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The Current Transcript for September 6, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

We had been on the run from the mafia. And that's why we had disappeared twice. And so the mafia was an ongoing threat in our lives.

ANNA MRIA TREMONTI: As a young girl she had come to expect her mother's sometimes erratic behavior. A single mom with two kids warning not to tell, layers of secrecy, sudden moves where they couldn't say goodbye. But in her 20s she was trusted with her mom's story of the mob and the people trying to protect her from them. And then her life took an even more troubling and secretive turn and there were body doubles, secret codes, more warnings. And that's not the half of it. Today Pauline Dakin recounts a tale of suspense and heartache. Her own story. And yes that Pauline Dakin the one you've heard for years as a health reporter for CBC Radio. Hear her in half an hour. And:

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Nuclear powers understand their responsibilities. Kim Jong Un shows no such understanding. His abusive use of missiles and his nuclear threats show that he is begging for war.

AMT: The tone is measured but there is no mistaking U.S. anger over North Korea's brazen test launch of a powerful nuclear weapon. And it's all complicated by growing fears in both South Korea and Japan that their current arrangements for nuclear protection from the U.S. may not be reliable. Are we about to see a new nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia? And to what end? We're starting there. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Nuclear weapons for South Korea may be 'only answer': political expert

Guest: Doug Bandow, Michael Auslin, Thomas Berger

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The recent self defense measures by my country DPRK are gift package for the rest to none other than the US. The US will receive more gift packages from my country. As long as it's rely on reckless provocations and futile attempt to put pressure on the DPRK.

AMT: Chilling words yesterday from North Korea's ambassador to the UN, Han Tae-Song. The gift package to which he refers is his country's nuclear test last weekend, with a bomb is said to be eight times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, in the Second World War. Tensions are escalating daily in that region and the calls for ramped up diplomacy and sanctions are being heard as usual. But as the situation becomes more serious, we're also hearing something new; calls for South Korea to go nuclear and arm itself in the face of a rogue nuclear North Korea. Doug Bandow is a senior fellow specializing in foreign policy at the libertarian think tank the CATO Institute. He joins us from Lincoln, Nebraska. Hello.

DOUG BANDOW: Hi there. How are you doing?

AMT: Well I'm curious. 1991 was the last year the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons were stationed in South Korea. Should South Korea be reconsidering this?

DOUG BANDOW: Well you know war and nuclear weapons are present doesn't really change the U.S. ability to use them. So, it's a question of symbolism more than kind of substance. They feel more secure. They think that it sends a signal to North Korea. I'm not convinced it changes the calculus very much but that's the way the South Koreans are looking at it.

AMT: It's interesting we just heard the defense minister the other day saying they should review putting the nuclear weapons back on their territory, and then the day later he kind of changed his mind. What was that about?

DOUG BANDOW: It remains a fairly you know kind of controversial subject there, in part because the new president is more a man of the left who is you know in the past has favored engagement with the North. He's not somebody mean - there's more of a nationalist sense there. Do you want to turn security over to the United States? A certain number of folks who are anti-nuclear themselves don't like to see US weapons there. So there was a politics there that's fairly kind of dicey internally. I suspect the defense minister may very well have spoken on his own and then gotten a phone call from the president suggesting that he backed down a little bit.

AMT: Well that kind of tells us what's going on internally, I guess then, in the way they're thinking. So what do you think? Should South Korea have its own nuclear arsenal?

DOUG BANDOW: Well I think that what the U.S. needs to do is open that discussion. The challenge here is that if you assume the north will eventually have, not only nuclear weapons but missiles that can hit the United States. Is the U.S. really prepared to lose Los Angeles and Seattle to protect Seoul? And I'm not convinced that's the case in that point. South Koreans have to look at that and start wondering if the U.S. is really willing to back them up. And the U.S. has to ask does it want to be the backup in that case. You know nuclear weapons for the south might be the only answer. I mean my hope would be that the discussion itself would get the attention of the Chinese, that they would see that recognize this is serious realize that it could go to Japan as well. And understand that it's in China's interest to act more forcefully to ensure this doesn't go any further.

AMT: Well let's talk about other countries. I have a clip from yesterday. The U.N. Security Council held its second emergency meeting in less than a week over the North Korean threat. The U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres was talking. Listen to what he says in this clip.

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The solution must be political. The potential consequences of military action are too horrific. As Secretary General, I am ready to support any efforts towards a peaceful solution of this alarming situation. I mean as I said at the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

AMT: What do you think of that Doug Bandow?

DOUG BANDOW: He's right. The problem here is you know, what's the political solution? I was actually in North Korea back in June. I mean they're very insistent they're not going to give up nuclear weapons. And they're entirely rational. I mean it's an evil regime but that doesn't mean they're suicidal. They look at Afghanistan. They look at Iraq. And frankly they look at Libya, where the dictator in their view was dumb enough to give up his nuclear weapons and missiles and look what happened to him. He got taken out. So say they see this development as building a deterrent gives them status gives them defense. They're not interested in giving it away. So the question is then what's your political solution and that's the challenge we face. You know, can you get additional sanctions? Will that change their perspective? And frankly at the moment the political solution doesn't look very good, other than the fact that war is utterly horrific and to my mind you know inconceivable. You end up with the destruction of Seoul, South Korea, you get a real war on the Korean peninsula. No one wants that.

AMT: Well we just heard today in the news Vladimir Putin saying that he's not going to go along with the cutting off of oil supplies so that's the sanction question right there.

DOUG BANDOW: Yeah the really the two toughest sanctions would be cutting off energy and cutting off food. And if you want to bring North Korea to its knees you do that. They might, they still might not concede. I mean the late 1990s about a half million North Koreans died in a famine, that had nothing to do with sanctions, but the regime didn't change course. I mean a half million people died. You know they're quite willing to sacrifice their population. But if you don't go after oil and food you know the regime I think can maintain its current policies and will continue building nuclear weapons and missiles.

AMT: Okay, so let's get back to that what should South Korea do in your view?

DOUG BANDOW: Well I think that a number of things need to be done. One of which is the South Koreans themselves have to look at the current situation and realize they need to do more militarily because they are vulnerable to American decision making. They're the big player in this politically even though they have much more at stake. I think the engagement with China has to be much more serious. They have genuine security issues at stake. You know so the U.S. can't simply order them around. It's a question of making a deal with them. They don't want a failed state and frankly they don't want a united Korea allied with America and U.S. troops on their border. So the U.S. I think needs to discuss this and say if there's reunification U.S. troops go home. If there is mass refugee flows the U.S. helps pay. I mean we need to engage as opposed to simply tell them what we want. They know that's not the way to get Beijing to help out.

AMT: And for South Korea could you could we see the start of a new nuclear arms race?

DOUG BANDOW: Yes. I mean what's interesting is that there's much more sentiment for that in South Korea than in Japan if it happened in South Korea, I think it would force a discussion in Japan. But back in the 1960s Park Chung hee. You know the dictator at the time started the nuclear program when the U.S. put pressure on him to cut it off. But they've had presidential candidates who supported the idea, they have folks in the National Assembly who support the idea. It's talked about in the media. They have think tanks support. So South Koreans are talking about this in a way that we haven't seen in other countries in Asia. I think you could see greater support for it is still controversial. It doesn't mean the current president wants that. But I do think the political atmosphere in Seoul is changing.

AMT: Okay, Doug Bandow, thanks for your perspective on this.

DOUG BANDOW: Happy to be on. Take care.

AMT: Doug Bandow senior fellow specializing in foreign policy at the CATO Institute. He's in Lincoln, Nebraska. There are lots of views on this question of nuclear weapons for South Korea. Michael Auslin is the Williams-Griffiss Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. His most recent book is The End of the Asian Century Wars Stagnation and the Risks to the World's Most Dynamic Region. And we have reached him in Washington D.C. Hi.

MICHAEL AUSLIN: Good morning.

AMT: Let's talk about the risks to this dynamic region. First of all what are you thinking as you listen to Doug Bandow?

MICHAEL AUSLIN: Well I think Doug is right, as most analysts are, that you know we face no good options with North Korea. I mean I think we have to start from the recognition that this is what a quarter century of diplomatic failure looks like. These are extraordinarily complicated problems that no U.S. administration, Democratic or Republican, has really figured out a credible way of dealing with. Because if you think about it we were basically at the point where every president said we wouldn't get to which is a nuclear North Korea. Once you're there, I think your options are extraordinarily limited. It seems to me that there is no rational reason to believe that Kim Jong Un will ever give up these weapons short of compulsion. And compulsion of course means the use of force. We've tried coercion that doesn't work. We've tried bribery that doesn't work, and we've certainly tried engagement and that doesn't work. So all of the the options that are out there on the table, Doug talked about, working with China which we certainly need to try to do. I'm not very optimistic about it but we certainly need to try to do that. There are options. People are calling for forgetting about denuclearization, which I think is right. But then they're calling for a freeze. Freezes are very hard to verify and implement on the ground. And then there are others who say we should be preparing for an attack which would not remove this this nuclear and ballistic missile program. So really we're out of good ideas.

AMT: Who would be attacked?

MICHAEL AUSLIN: Well they're talking about trying to remove North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, saying that you know if we cannot reach a satisfactory solution we cannot live in the shadow of a North Korean nuke. Therefore try to remove that but yeah attack North Korea. You cannot do that anymore, 1994 maybe, not today.

AMT: Is there any merit to the U.S. stepping away and letting South Korea take more responsibility for deterrence in that region?

MICHAEL AUSLIN: It is it's an extremely difficult question. There is, I believe there will be a growing call for that in the United States as people begin to question why the security guarantee that Washington has given to Seoul for 60 years now is a good deal for the U.S. if it faces a nuclear North Korea. They're going to look at the size of the South Korean economy and say look it's a one point three trillion dollar economy. It's the 11th largest economy in the world. Why should we be offering an extended deterrence, you know, the nuclear umbrella guarantee to that economy? As it stands, South Korea already has the primary responsibility for defending itself, where the United States comes in is at the higher levels so to speak of nuclear deterrence, of strategic options such as bombers that South Korea doesn't have, or in the end of the day nuclear missiles. So it's not that if you get into some type of conflict with North Korea that it's all the US's responsibility right away, that's not the issue. South Korea would be the primary combatant on the peninsula. But it all changes when you're talking about a nuclear North Korea. And I and I fear that those questions actually will rise up much more strongly in the United States because the foreign policy community has not actually articulated the reasons why the United States should put itself at an order to defend to defend its ally. And this is a hard case I think, in the case of South Korea, not because we want to walk away from allies, but because when we gave security guarantees back in the 1950s and 60s. Going forward it was and it was in the Cold War it was when we faced an ideological threat, an existential political threat, and we don't face that with North Korea. Pyongyang is not Moscow and so therefore it's harder to make the case that you should accept this type of risk. But that's where we're at because the policy of denuclearization has failed.

AMT: So I'll ask you what I asked my last guest: If this failure continues on this track, are we looking at an arms race?

MICHAEL AUSLIN: Well we already have an arms race. You know South Korea just yesterday announced jointly with us that the limit on the size of warheads that it can put on its own rockets, its own missiles will be lifted. So it's going to be putting larger and more powerful warheads on its rockets. Of course South Korea wants to buy the F-35.

AMT: But you're not talking nuclear warheads, are you?

MICHAEL AUSLIN: Not yet. No. No, conventional. So to your point we are already in an arms race. The question is do we get to a nuclear arms race? And I think that if the United States alters that security guarantee then South Korea most likely will feel it has no choice but to go nuclear, and if it does then Japan certainly will. Japan is not going to live in a neighborhood where China, South Korea, and North Korea have nuclear weapons and it doesn't.

AMT: Well I'm going to pick up on that last point with our next guest. I'll let you go and we'll look at Japan and all of this. Thank you very much Michael.

MICHAEL AUSLIN: Thank you.

AMT: That's Michael Auslin Inaugural Williams-Griffiss Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He joins us from Washington D.C.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: They said I want Japan to nuke. I want Japan to get nuclear weapons. Give me a break. North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea. Maybe they would be better off, including with nukes, yes.

AMT: Candidate Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year with a differing opinion on whether Japan should develop nuclear weapons. Yesterday President Trump tweeted he is allowing both Japan and South Korea to “buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States”. For more on the question of a nuclear Japan I'm joined by Thomas Berger. He is a professor in international relations at Boston University. That's where we've reached him, hello.

THOMAS BERGER: Good morning.

AMT: First of all, what does that tweet from the president mean? He's allowing Japan and South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the U.S.

THOMAS BERGER: Well I think that that's more of an appeal to his constituency. He wants to always show that he's making good deals for the American people and for the American economy. In reality the Japanese and the Koreans already rely heavily on American equipment and I don't think that much is going to be changing on that front.

AMT: And so given the increased nuclear threat coming from North Korea, what do you think about the musings in Washington saying Japan needs its own nuclear weapons?

THOMAS BERGER: Well I think that's certainly a discussion that we need to have and that we need to have with Japan and with South Korea, and also very important the other players in the region. In particular, the People's Republic of China needs to know that if this is the direction that the region is evolving that they are going to have to also look at the possibility of renuclearization of the region, redeployment of U.S. strategic or nuclear weapons in the region and also the expansion of a Japanese and Korean nuclear option. Now Japan and South Korea both countries which are already in a position to develop nuclear weapons of their own. If North Korea can do it - if it's broken down rather pitiful economy, believe me, both South Korea and Japan can do it. Japan in fact is sitting on several tons of plutonium which could be used pretty readily for nuclear weapons if they so desire to do it. But they don't do it and that is they are very good reasons for it., both global and regional. Globally of course we are trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons capability around the world. During the Cold War, there were approximately five powers which were recognized nuclear powers. What's the trend now is towards more countries developing it. I mean if India and Pakistan got nuclear weapons in the late 1990s, Israel of course long had that capacity, Iran was moving in that direction North Korea's de facto nuclear weapon power. And the more countries around the world are just stepping away from the region who have nuclear weapons capabilities. The more different kinds of political dynamics, geopolitical dynamics are at play and sooner or later you're going to have a very real possibility that one of these weapons is going to be used again for the first time since 1945.

AMT: Okay, so, the discussion now going on about whether South Korea and Japan should join that list. Is part of this related to fears that the U.S. could just cut them loose?

THOMAS BERGER: Well I think your first guest Doug Bandow had it exactly right. The minute that North Korea is in the position to launch an attack on American cities there is the danger of what we used to call during the Cold War the risk of decoupling, that is will the United States really be willing to trade Chicago for Tokyo? Or Seattle for Seoul? And the honest answer to that is probably not.

AMT: And is that realistic? Is that is that a good question for a military strategist? Is that what they would be trading?

THOMAS BERGER: Well that's in fact the question that is being asked in Tokyo in Seoul right now, as the North Koreans move towards a capability. Another way to deal with that issue is to create a escalation ladder and to create you know increase the probability that nuclear weapons would be used against North Korea in retaliation for their actions. Now that does mean that these countries have to acquire their own nuclear weapons. I think one thing which I would sort of differ a little bit with your first guest Doug Bandow on is that there are a range of options. It's not just whether the Koreans and the Japanese should have nuclear weapons or not but whether they should have the ability to be equipped with nuclear weapons very quickly in a crisis.

AMT: Okay. And so we just saw you know this big test launch a few days ago. What can we expect Japan to do if there's another missile launch like that?

THOMAS BERGER: Well I think the Japanese are moving towards - you know trying to make sure that the United States does not detach itself from the region, in the ways that both Michael Auslin and Doug Bandow warned about. They want us to be strongly committed. They want us to continue to put pressure on North Korea and also on China, which is the largest trading partner of North Korea, to reverse that program. And if that program proves not to be reversible then they will probably want to have both increased missile defense systems and a strengthened U.S. nuclear deterrent.

AMT: Okay. Thomas Berger we have to leave it there. Thank you for your thoughts on this.

THOMAS BERGER: Pleasure to talk to you.

AMT: Thomas Berger, professor of international relations at Boston University. He joined us from Boston. Well, let us know what you think about that. You can tweet us. We are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and stay with us the CBC News is next. And then sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

SOUNDCLIP

I could hear my pulse as silence descended between us like a wall. My mother suddenly felt like a stranger whose intentions were unclear.

AMT: Former CBC reporter Pauline Dakin tells the tale of her real life family mystery. A memoir with twists and turns worthy of a thriller. She's up next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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This author believed her family was fleeing the Mafia. Then she uncovered the real story

Guest: Pauline Dakin

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Up next, run, hide, repeat.

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PAULINE DAKIN: Pauline Dakin. CBC News, Halifax.

ANNOUNCER: We're starting with the CBC's Pauline Dakin.

PAULINE DAKIN: Pauline Dakin. CBC News, Halifax.

AMT: If you are a regular CBC listener you're likely familiar with Pauline Dakin’s name and voice. It's safe to say you don't know her story. The long-time CBC reporter producer and host is now an assistant professor at the University of King's College School of Journalism, but she's also been at work reporting her own life story in a new book Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood. It tells a gripping story of a childhood spent on the run. And there are some incredible twists as this tale unfolds. Twice without any notice, Pauline's mother moved her and her brother across the country, wrenching them from their daily lives with no explanation. There are odd unexplained events; breakings, car thefts and a palpable sense that something menacing is looming over their life. But just who or what, were always questions that remained unanswered, until one day in 1988 when a 23 year old Pauline Dakin met her mother at the Bluebird hotel in Sussex New Brunswick. Here is Pauline Dakin reading from her book:

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PAULINE DAKIN: I walked over to mum's car and got and said hello, leaning across for a hug. She held me just a bit longer, tighter than normal. As she pulled back, her smile was sad almost apologetic. She handed me a note and an empty envelope. She put one finger over her lips hushing me although I wasn't speaking. She pointed at the note. Puzzled, I unfolded it and read in her distinctive handwriting: “Don't say anything. Take all your jewelry off and put it in the envelope. Don't talk until we get out of the car again. I will explain.”

AMT: Pauline Dakin reading from her book. Pauline Dakin joins me from our Halifax studio. Hi.

PAULINE DAKIN: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What was it that your mother had to say to you that day at the Bluebird motel?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well she was there with a long-time family friend, who surprised me with his presence as well. They sat me down and they told me that all the odd things that had happened, while I was growing up and when my brother was growing up, was because we had been on the run from the mafia. And that's why we had disappeared twice. That's why we would suddenly without notice go on a hiking trip. “Oh! But we're missing school. Oh it's kay.” So strange things happen. And so the Mafia had was an ongoing threat in our lives and part of the reason for that, they told me was that my father had been involved in the Mafia in Vancouver.

AMT: So much to absorb.

PAULINE DAKIN: [Chuckles] Oh yes.

AMT: Why did she have you hand over your jewelry?

PAULINE DAKIN: Because there was concern that perhaps there would be listening devices in my jewelry, particularly the jewelry that had been a gift from my father or his wife.

AMT: Okay now you mention there was a family friend there, Stan Sears. Tell us a little bit about who Stan was and what role he played in this.

PAULINE DAKIN: I first knew Stan Sears as the minister at a United Church we started going to when I was six. You know this really kind of outgoing friendly guy. And what I didn't know was at the time my mother was in the process of leaving my dad. She was very fearful. He was alcoholic and so she had gone to Al-Anon and she was suffering from depression. At Al-Anon somebody said “well you really need to go and see Stan Sears. He works with a lot of the family members and he's a really great guy and we think he can help you.” And she did that and sure enough over about six months her depression began to lift and she could see the way forward. And she did leave my dad. Then she needed to get work so she became his secretary for a period of time. His other one had retired. And so she filled in.

AMT: I should stop you. He was a clergyman?

PAULINE DAKIN: He was a clergyman. He was with the United Church of Canada. Also he had some training in psychology. And so that was you know why he was used in the community as a counselor as well. And so that night, when I was 23 in the motel room trying to make sense of all of this, I kept saying why us? But why us? And so Stan told me the story about how, before he'd ever met my mother, he had been doing counseling with somebody who'd been involved at a high level with the mob on the waterfront in Vancouver. And he'd been counseling this man who was regretful and repentful and wanted to change his life and the Mafia found out and they killed him. And so that's how Stan had come to the Mafia's attention. Then when my mother began going to him for counseling and then working for him, what he said was that the Mafia realized or felt that my mother was sharing information and that they were probably going to authorities with information about them.

AMT: And again, because your father was involved they said in with the Mafia as well.

PAULINE DAKIN: That was the thinking that because you know my mother would have information, supposedly from the time they were together, that she would be sharing that information with Stan.

AMT: And the story they told you became even more complex. What was the place of hope?

PAULINE DAKIN: The place of hope was a shadowy secretive - we called it inside. We called it the weird world. So what it was kind of a very secret penal institution that was only for people who were arrested because of their involvement with organized crime. And what they told me was that this organization reported only to the Privy Council. It received its funding through military budgets that people who were arrested and imprisoned there were tried by military tribunals. So that was a penal part of the place. But also we know he called it inside because it was also a place where people whose lives had gotten caught up with the mafia through no fault of their own, but who had become targets of the Mafia could be taken there for their own safety. They could go inside to be safe. And by the time Stan was telling me this he was telling me that he had gone inside. He'd been a big target because he told me he'd started to work with the weird world, this group the anti-organized crime task force. So he'd gone to work with them and become even more of a target. And therefore my family was even more of a target.

AMT: And so he told you he had protectors.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. So part of what the weird world did was provide protection for people like my family who had for some reason become targets. And so I was asked would I agree to have locating be beacon put on my car, so that they could the people who protected me and followed me, what they called my coverage, would have an easier time keeping track of me and making sure everything was okay around me. I was given a special little radio, looked just like a little transistor radio from the 70s, and I was instructed on a way that I could put the settings to call for help if I've ever felt my life was in danger.

AMT: And he communicated with these protectors. How did he do that?

PAULINE DAKIN: I called it the butt receiver. He had a vibrator, a little vibration tool, in the lining of his wallet and he could get messages through that. You know it would be kind of like the Morse Code of vibration in his wallet pocket.

AMT: And you saw him actually take notes from this. What was that like? What would you do?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well as things went on, and sometimes I would end up being asked to go on the run with Stan and mom, because something was going on that was threatening. I would see him occasionally pull a notepad and start making all of these notes in numbers and letters, and then he would sort of figure out the message afterwards. He'd look, decipher and figure it out and come back with a message.

AMT: So they told you this one night, in this motel, totally by surprise, you were not expecting this. How did you react to all of it?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well you know I was a young journalist but I did understand you know the value of critical thinking and healthy skepticism. My first reaction was you're crazy. This is crazy. Nobody can keep this kind of a secret. A world like that would not be kept secret. So you know that was my initial reaction and then I started to think “Well. God! if this is true? Maybe I should go to Australia. Maybe I could get lost somewhere in the world. I don't want this to be part of my life.” The other thing that Mum had told me was that she was getting ready to go inside, that she wanted to go inside. After so many years on the run she was exhausted and that was her plan. But you know as my thinking evolved, during that weekend but also in the weeks that followed, I just had to think that you know here these two people, good people. People who were very idealistic, who were doing good things in the community, who showed nothing but empathy and for the world around them, and they had been the two people I could most trust in my life. They were always there for me Stan ultimately had become like a father to me and they never once in my life let me down. And I thought “Wow! If I can't believe these two people, of all people, the game is over anyway.” You know what's the point of anything? And so I eventually decided I had to believe this because of who was telling it to me. I was never without doubts. You know I struggled with that, mightily, but I always came back to that; it is Stan and Mom and I trust them.

AMT: Now your parents were divorced. What was your relationship like with your dad during your childhood?

PAULINE DAKIN: My dad was alcoholic, so there were periods of time I didn't see him. And he struggled with that disease. When there were some court ordered visitation - My father and mother had been in a very long and ugly court battle over access and child support payments and so on. So that for a period of time I did see him before we left Vancouver. But then that summer, that we supposedly went on vacation to the prairies, we didn't tell him. We told him we're going on vacation but then we never went back and we didn't talk to him again, for a very long time. So I for great parts of my life I had no relationship with my dad.

AMT: And tell me a little bit more about your childhood, about the sense of fear in your childhood.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yeah you know there was always a sense that something was wrong but we could never put our finger on it. My brother [unintelligible] this. “What do you think this is all about,” because even if we were just going on a vacation or out for dinner, we were just always told “You can't. Don't talk about this. Don't tell anybody this.” Why can't we tell the simplest things in our lives. So there was this sense of secretiveness all the time and that something bad was going on.

AMT: Give me an example of some of the unexplained or disturbing events that you saw as a child.

PAULINE DAKIN: Well one time I came home from school and we were very quickly ushered out the door and told that we couldn't be in the house because the furnace was malfunctioning. And then went on that weekend in at the Bluebird motel. I was told now; I remember that well what was actually happening is that people were coming after us. So we were getting everybody out to be safe. And I guess you know the one that that really rattled me was one time when we came home and we were told “Well we're going over to the Sears for a sleepover.” So the other thing you need to know is that every time we disappeared, Stan and his wife disappeared with us. That of course always seemed very strange. We were moving around the country in lockstep. So this was in Winnipeg and we were told we were going to their house for a sleepover, which seemed odd because it was a school night and I didn't realize that adults did sleepovers like that. So we had this very strange dinner and then went to bed. And I was just going to sleep when there was this terrible ruckus in the basement. It sounded like things being thrown around. It sounded like a big fight. And I put the light on. I was so scared. It was that moment where it like in a nightmare, where you know somebody is coming at you and you can't run because you're frozen. I was frozen with fear. And mom came into my room. Ted was in the room across the hall and stand and Sibyl were out in the hallway. And they came in they said: “It's okay, It's the dog, the dog is all upset.” And that just did not make any sense with what I was hearing. Then of course, years later, I was told about that that the Italian Mafia people had actually come across the pond and come after us. And there were some of the good guys, our guys, our coverage was waiting in the basement. And what I heard was the Mafia guys come in through the window and our guys fighting them off, and that in fact people were killed that night.

AMT: Hmm. And Sibyl, is Sibyl Sears, his wife.

PAULINE DAKIN: That's right.

AMT: And again, these were all events that you remember from your childhood, but that night in the motel, they tell you this is why. They can actually point to things that now make some kind of sense to you.

PAULINE DAKIN: Right. Yes. You know, [chuckles] as mom said: “You know you always wanted to know, well here it comes.” And that was part of the reason that you know it's so strange but it makes some kind of sense when those puzzle pieces all start coming together. And there is an explanation for so many things that were so strange.

AMT: Okay, so you're 23 years old and you find this out. You're working at the Telegraph journal right out of St. John, at the time.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes.

AMT: Okay. And so after you know this, and the years immediately after your mom and Stan make this revelation to you, what is your life like?

PAULINE DAKIN: Increasingly my life felt is just completely irrelevant. I just couldn't talk to anybody about any of this, and this was taking up a large base in my head. I was afraid. I was told that people were following me, for my protection, but that still felt creepy. And of course I was always trying to spot them. And I never knew, you know, when somebody might be coming after me. So, I regarded the world with a lot of suspicion. I still had some doubts that I was struggling with that but you know deciding that I had to take this seriously, in case.

AMT: And you couldn't talk to anybody. You were living with a boyfriend at the time, but you couldn't tell him anything.

PAULINE DAKIN: I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell my best friends. I was told: “You can't tell anybody this. It could put people's lives in jeopardy.” So I told nobody and I found myself increasingly isolated and somehow the idea that I would go to work and go cover some council meeting, or school board meeting, or something, just I thought: “What's the point of all that?” It just seems so irrelevant when all of this big threatening crazy stuff was going on in the background.

AMT: And you've still got this little device he gave you. You're putting it in every purse. You move it around. You keep it with you in case you need to call for help.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yup. It was always there. I was told never to be outdoors without it.

AMT: And so now you know, and you're part of the inside knowledge and things are still happening. Give me example. There's one really is at the front of my mind. The story of the boat full of injured and dying refugees who have been trafficked. What was the story? What happened?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well, we were on the run. Stan was visited- By this time he had retired to the west coast and then gone inside. But he was back and out and visiting and we were asked to leave town. So he and moment I got in the car and drove to Cape Breton. I was told that that was good because rural areas it was easier to keep us safe, with fewer people around. So we were up there and suddenly I could see him taking notes and that there was something going on. This was quite a frequent occurrence. You know he would be getting messages. Sometimes the message was: “Take the next right. We're checking out a car behind you to see if they follow”, that kind of thing. This time he was obviously very upset and he said that he was getting messages that a ship had been found floating just off the coast of Nova Scotia, and when it was boarded they found that it was - He called it a death ship. It was a bunch of illegal immigrants who had been in the U.S. who had had their organs harvested. They'd been kidnapped for the black market in organs. And so that when they went on board that ship, we were told that there were people who were dead because all their organs were gone. There were people who were dying and there were people below in a hold that didn't know what was going on. And something there had been surgeons on board, you know, organized crime people who had been scared off and had just left the boat to drift.

AMT: That that's just like so upsetting and you're a reporter you can't churn out obviously either, right?

PAULINE DAKIN: Right. Oh there were so many times that there were stories that I thought: “Oh my gosh! I can make my career with this story. You know this is amazing.” But no I couldn't tell.

AMT: And so Stan is living in B.C. because he's living in the Place of Hope, but he comes back. And what's the explanation that the feds are paying for him to come back?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. You know he became - His work with this organization got to be a bigger and bigger part of his life, and he became a leader in that community and that the government he worked within that military budget. And so that's how he got around. There was an aircraft - military aircraft that he called the bird - and he would sometimes fly in on the bird. And other times he would take, what he called very risky, commercial flights. And so he would be spending time here quite frequently.

AMT: And by this time you know and they are very open with the fact that your mom and Stan are in a relationship. They've fallen in love.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Yes.

AMT: And Stan has a wife but she, you're told, knows this, or that issue had been dealt with long ago kind of thing.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. That they had gone back to retire. He had bought her a place on the west coast and then gone inside and that their relationship ended when he went inside, because she didn't want to. She wanted to stay outside.

AMT: And morphing into one other point of this, Pauline. Your dad was an investment guy. And one of the things they also told you was that he had put your name as part of that sort of in his work with the mob, that you were listed in something that was related to the mob, which is why you were vulnerable as well. Am I right?

PAULINE DAKIN: That was part of it, that a number of money laundering businesses and that kind of thing had been put in my name and my brother's name. And there was the expectation that we would join that business, that we would become part of organized crime with our dad. And we were told that our half brother and sister had been before us, and that many people we'd known around us had also been involved. You know people that were around my dad. So yeah that there was an expectation that we would get brought in.

AMT: And some of those people started writing to you.

PAULINE DAKIN: Well the people who started writing to me were people who had been involved and then been arrested and taken to the Weird World and they were imprisoned in the Weird World. And then some of them had ultimately changed and became trusted and began to do jobs in the Weird World. I received letters and lots of them from people who had known me as a small child. They were writing to ask me to forgive them for the things that they'd been involved in, that had harmed my family and sent us running.

AMT: And they knew things about you as a child. They were very familiar letters.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. You know I had letters from people who had been neighbors, my godparents, my half siblings who I was told had been arrested and now we're there. Yes, people who knew things about me.

AMT: Your brother doesn't know anything yet.

PAULINE DAKIN: Not yet.

AMT: Okay. So they've told you this story about the mafia and they made it clear that you two are a target. And, at some point, you realize you should go into permanent hiding with Stan and your mom to this Place of Hope. That was pretty drastic turn for somebody so young to think that you have to go into hiding permanently like that.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes it was. It was definitely desperation. You know I just found it so difficult to live a normal life when I knew, or I was always being told, about all these things other things going on around me. As I say, it isolated me it made me feel distant from the people in my life. It made my life's work feel less relevant to me. And I thought “Oh. What the hell I'm going inside”. You know and I was told that there would be work for me there and that there was a community of people that would welcome me. I was told there would be a horse for me [laughs], because Stan knew I really liked horses when I was young. And you know, I would be welcomed.

AMT: Pauline Dakin, we're going to have to pause here. There's a whole lot more to your story. And in fact, there is another twist to this story of so many twists. We'll get to that in our next half hour. I am speaking with Pauline Dakin in Halifax. Her new book is called Run Hide Repeat a Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood and we're going to pick up her incredible story right after the break. Visit our website if you want to see some photos from Pauline cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is the current Pauline will be back with me right after the break.

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AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. If you're just joining us I'm speaking with former CBC journalist, Pauline Dakin, about her childhood which was spent on the run, and the revelation at age 23. Her family had been a target of the Mafia. She's sharing her story for the first time in her book Run hide Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive childhood. And if you missed the first part of our conversation, you can find it on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can also find it on our podcast or on the CBC Radio app. So here we are after a childhood full of questions, sudden moves across the country, a sense that something is wrong, the revelation that the mob is after them. That seems to explain a lot about Pauline Dakin’s childhood. But there's still more to this story and Pauline Dakin is in our Halifax studio. Hello again.

PAULINE DAKIN: Hi Anna-Marie.

AMT: So you've been told this incredible story, of your mom being on the run with you kids, you and your brother your younger brother, and your childhood on the run from the mob. Something isn't sitting right with you. You have doubts about their story.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Always there were doubts. When that happened, you know, it was a terrible agony. Do I believe these people that I trust, who have never given me any reason not to trust them? In fact, quite the opposite, have been the most reliable people in my life. And so I kept coming back to that. But you know as we would be running together, we'd be traveling to get away from some kind of threat. I began to notice strange little inconsistencies and little patterns that just alerted me that something wasn't quite right. And Stan knew so much, had so many stories about this what had gone on in the weird world, and all the people who lived there. It just seemed incomprehensible that anybody could make this stuff up but something wasn't quite right.

AMT: Hmm. But at the same time, like a couple of years are going by. You are trying to live your life. You get engaged. Your brother eventually finds out about this.

PAULINE DAKIN: And I did not go inside and my mother did not go inside. We were told it was because there were threats that either one of us disappeared again that our remaining family on the west coast would suffer for it. So yes, we were still outside for a long period of time and I had begun to lose hope that that would ever happen.

AMT: And as you do that you start looking at these inconsistencies again, and that brings us to another part of this story the truth. When did you seriously doubt the story your mom and Stan were telling you?

PAULINE DAKIN: There were a number of incidents that built the case, I guess. I told you about the little radio that I was given, and my brother was given the same radio. He and his wife - he married quite young - they were traveling through Vancouver one night and thought that they were being chased. And so he pulled over. This is in the cell phone era. He pulled over to a payphone and - Oh he had also been given a 1 800 number. So at one time he pulled over and went to a pay phone and called the 1 800 number, or the number and it didn't work. There was no answer. And then another time, when he thought something was going on, he'd use the little radio receiver. And again nothing happened. So he lost faith very quickly. Now, you know, when these things happen the answer always came back “Well oh this is serious. This is going to require an investigation. We have to find out why,” you know. And it would come back that somebody mistakenly cut a line or you know something like that.

AMT: There was always an answer right.

PAULINE DAKIN: Always.

AMT: Pre-cell phone era. What years are we talking about?

PAULINE DAKIN: We're talking about the late 80s, early to mid-90s.

AMT: Okay. And so your brother has these consistencies that he starts to share. Keep going.

PAULINE DAKIN: I'm also noticing kind of an odd thing. My mother was all about you know trust. If I we don't have trust, we don't have anything. Tell me the truth every time. I don't care how hard it is , it is better than a lie, that kind of thing. And a couple of times I saw her get very upset with Stan because she thought he told her something that wasn't the truth. And I watched how he deflected her anger by bringing up the death of his son. He had had a son die, and he would you know get very sad. And she would say: “What?” And he'd say: “Well I just found out something about Michael”, his son. And so the second time I saw that happen, he just knew that my mother had such empathy for that loss that she could not press him when he was feeling sadness about it. And I thought that seems like he's using that sadness. So eventually I just couldn't live with the uncertainty of the situation. And I decided I have to know. So I guess I set up a bit of a sting to find out one way or the other whether there was any truth in this whole story.

AMT: What did you do?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well I I waited until I knew that Stan would be in the area, visiting my mother, and then I called her and I said: “My house has been broken into. What should I do?” And she said: “Our friend is here.” Of course she would talk that way because in case anybody was listening on the phone. And she said: “Our friend is here. I'll check and I'll get right back to you”, and then I hung up and I just sat waiting. And she calls back and she said: “Yes, we know about that break in. There were two people. We've picked them up down the street in a car. The car had your pictures in the back. They'd been watching you. They were looking for the China that your father sent you.” And in that moment I just knew the whole thing is a lie. Our whole lives are a lie. It was excruciating.

AMT: It must have been devastating.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes, yes.

AMT: Did you have a physical reaction to that?

PAULINE DAKIN: Oh, yes. I thought I was going to be sick. And of course I was shaking. I was shaking when I made the call. I was still shaking. It just - I was aware that by doing this I was turning our lives back upside down again. And my whole understanding had to change again.

AMT: So much of the story seems fantastical. You go to a wedding and you're told that the family has body doubles, and that's the aunt that you're looking at you know isn't. It's an actor. Even right down to the way she does something with her toes in her sandals, everything. Like the Canadian government’s figure this out and they're protecting you all. It's a very deep rabbit hole, huh?

PAULINE DAKIN: It really was. Yes. The doubles were you know a very disturbing thing to get your head around. But you know the argument was Winston Churchill had a double, lots of people have had doubles. We spend months training our doubles. But of course organized crime does too. So you never know which double you're looking at. It was mind bending .

AMT: Right and we know people go into witness protection so it's just like a stretch from that. And so did you confront Stan and your mom and at some point?

PAULINE DAKIN: I confronted my mom first. I honestly believed - I knew she had to believe this because I knew she would never fool us she would never do anything to hurt me and Ted. She really - honesty was her highest value really. So I knew that she was following his lead. So I decided to try with her first and I told her and she was so upset. But what she was upset about was that if I didn't believe this story it meant that I might put myself in danger. I might put myself at risk.

AMT: Hmm. I should have said spoiler alert here. But there's so much in this book that we're not going to take away from anyone's sense of suspense or awe as they read through your story, Pauline. But if it wasn't the Mafia, why did Stan and your mom tell you all this?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well in my mom's case, you know, she met Stan at a time that she was so vulnerable, leaving a marriage she'd been abused in, she had not had a great relationship with her dad either. He was abusive in some ways. Then she met this man who she always said saved her life. She said that she'd been suicidal by the time she met him, and she credited him with saving her. And he was a gentle guy and he was a good guy. He was right thinking. He was a great preacher and very interested in social justice. So she had huge admiration for him. So that's why my mother believed it, until the day she died, in fact. With Stan though, that was always the question. Why would he do this to us? He was like a dad to me. Why would he ever do this? And it was the mystery. I nearly turned myself inside out trying to figure that out over the years that followed. Obviously once I decided I didn't believe, I was now an outsider. You know I retained a relationship with my mother and to a degree with Stan as well. But you know we were on opposite sides of a pretty vast chasm. And I knew that he loved me. I loved him. Why? And then some years later, I happened to read an article in a medical journal and all the lights went off and I went: “That's why.” This article talked about an under-diagnosed, under-recognized, understudied condition that's quite rare called delusional disorder. It's far more rare for example than schizophrenia. Although in reality I think people who have specialty in that area would say “we don't really know how common it is” because people who have this condition typically don't go looking for help.

AMT: And they're very good at hiding it. Well depending on their intelligence. Somebody with high intelligence, suffering from this, oh yes. They can they can fool all kinds of people.

AMT: So what his delusional disorder? What did you learn about it?

PAULINE DAKIN: Okay. Well it involves delusions but non bizarre delusions. Now you may say “Pauline, that's all pretty bizarre” and it is. But you know with somebody with schizophrenia for example they have the kind of delusion that they maybe are hearing voices, or somebody is sending signals from space, things that are clearly not possible, not reasonable. With delusional disorder, the delusions are, yes maybe very unlikely or unusual, but they're possible. Not probable but possible. And then they, if there are intelligent people, they can build entire worlds. And it's kept in kind of an envelope. So they can live very normal looking lives. Quite often people with this condition are diagnosed a little bit later in life. So they tend to be educated. Maybe they've had a family. They're established in a career.

AMT: So this is Stan that you're explaining. Yes.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. And they have credentials in the world. So they're not suspect initially. And then something tips and I don't think anybody can tell you what actually goes on in the brain. There's lots of theories but they begin to develop delusions. There are subtypes of this condition. You would you probably would have heard of the Erotomanic subtype of delusional disorder. This is where you hear about somebody who's been chasing a Hollywood star because they think that that person is in love with them, has been sending the messages that they want to connect. So, occasionally, you hear about that one. Or you might hear about one that's called somatic, where somebody thinks that they have maybe something growing under their skin or they emit a bad smell. And those people do go look for help. They go to see doctors who can't find anything wrong. But in Stan's case, the two subtypes that I think were at play - and others have backed me up on this - is persecutory, where you believe that somebody is coming after you, trying to harm you, is plotting against you. And I would say that was kind of the primary one. And the second one being grandiosity, where you have some secret knowledge or ability that other people don't have. And when I read everything I could get my hands on about this condition. Those things really describe Stan for me. You know it was him to a T. And so I got in touch with the guy who wrote this article in The Journal and his name is Dr. Manschreck. He's a psychiatrist at Harvard in Boston and we spent a long time on the phone. He's spent a long time saying: “Wow! Really? Wow!” He thought this was interesting because you don't hear a lot about these cases. He said a psychiatrist could typically work an entire career and never see one of these people.

AMT: And you were living it, and you could document after the fact. Well, I mean, you talk about they have to be a high intellect, because that's the thing that struck me as well. What kind of intellect you have to have to create such a sophisticated web of, not only lies, but of concrete examples? Like you had all these letters from people who knew things about you. Your mom had a huge collection of letters. He did put a lot of work into this.

PAULINE DAKIN: Oh. And how did you do that and have a career and all. He was involved in all kinds of things in the community. And I don't know. I mean there are things about this story that will always be a mystery to me. How did he pay to be flying back and forth across the country? I don't know. I managed to track down his son, in B.C. We had a visit.

AMT: Did they know about this?

PAULINE DAKIN: They had some indicators but he said - His name is John - and he said until I sat there and told my story he didn't know whether it was real or not. His dad, just at the time that his dad was meeting my mom, he was noticing strange things at home. And you know he would come in and say: “Oh there's danger out there tonight. There are people with guns you can't go out there”, that kind of thing. Eventually, John said look that's ridiculous and unless you want to prove something to me, stop talking to me about it. And so I think John had always wondered. But Stan died some years ago and so he figured he always would wonder about that. But I have to say we had quite an interesting conversation.

AMT: Hmm. And so Stan has died, your mother has died and your dad has died, right?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes they're all gone now.

AMT: Are you certain that it was delusional disorder?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes I am. I am completely certain in my head. So, you know, Dr. Manschrek, who is you know one of the leading authorities on this, agrees with me. When we've talked about the situation in detail and he said to me: “Pauline you know there's somebody who's like the world expert on this. Somewhere in your neck of the woods, maybe Dalhousie?” [Laughs] Which is just down the block for sure. I now work on that campus and. And so I did track down Alistair Munro who is professor emeritus at Dalhousie in the Department of Psychiatry. We also met and talked and he said yes this does seem to be what's going on here. So you know two very well-credentialed people with expertise in this kind of rare area have agreed that that's probably what was happening.

AMT: I have to admit to you halfway through the book I was starting to wonder if it was an elaborate cover up for Stan to have an affair with your mom.

PAULINE DAKIN: That had crossed my mind too.

AMT: And did you ever learn what he was telling his wife Sibyl to explain why your mom would move you kids to follow them in like the whole bit about one was in one part of the country one was in another?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. He told Sibyl the same thing. She was you know part of the moving and believed that. I went to see her shortly before she died and I asked her a few questions. She was you know quite old and quite frail and I did not want to upset her but I did ask her. I did say to her you know I've been told what was going on when I was growing up and she said oh yes. And I said: “Do you think there's still a threat?” And she said: “I don't know I just live my life.” But she was in on it. But you know Stan obviously didn't go inside. And John says he continued to live with her until he died. And there would be times that he would say he was going away for various reasons and that would have been when he was on the other coast. Yes.

AMT: And you made the point that your mom believed this in some very important way right until she died.

PAULINE DAKIN: She did. My mother was, you know, she was not somebody that fell for things very easily. And so my brother and I have talked a lot about why would she fall for this. And I think it was just you know a very vulnerable time in her life and she met what she considered a very fine person. And he had he was a minister in the United Church and she'd been brought up in the United Church. And you know you respect people with those kinds of credentials and ideas in a way that we no longer do in society.

AMT: And she met him as well when she was vulnerable and he took advantage of that.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Although the interesting thing, I realized now, that has been transformative for my understanding and my feelings about this whole story, is that yes he took advantage of things and he co-opted circumstances to make thing to support the story that was being made up in his head. But he believed it too. He never thought he was manipulating people. And it's a very bizarre thing but I had long conversations about this and how could it be. But yes people can make things up to support a story and not feel that they're making it up.

AMT: and that's how he could go on living his life, even as a man of the cloth. I accept what you're saying. But on another level his illness, your mom's vulnerability to believing in him, it hurt you and your brother.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Yes it really did. You know there were many people that we lost touch with, people that we were I guess ripped away from. And there was a sense of being alone. You know that we were always different we were other.

AMT: How do you process that now?

PAULINE DAKIN: You know the process of writing this book. I originally decided to write this book as a way of telling my kids what had gone on in my life. I wanted them to hear the story in a nuanced way that wouldn't have them kind of automatically judging people, including my mom. My kids were very close to my mom. So that was originally why I wanted to try and make some sense and put it into narrative form. But the process has been remarkable for me, in terms of sorting things out. I had just tried to forget about this and move on with my life. And you know you can only push this stuff down for so long. And so yes it's been therapeutic for me. And you know the discovery about delusional disorder has allowed me to forgive the people who harmed me because I know it was not malevolent or intentional.

AMT: And what about yourself and your own - I don't know what the word would be - your own vulnerability or delusion in believing that story? Were you hard on yourself?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes.

AMT: Have you changed? Talk to me about that.

PAULINE DAKIN: I felt a lot of shame that I had fallen for this. I'm supposed to be a journalist for crying out loud. And I did feel a lot of shame and also shame for, you know, other people who kind of got caught up in it because of me. I was married for a period of time and caught somebody else up in the story. I guess I had started to think differently as I was opening up the door to this again and trying to sort it all out. But I think it really had a lot to do with the way my kids reacted to this book. They read it, parts of it, while it was in the works that let me kind of forgive myself. Their response was full of empathy for some but for a little girl who had no control and just got caught up. And then as an adult followed the person she loved you know my heart was leading my head.

AMT: It's interesting that you say that you didn't want them judging your mom because you I guess you felt that she was open to judgment.

PAULINE DAKIN: Well yes. You know if I tried to proof my kids when they were 10 and 13 or something, they couldn't have imagined it and leaving behind everybody they knew.

AMT: With no explanation.

PAULINE DAKIN: Without explanation. So yes I could see how easily that could turn into some judgment. And so on. But my mother, despite her faults and her vulnerabilities was a remarkable person. And I wanted them to know that about her too. And they do. They have complexity of thinking on this which pleases me very much. It's very easy to slide into black and white. But they can see the truth and still feel love.

AMT: What do you want the rest of us to learn from this story?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well I think the obvious one is that things aren't always as they appear right. I appeared to have a pretty normal life, most of the time I think. The other is I do hope people, this under recognized illness could be hijacking a lot of other lives too. I know it's so hard to find the people to do the studies but it seems to me that there needs to be somebody paying more attention to this. And also there are probably kids out there that were in a similar condition to me. And I often wonder Anna Maria when I disappeared and didn't turn up for school on Monday. Were there adults in my life at school or other places who thought “Gee I wonder what happened to her?” Does anybody know? Did anybody look? Did anybody worry about these kids who just disappeared? I don't know.

AMT: And these are questions we need to ask ourselves. Yeah. Pauline Dakin, it's a remarkable story, a remarkable life. Thank you for sharing.

PAULINE DAKIN: Thank you for being interested.

AMT: Fascinating. A lot of twists and turns some we didn't even get to. Pauline Dickens book is called Run Hide Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood. She joined me from our Halifax studio. That's our program for today stay with Radio 1 for q. Loudon Wainwright discusses his new memoir liner notes with host Tom Power today. Before we go, we're looking for stories from you as part of our new season long project adaptation. We want to share some of your own personal adaptations stories. This fall we will focus on adaptation in a number of places including in the workplace and so maybe you can send us your stories about any surprising significant changes you've had to make at work. How do you adapt to maybe accommodating a difficult boss, navigating rapid technological change? Let us know what you have had to adapt to in the workplace. You can send us an email through the website cbc.ca/thecurrent and just put My Adaptation in the subject line and you can also just send it straight to thecurrent@cbc.ca. Now we began today's show talking about North Korea, the missile it launched right over Japan last week is just one of the recent incidents ratcheting up tensions in the region. We have some tape of what it sounded like at 06:04 a.m. local time when the missile flew over northern Japan. Chris Broad, who describes himself as a British guy living in Japan, caught the moment on video for his popular YouTube channel Abroad in Japan.

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AMT: We'll leave you with that I am Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to the currents.

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[Indistinct language]

[Sound: War sirens]

It is 06:00 a.m. in the morning. Rudely awaken by my phone going Nnananana… Vibrating and going mental. And then there is an air ride, this air ride siren going on outside, for a missile from North Korea. I do not know if it is real or no. But, it is not a very nice way to wake up in the morning. But what I do notice this area, currently in Aomori on the sea of Japan coastline, and I think last year a missile splashed down in the sea of the coastline. Maybe I think about a hundred kilometers out to sea, and then there was another missile [unintelligible] crash landed just off the coast of [unintelligible] about a hundred kilometers that away. So this remote, far, flung region of Japan, the only thing that the locals have to worry about...

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September 6, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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