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The Current Transcript for April 13, 2020

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: There's a new NBA champion and it's a team from Toronto, Canada. We the North are now We the Champions. The Raptors, the 2019 NBA Champs.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: I know, I know. That sound cuts deep these days and it seems so long ago now, but it was this time last year Canadians were coming together to watch the start of the Toronto Raptors historic run to the championships. And others were watching the start of the baseball season or they were watching hockey or soccer or curling or or or. Now lots of us are aimlessly wandering around our homes with not a single sport to take our minds off the pandemic. Coming up this morning, how could COVID-19 change sports forever? And what are we all to do in the meantime? Plus, on this Monday, we will hear from some old friends.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: She was going to be gone a half an hour, 45 minutes at the most. Dave said, give me Jennifer. And that's how Dave came to be standing on his front porch the other day, holding a baby girl in his arms and ringing his own doorbell.

PC: Later on, a classic Vinyl Cafe tale by Stuart McLean. But we'll begin in Montreal with the tragic events at a seniors care home. Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Matt Galloway, and this is an extended edition of The Current.

Long-term care home residents deserted amidst COVID-19 pandemic

Guests: Barbara Schneider, Loredana Mule, Debra Arbec

SOUNDCLIP

[Speech from Quebec Premier Francois Legault]

PC: A gross negligence. That's how Quebec Premier Francois Largo described the tragedy unfolding at a seniors residence in Montreal. The Residence Herron facility had 31 residents die in under a month. Only five confirmed from COVID-19 he said. 93-year-old Mary Schneider was one of the residents who died. Her daughter, Barbara, is with me now. Barbara, hello.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Hi.

PC: I am so very, very sorry for the loss of your mum. Mary and I thank you very much for coming on the radio to talk to us about her. So tell me what she was like.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Oh, my mum was a very vibrant woman, very generous, loving, caring woman. And nobody should have to have what went down happen to anybody.

PC: Your mum hadn't been at this, residents, this seniors residents for very long before she had passed. Why did she originally go there?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Well, my mum needed more care than she had at where she was staying. So we put her into Herron because we trusted that they would take care of her. It was a private residence and they said that she would get more care. So she went in about only about three weeks before the lockdown and we were able to speak to her pretty frequently. She had a phone in her room and my mum and I were very close. We spoke very, very, very often.

PC: And when your mum went into the Herron residents, what was her health like? As you say, she moved in just a few weeks before the lockdown. How was her health?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Well, her health, she needed help doing things. I mean, she was able to eat on her own, but she was walking with a walker, but she needs help to take a shower. She pretty much was able to get dressed. She might have needed help to choose her clothes and put on maybe her pants, but she was able to manage. She was able to eat in the dining room. She was pretty not bad. She needed some help.

PC: And was her living conditions, was she in a room by herself? Did she share a room? Tell me what it looked like inside from her perspective?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: The reason we picked Herron, because it was quite nice. As I said, we paid for this. This wasn't a welfare or public. The room was quite large. She had her own room. We moved in some of her things. She had a huge window, but yes, it was a one room place, not an apartment, because there were staff that were supposed to see to her on a daily basis for morning lunch and dinner and evening.

PC: And when did you notice or hear from your mother that things were starting to change at the residence?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Not so much from my mother, because what was happening is we spoke often. She seemed OK. But once the lockdown happened, things started to change.

PC: And how so?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: It was getting more and more difficult to speak to my mother. There were times where I couldn't get through their room and I would try repeatedly and times where it said the local wasn't good. I tried to reach the reception. There was no receptionist. I wasn't able to reach anybody. Sometimes a day or two would go by and I wasn't unable to speak to her. And we're talking I spoke to my mother sometimes five to six times a day.

PC: And so I imagined having no contact with your mother, not being able to get a hold of anyone else at the facility, you're worrying by that point?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Oh, my God. Completely. I mean you know, but I had no reason to think anything was bad. I mean, we're talking about we're in a pandemic and things are going on, even though I couldn't speak to her and I was worried, I still didn't think anything was bad. Right? I figured they're, you know, that she's looked after and everyone is overwhelmed with what's going on. We're overwhelmed.

PC: And so did you ever get through to someone at reception or one of the staff and get a chance to ask about how your mum was doing?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Once or twice I was able to get through and when I ever did, and I said, I want to find out what's happening with my mother? She's fine. That's all I ever got. She's fine.

PC: And then it was.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Then. Sorry.

PC: No, you go ahead.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: So I only ever got, she's fine. Things started to change by the end of March.

PC: How so?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Near the end of March, we're starting to get some emails from Herron saying that they're starting to get cases of the virus. And now I started to really worry. Did my mother get it? What's happening? How many cases? What's going on? And again, I keep trying and trying to reach what's going on. Very, very difficult to reach anybody, let alone my mother.

PC: And as I understand it, Barbara, last Thursday, a nurse who works with the Provincial Health Authority called you.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: She did. Now we're talking, she just started, she was on the job two days now. This already was she started on Wednesday, OK? On the 8th. And she told me that my mother was very ill. Very ill? OK. They had told me that they were going to test my mother for the virus, which they did, and told me that she was positive. On Thursday, I get a call from Vanessa saying my mother is really ill, and I said I haven't seen her, I hardly spoke to her. Is there any way we could see her? She was wonderful, this nurse. And she after her shift, she went back to my mother's room and she did a FaceTime video call so we could see her. I was shocked. My mother must have weighed maybe 80 pounds. She was frail. She was gaunt. She couldn't hear me, see me, her breathing, she seemed to breathe OK, but she was obviously now I mean she hadn't eaten or drank or anything. I mean, she was just so sick. I mean we kept saying, we love you. We love you. Hold on, hold on. The next day, Vanessa called us. My mother passed away that Friday night, the 9th, my mother passed away. I mean, I cannot believe the difference a woman who walked in, who, you know, was able to walk in and was able to feed herself and talk to you like it and three weeks later? How did that happen?

PC: I'm so sorry, Barbara.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Something is not right.

PC: And so when you heard the news that 30 other people at that seniors residence, that same one, had also passed away, a handful from coronaviruses, what the officials are saying. What did that make you think?

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Well, first of all. Exactly. Then we started to hear the news that more people passed away. And then once they started investigating, then 31 people passed away within a month. We started to put the pieces together and realizing and then we heard from some nurses who walked in in what they saw. I mean, I was, as I said, we paid for my mother to go into a place that we trusted, trusted and put our souls and our heart that they would take care of our loved ones. And that's not what happened here. This is just horrible, unacceptable and someone has to be accountable. This is not right that this can happen in our day and time. That my mother should have to suffer the way she did. Anybody. It's not right. It's not right.

PC: Barbara, I know, It's a complex time, and amid all that, you are grieving you and your family for loss of your mother. And again, I just want to thank you so much for making the time for us through all of this. I appreciate it.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER: Thank you.

PC: Barbara Schneider is the daughter of Mary Schneider. And Mary Schneider passed away at the Herron Seniors Home in Montreal. Well, many of the long term care workers at that facility were no longer working there. The province stepped in and brought in relief nurses for help. Loredana Mule was one of those volunteer nurses. Loredana, hello.

LOREDANA MULE: Hi, Piya. Good morning.

PC: Good morning. How did you come to work at the HARRAN residents to to be one of the volunteer nurses there?

LOREDANA MULE: Well, you know, I I have a full time position and I have two daughters. They're grown. My mother is in a nursing home here in Lassalle. And so I said, you know, I'm cooped up in now. You know, during this pandemic crisis, I said, let me pay it forward. You know, I'm a single mum, cancer survivor. I said, let me go out and and help during this crisis. So I submitted my name, you know, and I was supposed to go and help with COVID testing and at the Beaconsfield Clinic. Now, they were full staffed and so I said, fine. I you know, the following weekend, again, they said that they didn't have enough supplies so that I wouldn't be working at the clinic. But on the Sunday at 4:00 o'clock, I received a call from this U.S. West Island saying, Laura, can you go to the Herron? And I said, you know, what are my tasks? And they couldn't, they didn't give me any information. So I said, not a problem. Got there at 5:30. I was greeted by I believe his name is Anthony, he's Lebanese and the superintendent. So I gowned and they brought me up to the second floor where I met Samantha, the manager of the building. And I said, Samantha, I'm Loredana, what do I do? And she says, just go into the rooms and feed.

PC: And so when you got into the rooms, when you started seeing the residents, what kind of conditions did you see?

LOREDANA MULE: Well, the rooms stank of urine and feces, terribly. It was horrific. It just hit you so hard, the stench.

PC: This is because the residents hadn't been changed or helped to go to the washroom or anything?

LOREDANA MULE: At this point I don't know. I said maybe housekeeping. I just there was a huge stench. And so I started going into the rooms. I found their lunch trays were not touched. And the supper trays, by the time I got up there and started feeding, I was feeding them cold food, you know, mashed potatoes. Some of these residents can people chew. So I tried to feed them the mashed potatoes, try to give them as much fluids because they were so dehydrated.

PC: And when you were talking to the various residents who who called that facility home, what kinds of things were you hearing from them?

LOREDANA MULE: I wasn't hearing anything. Nobody spoke. Nobody spoke, Piya.

PC: As a health care professional, I imagine you hadn't experienced anything like this before?

LOREDANA MULE: No, here I didn't. We didn't have time. There was a manager. There was a PAB on the floor. The superintendent, God bless him, was trying to help feed. So I couldn't really spend time with the patient. I'm just trying to put food in their tummy and and and fluids. And then by the time I did some moves, they came out of the room. There were two directors from another home that came in to help. And this other nurse, nothing. So I said nothing. They're all in bed. We're going to pair up and we're gonna go room to room to settle them for the evening. And I thought, you know what? Diaper change will settle. Then will position them. But every room, Pia, when we removed the sheets to remove their diapers, they were drenched in urine and faeces. And I can tell that if they'd been sitting in that for days, because the sheet had turned brown to black right up to their neck, it was horrific. I just couldn't believe it. And as we were washing the patient, we couldn't even wash them. We had to wipe them down first and then wash them and we couldn't wash them like we couldn't scrub them. The skin was gonna fall off.

PC: There is now a police investigation. The government in Quebec is looking into this. What do you want to see from them?

LOREDANA MULE: What I want to see is I know that we have a COVID situation, but, you know, I've been hearing on the news that this has been an underlying issue. I think there's underlying issues and all nursing homes. And this has brought to life a serious breach of standards of care. And and as a society, we are clearly falling below our responsibility for these elderly. And like Mrs. rider. stated, you know, it's already a hard decision for a family to please them or their mum or their dad. And and we entrust these nursing homes to care for them. And it's horrific what is actually happening in these nursing homes. I mean, yes.

PC: I have to let you go, but I just wanted to thank you for putting your hand up as a volunteer nurse and trying to help out during these times and for telling us what the experience was like, albeit not a great one at that place. But thank you very, very much for joining me.

LOREDANA MULE: Thank you Piya. And my condolences to all the families that have lost a parent.

PC: Thanks again. Bye bye.

LOREDANA MULE: Bye bye.

PC: Loredana Mule is a registered nurse and senior patient services manager at McKesson Pharmaceuticals. Well, Debra Arbec is the host of CBC Montreal News at 6 on CBC Television. Debra, hello to you.

DEBRA ARBEC: Hi Piya.

PC: These stories that we're hearing are astonishing. Tell me how Quebeckers have reacted to stories like the one we just heard from, whether it's Loredana Mule or Barbara Schneider.

DEBRA ARBEC: Yeah. People are calling it basically a horror show. They're reacting with outrage. They're grieving. It's devastating. You know, through this crisis, Quebeckers have been told daily by the premier that the elderly are at the most risk that they're vulnerable to this disease, that we have to protect our seniors, because most of the people who are dying from Cauvin, 19, are over the age of 70. And then this happened and many are seeing this as a colossal failure. These elderly residents at Herron were literally deserted.

PC: And yet, you know, during the news conference by Francois Legault, the premier of Quebec, he was visibly upset. He was shaken. Did this catch the government by surprise, given what you just said, that they said, look, our seniors are most vulnerable, long term care homes are vulnerable. Were they caught off guard?

DEBRA ARBEC: Yeah, I think in this particular case, the premier was caught off guard. The government was the regional health authority was brought in to Heron to at the end of March. But even though there were signs that things were going terribly wrong, the Montreal Gazette reported that funeral home vans kept driving up to the building. It wasn't actually until Friday night at 8:00. The premier says that a court order finally forced the owner to open up medical files. And that's when the government says it learned the magnitude of all of this. That there were actually 31 people dead over the last month.

PC: This is a private senior's home. Of course, there are public seniors residences in Quebec as well. And across our country, they're both. How much government oversight is there a private seniors homes in Quebec?

DEBRA ARBEC: There actually is a fair bit of oversight. All there are many different types of seniors homes in Quebec, the French acronym for long term care facilities, they break down into basically private, public and then sort of a hybrid of private and public. But in terms of government oversight of all of them are treated the same. They have to obtain permits, they get accredited, they have ministerial visits. Those visits though, are every one to two years.

PC: So now there is an investigation, several of them actually. So bring us up to speed like what is happening in the police investigation and the provincial one that is that is now under way. What do we know?

DEBRA ARBEC: OK. So Premier Legault said on Saturday, as you use that clip off the top, that what happened at Heron Home looked like major negligence. So now basically the homes as a crime scene, a Montreal major crime, spent the night there on Saturday into Sunday. They went back again on Sunday during the day. They've been investigating. They're looking at videotape from the building. They've seized documents that we talking to residents, family staff. They're trying to figure out what kind of charges could be laid in this circumstance as well as that. The coroner is also investigating not only the deaths, but also the circumstances that led to those deaths. There are approximately 150 beds at the Heron home and they lost 20 percent of their residents in less than a month. So at this point, we know that five of the deaths were 19 related. As you mentioned earlier, what happened to the other 26? We've heard from some of the residents, as well as the nurse that you just talked to, that that residents were dehydrated. Many were in bed when authorities went in. So was that all a factor in these deaths? That's what the coroner is going to have to determine.

PC: OK, we'll have to leave it there. Debra, thank you.

DEBRA ARBEC: You're welcome.

PC: Debra Arbec is the anchor of CBC Montreal News at 6. Well, we reached out to Marguerite Blais, Quebec's Minister Responsible for Seniors. She was not available. We also reached out to the owners of Residence Herron. They too were unavailable. But in a statement, the company said it made, "extraordinary efforts since the COVID-19 crisis began, but their calls for help were ignored by regional health officials." There's much more to come on this story. Stay tuned to The Current and CBC News for all the latest. The CBC News is next. And when we come back, we will hear how professional sports could be forever changed by COVID-19. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Matt Galloway on this Monday. You're listening to The Current.

[Music]

The future of sports after COVID-19

Guests: Shireen Ahmed, Devin Heroux, Morgan Campbell

PC: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, in today for Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, is all this time apart maybe making us better at reaching out to those in need? We'll connect on that later on. But first, sports or a lack thereof in the time of COVID-19.

[Music: Theme]

PC: So if you're not a sports fan, you may not believe it, but sports withdrawal is a very real thing.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We so miss our sports. If we're not actually at games, we have sports on. So hockey, during hockey and football on almost every night.

VOICE 2: There's definitely, definitely a void. I mean for the last 30 years for me has been filled in the springtime, especially with that excitement of the playoffs and the Masters.

VOICE 3: For me, it's much more than missing the entertainment value or the Kawhi shot or Connor McDavid exploding down the ice.

VOICE 4: Baseball's actually my favourite. So now that's gone, which kind of sucks.

VOICE 5: Especially when I'm on social media and you see posts from the sports teams and you're used to being able to see highlights from clips and previews from upcoming games and that kind of thing. And then the fact that there's absolutely nothing going on.

VOICE 6: Hey we're over a month in now. So, as a sports fan, things are getting desperate.

PC: Yes, Canadian sports fans are missing their teams. Of course, there is good reason for the break, global pandemic and all, but fans are still feeling a sense of loss for seasons that did not end and others that had not begun. Three people are with me to talk about sports in the time of coronavirus and what might be ahead post all of this. Shireen Ahmed, co-hosts the sports podcast Burn It All Down. Devin Heroux is CBC Sports curling and olympic correspondent. And Morgan Campbell is a freelance sports reporter. He's formerly with the Toronto Star. Hello to all three of you. I have to say, if we're not watching sports, at least we're all together around the virtual table talking about it. Right? It's nice to talk with all three of you again. Devin Heroux, let me begin with you. By asking this very simple question with some complexity, because the question is, how are you? And if you could answer it with a sports analogy, I'd appreciate that.

DEVIN HEROUX: Yeah. Good morning to you Piya. I mean it is a desperate time. I'm asking these big existential questions. Who am I when I'm not in an arena or a stadium? Listen, I'm on the road eight or nine months out of the year. I've never spent this much time at home in my life. So, you know, and as CBC being the Olympic broadcaster, we were in the ninth inning. We were in the home stretch. We were getting down to the final out of the game with heading into Tokyo 2020. So if I could use a baseball analogy, as I talked to you from across the street from the Rogers Centre for the first time in my life, I feel like a closing pitcher in the bullpen, getting ready, getting ready, waiting to come into the game, step on to the mound. And I'm not very good at the waiting game, Piya, as you know.

PC: OK, good, Devin. Shireen, how are you holding up?

SHIREEN AHMED: I love these existential questions. Thank you. I mean, I think that with I've decided to be very, very optimistic. Like I work from home. I agree with Devin, but not travelling because I travel quite a bit is very odd. But I work from home and I'm very grateful to be healthy. I've got four teenagers and everyone has had a sense of loss. We've had volleyball seasons cancelled and not just the pro ones, but just even in our personal lives that has affected so many people. The lack of being able to be active the way we usually are. I mean, I if I'm going to use a sports analogy, this is kind of a sad one, but I'm the CWHL has been shut down, has looking around, not sure what happened, not sure where to go and looking forward to seeing what's next. But there will be mobilization at some point.

PC: OK, so comparing yourself there to the Canadian Women's Hockey League, which is no longer. Morgan Campbell, how's life without sports and writing as much about sports and all those things?

MORGAN CAMPBELL: Well, first things first. I was not aware that Devin Heroux even had a home. I just thought he lived his role in some sports event at a sports event 12 months a year. So who knew he had a, listen, Devin, your condo, probably glad to see you walk through the door that one day. Second of all, life for me is not that evident for the same reason, Shireen laid out that I was working kind of from home in various cafes. Anyway, selected day to day is not that different. But it does make a big difference in sports is not out there. I grew up as a fan. I sport and obviously from a professional standpoint it's going to cost me some money. But sports has to sit down for several months to a year. I'd rather lose the money on the front end than have you know this virus wash through my neighbourhood like a tidal wave. I'm on on the back end. So what I feel like is if you like Cam Newton, remember, he had the list frank fracture in his foot last season. So you can try to like that's a serious injury. Once your diagnosis that you seises on, you've accepted, there's no wishing it away. There's no there's no painkillers is going to make it go away. You're injured. You're injured. Your body's not going to work. So what you have to do is be patient. You get the injury healed first and then move on. That's where I am.

PC: OK. So very good cause all three of you are being very sportsman, sports like in terms of having a positive mental health space, looking at all of this. But I want to go back before we go forward, Devin, a year ago today. What were you doing in terms of your job as a sports reporter?

DEVIN HEROUX: Well, yeah, absolutely, Piya. I mean you and I had a lot of conversations throughout it. Exactly a year ago today, the Toronto Raptors started that remarkable magical use every adjective you can think of run to the championship. It all started on April 13th, 2019. We shouldn't talk about the first game of the playoffs because the Raptors always tank out in them. But it started that incredible run and it was such a collective experience for two months from April 13th until June. Then, of course, I watched the rerun of the championship game last night. You saw the beautiful scenes that played out in Jurassic Park and played out across Canada. And that's what it's about. That's what sport's about, the sweet escape from the mundane, from the predictable aspects of life. And to me, Pia, that's what we're missing most. We're missing our sweet escape that when we wake up at this time of year, in particular with the play offs and everything that was going to be happening, there was this promise that on this night or any given night moving forward, something unscripted, something unpredictable might happen, something that takes us out of the everyday monotony of our everyday lives.

PC: Shireen, you know, you were saying it's not, of course, just professional athletes and fans watching them. It's all kinds of people who play amateur sports. Children and adults like yourself. You're a soccer player. Talk to me about like not even be able to participate in sports from your end.

SHIREEN AHMED: Well, I mean, just even reflecting on a year ago, a year ago was gearing up to go to a women's World Cup. And I went to France. I was actually in France when the Raptors won the championship watching on my laptop at 3:00 a.m. So lots of your amazing your passport all around. And that was translated into excitement of like other young girls. And, you know, on the pitch. So to have this incredible year momentum also going up to the Olympics, leading up to everything. It's it's been a bit you know, it's it's really been. I think a lot of people were in shock initially, know a little bit in disbelief of what's happening. Okay, maybe we'll be out. But as the data and information shows and public health officials are sharing what they know, this could go on a lot longer than we think. Like it's quite possible that, you know, we won't see any WNBA, women's NBA players. And get on the court. You know, we're not sure what will happen with other Olympic qualifiers. Like there's a lot. And in terms of other people in amature who look to the majors and look to the big the big leagues, I guess you could say it's it's quite daunting. And there's a whole like I miss my soccer team. My soccer team is a form of therapy for me to come. I don't have that. And, you know, there's many other people I'm. I mean, how much colouring can one adults do? I'm sure you can do a lot here baking incessantly. And I don't even like I've acquired an aloe vera plant, which is a sport in itself for me to try to take care of any plant. So I think that people trying to be, you know, balanced out with gratitude. But the impact this has emotionally and mentally on people cannot be understated. Like just you know, there was a story out last week about how Canadian sport officials are providing mental health and emotional health support for athletes, because this is a very real thing. I think that we talk about sports as entertainment value, but we don't realise how impactful and important it is in the daily lives of so many Canadians.

PC: I want to ask you, Shireen, because you write about this. Your podcast focuses on this as well. Is there a way of looking at this through a gendered lens, by which I mean, has this had a particular impact on women's sports that it hasn't on men's?

SHIREEN AHMED: Piya, we can have a whole show about this. And I think the thing is that as as we know, women's sport, usually gets, is considered second tier, which is so unfortunate. For example, a lot of people may not know this, but the WNBA will have a digital draft this year on April 17th. So but initially, ESPN decided to have it on the secondary channel, not the main one. Why? Because they wanted to show reruns of baseball games from the 80s. No disrespect to anybody who loves the baseball games from the 80s, but this is happening in real time. These a real up and coming superstars that we see. They don't even deserve the first here. Secondly, there's soccer leagues, football leagues all over the global, you know, situation that are shutting down the women's streams. In Colombia, like in Europe, they're talking about literally shutting the doors of the women's team. FIFA has talked about dipping into their surplus of a billion over a billion dollars to be able to bail out. Yes, I said bail out the men's side, where women's will be just left to dry up and this is so unfortunate because the distribution of wealth within sports is extremely problematic and we're going to see the negative results of this and women do amazing things with whatever little you give them and now they're going to get even less. And I think the priority will always be looked at, unfortunately, to look at men's sports. And I mean, it's it's going to be very, very difficult for a lot of a lot of athletes, a lot of teams. And, you know, I'm I'm trying to be positive, but it's going to be rough.

PC: OK. That's interesting. All that sort of various tentacles of all of this. Morgan Campbell, I want to talk about what some sports leagues are thinking about or possibly going to do during the pandemic. In other words, they're coming up with different kinds of plans. So the MLB Major League Baseball plans for an isolation league in Arizona. Just briefly, tell us what that is and what you think of the idea.

MORGAN CAMPBELL: OK. And this is another moving target. Right. So what Major League Baseball had done is looked at Korea, Korean baseball organisation and the Chinese Professional Baseball League, because both of those leagues are getting ready to restart. They're having spring training. They're having exhibition games. China, I think, start its regular season over the weekend to what they did was in Korea especially. I don't I'm not quite sure on the details in China, but Korea is basically moved all the teams, all their players to a centralised location. They don't have fans and everyone's tested for venue would have if anyone sick. They don't play, they get out, they get test, they get treated and they are playing in these spectator free environments. The idea being that if you isolate everyone, put them in this little biosphere, that you can play out of season without worrying about Kobe at 19, making all people sick. And if you don't have fans, you don't have, you know, people just coming in off the street willy nilly to spread their germs around. So Major League Baseball, look at that and said, hey, why don't we do that over here? We can do this in Arizona, because Arizona has like a critical mass of baseball facilities, because so many of the teams have spring training there. And all the teams, the spring training, like they're their stadiums are adjacent to each other's was not like you had to make a long drive between stadiums. Now, that idea is patently insane. It's crazy. It's crazy because you can't copy what Korea is doing. And so you copy what Korea did. And the first thing people did in South Korea is get a hold of the pandemic and flatten the curve and wrestle the rest of the spread of this disease into submission. And if you're not going to do that, you cannot do anything else. So Major League Baseball thinks they're going to move all these people. And, you know, criticisms have also mentioned the fact that, you know, players have to be away from their families for weeks and weeks and months at a time.

PC: They also can be fed and watered and have people work around them than more people involved than just the athletes in sports.

MORGAN CAMPBELL: Yes, there's the support staff and all these people. And like if someone gets hurt, you have to bring someone else in. But this other person hasn't been in the biofilms. You know, they've been interacting with him in their time off. So all kinds of holes in this theory, maybe because, again, like you can't you can't plan any any any large scale resumption of the sports industry until you have, you know, as the experts say, flatten this curve and gotten this pandemic under control. But especially in their other stakeholders here. Right. In the global sports industry, there are so many billions of dollars that change hands depending on whether or not these games get played. So Major League Baseball says, hey, listen, we've got to get these games going so we can get this broadcast money. Broadcasters like wienie live sports because we need an audience because at this point, people will watch almost anything live. And to Cherien Point, this is where the where ESPN missed an opportunity with the WNBA draught, because as long as live sports on around, like people will watch anything that live and they will invest in it. I got friends watching the Chinese Professional Baseball League that had never watch Chinese professional baseball before, but now they have a favourite team. You know why? Because they're playing. So if you put a WNBA draught on now, people are going to watch. You know why? Because there's nothing else live sports lated on right now.

PC: OK. Devin and Shireen, I think I could hear you sort of laughing and saying some things about when Morgan was talking about these compressed seasons. Do either of you think these pro leagues could play some kind of compressed season in the summer or fall? Could that work Devin Heroux?

DEVIN HEROUX: You know, I'm going to jump in. I have so many thoughts as I listen to Shireen and Morgan. It is crazy. It is ludicrous. And I think one of the things that I'm pay attention to, look, we all want sports back. We know that. But at a certain point, listen, the biggests sports are going to be fine. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, they're going to be fine. Obviously, it's a business. They want money, they want, they want revenue. They want this back as quickly as possible. But they're going to have to be careful that they don't fall tone-deaf on on the seriousness of the situation. And when they get the green light, I'm going to be very interested to see what league mobilizes the fastest, to be the first out of the gate to get people back into arenas, because I've been talking to a lot of sports fans posing the question. OK, let's say these leagues are coming back. Would you go sit in a petri dish with 20,000 people and watch these sports play out? And a lot of people are saying no. So we're a long way away from that pro sports it's going to be fine. It's the amateur sports. It's the fledgling leagues. They talk to the commissioner, the Canadian elite basketball league, the Canadian Premier League, even the CFL. They're in a lot of trouble right now. They're trying to get momentum, of course, the inaugural seasons for this EPL and the CBL. How many times have we seen Canadian leagues seemingly have momentum in a first season and then fall into the Canadian sporting landscape? So that's what I'm going to pay attention to. Then you look at cancelled world championships in the curling. Figure skating, women's hockey and Halifax, that world championship. So to me, yes. Let's have all of the conversations, dream up all the crazy fight islands and putting things in a hotel or on a cruise ship or anywhere to do. Just take us away. Like I said, that sweet escape. But to me, the amateur sport, these young leagues, the grassroots sports. That's what I'm most concerned about right now.

PC: Shireen, you know, some networks as we talk about have been playing those rebroadcasting the classic old games or the playoff runs. They have kept people busy in their homes rewatching them. I've been watching a few and I keep forgetting who won, which is kind of good, cause it's like watching it for the first time. But do you think there are other things that networks and and leagues could be doing? Something more creative or giving more exposure to less well-known athletes?

SHIREEN AHMED: Well, I mean, there's always I appreciate a lot. Like just yesterday, you know, they were showing the Olympic finals from 2012, the women's hockey. I could watch that forever to be taught. To be honest. It was absolutely a riveting game. And I think that in terms of profiles of youth athletes, I think the profiles of varsity athletes, I think profiles of up and coming. You know, Devin said this up and coming, which is really key here, because there's still a lot of youth and younger athletes who is you know, success is still hinging on everything and public attention. And I think that's really important, like even a series that could be I mean, the people that work in media, quite frankly, I feel like they're geniuses. I think they're reading together things where, you know, doing our interviews from under blankets at home, etc, etc. They can weave together different stories, how athletes may be working out at home. I interviewed Kia Nurse a couple weeks ago and she was explaining that she does and she shares this on Instagram and she's a stalwart of the Canadian basketball team. She does her leg lifts and her leg exercises running up the stairs in her home in Hamilton. And I mean, I think that's that's amazing. And it's you know, people want to see that there's hockey hockey players out there. And there are all these amazing women are training at home and sharing that stuff just to show some that everyone's in the same thing together in the same way. I think that's important. Just to touch on something really quickly. There's another league that I was just working on something and I was reading that I miss global football. I missed the Champion's League very, very much. And we would've been right into the towards the end of that right now in April. And Bundesliga, the German biggest thinking about starting in May. And just to touch on what Morgan said quickly, as excited as I am to get football back, global football. Not at the expense of life. And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about broadcast versus. So when you've got athletes at home, you've got athletes doing amazing things. Hayley Wickenheiser is part of this Conker covered group which started out of Toronto at a grassroots out of someone's home. And now you see athletes on Frontline doing things and joining these movements. There's so many different opportunities that you can have. We don't have to be the Bundesliga that's going to put people. I mean, the only like known football league that I know is happening is in Tajikistan, where there are no reported cases of COVID-19 anyway.

PC: Tajikistan because the leader there says there's no cases happening. We don't know the picture inside.

SHIREEN AHMED: Exactly. But you're putting all these people, the support staff and all these people at risk. So, I mean, you know, I still don't think that's safe. Not in the way this pandemic has spread. So this there's so many things and everything we have to remember is interconnected. So it's not like you can have a lead somewhere that would remain unaffected to the rest of the world, the decisions being made by people at various stages. As we've always seen in sports, we'll have very important consequences on other people.

PC: Morgan Campbell, I know, I want to bring another sport. I know you're a big boxing fan. So how is the outbreak affecting the world of combat sports, boxing, MMA, things like that?

MORGAN CAMPBELL: Yeah. Like boxing and when they were were sort of the last sports to shut down because they were, you know, you could always rationalize it. Look, we can do this in an empty arena. We can do this in a TV studio. You can stage a fight with, you know, a fighter and two cornerman, whereas, you know, a football team has 50 plus people plus all these coaches. But at the same time, you know, they involve people being in really close contact. And if one person is sick, everybody gets sick. So what we had was like fight scheduled into mid-March until state or provincial commission started shutting them down. And then California, Nevada, they issued like these moratorium like no fights from mid-March until the end of May at the earliest. And what happened in between there was that Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, said, hey, we're going to keep going no matter what. We're going to keep looking for places to face these fights. The story I wrote a couple of weeks ago for The New York Times where the original plan was, these fights that were scheduled for April 18th was supposed to happen in Brooklyn. And this was just as the curve is really starting to ramp up in New York. So I talked to the commission, the state commission in New York. They said, listen, we can't have these fights. You know, this this this if they want to have you. It's not going to be here. They cannot come to New York. So what happened with the ultimate fighting championship is that this pandemic has put them right back to the beginning. Right. Right back to where they were. Right back to the days of old bare knuckle boxing. Right. Like the John O'Sullivan days when it was illegal. So they would fight on a barge. You know, have a have a secret location in the forest. The guys go hold up the rope and they go fight before the police can break it up, because when the ultimate fighting championship, when they went mainstream, you know, 2005/2006 are out there. Right. Their goal was to find every state and province was like a really strict regulatory environment and go stage events there and get regulated under these strict conditions to signal to the ESPN, to the world and the Fox forces of the world, like the big, big money paying rights holders of the sport was legitimate and not some sideshow, not human cockfighting. Now, we're right back where they started, where they're searching for really lax regulatory environments where they can stage these fights without getting shut down in the midst of a pandemic. The other thing that's happening is and the reason that Dana White has been so reluctant to eventually cancel the April 18th show, which they did have to cancel it and why he's so adamant to stage fights on these private island like it's Enter the Dragon and he's Mr. Han. But the reason you know, the motivation behind this is you have to remember Dana White is very much a, he's a he's a very, I don't know if I would call him a disciple of Donald Trump, because he's probably a better businessman than Donald Trump is. But he is a very strong Donald Trump supporter. And one of the things we've seen with Donald Trump is that he commandeers the airwaves, you know, everyday for these COVID-19 briefings. He commandeers the airwaves. He does not give people a choice about watching him and then he brags about the ratings on the back end. Well, of course, tiy had the highest rating because you're on every single channel and people don't have anything else to watch. And so the UFC with every other sport shut down, here is their opportunity, because, again, people are going to watch stuff they don't normally watch just because it's live and something is at stake. So here is this opportunity to be the only live sport going and this is the goal, the thing they want to achieve because on the backend of this, like the UFC wants to be the thing that sticks around.

PC: OK. Morgan, I'm going to have to leave it there. That's the buzzer going off. We've got to take a break. Thank you to all three of you. Appreciate you joining me today. Shireen Ahmed co-hosts the sports podcast Burn It All Down. Devin Heroux is CBC's curling and olympic reporter. And Morgan Campbell is a freelance sports reporter. Well, coming up after the break, we're all feeling pretty lonely these days. So we're gonna hear about how isolation can help us to form stronger bonds with our loved ones. We're back in just a bit.

[Music]

How to deal with self-isolation in times of COVID

Guests: Tito Curtis, Val Walker, Lara O’Brien

PC: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Matt Galloway today, and you're listening to The Current. Well, anyone can pick up a phone these days and shoot a cat video. I mean 98 percent of the Internet is basically just cat videos, right? But it takes true skill to make a cat film. Christopher Curtis, who goes by Tito, and his cat Ulysses are using their social and social distancing time to give some human classics the feline film treatment. They've tackled Gladiator, Rocky, The Big Lebowski and Jaws. Here's Captain Quint trading war stories with a kitten.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip of feline parody of Jaws]

PC: Well, for Tito, these films were also a way to help keep his mental health in check when he faced 14 days of COVID-19 related self-isolation. Filmmaker and feline savant, Tito Curtis joins me now from his apartment in Montreal. Hello.

TITO CURTIS: Hello.

PC: We will talk about you in just a moment. But let us talk about Ulysses first. Tell me more about the cat.

TITO CURTIS: So in November, I was watching TV and there was a pretty bad snowstorm and I heard something meowing on my back balcony and run over to it. What do I see? But a pretty little orange cat with half of a tail and a he's full banged up and scruffy and he's covered in snow and he's meowing to get in. So I opened the door and he basically jumps in my arms and he hasn't left since. He's been a part of my life.

PC: OK. And a pretty good sport as well. Had he shown much aptitude for acting? Was acting in his blood before this pandemic?

TITO CURTIS: Oh, man. He is a little performer. Whenever he's hungry, which is always he you know, he meows. He paws at you and he's broken into the fridge. He's broken into the freezer. He can get it to any cupboard that I have in the apartment. So I baby locked all of them and the ones that I can't baby lock, I went to the hardware store and bought a clamp to shut it down. So he's an actor. He's an escape artist. He's a singer. He's my little guy, but he's also driving me crazy. Like I have an eye on him right now because I know he's probably going to loudly interrupt this interview.

PC: Fair enough. I welcome that. I welcome that. OK, let us talk about you. You were in 14 days of self-isolation. Why?

TITO CURTIS: I had some pretty bad symptoms or fever, just kind of aches everywhere. I was dizzy when I would walk around shortness of breath. So I called the Service Quebec, which is sort of our authority on COVID-19 right now.And they told me to just go ahead and self-isolation if the symptoms got much worse than that, to call again and go to the go get a test. But I never got to the point where I got a test, but for 40 days I could not leave the apartment, which for me was real. I mean, for anyone sucks. You know, it was I knew it would be daunting.

PC: So you were physically not feeling great. But as you say, for anyone, it's hard to stay indoors or for most people these days. But for you, it's sort of an added layer of challenge, as you have said. So tell me about that.

TITO CURTIS: Yeah, well, by this summer or last summer, a spent time at a locked unit at Douglas Mental Health Institute in Montreal. I was really. I later found out that I struggle with complex post-traumatic stress disorder from some some really nasty things that happen to me when I was a little kid. And so I this summer, I was in a really, really dark place. And I was a danger to myself. So I would go for those with at the time brought me to the Douglas and I spent some time there. And as you know, I've been working on myself, but the prospect of being alone with my thoughts for14 days, you know, I always I worry that that I could get back to a dangerous place like that. So I, at the very beginning of that isolation, I was I was starting to worry that I might slip into this really dark place. And I've cracked a few times. It's hard, you know, I've broken down at couple times. But it's I guess it's just all part of, you know, my process or whatever you want to call it.

PC: For people and so many people who have mental health challenges, you know, the advice part of it always is, you know, get outside, get go get some fresh air, you know, do some exercise, get outdoors, all those things. It's a challenging time for so many people. And you wrote that for people with mental illness. Isolation means being alone with the one person who scares us more than anyone else on this planet, i.e. yourself. Tell me more about what that really means to you.

TITO CURTIS: I think. You know, I think it's like there's this thing burning inside of you and, you know, I if left with enough time, then then I will convince myself that I am all the worst things. And that is a really powerful feeling. And over the years, it's something that I've I've dealt with like really destructive behaviour. You know, whether whether it's binge drinking or drugs or, you know, it is just really, just really, really reckless behaviour. It's something that. You do anything to numb, you know. I've heard it compared to like if your house is on fire. You would dose it with like a tidal wave just to just to make the fire stop. But that tidal wave would probably also destroy your house. So so it's it's it's kind of learning to manage that, which I'm still learning how to do, you know, and hat was really a big part of my fear going into the isolation.

PC: And so working with your cat and making these film parodies, was that partially to try to help you cope?

TITO CURTIS: I mean, I unconsciously probably, you know, it wasn't like this thing that I had planned out, but I like making. I've always. I'm a huge, I'm like a movie buff. I've studied a bit of it when I was like 18, 19 in college. So I what I figured midway through all of this or early on and all of this is that it's an hour or an hour and a half and a day where I'm not consuming the Internet or I'm not thinking about the worst possible scenarios or I'm not. It's an hour and a half and a day where I get to make something. And, you know, the cat is a huge part of it. If he collaborates, which is rare. So so the you know, the just the whole, like, building. I you know, I build sets and props out of old cereal boxes and tape and cases of beer and toilet paper rolls and and household items and aluminium foil and all of that kind of that process of. Doing what I can with the limited materials that I have, the limited skills that I have, which are quite limited, is a part of it.

PC: So you've been posting these online. You've been getting a lot of response. You've had politicians support you through donations to charity. You've got some professional help for a few of these, you had a special guest in your adaptation of The Big Catbowsky and she helped you film some deleted scenes from the Netflix series Tiger King, where you played Joe Exotic, The Tiger King, who is quite an image for those who have not watched that. She plays Carol Baskin and Ulysses plays a big cat, of course, because this Netflix show is about Tiger. So I want to play a little bit of that. Here we go.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip of parody of Tiger King]

PC: OK, so we're missing the visuals a lot, but these videos, well, they're both funny and pretty off the wall, Tito. Why do you think people are connecting with them?

TITO CURTIS: I think people see a giant kid when they see me do this stuff, and I think despite my many, many shortcomings, I have a very strong imagination. And, you know, it's like the toilet paper roll becomes binocular. I got binoculars or or the broom handle becomes a spear or my bathtub becomes the Atlantic Ocean in Jaws and Jaws the shark is tin foil and a Gatorade bottle. And when I mean, what I'm doing this, I'm I'm fully committing to it. It was you know, we're we're really just we have created a little world and we are so into it. And I think people want to play along and they want to they want to be a part of it. And they're you deo. You know, she's busy. She's a professional actor. She's got her old life. But she really wants to be a part of it because we're just we're playing, you know, we're pretending. And. And she's been a really great friend for the last couple months and especially throughout this ordeal. And and and men like her filming her hands, also financiers and then like have to reshoot all of that because I'm so intimidated with how good like she's an actor and I'm not. Got it. It's been a lot of fun.

PC: Well, you're bringing much joy to those of us who are watching these and I appreciate you joining me today. Thank you.

TITO CURTIS: Thank you for having me on the show. And thanks for, you know, thanks for giving Ulysses an even more inflated ego, even though he doesn't need it.

PC: Well, he's been well-behaved.

TITO CURTIS: He really is. He's only been walking around. But thanks a lot, I really appreciate you tackling some of these issues and I hope you guys have a great day.

PC: Thank you. You as well. Christopher Tito Curtis writes for the Montreal Gazette. By the way, if you're a TikToker or you want to go see his work, you can find him on TikTok and on Twitter. His handle is @TitoCurtis. Well, in Canada, millions of people are finding themselves in the strange position of having to stay away from their loved ones and that can be especially jarring around the holidays. But for some people, a kind of social distancing was business as usual well before COVID-19. That is true of Val Walker, the author of 400 Friends and No One to Call: Breaking Through Isolation and Building Community. She's just outside of Boston today. Hello.

VAL WALKER: Hello.

PC: OK. So 400 friends and No One to Call. It's a title. What it, tell me about the title and when did you find yourself in that position?

VAL WALKER: Well, I was actually stranded in a hospital, even though I had lined up two of my closest friends to help take care of me after my hysterectomy. And even in the hospital tied to the IV's in my bed, I got a text message from my friends who suddenly were not able to show up due to a family emergency. And even though I had been a rehabilitation counsellor and had lots of connections professionally and personally, I was shocked that I couldn't find a single person to help drive me home or take care of me for a couple of days I was literally stranded. And it was a real wake up call that made me think. You know, there needs perhaps to be some kind of book about this. I ended up writing the book. I couldn't find him.

PC: And so, Val, you know, people are listening, saying, well, that would never happen to me. I have all these friends. Someone would come get me from the hospital. I have, you know, all those things. So tell us, how did you become so isolated from your friends?

VAL WALKER: Well, the fascinating thing was I had only really built strong relationships with just two with three close friends. I frankly, could have if I could go back six years ago when this happened. It actually happened around 2012. At the time, I was so embarrassed and ashamed that my friends didn't show up. And yes, I did make some calls to other friends, but they were very tied up with their own issues. They couldn't help me. I did call around. But the thing was, I got very easily discouraged and ashamed. And so I stopped calling. I felt so bad having to feel like I was begging. But the real truth is there are a lot of us in the same position that I was in. And reading social science research actually was in a way comforting for me because I saw there many Americans in the same boat that you may have lots of connections, but you might not be able to count on them.

PC: And this is true even before the pandemic, that studies showed that people were living more isolated lives. Right. More lonely lives, more isolated. We have, you know, 700 bajillion Facebook friends, but only a couple in real life. So talk to me about sort of what the studies were showing, what part of society was the most isolated.

VAL WALKER: Right. Well, actually, the two extremes of age groups, mostly people over 65, were tending to live more by themselves. One out of three Americans over 65 lives alone. And then one out of four Americans under that age group lives alone. But also generations Zee and the younger millennials, particularly those under 25, are being researched and it's very well proven now that they are even more isolated than the older seniors. And a lot of the reason is that the use of conversation in a casual way has actually been disappearing in their peers. And they put a great deal of pressure on themselves using social media, which means you compare yourself, you judge yourselves, you judge each other and you're a little more shy and anxious. Lots of research on how anxious, socially anxious folks under 25 are and that causes a lot of loneliness.

PC: And here we are, though, now, you know, being told and people taking advantage of connecting virtually. Right. Reaching out to their loved ones since or, you know, even people they want to help out or maybe connecting with the long lost friends were sort of being in. Urged to do that. Do you think that's going to help kind of long game alleviate the concerns about us being more isolated?

VAL WALKER: Well, there's some very interesting ways. I call it the necessity is the mother of invention theme and that when you really can't get together with people in the ways you were before COVA 19, there are some remarkably brave new ways of reaching out. And people are returning, even younger people. Millennials and younger to having conversations again. See what I wrote about a lot in my book? It was up until before Cauvin 19 conversation was actually diminishing as a easy, normal way to connect with people. We were often being distracted and interrupted with our phones and our digital age. Sherry Turkle is a great researcher I wrote about in my book. I studied a lot of what she studied from the Pew Research Centre. She works with it with M.I.T. here in the Boston area. My point is I thought I was really feeling lonely and many of the people I profiled in my book were feeling very lonely at the lack of conversation. And social media seemed to be a kind of a quick, easy replacement for conversation. But it wasn't really meaningful conversation, quality conversation. So many of us were feeling lonely just because we couldn't really get our heart to heart into a conversation. So I wanted to emphasize now with at 19 some people, especially people I would say between the ages of 30 and well into their 70s and 80s are finding, gosh, people are calling me now. They didn't used to after Cauvin 19. People are reaching out. So I don't want to say that it's just a happy thing about at 19. But there is a return to good old fashioned phone calls and also Skype and Xoom to have on screen connection. But some people are really, truly calling their long lost cousins, old high school friends, roommates, co-workers. There's a lot of reaching out going on. And part of it's a human response to feeling very afraid and lonely. It's a pretty good response, but yet everybody's responding that way.

PC: Well, we'll have to see on the other side of this pandemic if people still choose to use, you know, the phone or Zoom to connect or if they actually are going to leave their houses and connect in a more physically, physically close way in real life. We'll have to wait and see what that writes. Like as you say, though, I mean, people are connecting, but it is very true that so many of us are in this time feeling isolated and feeling lonely. So give us some advice about what we should do in terms of that.

VAL WALKER: Oh, I'm happy to share that. It's advice that I wrote about in my book and also practise on myself both as a counsellor and on my own personal loneliness to rebuild a whole support network for myself after that terrible experience in the hospital. I had to get past my shame, embarrassment and loneliness and say, Val, you've got to get proactive and get out there. So one of my biggest messages is I learned some very sure bets for how to build community and also profile people. And then I have a lot of research from AARP is connect to affect studies on people over 50 and a lot of research from Cigna and many other National Institutes of Health. So before I offer these tips, I just want you to know it's really well researched and proven to work.

PC: OK. Go with your tips.

VAL WALKER: OK. First of all, helping out and reaching out in some way, volunteering or checking in on others, whether we formally volunteer, which we can do remotely in our own local communities, helping out our local people fellowship, a sense of fellowship and mission, helping others, but also calling people. Just checking in with our own loved ones and friends too. So reach out and help out. When we help others, we tend to feel less helpless. Lot of psychological study on anxiety, even on grief that shows and depression that when you reach out and you focus on a mission or on a goal to help other people, it really helps pull us out of ourselves and our worries. So that's number one. Volunteering and helping.

PC: I'm going to have to cut you off Val. We're going to have to go, but we'll get the tips up. We'll put them out on our Twitter feed later on, but I appreciate you joining us. Thank you.

VAL WALKER: Oh, I'm glad to be here. Thank you.

PC: Val Walker's new book is called 400 Friends and No One to Call.

[Music]

PC: On Friday, I spoke with two seniors who lived through previous outbreaks of disease or epidemics, and quite a few of you wrote in with your own childhood memories. The Current senior producer Lara O'Brien is here with some of your mail. Good morning. Hello. Hello.

LARA O'BRIEN: Hi Piya. People have some vivid memories of growing up during outbreaks of polio, tuberculosis and influenza.

PC: And that includes Terry Woolf from Yellowknife, who remembers his family's arrival in Canada. In 1957, Terry's father came to Canada first, then the rest of the family followed later by boat. So here's what Terry writes in October. Mum, who is still alive and well at 96 and six children boarded the Empress of England to sail to Montreal, where dad would be waiting. This October crossing turned out to be one of the roughest in many years. I think of my mum ill herself dealing with six kids, ranging from one to 11 years old, all of us seasick. Then the flu pandemic hit us. We were crammed into two tiny cabins, vomiting and racked with diarrhoea. Somehow we made it to Canada. But our arrival was not as planned. We doctor Quebec City and we're all immediately quarantined in hospital. The ship carried on to Montreal, where dad was waiting. At that time, communications were limited, so we had no way to let dad know what happened. When his family did not walk down the gangway off the ship, he had no idea where we were. Purser eventually told him that many of the passengers were sick. And in Quebec City, he made his way to Quebec City and found us. I remember vividly dad standing outside of the quarantine area, waving at us through the glass. Whoa!

LARA O'BRIEN: That's a story. Maryleah Otto wrote us from Brampton, Ontario about her experience with polio. I am 91 years old and in the summer of 1937, I was nine years old in Toronto. I especially remember the terrifying photos in the newspapers of children in iron lungs at the old Hospital for Sick Children on College Street. I can still see these pitiful pictures in my mind's eye and it sends chills down my spine to this day. At the height of the outbreak, I took sick. Naturally, my mother assumed the worst, but our family doctor wasn't sure what was wrong with me. He ordered me to bed for a month, but he didn't order a spinal tap, which was the only test as far as we knew, to determine the presence of polio in the body. Schools were closed until late October, which maybe I thought was an unexpected treat.

PC: Well, for other listeners, that interview sparked a different observation. Linda Alexander from Lakefield, Ontario, noted that our guests talked about how they're turning to the Internet during this pandemic. But she writes, this isn't an option for people like my brother, other poor seniors and those in poverty now due to COVID-19. These people do not have the money to pay for the Internet. Prior to COVID-19 they could go to the library or Tim Hortons and other places with free Wi-Fi. Now, they have no way to keep in touch with friends and family and no means of accessing information about the virus.

LARA O'BRIEN: Now we've also been asking people what music they turned to for comfort in these times. And we keep getting suggestions.

PC: Not suggestions. Many, many suggestions. This one comes from Dan McCabe, who wrote to us from Vancouver. I'm tapping out this message crouched in the doorway of the locked up West End Community Centre, where a vestigial Wi-Fi signal is still available. I'm grateful to the city of Vancouver for that and happy to be debt free and alive. And whether we're huddling in doorways or contemplating mortality and isolation more splendid, we are all blessed by the incipient glory of springtime. You solicited requests for songs to celebrate solidarity in the face of the current plague. And so I'd like to hear "And When I Die" by Blood Sweat and Tears. All right. Here you go, Dan.

[Song: "And When I Die" by Blood Sweat and Tears]

LARA O'BRIEN: Alright. The CBC News is next, then back by popular demand, Stuart McLean with a special Vinyl Cafe story. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Matt Galloway, and you're listening to an extended edition of The Current. We're back in just a bit.

[Music]

Revisiting the Vinyl Café Diaries

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: In other times, food has been a reason for us to gather and a way for us to connect with others. And I don't think that that needs to end.

PC: You may know Chef Samin Nosrat from her book and Netflix show Salt Fat Acid Heat. She's used to mixing it up in kitchens, serving large groups of people. Basically, many of things we're not allowed to do anymore. Coming up, hear how social distancing has not stopped Samin's love for cooking and sharing that love with others. And you'll hear about her new podcast as well. But first, we hear from some old radio friends.

[Music: Theme]

PC: So in stressful times, there is something about a familiar voice that provides comfort and for listener Ginni Burton, that voice is Stuart McLean's. She wrote us last week saying she's feeling wistful for his stories about Dave and Morley. And so for Ginni and many others we have heard from, here's a good yarn on this Easter Monday. It's a story about rebirth and resilience. Here's Stewart McLean with "This is Tree of Heaven."

["Tree of Heaven" episode of Vinyl Cafe Diaries with Stuart McLean]

PC: That's the late Stuart McLean with the story "Tree of Heaven." It appears in the Vinyl Cafe Diaries. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Matt Galloway. Matt will be back tomorrow. And I want to tell you about something coming up on that show. Pauline Dakin was a health reporter for CBC Radio for many years and one of her stories for The Current was about how well Canada was prepared for a pandemic. That was 15 years ago. Pauline will be back tomorrow to revisit what experts said then and what they're saying now about how prepared our country was and is for disease spread like this. One of the people Pauline talks to is Dr. Michael Osterholm, the Director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Why is the world surprised? Clearly, every segment of the world, whether it be the public health community, the medical community, the business community, governments, civic leaders and the public, all seem very surprised by this. And if you go back, there's been a track record of more than 15 years of detailing what a pandemic would look like in its earliest, middle and late stages. But it amazes me how those who should have been in the know weren't. The second thing is around the world, we have basically reduced health care capacity, meaning there is just not the extra beds or elasticity within the system to take on these surge events like this. We don't have the manpower, we don't have the equipment, we don't have the beds. And that surely did aid in bringing down some health care costs because we didn't have to pay for that redundancy. So now we're paying a huge price for not having it. We're paying a huge price for not having the protective equipment.

PC: That tomorrow on the show. Pauline Dakin will be looking back at Canada's preparedness for a pandemic. Allright, coming up after a very short break, Chef Samin Nosrat shares why it's still important for us to gather around food even if it's over Zoom. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. We're back in just a bit.

[Music]

Matt Galloway in conversation with Samin Nosrat

Guests: Matt Galloway, Samin Nosrat

PC: I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you are listening to the extended edition of The Current. Well, her cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat is a staple in many, many kitchens. Samin Nosrat has developed a devoted following with her hit Netflix series. Salt Fat Acid Heat is the name of that as well. And now a podcast to help us with pantry cooking during the pandemic. Her podcast is called Home Cooking and Matt Galloway reached Samin Nosrat at her home in Oakland, California.

MATT GALLOWAY: Samin, good morning.

SAMIN NOSRAT: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: How are you doing in the middle of this wild situation that we all find ourselves in?

SAMIN NOSRAT: I feel strangely fine, to be totally honest. I've had a hard few years, just like incredibly demanding. So it's been really nice to just be home even if you're forced to be home. I have a big garden and I feel really lucky to live in the situation where I live. So I'm trying to sort of share my my pleasure and joy with others right now.

MATT GALLOWAY: You're doing this, I mean, I would think that the sales of a cookbook would go through the ceiling because people have time to cook and they need some direction. But this podcast arrives at a perfect time and it's a ton of fun as well. Where did the idea for come from?

SAMIN NOSRAT: Thank you. Well, my friend and collaborator, Rishi is a great independent podcast producer and so we've been talking about doing a podcast together for a couple years. And he's always pestering me. He's like, let's do and let's do it. And I've been so busy. And so a few weeks ago, he said, what if we just did a little project and it's not like you're doing anything else right now. And so we had kind of had the idea already in the back of our minds. And so it just now is the right time.

MATT GALLOWAY: What is different in cooking now than at a normal time? And you know what we're calling in the before time. When you're stuck at home what's different about that?

SAMIN NOSRAT: Well, I would say the constraints are different. I mean, typically or we have every ingredient available to us. We can run up to any store and get anything we need, but we are often limited in our time. And now it's a little bit reversed where we have all the time in the world and a lot more limitations in terms of our ingredients or, you know, what we're exactly able to make.

MATT GALLOWAY: The first episode of this podcast, there's a large part of it that is devoted not by your design, but because these are the questions that sent in is devoted to beans. What is it about a dried beans that is so perplexing to people?

SAMIN NOSRAT: I think a lot of people have really bad relationship to beans because they an end to me. I think that it's because they've historically undercooked them. So that cause that can cause a lot of gastrointestinal distress. But but and also there have been many, many beans that I've eaten at other people's homes that are not cooked evenly. And so I think if you've been storing little beans in your cupboard for many decades, they dry out to such an extent that they'll never cook up all the way evenly. So it's just about giving people some tips and giving them the comfort to know it's OK if you're being is a little bit falling apart because it's overcooked, because I'd rather eat an overcooked than an undercooked one.

MATT GALLOWAY: You get into this debate of to soak or not to soak. Are we supposed to soak the dried beans that we have?

SAMIN NOSRAT: I believe in soaking. It's not essential, but I do think it shortens the cooking time and it also creates a more tender bean.

MATT GALLOWAY: Can I ask you then for people who are listening, who they've opened the pantry and they're in that jar at the back is a selection of beans that from unknown provenance and they're not sure how long they've been there. What should they do? Give us a very quick idea of what they could do with those beans.

SAMIN NOSRAT: Soak those beans over night in three times the amount of water with a generous pinch of salt and a pinch of baking soda. And then in the morning, just to use that same liquid. I mean, I just go ahead and soak them in the same pot and bring them to a boil. Turn them down to a simmer and cook them until they're tender. Then you add I would add a glug of olive oil and any spices I want. And if they still are not evenly cooked, turn it into a pure eight bean soup.

MATT GALLOWAY: That's easiest thing in the world.

SAMIN NOSRAT: Yeah.

MATT GALLOWAY: There's a lot of anxiety right now and people are feeling it in all sorts of parts of their lives, whether it's around work and they maybe have lost a job and they don't know how they're going to afford the things that are important to them, whether it's about what's going to come, because we don't know how long this is going to last. What do you think it is that that being in a kitchen and cooking can do to ease that anxiety?

SAMIN NOSRAT: I think it's a couple of things. One, for me, cooking has always been a wonderful physical pursuit that gets me back in my body. I'm a pretty heady person. I spend a lot of. Being anxious and worrying and thinking about the future, what I need to do. And so when I'm in the kitchen, I have to be really present with what I'm doing. And that means what, you know, really using all five of my senses. And that is probably the shortest, shortest way. You know, quickest way into kind of meditation for me is is being really present in the kitchen. And, you know, certainly smelling and looking and touching and tasting you to do everything. You even have to listen when you cook. And it's a nice way out of my head and into my body. So I think that's a really great thing for people. And also, I mean, even though our circles might be really limited. And for me, for example, I live completely by myself. So it's not that I'm cooking for others on a regular basis, although I do give a lot of food away to my neighbours and to homeless people in my community. And I found myself cooking a lot and not really interested in eating that much right now. Really giving. Yeah. I which for the first time in my life I have no appetite, which is so weird. But but I do think there, you know, that thing that in other times food has been a reason for us to gather in a way for us to connect with others. And I don't think that that needs to end whether that connection is happening digitally. I know a lot of people are gathering for like Zoom lunches and Zoom meals or just sharing food with your neighbours and people in your community.

MATT GALLOWAY: How social is that experience of cooking for people, do you think? I mean, I love to make food for people and it's almost to me more enjoyable than me eating it is actually giving it to somebody else. Just in general life, how social is the element of cooking for you?

SAMIN NOSRAT: Well, I'm a champion for incredibly social cooking because I think that it's a good thing to spread. You know, it's a wonderful my to spread if you will.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's the good virus.

SAMIN NOSRAT: Because I think what it does is it there is there are so many obstacles for people these days. I mean, certainly before before the virus really came about. There was a lot of people feeling very wistful, like they would never be a good cook and watching whatever everyone else is doing on Instagram and comparing themselves and feeling intimidated. And I think the only way through that is practise and is is just participation. And that practise and participation happens, you know, in the most simple way when we join each other in the kitchen and peeled garlic and chopped parsley and just, you know, stir a pot of beans and do the simplest things and taste. So if anything, I actually think right now, this period of time when we really are sort of all driven back into our kitchens, a wonderful thing that will come from it is a lot more confidence in the kitchen for people because the only way there is practise. And now we're getting that practice.

MATT GALLOWAY: What about also and I hope that that's true, that people do spend the time and feel more confident because it can be intimidating. What about also the idea that that will get a better sense as to where our food comes from? I was speaking with Bill McKibben, the environmentalist on the program a few weeks ago, and he talked out that this can can remind us of our place in the physical world in some ways and that there is a physical element to who we are and where we live and you might lose that in the hurly burly of the day to day and this changes that.

SAMIN NOSRAT: I definitely think that that is a wonderful thing that is certainly happening here in California. I mean, it might be a little cold at where you are starting to think about planting things. But certainly our relationships to the land in terms of our own gardens. I think I've seen there have been there's been a huge upshot here in upswing, I should say, in in. People you know, the nurseries are completely sold out of all of the plant starts and seeds and things like that. But even more than that, I think the relationship to our local farmers, I see that deepening and farmer's markets are still able to run here. And a lot of farmers who are really suffering because restaurants are closed have pivoted, you know, on a moment's notice to farm boxes. And so people who I never thought I'd see order a farm box are ordering farm boxes and, you know, driving an hour or so to do a pickup, bulk pickup of, you know, a whole bunch of pork that just came out of the freezer from from it. Their farm areno. So it is kind of heartwarming for me to see these small farmers getting direct relationships to their customers, albeit under really quite extreme circumstances. But that hopefully is something that will sustain. I think for me, I feel so safe because I know so many people who grow food and I feel like there will always be something for me to buy.

MATT GALLOWAY: You talked about the last few years of your life, which have been wild. And this Netflix series was this enormous hit. And people who perhaps hadn't had the book before learn about you. They got excited about how excited you are about food and they follow you along. What was that like, that whole experience of TV, I guess it's still TV, streaming celebrity and becoming famous in that way.

SAMIN NOSRAT: It's surreal. It's definitely surreal. I don't know that that was ever a goal that I had. I definitely wanted to make the show because I wanted to get the word out and teach people this pretty simple philosophy about cooking. But I don't think I anticipated what would happen to my life. And it's kind of turned a lot of things upside down. I mean, on the one hand, I the show helped sell so many books that I was able to buy a house, which is not something I ever was sure I would be able to do. So that's amazing. And I feel really financially secure. So that's really wonderful. But also, I've completely lost almost all anonymity. And a lot of the privacy that I was used to that comes with anonymity. So, you know, luckily, almost I would say entirely 100 percent of the attention is positive and incredibly wonderful. It's just that I wasn't always used to this much attention. So so it's been something to get used to. And I just have to be a lot more in touch with how I'm feeling before I prepare to leave the house, basically, so that I can sort of be my best self in public because it's so earnest and wonderful. The you know, what it is that people say to me and what I want to see how they would want to interact with me, it's just that it's constant. And especially, you know, I always say the epicentres for me are the farmer's market, the grocery store, restaurants, the places you want to be, ground zero. But it's so it is really to me, the most heartwarming part of it is seeing the way it actually affects people's lives incredibly positively. And so or, you know, when kids feel like they're cooking in there, they come up, you know, and they're shy sort of behind their parents and they need to say hi to me. That's really wonderful. And the other thing is, so many people of colour and queer people and overweight people and differently abled people and just people who are not the typical people who are represented on screen, they really feel somehow a connection to me because they think I'm not the typical person who you see on screen. And so that's amazing when that if that happens. And so that's really heartwarming for me as when people, you know, really just kind of thank me for being there. And I do think, wow, what I wouldn't have given as a little kid to see all sorts of different kinds of people on screen, that would have been amazing.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's the effect of that, do you think? That's I mean, there's two sides that. One is that burden, as you said, that you have to be your best self as you step out the door. But you know that people are going to see you as a representative of who they are in some ways. What is the what is the effect of that, do you think, on them to see you on that screen and see you be successful?

SAMIN NOSRAT: I think it may, I mean, what I, I can only think about how it would affect me or how it has affected me in the past in both on the page and on the screen, which is you feel. Less out there. You feel less different. You feel like your difference is acceptable and something to celebrate. And that's really wonderful because I spent my childhood, you know, in a sea of beautiful white, blond Southern Californians and feeling very much like the odd person out. And like, I would never belonged. And so I think that if I can share with people a sense of belonging through just being me, then that's a really wonderful thing that I'm happy to do and I feel really proud of. And if I can also help you feel like you belong because you're a little more confident in the kitchen, then that's great, too.

MATT GALLOWAY: I had read that you were working in and around the idea of being if not a full vegan, then like a daytime vegan. Is that true?

SAMIN NOSRAT: Yeah, I will say that's changed the corona times.

MATT GALLOWAY: I was oging to say pandemic puts on different pressures on one's life.

SAMIN NOSRAT: In the pre-pandemic, yeah, I, since about June I've been sort of aiming to eat, at least two meals a day that are completely plant based or the other sort of like I've loosened up the rules a little bit for myself or I eat predominantly vegetarian the whole day. So my main I would say my two big exceptions, well, my main exception meat wise is not even meat really. It's chicken stock. I love you can start. I feel like it makes me a superhero and I can do anything. I have chicken stock. So I do make chicken stock. I am a friend who is a chef who uses so many chicken bones that she doesn't know what to do. It gives me chicken bones and I make stock with those. And then during the day, I try really hard not to eat dairy, but sometimes I really just need some butter on my toast, you know.

MATT GALLOWAY: That's fair. We all sometimes. Yeah. So in that, I mean maybe it's before, but what would what would the comfort food be for you right now?

SAMIN NOSRAT: Well I also, so one of my very favourite things to make, which actually does align with the vegan lifestyle is a dish that I learned from one of my friends who grew up like children of hippies with her sister in Hawaii. And for them, they're like greatest treat that they could ever imagine when they went to the health food store with their mum was that she would buy them marinated tofu, like if they were good that was the.

MATT GALLOWAY: That's the treat?

SAMIN NOSRAT: And so my friend Mara makes this tofu that is so funny and I know this will raise a lot of eyebrows, but it's so delicious. And I say this is a person who really enjoys eating meat that you to you take medium firm tofu and drizzle a little bit of Braggs liquid Amano's. I'm not sure if that's available in Canada. It's a kind of unfermented soy sauce. A staple comes with a yellow label. If you can't find braggs liquid amino as you can use soy sauce and then you kind of pat it dry. And it's been sliced into maybe half inch thick slices and then it gets fried and coconut oil. And there's something about this combination of these three ingredients that is so mouthwatering. Delicious. It's so incredibly like it's just it's so savoury and wonderful. And then the textures are really incredible because the coconut oil gets so hot that the surface of the tofu develops this incredibly lacy golden crust. But if you use the medium term tofu, that what happens is the inside sort of melts into this custardy texture.

MATT GALLOWAY: Oh, my goodness.

SAMIN NOSRAT: So it's so good. It's so good. I wrote an entire column in The New York Times magazine about it. And I usually do it with steamed rice and just like boiled or sauteed vegetables and a big dollop of hot sauce. And it's so, so comforting. It's so good.

MATT GALLOWAY: You know, what happens is I watch your shows or I read and go and cook from your book and my mouth starts to water. And that's just happening now as you're describing this. I'm a big fan. It's a real pleasure to talk to you and be well in the midst of all of this wildness.

SAMIN NOSRAT: Thank you. You too. Take care.

PC: Samin Nosrat spoke with Matt Galloway earlier this month. Samin's a chef and food writer for The New York Times magazine. And her cookbook is called Salt Fat Acid Heat. You can also check out her Netflix series by that same name. She also has a new podcast out. It is called Home Cooking, and it's aimed to help you cook during the quarantine.

Students raise $30,000 to thank health-care workers with 'a good, decent meal'

Guests: Melissa Vitagliano

While cooking for others is one way Canadians are helping out right now, last week, we interviewed a woman in Nova Scotia who's giving free food to truckers at her truck stop. After that aired, we received an email from Julian Hughes. Julian told us about another project that's getting food to those who need it. A group of third-year medical students at McGill University in Montreal is providing healthcare workers with fresh hot meals. Melissa Vitagliano is one of the students behind the initiative, and she's with us now. Hello to you.

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: Hi, Piya. How's it going?

PC: I'm OK. Tell me how this food to healthcare workers all works.

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: Yeah. So basically we were a group of three medical students who about two weeks into our self-isolation decided that we wanted to be able to give back to the health care workers as well. Given that we had been removed from our clinical rotations. So we tried to ask a few residents what we could help them out with. And a lot of them simply said, you know, we could really use a good, decent meal. The hospital's really busy these days. It's really hard to get to the grocery store, let alone prepare yourself for a meal. So that's really what could help us out just to even like boost our morale a bit. And we started to reach out to a few restaurants, see if they would be interested in participating. And we got quite a bit of a bite. So we figured, OK, this couldn't be too hard to launch. And just like that, one day we launched to go find me. We tried to raise funds and the response was astonishing. We raised over $15,000 in two days. And we kind of have just been growing since then.

PC: And so all the food comes from a local Montreal restaurants.

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: Exactly.

PC: And you pay the restaurants for the meals. You they do donate it, right?

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: Yeah, exactly. So some restaurants have offered to donate completely. And really we try to emphasize to them, I mean, if they really want to, we accept it. But we try to emphasize that while trying to support the health care workers, we're simultaneously trying to support these local restaurants. And we tried to tell them, like, you know, we've fundraised to be able to pay you for these meals. So we're happy to be able to give to you guys as well if it makes a Win-Win situation for both parties. And, you know, they're always like, so, so, so happy to hear that. I think everybody is really trying to show, like from the goodness of their heart what they're willing to contribute to community. But when you kind of encourage them and tell them that you can help them out as well, they're they've been really happy about that as well.

PC: The project is called Merci Meals. Thank you meals. Why did you want to call it that?

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: So we actually brainstormed for about a whole day. You know, we went through like supportive suppers or like Happy Meals or Meals on Wheels, like try to do a few spin offs on things we already knew. And ultimately, we ended up with messy meals that worked in French and English. Given that we're collaborating with both French and English hospitals and Montreal and it's all bilingual. So that that worked out nicely. And really what we wanted to say is like a thank you to the health care workers, you know, like they're working crazy hours. We're supplying everybody from doctors to admin to janitors to secretaries to nurses. So try to incorporate the whole health care team. And it was something that pretty much worked across the whole board. And just to give a big thank you to them and restaurants I think also like this idea of being able to provide for them as well. Like, it kind of has like a purpose in their deliveries too, so it worked out.

PC: And so as you say, this this came up, this idea between you and a couple of friends who who weren't allowed to go do their clinical rotations and it sort of grown from there. So take me through like how does this food from restaurants get to the hospitals, how many hospitals you're serving?

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: So we started as a group of three. But now we've expanded to a group of seven. So we all kind of have different tasks within within the organisation. So some of us are in charge of recruiting funds. Some of us are in charge of recruiting restaurants. Some of us are in charge of recruiting hospitals. So we kind of every day have like a daily check-in with each other and try to see where it's at. But right now, we've grown to about $30000, which is pretty impressive considering we really didn't expect any of that. We have about nine hospitals both on the English and the French side together and about 20 restaurants. So the way it was working out initially with the restaurants is we were reaching out to ones that we thought were posting on Instagram or Facebook that they were still running and having to do deliveries. And that's, you know, like business is still going. And we tried to offer it to them to see if they would be interested in participating. And then as we grew, restaurant started to reach out to us being like, listen, you know, like I had to lay off all of my employees. If you can give us an order, this would be so nice that we can bring them in. So that's been really, really nice. 'Cause when we get an order of 150 people, that restaurant can then bring in maybe three employees that they previously had to lay off. And now they can at least provide for that day. And it kind of pieces together nicely as well.

PC: And do you have any idea how many meals you are serving up each and every day?

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: Yeah. So the average I think so far we've done just short of 600 meals and we only officially started doing deliveries, I think on April 4th. So between then we kind of started off flow was like only. Twenty five meals that day, but now that we have a whole list of restaurants and a whole list of different units of the hospital, that it's a much easier matchmaking service. And it was initially we're providing around like a hundred meals per day, let's say on average, 60 meals per day easily.

PC: Wow. And as you said, you know, it's it's not just the doctors or the nurses. It's the cleaning staff or anyone really who is working in one of these nine hospitals that you're offering up food, food for. I know they are extraordinarily busy. I don't know how many of them you've heard from, but from those you have heard from. What have they said about what you're doing for them?

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: It's been really nice. They've been so, so, so happy. I know that I've gone into the hospital only a couple of times here and there since everything has been shut down. And the vibe of the hospital is just really, really different. Like there's there's no visitors in the hospital anymore. It's very, very, very quiet. It doesn't look like what it's typically been looking like. And they've all said right away that it's totally lifted the spirits of everybody on the ward and everybody in the ICU and everybody in an overnight E.R. shift. It just shows them like this is what they have told me, that the community really is supporting them, even if they don't always see it directly. Just a matter of fact, that people are willing to donate and restaurants are willing to gladly participate. They really feel like everybody has their back and it kind of gives them a little push for their shift. And they always send this pictures right after we do a delivery and some of them hold hard. Some of them are making funny faces with the food. And it's just been really, really nice because right away you feel like. You had their support and you made a difference right away.

PC: Melissa, thank you for helping your fellow health care workers and others who work in hospitals and health care centres. And thank you for joining me. I appreciate it.

MELISSA VITAGLIANO: Thank you so much.

PC: Melissa Vitagliano is one of the organizers of Mercy Meals, a group that works with local restaurants to provide meals to frontline workers in Montreal. So we have been asking you to send us requests for songs that bring you comfort during these times. Scott Merrifield of Sudbury wrote in with his comfort song. He writes, "I think I may have almost the perfect song for these difficult times. "O-o-h Child" written by Stan Vincent. The version I know well and prefer is by Nina Simone. Here you go, Scott.

[Song: "O-o-h Child" by Nina Simone]

PC: Little bit of "O-o-h Child" there for you all. Well, coming up, the host of Q Tom Power is going to be by with a couple of interviews, including a chat with iconic Canadian writer Douglas Copeland. They'll be talking about the slogans that define our time. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current. And we're back in just a little bit.

[Music]

Tom Power in conversation with Douglas Copeland, Ingrid Veninger, Eman El-Husseini and Jess Salomon

Guests: Tom Power, Douglas Copeland, Ingrid Veninger, Eman El-Husseini, Jess Salomon

PC: Hi again, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, in for Matt Galloway, and you're listening to an extended edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, we'll be checking in with a Canadian power comedy couple about going from New York City to rural Quebec to ride out the COVID crisis. But first, look who is here. It is Tom Power, host of Q. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: Piya, it's so nice to hear your voice. If I can't sit down and have a hotdog and a beer with you, which, you know, is my favourite thing to do, this is second best.

PC: Well, two things. First of all, favourite thing to do with me you mean, which is go to a Jays game and have a hotdog and a beer.

TOM POWER: Yeah or go to our neighbourhood bar where I often meet you and have a hotdog and a beer.

PC: That's true. I want to ask you how is she getting on? Is that right?

TOM POWER: That is. You're like you're like Ray guy. You are. You're incredible. You're like John effort. You're like.

PC: That's Newfoundlandese.

TOM POWER: You're like John Crosby. This is incredible. That is Newfoundlandese for yeah, how is she getting on means like, how are you?

PC: And how are you?

TOM POWER: Yeah. You know, pretty good. You know, another way we say that back home is how she cuttin?

PC: OK.

TOM POWER: And the answer is like the knife, which is pretty good, pretty good. Piya, so I should think of like a Saskatchewan style thing to ask you. Are you wearing a bunny hug?

PC: I just looked down. I am, strangely enough. I shouldn't say strangely enough. I am wearing a bunny hug, a.k.a. a hoodie. It says the six on it, which, of course, stands for Toronto for people outside of Toronto who may not know that. But yesterday, Tom, I wore another bunny hug. Yesterday was my weekly outing to the grocery store and I wore my Saskatchewan Roughriders hoodie and someone stopped me and said, I like those guys. And I said, yeah, me too. It was lovely. It was lovely.

TOM POWER: Is it called the bunny hug because the hood is kind of like a little bunny giving you a hug?

PC: I don't know. I've always known it as a bunny hug. Saskatchewan and Albertans tend to refer to hoodies as bunny hugs.

TOM POWER: I got one more question.

PC: Yeah.

TOM POWER: Does the CBC know they have two people from outside Ontario on the radio right now?

PC: Yes, but we both live in Toronto. So we're covered. OK. So we have business to take care of. That is, you bring Canadian artists and other artists to this program each and every day over the last number of days and moving forward. So you, as I understand it Tom, got to speak to a Canadian artistic icon. And for people of my age, it was sort of a hero when he penned his first novel, Generation X. Douglas Copeland, of course, for people who aren't familiar with that book. And I was thinking about it, Tom, and knowing that you're going to share an interview with him that you did, that if I remember Gen X correctly, the novel. I think the first part and in fact, I'm sure, it starts with a picnic, right? A bunch of friends sitting around having a picnic. And I was like, oh man a picnic, that'd be great to have right now. Can't do that.

TOM POWER: I love that you called Douglas Copeland an icon, because I also think of Douglas Copeland as a Canadian icon, like a legend, a real figure of Canadian art. Here's the best thing and maybe the most Canadian thing about Douglas Copeland. When he emails you to talk to you about his show, he goes, hey Tom, Doug from Vancouver here. Like yeah man, I know who you are. It's like saying, hey man, Justin from Stratford here. Like I know who you are bieber. We're not going to do that.

PC: Well, what did you, you didn't talk Gen X I'm assuiming?

TOM POWER: No, we talked about slogans. You know, a few years ago, he was putting together these things called slogans for the 21st century, stuff like I miss my pre-Internet brain or healthy people are bad for capitalism. So these were like these were comments on our society. So he's been bringing them back and he's been adding new slogans and retooling them to suit the current global pandemic crisis. I got to talk to Canadian icon Doug from Vancouver, Douglas Copeland, about this project and how he can soothe at a time like this. Here's our conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

[Tom Power's conversation with Douglas Copeland]

PC: Well, Tom, you and Doug from Vancouver had a lovely conversation. Douglas Copeland, of course. And you, way to go. Nice interview.

TOM POWER: Dougie from Vancity, I call him.

PC: On another note, you have another conversation you wanna share with us, right? This is another Canadian artist.

TOM POWER: Yeah. Ingrid Veninger, actor, producer, director, professor. She started a new international film project called, now brace yourself, Exquisite Cadaver Project, an international collaboration. Ten female filmmakers from all around the world creating a 10 minute short film, creating sort of a filmmaking chain to unite them during this time of isolation. What that means is they each make ten minutes of a film. They send them to one person that all get stitched together to make a snapshot of how the pandemic is being felt in their house around the world. It sounds very, very cool. It is, you know, I'm really excited about it. And really, it's more of a conversation about how creative people are making stuff work right now from tatters and rags and limited resources. Here's our conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

[Tom Power's conversation with Ingrid Veninger]

PC: That's Tom Power, host of Q, speaking with actor and filmmaker Ingrid Veninger. And before you go, Tom, it's the long weekend. We have some time to play some music. So I know a lot of people have been making pandemic playlists and all these kinds of things. Is there one artist or song that you find comforting during these times other than John Prine, who I know you have been listening to a lot since his passing the other day?

TOM POWER: Yeah, I know. John Prine, obviously a big part of my life, big favourite in your house as well, from what I understand.

PC: He is, yeah.

TOM POWER: I've been listening to those who have been influenced by him because, you know, there is that saying that no, as long as your presence is felt, as long as someone is still saying your name, you're never really dead. So I've been thinking a lot about the artists who have been greatly influenced by John Prine. And this is perhaps one of my favourites right now. This is a guy named Tyler Childers. This song is called "Peace of Mind.".

PC: All right, Tom, let's have a listen. Thanks a lot, eh.

TOM POWER: Piya, take care. Stay in your most comfortable bunny hug and I'll see you soon I hope.

PC: Yeah, big virtual hugs.

TOM POWER: Bye, buddy.

[Song: "Peace of Mind" by Tyler Childers"]

PC: Well, for listeners in Newfoundland and Labrador, Cross-talk is up next. For everyone else, we're back in 90 seconds. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Matt Galloway, and you're listening to an extended edition of The Current.

[Music]

PC: So before we go, I want to leave you with a conversation that the host of Q, Tom Power, had with power comedy couple, Eman El-Husseini and Jess Salomon. They moved from Canada to two New York City in 2016 and they have been headlining comedy festivals and performing in clubs. But now the married couple find themselves back in Canada in rural Quebec, after finally making the decision to leave New York last week. Here's their conversation with Tom Power.

SOUNDCLIP

[Tom Power's conversation with Eman El-Husseini and Jess Salomon]

PC: That is Tom Power, the host of Q, in conversation with Eman El-Husseini and Jess Salomon. That is The Current for today. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. Joim me Wednesday evening for a CBC special: COVID in Canada, a CBC News Virtual Town Hall. If you live in Quebec or West, it will be at 7:00 p.m. local time. And if you're in the Atlantic provinces, it airs at 8:00 p.m. That is Wednesday night. Matt Galloway is back here on The Current tomorrow. Thank you for listening to this extended edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Apr. 13, 2020 episode transcript

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