at this time of our Earth?

DS: Yeah, you know it was it was remarkable in lots of ways. I think sometimes yeah, seeing a piece of tape that was marking a particularly important image that had been in the literature and were sort of foundational to our understanding of the ice sheets was thrilling. In other cases, there were some pieces where the film had been cut — presumably to make a nicer looking print and then was stapled back together — which was certainly not the you know top archival practice. We also took scans of and are hosting the notebooks and flight notebooks of the people who collected the data. And that was amazing. So I did my early PhD work doing surveys myself with a modern version of this data in Antarctica, and I was the operator on the airplane taking notes. And I think for me to see myself decades later, utterly dependent on those notes, both made me feel connected to those people and made me wish I had done a better job taking notes for whoever looks at my data. [slight chuckle]

CO: Professor Schroeder, it's great to talk to you.

DS: Thank you so much.

CO: Bye-bye.

DS: Bye.

00:42:39 - SPEAKER: M9

CH: Dustin Schroeder is a radio glaciologist, and an assistant professor of geophysics, at Stanford University. We reached him in Stanford, California. And we've got more on this story on our webpage at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Instrumental]

Valerie Harper obit

CH: For a generation of TV viewers, Valerie Harper was a role model. First, she starred as Rhoda Morgenstern in The Mary Tyler Moore Show — the brash neighbour and sidekick to the more reserved Mary Richards. The show broke new ground in television, revolving around female characters who were single working women. Later, Ms. Harper starred in her own spin-off series, Rhoda, which ran from 1974 to 1978:

SOUNDCLIP

VALERIE HARPER: My name is Rhoda Morgenstern. I was born in the Bronx, New York in December 1941. I’ve always felt responsible for World War Two. There first thing I remember liking that liked me back was food. I had a bad puberty. It lasted 17 years.

CH: That was Valerie Harper introducing her TV persona Rhoda, in the show's opening. Off-screen, Ms. Harper was an ardent feminist. She was frank about her personal life — and how feminism had created more choices for women like her. Here she is on CBC-TV in 1978, talking about her divorce from Richard Schaal, who she met working at Second City in Chicago:

SOUNDCLIP

VH: I've been in a state of massive change the last I guess six months, and it included a 13-year marriage that I can't even say that it's ended because Richard and I are very close. And when you say ended, or we split, or it's over, those are all such kind of almost unpleasant things. What we did, Richard and I was retain our friendship and terminate the marriage part of the relationship. But I see him all the time, we communicate, we're better friends and get along better since we are not married anymore.

REPORTER: But if everything is so nice between you in a way why even dissolve?

VH: Well, we looked at that exactly that, saying gosh, it's so nice. Why get divorced? And so we did, we kind of hung in and saw where we were going. But what we found was we did not really have a total marriage. And you may just love your best friend, but you don’t want to live with them, you know? But the option is now to have your life work however you want to arrange it, and that marriage is terrific. I think it's great and, I think it really works. I really do.

REPORTER: And it may again you're almost saying.

VH: Absolutely, oh sure, for me or for anyone. Or maybe I will never get married. But there's lots of options now open to men and you know really women have come such a ways in the last 20 years.

REPORTER: Yeah, the more choices you have, the harder it is to sort of hew to any one of them.

VH: Sure, but the more aliveness you can have, and the more you can express yourself because id doesn’t have to be this way or has to be that way.

CH: Valerie Harper appearing on CBC-TV in 1978. Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died of cancer. She was eighty years old. She was 80 years old.

[Music: Lullaby]

Ideas promo

CH: You can be driven up one, have your back to one, or see the writing on one. And there's a reason all those wall metaphors have negative connotations. Tonight, CBC Radio's "Ideas" will air the "The Peace Walls of Belfast". It's the first in a five-part series on "Ideas" exploring walls and borders in our time — how they usually fail, and only succeed in fostering even greater conflict. Noel Large was a hitman for the Ulster Volunteer Force during the Troubles in the 1980's. He was sentenced to four life terms for his part in the killings of four people. He was released as part of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and now works for community reconciliation. Here he is talking with "Ideas" host Nahlah Ayed.

SOUNDCLIP

NAHLAH AYED: What's the wisdom that you can pass on to the younger generations that nobody else who hasn't been through what you've been through can possibly pass on?

NOEL LARGE: There's no cause, no cause in the world, that is worth the shedding of innocent blood. No cause. And united Ireland it’ll will never happen in my day. Not because I don't want it to happen but because see the Republican loyalists who were involved in everything that went on, yeah. They have put that back because when you look at the flag of the Irish Republic, it's green, wite, and orange. Green for nationalism, orange for unionism, white for peace. That peace is not there. And it's not there because no matter what term you come up, a new Ireland, a green Ireland, a united Ireland, it needs people to be united. And what we have done is divided the people, and isolated the people even more. So young people, there's nothing wrong with having ideologies. There's nothing wrong with being a Republican. There’s nothing wrong with being a Loyalist. But what is wrong is when you try to impose your ideology on other people by the use of force.

CH: That's coming up on "Ideas", at a new time — right after As It Happens, with the program's new host Nahlah Ayed. Or you can listen right now on the CBC Listen app — or on the Ideas website at: www.cbc.ca/ideas.

[Music: Ambinet]

Part three: Lee Maracle

Lee Maracle

Guest: Lee Maracle

CH: "This is a magnificent book." That's high praise for a novel — even if it's coming from the woman who wrote it. "Magnificent" is how Lee Maracle describes her book, Celia's Song — one of a great number of books written by the Sto:lo novelist, poet and scholar. Her first — Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel — came out in 1975. And she's been writing and telling stories ever since. Sundogs, Ravensong, I am Woman, and My Conversations with Canadians to name a few. Her work is uncompromising, and often unrewarded. Celia's Song, for example, appeared on plenty of best-of and top-book lists. But it never won Ms. Maracle any major award nomination — until now. Lee Maracle is currently a finalist for the prestigious Neustadt Prize. And she sat down with Carol in our Toronto studio to talk about that, the upcoming federal election — and a whole lot more.

CO: Lee Maracle, first of all, big welcome to As It Happens, what a pleasure to have you in the studio.

LEE MARACLE: Oh, thank very much for inviting me.

CO: Now we are going to talk about what you are shortlisted for — a finalist for — which is this prize, a Neustadt Prize. The American Nobel as they call it. And congratulations on that first of all.

LM: Oh, thank you very much.

CO: Celia's Song has been on every list in Canada. It's been lauded, celebrated, and yet, where is the recognition for this novel here in this country?

LM: I think that Canada has a difficult time with Indigenous women writers generally. And I think that Marilyn Dumont said it best: If you're a woman, you’ll have a hard time. I'm not the only one that's gone unrecognized. Some of our really fine poets like Marilyn Dumont — and there's quite a number of Indigenous women writers that have not been recognized, Katherena Vermette…

CO: Katherena Vermette, who was the one who nominated you for this Neustadt Prize.

LM: Yes, shes got American awards before. She’s got Canadian awards for The Break.

CO: Why is that? Why do you think that because women writers are very well regarded in Canada, why do you think that Indigenous women writers aren’t?

LM: I don't know the answer that. Some white person that's figured it out has to tell us that.

CO: So it’s not just sexism, it's racism?

LM: Yeah.

CO: This book — Celia’s Song — is a story that's been incubating in you for a long time, isn't it? I mean Celia, this character was in Ravensong.

LM: Yes, she was. [slight chuckle] She was seven in Ravensong.

CO: Yeah.

LM: And it wasn't really incubating. Quite a number of Indigenous people asked me why I disappeared her first novel? And I said well, I wanted to create a strong character that was a child that disappeared, so people knew how it felt for us to have our children disappear. And I achieved that with Ravensong, but people kept telling me I should tell the story of Celia. And she's a seer, in fact. And she grows up without elders, and so she thinks she's crazy, and half the village does too. And it turns out that she's a seer, and her nephew is as well. And she discovers that during the course of the novel, so there's a number of threads to Celia's Song that originate in Ravensong. They get resolved through the healing period, and that happened in my life, in fact. I grew up in the 50s, and the 50s and the and the 80s up to 89 were very different periods in our life. I wanted to capture both those periods through these two women. And I think I also wanted to create a village.

CO: And this is a this is the Coast Salish village that you have created. And we meet Celia as she's in her 40s. she's known tremendous tragedy and heartbreak before we even meet her. And well, and then there's of course the voice of Mink — the shapeshifter who’s tell the story.

LM: Yes, I like our little trickster.

CO: The little trickster. And so we think of though the Raven has been the trickster traditionally. Why mink.

LM: No, not traditionally for us. Traditionally for white people. Raven’s name means “the transformer”. A trickster does not create heaven and earth and the sun and that sort of thing. Raven's jobs big job. If anything, he's a super-sociologist that's I think of Raven. But the Trickster is a child figure. I don't know why we picked a mink [CO laughs] because Minks are awful beasts.

CO: [CO and LM laugh] they are nasty little creatures.

LM: Nasty little creatures they find out.

CO: Absolutely. But at the same time, Mink is bearing witness. This is this is all about witnessing what happens when, as you point out, children are taken away from communities repeatedly, generation after generation, what that does.

LM: And it continues.

CO: And it continues. And there's one… I don't know how you manage to bring humour into something as dark as these stories, but there is just one that I just want to refer to — which is this missionary who's trying to convince a man to give his daughters Christian names so they can sit in the lap of Jesus.

LM: [laughing] Yeah, how big is this guy?

CO: Honestly. But humour is very important. Your laugh, of course, which makes everyone laugh along with you. But humour is a big part of your work, isn't it?

LM: Yeah, it is.

CO: Despite the darkness of these stories.

LM: Yeah, I want to get through it, and get past it. And humour is like a push. When you want to sit down, humour stands you up and pushes you forward so that you can get through it. And we can't get through it by dodging the dark. That's like having no night. You have to have a night. So getting through the dark, you need that motivating force — which is a little bit of a push every now and then. And that's what humour serves in all of our stories.

CO: You are a storyteller. Because it's a big deal to take on that role, isn't it? I mean people are always saying I got a book on me. But to actually do, to actually become a storyteller, to actually take on that role, how much trepidation did you approach that?

LM: I think my grandmother said that I was very lucky because I didn't go to residential school. I had the comfort and the boost of family. And my grandfather was instrumental in getting me to keep the imagination alive. And it started with me lying to him. [CO laughs] And I do recall him staring at me going through all these emotional shifts. Then all of a sudden, he laughs and says that's a pretty good story. Now I'm going to tell you one, and you tell it back different but the same. So he tells me a story, I tell it back what I think is different but the same, until he finally says to me now you're going to go to school and learn to write. And those white people, they really like that stuff. You can make a lot of money writing books like that. But don't you ever lie to me again. [CO and LM laugh]

CO: But you say you say in this book, and you say it elsewhere, that all of this is true even if it didn’t happen. What do you mean by that?

LM: The original story's true. Because of the lessons that are contained in it. That's where the truth lies. And if you tell it back different but the same, and apply it to today, you can create fiction from it, but it's still true. And it happened even if it didn't. You may not have witnessed this, but somewhere in this country this actually happened. And that's true of Celia's Song.

CO: But at the same time, we have experience where people decide that they are going to imagine the experiences of others, and write those experiences, and write those stories. And you have had great issue with that. It has to be your story. It has to come from you, right?

LM: Yeah, it has to come from your experience. You have to know something about that. Just making crap up, you sound stupid after a while.

CO: I want to get back to Celia’s Song, and I'd like it very much if you would read a passage that well, we’ve chosen from it if that’s all right with you. And it's bookmarked. I can pass that on to you.

LM: Okay All right.

CO: And maybe set it up before you.

LM: Oh yes. Okay. So I know a lot of people talk about how you know Europeans did a lot of things to us which you know destroyed our communities, and that's true. But I was having a chat with a pair of young girls, and one of them said you know we didn't need these people to come along and wreck our lives. We did it once before. And so we started talking about our stories of implosion that occurred before, and the stories that came out of them to keep from falling into the pit again. But residential schools separated us from those stories. And, of course, the songs and the culture that would have prevented us from falling in the pit.

CO: All of which was forbidden to the students — even when they were home.

LM: Exactly, yeah. So that made it impossible. But now that we've been released from that since I think 62 or so, and we started telling the stories again. And so I decided that I wanted to write from those stories. And I wanted to do that with the double-headed serpent — what we call the split mind. So that's the beginning is the actual story of the double-headed serpent. The serpent has two heads. When they go to war, no good can come of it. That's what the old folks say. Anyway, they were talking about the vote. The government gave them the vote and took away other things. Nothing had been solved by the vote. Before the vote, families talked to each other through their men — From men to women, from women to women, between children who overheard the women, back to the men, then back to the chief. By the time a decision was made, it was clear what needed to be done because much talk had already occurred. Many sides had been seen. Much had changed, and much value had been added. The decision was obvious. Everyone knew what part they were going to play when the plan was finally unfurled. If every family sent someone to make the decision happen, it flew. If there was a missing family, the chief turned over the dirt he stood on, shrugged, and went home. That was it. Mama had hit the nail on the head. The chatter died with the vote. Celia thinks about the healing circle she belongs to. They talk to each other, but it was limited to disclosing certain trauma or rage. That kind of talk feels narrow and tiring. She knows they need it, but now she wants it peppered between the other kinds of conversations they never seem to have any more. I smile. Celia is on her way. She doesn't know she shifted direction, but there it is. She's on her way home to the old ways. The vote was silent — ominous in its lack of community and collaboration. It stood between them and the ordinary conversations they needed to have to make decisions about their lives. The vote was powerful in its ability to silence the village and isolate each from the other. It was like the white men; all-powerful and silencing, except it was invisible.

CO: That is Lee Maracle, reading from her extraordinary novel Celia's Song. Snd she is with me here in the As It Happens studio, and we're talking about that book. And this idea of talking about the vote because we are now headed into another…

LM: Election.

CO: In the last election, that brought us the Trudeau government, you encouraged Indigenous people to vote — to get out to vote.

LM: I did. And I did because of the body bags that Harper sent us instead of medicine during that flu when so many young people in the north died.

CO: Just to give context, that is exactly what happened. Instead that they sent them gloves, masks, and body bags — and not the medicine.

LM: And so we decided that was enough. And there was these gals that started the Rock the Vote movement because they wanted Harper out as well. And so I hooked up with them actually. I just joined that group, and it became a powerful movement via the Internet. Because the death was too much — outright killing us was too much. They don't send us body bags now.

CO: How important was it to you that Jody Wilson-Raybould became the justice minister?

LM: I thought it was a coup for her. I've known Jody's father all my life. Both of us share an uncle. And so we’re connected. Jody is the same age as one one of my daughters, and her and her sister wanted to be prime minister one day.

CO: That’s what her father has said to Trudeau, in fact. That yeah, maybe one day that maybe my daughter wants to be prime minister, and she'll be there.

LM: Yes. Yes. And I think she was heading in that direction. But they came to a set over Lavalin, and she felt she had to stand by her principles.

CO: What we've gone through in these past four years we have seen more developments on many fronts. We've seen the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Commission report, we have seen more developments and within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we have seen an awareness among Canadians, I believe, that didn't exist before. Have you seen progress?

LM: Progress lies in this. It's in one of the calls for action, which is financial equality. That's where progress will be seen. I know that in the 70s and 80s, they trained an awful lot of peacekeepers in our communities and then didn't hire them because there's don't budget for it. Now Canadians have a budget for peacekeeping, or cops, or policing, or whatever you want to call it. We don't. We have programs, and they change year to year. So there's no possibility of any individual as a family person gaining an income and gaining a long-term plan for the family, for college, for retirement, for whatever the case is so that they can survive as a family as Canadians do. You know people can plan, they can do financial planning. We cannot because we have programs instead of budgets. We also don't have our trust funds. They take took our money, put it in this trust fund, and then we can't access it. And, of course, we can't develop a budget from it. They won't give us something permanent on which we can build. That's a choice. That's a choice they're making. You see, if they chose to say okay, we're going to hand the money over to you and you're going to build on it or not, then that would be different. It would be a whole different can of worms.

CO: Why do you think they don't do it? Why do you think they — the government — does not do that?

LM: I don't know. I told you, I'm not racist in charge. I’m really not. I wouldn't do that to another human being. I haven't got a clue what someone would do that to us. Canadians have to figure that out.

CO: And you have said the Canadians have to come to terms, they have to accept the responsibility for what…

LM: They do — for what their government does.

CO: And say not the Canadian state, but the Canadian people have to take this responsibility. How would they do that? Because as people say ok, well, that was pretty bad what happened. Let's move on. That's not what you're talking about.

LM: No.

CO: What do Canadian people have to do to take responsibility for what happened to First Nations Indigenous people in this country?

LM: I think if a Canadian sat down and thought about that genuinely, they'd figure it out.

CO: Well, they haven't at this point, have they?

LM: No. But they do have to. Why is it that we are five to seven per cent of the population, and get point-nine-eight per cent of the gross national product? Why is the inequity that sharp? Why is it that we're killed four times more? A Canadian could say well, I'm going to try and figure this out. Like that Canadian who discovered the experimentation with starvation of Indigenous children during residential school, he decided to look at something.

CO: That was supposed to come out of the truth and reconciliation process. It didn't, did it?

LM: We haven't reconciled with anyone that I know of. When those calls to action are met then we can reconcile. But until those calls to action are answered, there's nothing to reconcile over because nothing's changed.

CO: So there hasn't been any progress?

LM: I didn't say that. I just said that until they're all satisfied — 94 calls to action. Things are happening, but it takes all 94 calls for us to reconcile. All of them have to be met, and many of them have to be met by government.

CO: I am speaking with Lee Maracle, she’s in the As It Happens studio with me. She's an author. She is an artist. She's a poet. She's a mentor of many. And just there's a quote from Jeremy Dutcher during the Polaris Music Prize last year. He said that Canada, you you're in the midst of an Indigenous renaissance. Would you agree with that?

LM: I think the vice is off, and we're showing what we were always capable of. A renaissance was always going on. In 1948, for instance, the poles started being sold all over the world. And a single woman who lived at Stanley Park asked all the Indigenous artists to hold back on selling their poles until we got a fair price. That was the first renaissance that was in my lifetime. Again, our stories came back in the 60s. And we started telling them again. And we started talking about them again. This had no effect on Canadians, so Canadians did not see the renaissance. But that is the renaissance that started everything else that exists right now. And then the human rights legislation in 1968 led to a number of changes — including us going to school. That's another renaissance. There's been many different renaissance movements among us. And I think that this is the one they paid attention to because this is the one with a lot of young boys at the head of it. [CO and LM laugh]

CO: Do you feel optimistic? Do you feel positive? Do you feel there's something I guess good developing because there's been as we talked about the beginning so much darkness? Do you do see light?

LM: I’m never not optimistic. I’m a very optimistic person. Some people say groundlessly so. Transformation is a multi-stage process. The transformation began in 1492, when the Europeans first came. They were illiterate, unwashed, unclean, and sick, and violent — very, very violent. And over the centuries, they have become less violent, much cleaner, and more human, and democracy's been brought to them. The first democracy in the world was in North America, and it was a thousand years ago. And it was the first democracy where women actually had the same power as men. And it took till 1962 to bring that home to Europeans. So Europeans have been undergoing transformation since they first arrived. They behave as though they brought all this civilization. But, in fact, they brought no civilization. They came here uncivilized and ill-disciplined — and acquired through cultural collision and cultural interaction a human way to be. And we are coming closer and closer to one another in terms of how we are. But that doesn't mean we're necessarily going to like each other — because we're not the same.

CO: How did you get to be so wise, Lee Maracle? I’ve watched you on stage. I've seen rooms full of people riveted, listening, hanging on every word, trying to learn from that. You just you are worldly wise. You have a depth, a knowledge.

LM: Yeah, I think my elders did. This is the first time I say this to Europeans. But Grandpa Thomas was 108 when he died. And I was in the room, and he was holding my hand. And he said stay with me till I'm gone. I said okay; I was four. So he dies, and then the people believe that everything he knows I now know. Then they took me around to all the elders that they do all over Salish territory, and everyone told me stories and taught me things. And it took about till I was about nine or ten for that education to be completed. And then I had conversations with my grandfather right until he died. And with my taha until she passed on. And with a tremendously powerful intellectual among us, until he died. And out of that came my propensity toward wisdom. I just had this happen to me the other day this fellow says what about vengeance and this sort of thing? You know why aren't you angry? And I said well, that's not my culture. It's not who I am. I'm the great, great granddaughter of the princess of peace. And the peace is more important than anything — the peace that's inside. If you're quarrelling with yourself then you haven't made the right decision. And I learned that as a small child. So whatever wisdom I have comes from that. The piece inside is more important than being alive.

CO: Lee Maracle, thank you for your wisdom, for your books, and for being here today.

LM: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's good. Thank you very much.

CH: That's Sto:lo writer, poet and scholar Lee Maracle, speaking with Carol in the As It Happens studio. In that interview, you heard Carol refer to Ms. Maracle's use of humour to tackle dark subject matter. "A push," the writer calls it. So here's Lee Maracle one more time — giving you a push. This is the Neustadt Prize nominee, reading from her novel, Celia's Song. In this passage, a village elder grapples with a visiting priest's desire to give his children Christian names, so they might sit in the lap of Jesus. And an unfortunate interpreter struggles to make sense of it all.

SOUNDCLIP

LM: What kind of a man wants to have women sitting on his lap forever? And what kind of men and women would want to stay on anyone's lap for all eternity? How big is this Jesus man? How can he hold so many? Grampa repeated the words to the translator to be sure he got them right. He answered that they would sit on Jesus lap in heaven, next to God. The old man looked around. Who is this God man? He couldn't picture anyone wanting such a lazy eternity. The old man was beginning to suspect that the interpreter was not getting it right. That he could not do his job. So he carefully explained to him what he meant, and asked the man to have another go at it. He went into some fervent tirade about fire and damnation, which was completely off topic in grandpa's mind. The translator was now read in the face. He had no way to bridge the gap between the vastly disconnected meanings each man held around the same words. Grandpa wasn't satisfied, and the translator told him this. Frustrated, his eyes flashed fire, and his teeth clenched tighter than usual. They mean your granddaughters will be baptized, he said. Without baptism, they cannot have medicine against our diseases. He then looked oddly at Grandpa. Grandpa thought Father Mackilty looked like a foolish boy who'd stabbed himself while playing with his father's fishhook, and lacked the courage to thread it through and remove it quietly without saying anything to anyone — and especially lacked the courage to tell his father. Grandpa couldn't figure out what such look was doing on a grown man’s face. But he recognised the word medicine, and understood the threat.

CH: Lee Maracle, reading from Celia's Song, which is published by Cormorant Books. And you can hear her conversation with Carol again on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

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September 02, 2019 episode transcript

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