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The AIH Transcript for April 18th, 2022

DS: Hello, I'm Dave Seglins.

AH: Good evening, I'm Ali Hassan, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

DS: Hard truths. The Novaya Gazeta has endured the murder of its reporters and won a Nobel Prize, but tonight the editor-in-chief of its new European operation says it can no longer operate in Russia -- at least for now.

AH: Crisis point. As drought persists in Somalia, the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for the region tells us conflict in Europe is making things worse -- and innaction now could mean hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

DS: Valiant effort. A humpback whale fended off an apparent attack by a group of Bigg's orcas this weekend. And while Valiant may have been outnumbered, the whale wouldn't be outplayed.

AH: They've got the hang of it. A father-son duo in the U.K. has become the world's fastest team of two to hang up ten items of clothing -- and they really beat the pants off the competition.

DS: Coming in clutch. In the midst of continued suffering, sales of intricate Ukrainian Easter eggs have been raising relief funds. And that reminded us of the story of a particular pysanky that looms large in the As It Happens archive.

AH: And… Frequent fliers. By now, we're used to thinking of bees and other pollinators as being under threat, but our guest says we should spare a thought for predatory insects like wasps -- which are potential friends too often mistaken for foes.

AH: As It Happens, the Monday edition. Radio that knows better than to swat the small stuff.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Novaya Gazeta Moves, Somalia Drought, B.C. Humpback Whale Vs Orcas, Clothes-Hanging Record

Novaya Gazeta Moves

Guest: Kirill Martynov

AH: It's been hard to get the straight goods on the Moskva in Moscow. The missile cruiser was the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet. The Ukrainian military says one of its missile strikes sank the ship last week. Russian news outlets are repeating the government line that there was a fire on board, and the 500-plus crew were rescued before the ship went down. Kirill Martynov and his reporters are hearing different. Mr. Martynov is the Editor in Chief of Novaya Gazeta's new European operation. The Nobel Prize-winning news outlet was forced to suspend its Russian operations last month because of laws restricting what Russians can and cannot say about the war in Ukraine. We reached Kirill Martynov in Riga, Latvia.

DS: Mr. Martynov, what have your reporters been able to learn about what happened to the Moskva and the sailors onboard?

KIRILL MARTYNOV: Well, basically, we connected with a few relatives of these sailors who was on Moskva ship, and most of them just don't understand what… what happened with these boys, with these young... young men. And they tried to get any information from Russian authorities. And it looked like that a lot of people on board the Moskva was just dead or just, you know, lost. And it's a very strange situation, and it's probably an unbelievable situation because if you lost dozens or maybe even hundreds of sailors on the flagship of Russian Navy in Black Sea, obviously you have to provide some information, at least to these relatives. What happened, and… and why these people was lost? And for now, I still can't believe basically that the Russian government and the Russian officials, they just pretend to hide the information what exactly happened with the sailors?

DS: So what would be happening if you were still in Russia and reporting these very things that you've been able to find out about this ship?

KM: It's a very, very simple question because they just say that… just would say that we published some fakes and we have some negative information about the Russian army or fleet in this case. And so, we can face criminal prosecution up to 15 years. That is basically the reason why we operate in Europe now. Not because we are afraid, but… not only because we are afraid, but for the reasons that you can't be a journalist in Russia anymore. So they just entered the history of independent Russian media, which lasted for 30 years now since the perestroika times. And they just have found the propaganda for now. And propaganda to keeps silence about this station, about the Moskva ship.

DS: Will you continue to have journalists working inside Russia but feeding the European publication?

KM: I feel it's… it would be the most valuable of our information we can provide to the Russians itself and to the whole world. Of course, it's a huge problem in terms of safety because I'm not sure if any journalists in Russia can continue his or her work like normal journalists? And most… most editorial offices which operate in Russia have the same problems for now. Probably, you know, journalists will work in Russia during these months or maybe years like… like some kind of undercover agent. And it's… it's very strange, of course. I mean, they have to publish its pieces anonymously, and they have to have no legal connections to the newsroom, to the office. And so, we have to decide how to pay them so that Russian authorities can't control it. So, it's… you know, it is… they really want to destroy media, and they… they did already because we was the last large independent media in Russia till the end of this March. And now, we have to recreate everything from the ground and in this new space.

DS: How will Russians access your new publication? And how will… how will Russian censors try to control it, do you think?

KM: For now, we have only two big media platforms in Russia, which they say still don't have any censorship. It's YouTube and its Telegram Messenger. You can imagine that more than 50 millions of Russians use YouTube daily, or maybe weekly. And so, it's… it's the biggest media platform in Russia. They still did not block YouTube, probably because my… my explanation is they understand that a lot of people are not interested in politics. They just use it for some kind of entertainment. And if they block it, these people start to ask questions. And probably, that's the reason why Russian authorities still can't lock YouTube. And the question of Telegram is even more complicated because Pavel Durov was the creator of Telegram. He's Russian origin, and he… he had probably some connections to Russian authorities. And a lot of Russian officials, they have Telegram channels like, let's say, Ramzan Kadyrov, one of the most horrifying case in this station. But basically, we don't care if we can provide some information without censorship to Russian public, and we can do it via Telegram, so it has worked for now.

DS: What do you think it means for Russians to have continued access to your content?

KM: I'm pretty sure that in Russia, there are millions and maybe dozens of millions people who don't support Putin and don't support this war. And they are really starving for information. Before Nova Gazeta suspended publications, we had almost three millions of visitors on our website daily. So I believe we can provide this information to these people just because they need it. And probably, it's a life matter for them. And probably, you know, it's only a reason why people still don't get crazy, don't… don't… don't see themselves like… like they're lonely people who are fighting this dictatorship and this Putin system. And after that, I feel like we have another task here because a lot of people, they just don't understand in which information they… they have to believe. And if these people stay without any alternative sources of information, and only we with Russian state propaganda, so they probably can believe that Putin is right and the war is a good idea and so on. And so, we have to fight for these people who didn't decide yet what has happened in the Ukraine for real.

DS: So can I ask you what kind of stories you have in the works coming up?

KM: We have a lot of different stories covering Ukraine and the situation in the Russian economy and data research on different issues connected to Russian censorship.

DS: Well, we will look forward to reading it. Thank you very much for joining us, and good luck.

KM: Thank you. Bye-bye.

DS: Bye-bye.

CH: Kirill Martynov is the Editor in Chief of Nova Gazeta Europe. We reached him in Riga, Latvia.

[Music: Indie rock]

Somalia Drought

Guest: Adam Abdelmoula

CH: As Somalia continues to face a severe drought, hundreds of thousands of people have had to leave their homes -- and millions are facing extreme food insecurity. Adam Abdelmoula is the UN humanitarian coordinator for the country. And last week, he and other officials visited a camp for internally displaced people in the country's southwest. UN agencies have been warning about the situation -- and insisting the international community do more to help. We reached Mr. Abdelmoula in Mogadishu.

DS: Mr. Abdelmoula, I understand you met with a 95-year-old woman at this camp you visited last week. What did she tell you about how this drought is affecting her?

ADAM ABDELMOULA: She told me that in her long life, she has never seen any drought like this one. She also told me that entire communities have left their areas of origin and have come to Doolow, where they anticipated that they would find either water or at least some relief agencies operating in that area. As I was talking to her, it was a short conversation of like 20 minutes. During those 20 minutes, I saw 400 new arrivals to that makeshift camp. That tells you about how dire the situation is in just one particularly small area of Somalia. Somalia is one of the most severely impacted countries by climate change. It has already seen three consecutive failed rainy seasons, and the fourth that begun at the beginning of April is also projected to be less than average. What that means is that for two consecutive years, there has been a total crop failure in Somalia. Add to this the impact of COVID-19 and the impact of the war in Ukraine. As you know, Somalia imports 85 per cent of its wheat intake from Russia and Ukraine. And that has come to a complete halt, leading to a sharp increase in the food prices that is estimated to be between 140 per cent to 160 per cent, according to the most recent survey conducted by FAO and WAP.

DS: So it's both drought, but it's also world supply and prices?

AA: Yes.

DS: On your visit to the camp, and as you… as you tackle this issue, how is this crisis specifically affecting children?

AA: Well, the children are the most affected. Three hundred and fifty thousand are estimated to face very, very dire outcomes if we don't intervene and scale up our interventions between now and June. What that means in simple terms is that if we don't do enough, those 350,000 are going to die by the end of the year.

DS: They're going to die?

AA: Yes. I visited a children's hospital operated by an NGO in Doolow, and it's not only the children that are malnourished and admitted to the hospital that has only a capacity of 50 beds, but also their mothers are malnourished. And these are all children between the ages of a few months to two years.

DS: You mentioned the situation in Ukraine affecting the supply of food, and… and therefore, the prices in… in Somalia. But also, the world's attention is turned away from places like Somalia. You've said that Somalia has, quote, lost the "CNN effect", so to speak. What did you mean by that?

AA: I said this so many times. Before the crisis in Ukraine broke out, we were completely overshadowed by the crisis in Tigray. And before Tigray, it was Afghanistan. And before Afghanistan, it was Yemen. All these newly emerging crises keep pushing Somalia's crisis to the back burner. The world's attention has shifted away from this very chronic and protracted crisis that has been in existence for almost three decades now. And consequently, I predict that all the… the things that we have seen in the past when the world turned its attention away from Somalia might re-emerge again. And by that, I mean piracy, terrorism, mass migration and mass starvation. We have seen that in the past, [Windows alert noise], and all of this could come back again to haunt all of us. As to this year's response plan that is seeking $1.5 billion, we are only four per cent funded. And that is why we are calling for a roundtable discussion on the Horn of Africa that's going to take place in Geneva next Tuesday.

DS: There has been criticism of humanitarian groups and the UN's efforts. I'm reading in The Guardian from last week, one organizer complaining that humanitarian groups… he's angry, saying that humanitarian groups have been complicit with the Somali government. That the funding is bogged down in politics. That funds are being misallocated. How do you respond to that criticism?

AA: First of all, the Somali government has been consumed with the internal political dynamics and the political paralysis that engulfed the country because of the delayed elections that took almost a year-and-a-half to complete. Now, we are coming to the end of the electoral process. The humanitarian donors provide funding either directly to NGOs or to UN agencies. And that kind of accusation is just simply inaccurate. We have absolutely no desire to… I mean, I'm confused with what the UN is doing with what the government is doing. Our work is completely based on the four core humanitarian principles of independence, impartiality, neutrality and humanity. We go where the needs are greatest, and we are facing funding shortfalls. And when that happens, people tend to escape with the UN; that the UN hasn't done this, hasn't done that. Everything that we do is completely transparent. And if you go to the website of any humanitarian agency or organization operating in Somalia, you will find the figures up there.

DS: What message do you want to get out to people about the costs of inaction in Somalia?

AA: You know, the cost of inaction could be in the hundreds of thousands of human lives. We are looking at a situation that is fast evolving into a perfect famine storm. Unless we scale up our responses, that is what we are looking at.

DS: Mr. Abdelmoula, we'll leave it there. Thank you for joining us today.

AA: Thank you for having me.

DS: Bye-now.

AA: Bye.

CH: That was Adam Abdelmoula in Mogadishu, Somalia. He's the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Somalia. He's also deputy special representative of the secretary-general.

[Music: Acoustic guitar]

B.C. Humpback Whale Vs Orcas

Guest: Olivia Esqueda

AH: A humpback whale known to observers as Valiant has a history of run-ins with killer whales. And last week, Valiant found itself under attack from all sides by two families of orcas. For up to half an hour, it held them in the Strait of Georgia off the B.C. Coast, right in the path of a BC Ferry, in plain view of a nearby whale-watching boat. Olivia Esqueda works as a marine naturalist on that boat, The MVC Lion. We reached her in Friday Harbour, Washington.

DS: Olivia, when your boat arrived on the scene, what did you see happening to this humpback whale?

OLIVIA ESQUEDA: Yeah. So when we first were like a little under a mile away, we started seeing that big bout, that big blow of the humpback whale, and kind of caught us off guard that we then had little orca spouts popping up right next to it. You know, we knew that the two were in the same area as one another, but we didn't realize that they were seemingly side-by-side. Our first good visual of their bodies, we saw that humpback whale come up right in the middle of all of those killer whales.

DS: And what did you think? I mean, you spend a lot of time out on the water doing this professionally. Was this… was this unique for you?

OE: It was absolutely unique. It was very hard to kind of not outwardly show my excitement about it. And we're also seeing those orcas doing what's called… you know, where they lunge at their prey. So coming on scene, we were seeing some typical historical aggressive behaviours together in that area. And then it almost switched on us. We were seeing that humpback whale just casually lifting up its tail fluke and just gracefully putting it back in the water. We were seeing that whale swim on its side and lift up its pectoral fins above the water, too, where it then kind of had us side-eyeing with one another if this was a playful behaviour because there wasn't any telltale signs that that humpback whale was chasing off the killer whales. There wasn't any telltale signs that those orcas were agitating that humpback whale any further. So, what might have started as possible aggressive behaviours, it… it almost turned into a playful behaviour from what we were seeing, which I think led to more questions than answers. You know, just seeing these two known species that don't typically interact peacefully with one another, we're now seeing them inhabit the same area. And that just is pretty crazy to witness.

DS: What's at stake here? What could a hunting pack of killer whales do to a full-grown humpback whale?

OE: With the killer whales that do choose to predate on the baleen whales like those humpback whales, it's actually often the calves that they're predating on, where they'll separate the mother and take turns holding that calf underneath water. But that is also what's been seen, you know, with the adults. You know, that's… that's their go-to move with a whale of that size -- is taking turns holding that animal underneath water until it essentially can't breathe anymore. But those larger animals are known to, you know, give it what they can [chuckle] and fight back. So, you'll see them, you know, chasing after those killer whales, which is something that this individual has been doing in the past, and chasing off those killer whales, and, you know, vocalizing really loud around them, and, you know, using that tail underwater. That's kind of the disadvantage we have, you know, being on top of the boat is we're only seeing what's happening on the surface and not underneath.

DS: Well, as you say, this… this whale is actually known. It's got a name: Valiant.

OE: Yup!

DS: What do we know about it and its history with killer whales?

OE: So what I know personally is that whale, we still don't know what gender, if it's a male or female. But based on that imagery of its tail fluke, there's a bunch of orca teeth breaks on it. So there's this idea that that individual whale had been, you know, presumably attacked by orcas when it was a young calf and then got away from them. And now, what we know from sightings from this individual, and we share this information through the whole Pacific Whale Watch Association, that there have been sightings of this whale chasing off killer whales before and seemingly coming up behind and just scaring them off. So coming in close quarters. So earlier that day, before we were physically on scene, we heard about this whale just casually getting closer and closer to these killer whales, and these killer whales also getting closer and closer to that whale. And we just happened to come on scene right when they finally met up.

DS: So you had a boatload of whale watchers with you. Do they have any idea what was going on here?

OE: [chuckling] Yeah, maybe. Yes and no. I think… so we had 12 passengers on board, and a few of them were small kids. And I think that you know, they're really excited that we saw a humpback whale and that we saw, you know, two different families of those killer whales. And they could tell that it was a crazy experience that we don't commonly see just based on my reaction and our owner, Bryan's reaction, who was captain that day.

DS: So, how did the whole run-in end?

OE: [chuckle Not as, you know, firework-y as you would expect it to. [DS chuckles] It was something where Valiant was just again doing those graceful, you know, swims within the killer whales, beautifully pulling up his tail fluke and bringing it back down in the water. And by the time the next corcas came, he was 500 yards away in the other direction, and those killer whales just stayed where they were. And then that next surface came up again from that humpback, and here is another 400 yards from there. So it was almost kind of like, all right, going to carry on with my day now. That was enough of that. And just casually swam, and the killer whales didn't even attempt to go towards him again or her.

DS: Well, Olivia, I… I envy your job, getting to see Valiant and and and others. [OE chuckles] Nice to meet you on the radio.

OE: Yeah, likewise.

DS: Bye-now.

OE: Bye.

AH: Olivia Esqueda is a marine naturalist with the whale-watching boat, the MVC Lion. We reached her in Friday Harbour, Washington.

[Music: Folk]

Clothes-Hanging Record

AH:Get yourself a partner and grab your 10 items of clothing. All different types! You have to include pants. Jumble them all up together in the laundry basket, clear a spot on the clothing rack. Three, two, one… go!

[Sound: The mortifying tick of a stopwatch.]

AH: Okay, well, you knocked the whole basket over. So just… yep, pick it up, you're back on track. Great! But see, you can't just throw the sweater at the hanger, you have to -- you know what? I'll stop criticizing. You're doing great. Well, not great, great. Like, not Edward and Rowan Draper-great. That British father and son duo have just become the fastest clothes-hanging team in history. And yes, their real name is "Draper". They've been training for months. Selecting the ideal clothes, ensuring they zip and unzip smoothly. Choosing the ideal hangers -- apparently, a mixture of plastic, metal, and wood. And now that their achievement has been certified by Guinness, the Drapers are officially the fastest drapers ever to drape --

[Sound: Stopwatch stops with a ding]

AH: That was it. 56.87 seconds. The Drapers' new Guinness World Record for "fastest time to hang up ten items of clothing (team of two)". How did you match up? Wait, are you just holding a pair of track pants and crying? Well, look: you'll get there with training. Right now, no offence, but you have too many hang-ups. And also not enough.

[Music: Hip-hop beat]

Part 2: Pro-Wasp Biologist, FOA: Giant Easter Eggs

FOA: David Barber Obit

AH: "He was the guy that you'd want to be with if things went sideways." That's how one of David Barber's colleagues, Tim Papakyriakou describes him. And to understand the quote, I think you have to imagine where Professor Barber did his work. As the University of Manitoba's Canada research chair in Arctic system science, he spent months at a time in some of the most remote and potentially dangerous places on earth. And it wasn't just his colleagues who appreciated what Professor Barber could do out on the ice. His work earned him the Order of Canada in 2016 as, quote, "one of our nation's most influential Arctic researchers." David Barber died on Friday of complications from a cardiac arrest. He was 61. And in 2017 he took a call from As It Happens. A trip to research the impact of climate change on sea ice had just been canceled... because of the dangerous impact that climate change was having on the sea ice that they were hoping to research.

[sc]

DAVID BARBER: They were very severe. They were ice hazards that basically were created by multi-years sea ice down from the high Arctic and residing off the Newfoundland Coast, much further south than we expected them to be. The research icebreaker we're on, the Amundsen is a twelve hundred class ice breaker which is sort of the second most powerful ice breaker we have in Canada and it had a hard time navigating through this ice. So the conditions were very difficult.

CO: Have you ever seen this kind of ice off the coast of Newfoundland?

DB: No, I never have and not expect to find it there either. This ice would typically melt before it would get that far south. Really, what's causing this problem is that the ice is getting thinner and there's less of it in the high arctic which allows it to be more mobile. This mobility can lead to unusual things like this event where the ice gets pushed out of the high arctic gets, into the Labrador current and makes its way all the way south off the coast of Newfoundland.

CO: And so all of this has led to having to cancel the expedition, so but, can you explain a bit more about why that's the case?

DB: Well it was really two reasons. You know we had spent the first week of the expedition already doing search and rescue operations in the Strait of Belle-Isle and we'd been doing ice escort services to you know allow ferry boats that were trapped in the ice to get between Newfoundland and Quebec, and then the Coast Guard moved us to the north east coast of Greenland where the ice was even heavier and even thicker. And there's, you know the search and rescue calls were coming to the ship multiple times per day with fishing boats being sunk and people having to be rescued from on ice flows and you know many different hazards were happening. And it became clear to me that you know, if we were to take our research icebreaker out of there, that would leave a very big hole and therefore a very big risk for, you know, marine operations in that part of Canada. And on the flip side of that, if we thought OK if we do go north, our fuel program is going to be contracted from a four week study to a two and a half weeks study and so all of the science teams would be pushing very hard to try to get as much data as possible in the limited time left to us, and that would also create a risk.

The Arctic is not a place where you want to be doing things quickly. You want to think them out and you know, go about them in a very controlled position where you're thinking about things before you're doing them all the time and so it was very risky both to stay and to leave. And so with all that risk in front of us, the best and only decision was really to cancel and regroup and go out at another time.

CO: But to go at it another time, what will be changed? If this is going to be the conditions, if this is what you're now seeing as a development, when will you be able to do this kind of research? When will you be able to get those scientists out and be able to do this investigation?

DB: I think we've learned a lot collectively between the Coast Guard and science in this particular event. Yes, climate change is happening. But in the short-term, now I'm talking, you know, five years, 10 years, 15 years, these kind of ice hazards we can expect them to go up. And so, sort of the take-home message for me is that science needs to play a role in that process, and we will as we move forward, but the communications are sometimes difficult between governments and universities and we all have to realize that what we're doing here is doing these things on behalf of the country and it's really the country that suffers from the effects of climate change.

CO: But you also have 40 scientists who are probably quite disappointed right now.

DB: Oh absolutely. It was a very difficult decision to make and everybody was extremely disappointed. But I think they also learned a lot about the importance of being a scientist. So these are young people that are going to develop their careers in science, and this was an excellent example of just how darn important science is.

[/sc]

AH: That was the University of Manitoba Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science, David Barber, speaking to former As It Happens host Carol Off in 2017. Professor Barber died on Friday. He was 61.

[Music: Uke!!!]

Pro-Wasp Biologist

Guest: Heather Holm

AH: If there's an insect out there that's in need of some public relations help, it's the wasp. They're party-crashers. They're disrupters. If you're hoping to enjoy a hot dog and glass of fruit punch in the great outdoors, they are not your friend. But with spring upon us, one conservationist is hoping to redeem them in your eyes -- and even convince you to build a garden that attracts more of them. Heather Holm recently wrote a book about wasps in North America. We reached her in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

DS: Heather, how did wasps get such a bad rap in the first place?

HEATHER HOLM: [chuckle] Well, I think that's an easy answer for everybody listening. It's the negative interactions we have with a very small minority of wasps, the social wasps that don't like getting their nest disturbed, so they tend to sting us. So, that paints a very broad picture of wasps, which I would like to say isn’t correct.

DS: What? They're not all stinging?

HH: Well, they all can sting, all the females, but for the most part, you know, 95 per cent or more of wasps out living… coexisting with us, we're not having negative interactions with. So they're going about their day hunting other insects, building nests, even in our gardens, and we don't get stung by them. So that's sort of the message that gets lost, unfortunately.

DS: Well, you've… you've set yourself up for… for a great campaign to convince people that appreciating wasps is what we ought to be doing. What inspired you to take this on?

HH: Well, I was focussing more of my work on native bees and their interactions with plants, so I thought this was sort of a nice segue into people who were really starting to look at pollinators, visiting their flowering plants and wondering, well, what are these wasps that are coming to the flowering plants?

DS: So, why would I want to plant a garden that attracts more wasps? What are the benefits?

HH: Well, they actually provide a couple of really important benefits or ecosystem services. They are doing some pollination of the flowering plants that we may plant in our garden. And then, sort of the really second and more important ecosystem services they’re… they're hunting a variety of different insects in the landscape. So, they could be helping with capturing caterpillars that are eating your cabbage that you're growing in your vegetable garden. Or they just are doing a lot of hunting of seed-eating and leaf-eating insects that can be kind of destructive to the garden plants or vegetable plants that we're trying to grow.

DS: And are there specific pests that people will be familiar with that the wasp would be a great deterrent or a great predator for?

HH: Yeah, the list is quite long. The one example is there's a wasp that hunts the emerald ash borer beetle, so that wasp has actually been used for bio-surveillance. Researchers monitor the nest of that wasp and look at what kind of prey the wasp, the females, are bringing back. And that helps them determine how that invasive insect is dispersing. I know in Ontario, you've had EAB there for quite a while, but I live west of you, and we are just starting to get emerald ash borer infections.

DS: So, if you're a studier of wasps, you've no doubt had some intense run-ins with them. Can you tell us about that?

HH: The last bad interaction I had was turning my compost pile, not knowing there was a yellow jacket nest inside. [chuckle] So, I got stung multiple times and chased in the house. And then, as a child, I stepped on a yellow jacket nest and got stung multiple times. But actually being out in the field and… and studying wasps, you'd be surprised to hear I haven't been stung at all, so.

DS: So, I feel like there's something ingrained in our… our evolutionary biology where we look at the wasp. We see the, you know, the yellow lines, the… the buzz, the look of them that… that they're frightening, are they?

HH: Yeah, I guess you could say the same about snakes or other, you know, organisms that we just inherently are afraid of or feel threatened by. [chuckling] But, you know, you think of wasps aren't that big. And yes, they can… certain species can sting. But for the most part, they really just want to go about their business.

DS: So it's easy to make jokes about the wasps and our love of hating them, or at least their sting. What would happen if we had no wasps?

HH: Well, if we had no wasps, we'd really have insect populations that would sort of go unchecked or become imbalanced. So, you have thousands of species, and each and many of those have very specific insect prey, and also spiders. So, collectively, they're doing all this amazing sort of predator-prey or preying on insect populations. I don't think we could live without wasps, for that matter. Yeah.

DS: Well, we certainly hear about the threats and the… and the shrinking of the bee population as pollinators. How are wasps doing?

HH: Yeah, that's actually not that well-known. They've been largely understudied, I would say. You know, there's some… much centuries-old studies on the basic natural history of wasps -- more recent comprehensive, systematic studies of their taxonomy. But we're really missing a lot of information about population sizes, distribution. And one of the really amazing ways that you know individual citizen scientists can help is by contributing their observations on platforms such as iNaturalist. And that's… when I was writing the book, there was many, many instances where someone had documented the specific nesting strategy of a wasp. And that was, up until that point, unknown. So, there's just quite literally every day you go out your front door, you could discover something new to science.

DS: Certainly, the way people talk about wasps, they talk about them as pests and their ways to get rid of them and exterminate them. What does it take to change the tide and convince people that we ought to be inviting them into our gardens?

HH: I think the… the best thing that people can do if they're interested in learning more and being comfortable or having comfortable interactions with wasps is to start planting some of the flowering plants that they like. It's an opportunity to get up close and observe wasps while they're visiting flowers and have more positive interactions. And maybe even take their photo [chuckle] while they're there.

DS: And if we're fortunate enough to have wasps in our garden or backyard, what's your advice to avoid being stung?

HH: Well, if you're… if they're just visiting the flowering plants, do nothing. This is a good thing. You're providing them with that… that fuel that they need to do their prey searching. If you discover a nest and its nest made of paper, then you need to be a little more cautious because that will be a nest of a social wasp. And it's, again, the social wasps that are much more inclined to defend their nest. So, if you want to do sort of early prevention, early spring into June is a good time to look for nests being initiated and try and remove those so that they don't become large and established by the middle of the growing season and result in people getting stung.

DS: Well, I admire your gumption [HH chuckles] at tackling the wasps and trying to promote the positive PR of wasps. Heather, thanks for telling us about your research.

HH: Thank you, Dave.

DS: OK, bye-now.

AH: Heather Holm is a pollinator conservationist. We reached her in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

[Music: Vocalization]

FOA: Giant Easter Eggs

AH: Eggs are breakable. Everyone who's brought a carton home only to find it filled with albumen knows that. But Ukrainian pysanky are something else. They've become symbols of resilience. The eggs can be breathtakingly intricate -- which is all the more impressive because of their fragility. And right now, across Canada, and around the world, artists and groups are auctioning off pysanky to raise money for Ukrainian causes. In Ukraine, people have been making the ornately decorated eggs since pre-Christian times. Now, the eggs are largely associated with Easter -- which is this weekend for Catholics and Protestants -- and Orthodox Easter, which most Ukrainians celebrate the following weekend. But one pysanka is largely associated with a town in Alberta. And I do mean largely. To find out how it began, come with us on a journey to the past.

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[Music: A spunky country jam]

ALAN MAITLAND: From St. John's to the Pacific Coast, veteran journalist, Bernard Clark, drives the 5,000 mile distance in a van emblazoned with the As It Happens name. His assignment: get off the beaten track. Drive into areas that never get covered in the media. Meet the people. Do stories on their problems, their successes, the personalities and events in their lives. As It Happens, On The Road.

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AH: The year was 1975. Barbara Frum and Alan Maitland were our hosts. The show apparently had a mouth-harp player on retainer. And we had our own branded van -- which was being driven across the country by roving reporter Bernard Clark. In September of that year, he wound up in Vegreville, Alberta, which had just completed construction of a giant Ukrainian Easter egg. Here is Mr. Clark's report -- from our archives.

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BERNARD CLARKE: I'm at Vegreville, a small town in southern Alberta, standing beneath a giant… a giant Ukrainian Easter egg. It measures 25 feet long, 18 feet wide and took 12,000 man hours to build. Ralph Gorey was chairman of the egg committee.

RALPH GOREY: Yes, it is a perfect super… a large egg. Actually, back in 1973, when we started on the project, we thought of building some type of monument. We were thinking of a horse with an RCMP mounted on it, something that people could take a picture of and say, well, we were at Vegreville, and this is… this is… depicts Vegreville. At the chamber meeting, Mrs. McKenzie thought of the possibility of an egg, and we laughed and thought, well, no, that's not a bad idea. It would be unique.

BC: So, the design, Professor Ron Resch of the University of Utah, got down to work. And nearly two years later, he came up with the design of the perfect egg.

RON RESCH: My initial reaction, I think, like most people to hear of an egg that scale was to break up laughing. And it took me some time to take the project seriously. Because at first, you would think that it's very simple. You just go build a big egg, right? [RR and a woman chuckle] And then you discover that if you're… if you're not going to be turning an egg out on a lathe, where you just can eyeball what the surface is good, you know very directly, then it turns out to be quite a terribly difficult engineering and mathematical problem.

BC: As you can imagine, when the council had the idea to build this giant Easter egg, the people in the town weren’t certain what to think.

MAN: Well, I think it's something fantastic.

MAN #2: I can't see anything wrong with it.

MAN #3: It's too late to do anything about it now.

MAN #4: All right. All right. I think it’s okay.

BOY: Well, I think it's really great. And… but we could have used the money for something different, except it'll put us on the map and it'll bring… attract lots of visitors.

MAN #5: Personally, I think it was a rather dumb thing for them to do. Spend that kind of money.

MAN #6: Good money gone to waste on the wrong thing.

RG: I think if we were to go out on the commercial market today and ask for bids on this type of thing, that it would come to well over a quarter of a million dollars.

BC: For an egg?

RG: This is right, yeah.

BC: Why? What's so special?

RG: Well, Professor Resch, the designer of the egg, did this by computer. It took him roughly nine months of time at the University of Utah to develop the geometry of the egg in the first place.

RR: I discovered after I went to design the eggs that no one had ever defined what an egg was. And so, the first thing that's there is a completely mathematically-defined egg shape.

WOMAN: Well, most of the people around here are Ukrainians and everything, and it's nice having a big Easter egg around there.

MAN: Good thing for the young generation coming up.

BC: For the young?

MAN: For younger people.

BC: A giant Easter egg. It just seems --

MAN: Well, for the younger generation, for Ukrainian heritage, eh? [both chuckle] You know? It's… it's people, you know? You want to be a little different than somebody else, you know? You'll see it is cars. If you’ve got something that's kind of a little… little different, they’ll go for it. [laughing]

RG: There are 524 tar patterns. There are 1,108 coloured triangles on the outside and another 1,108 on the backside. And then, there are 3,512 visible facets, which are flat surfaces, which actually give it the curvature. It takes that many to do it.

BC: The perfect egg?

RG: Yes, the… the holes that are drilled inside, which you can't see, of course, are done to five one thousandth of an inch accuracy. And this has to be the case, otherwise it wouldn't have come out into a perfect egg.

BC: Is it a kind of ninth wonder of the world?

RG: We think it is. We really do. There are nine mathematical, architectural and engineering firsts involved in this egg, alone. Besides being a masterpiece, a beautiful thing architecturally and engineeringly, it's… it's really something. Professor Resch has researched this. And this process now, since he's been able to build an egg and have it come on itself, he's going to be able to do almost any kind of architectural structure that you would ever want.

RR: Well, as we studied the structure, finally, the result was that a single mast going down to the egg would support it. So we decided once we saw it was going to sit on a single mast to have the whole egg rotate. There was quite a large number of speculation as well. Will the small point point into the wind or will the large point point into the wind? Or just what is this thing going to do? And finally, we ran a wind tunnel test to determine which way the thing would orient, but I'm not telling. Since it's such a subject of debate, I think it only fair to leave it to everyone's imagination and conversation. They can argue now and come out and see the egg and try to determine which way will it turn when the wind blows?

RG: [laughing] That's a fact. Now, there might be somebody, some town who will come out with a chicken? [laughing] It's people for you, you know?

BC: As a reporter, I guess I should summarise my feelings as I stand here beneath the Easter egg. I can do that in two words. So what?

RG: So what? I think that you will see nothing like this in the whole world. It's colourful. It's beautiful. It's something you could take a picture of and you can show to people and say that there is no other thing like this in the whole world. It will be in the Guinness Book of Records. There's no question about it.

BC: For As It Happens, On The Road, This is Bernard Clark in Vegreville, Alberta.

[/sc]

CH: From our archives, former As It Happens, roving -- and skeptical -- reporter Bernard Clark, reporting on the giant Ukrainian Easter egg in Vegreville, Alberta, in 1975.

[Music: Jazz]

Part 3: Encore: Nishga

Encore: Nishga

AH: Between Passover, Ramadan, Easter and the simple fact of a long weekend, many of us have been gathering with family over the past few days. And for some of us, those gatherings can be fraught. Complicated by absences. By acrimony. And by questions about ancestry and belonging. That kind of complication is something Jordan Abel knows a lot about. The Nisga'a writer, professor and poet has spent years unpacking his own ancestry. And it's a journey he says has left him with as many questions as answers, both of which are taken up beautifully in his 2021 book, Nishga. It's a work of creative nonfiction that made him a finalist for a Writers' Trust Prize last year. And now, it's scored Mr. Abel another two nods -- for a pair of B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes. So in celebration of those nominations -- which arrived on Jordan Abel's birthday last week -- here's an encore presentation of his 2021 interview with Carol Off about Nishga.

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CO: Jordan Abel welcome to As It Happens.

JORDAN ABEL: Thank you so much for having me here.

CO: And thank you so much for this book, because it is really an exceptional work.

JORDAN ABEL: Thank you. Yeah, it's a lifelong project.

CO: You begin this book, Nishga, by giving people permission not to read it. So you say if now is not the time, there will be another time. What do you mean by that?

JORDAN ABEL: Well, this is a book that was really difficult for me, and I think it potentially could be difficult for others too -- and as I write in that in that open letter to all my relations that begins the book -- it's a book about intergenerational trauma, Indigenous dispossession, and the afterlife of residential schools. But it's also a book about sexual and physical violence, lateral violence, depression, suicide and self-harm. And so I think depending on where you're at, at any given moment, you know, this might not be the book for you at this particular time. You know, it also might be the book for you at this time. But I want anyone who picks the book to have a moment to recognise what the subject matter is before they head into it.

CO: This is your fourth book, but it's also something that, as you just mentioned, is something that has been incubating or cooking for a lifetime. How long has Nishga been in the works?

JORDAN ABEL: I think this is one of those books that I've been trying to write my whole life in a lot of ways. Much like my first book, The Place of Scraps, that was a book that I'd been trying to articulate in various ways for years and years. I think this one goes back even deeper and even further because it's a book about my life and my parents' lives, my mother and my father, and my grandparents lives. And it's one that I never intended to write, but also it's a book that it felt like I was always moving towards this moment where I would have to find some way to write about intergenerational trauma.

CO: And why is this the right moment?

JORDAN ABEL: Well, that's a funny question. [Chuckles] I wrote this book in my PhD, so it was my PhD dissertation. And it's not at all really an academic book, but that was a particular moment in my writing career where I had to produce something. And I knew that this book was a book I needed to write. So there were some artificial circumstances that catalysed some of the actual writing of this project. But I think it's also a book that will always be timely because there are always Indigenous peoples who are dispossessed or who are impacted by intergenerational trauma. And I think those are circumstances that we as a society tend to not understand deeply.

CO: So who have you written this book for?

JORDAN ABEL: I primarily wrote it for me and my family. But I also want to understand all my relations as being further networks of kinship so Indigenous peoples who have been dispossessed from their home communities, urban Indigenous peoples, Indigenous peoples who intergenerational survivors of residential schools, and also non-Indigenous peoples who would like to learn about these areas and would like to learn about the intergenerational impacts of residential schools.

CO: The discussion we've had so far is about the content which just doesn't do entire justice to this visually beautiful and rich book, because the thing is that it's just not words, it's not just autobiography, it's not just telling us about things, it's showing us things through photos, through images. And the way the story kind of bends back upon itself and keeps going around in different kinds of circles, it's beautiful. And I just wonder, just describe if you would, how you see it, how you created this object, really?

JORDAN ABEL: Well, I guess the first thing I would say is that this book is being published as a work of creative non-fiction. But I see it as a multi-genre work. So there's obviously creative non-fiction in it, but there's also photography and concrete poetry and other kinds of forms of found documentation. And the reason why it looks like that is because as I was going through this process of trying to figure out a way to write about intergenerational trauma, I realised that there were all of these documents that I had access to that were very visual. And those visual documents played an important role in the narrative. And so I really struggled initially to try to find a way to include them in a way that made sense. And I just started placing these archival photographs into the document, that was the initial visual starting point for the book. And once they had those archival photographs in place, then I started including bits and pieces of my father's artwork. And once I had those in place, then I started combining those elements and combining those elements with my own artistic outputs. And so the book ends up taking on, I think, both a narrative trajectory but also a visual trajectory.

CO: The stunning Nisga'a artworks of your dad's -- sometimes they are superimposed with tex, they disappear and become text and then reappear. What is the text? Can you just describe what you're doing as you play with those images?

JORDAN ABEL: Sure. So there's a moment individual trajectory of the book where my dad's artwork comes into play where my textural output ends. And the writing in that text is actually a partially separate project of mine called Empty Spaces, where I write about landscape essentially. And it's a partly conceptual project that comes out of an interest in James Fenimore Cooper's book, The Last of the Mohicans, which is a deeply troubling, problematic book...t

CO: To say the least.

JORDAN ABEL: Yes, of course. But that project is very much about writing the landscape and in thinking about our relationships to the land through fiction and trying to map out these imagines fictional spaces that are populated by trees and rocks and rivers and natural things.

CO: But it does a very good job -- using James Fenimore Cooper's words, and they blend in with the artwork. The kinds of writing, the colonial writing of this country, of this continent that has come to be what people understand like you used before. You've used Westerns and how they create in the popular imagination what an Indigenous person is and that stays with us. We can't shake that. And so that's what really struck me the most about how you use those words.

JORDAN ABEL: Yeah. I think James Fenimore Cooper's work has had an enormous impact on the people of America and in Canada. And I initially became interested actually in James Fenimore Cooper's work after I read a book by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz called An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, in which she makes this really amazing argument that The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper was integral in creating this fictional origin story of the United States and one that very conveniently left out the part about Indigenous genocide. And I think that was a really powerful argument to make and one that really stuck with me. And I think that book and other books like it have historically done so much work to suppress the true colonial origins of Canada and America and to, I guess, obfuscate Indigenous presence on this land.

CO: You're listening to As It Happens. And I am speaking with Griffin Prize winning poet Jordan Abel about his newest book, Nishga. Jordan, so far we talked about sort of the larger themes. But this is a very personal story as well. And as you say, it's very painful for you to do this exploration, but you're looking at your own family history. What are some of the life experiences that you're taking up in Nishga?

JORDAN ABEL: Well, I think it's such a complicated thing to write about your family. And I often think about this book as problem based writing where the problem is my life or the problem is intergenerational trauma. And I like to frame it that way initially, because the thing that I'm trying to write about is it's not just me, but where I find myself in the wake of this violence that ripples outwards from the Coqualeetza residential school. And I think that necessarily involves revealing certain things about myself and my past. And it also necessarily involves pieces of narrative from my mom and my dad and my grandparents. And all of those things become intertwined and inseparable. At the very end of the book, I have this moment where I talk about how it's impossible to write about intergenerational trauma without involving other generations. And I think that that's true because our lives are all intertwined.

CO: And you just mentioned Coqualeetza residential school. So your grandparents went to Coqualeetza residential school when they were children or they were sent there or were taken there, right?

JORDAN ABEL: Yeah, both of my grandparents on my dad's side went there, yes. It's been a very difficult place to return to both spiritually and physically. As part of the narrative in this book, I ended up going back to the site of the Coqualeetza Indian residential school, which is no longer there, but there are other small pieces of it that remain. And I think that was a really difficult journey for me to make, but it was also one that I felt I needed to do. I felt like I needed to return to that spot that had had such an enormous impact on my grandparents' lives and also on my own life, even though I'd never been there before. And it's a very complicated place for me.

CO: And were you able to learn anything from the documents you went through about what happened to your grandparents at the residential school?

JORDAN ABEL: No, sadly. Part of this journey for me was going through all of those documents that I could find relating to the Coqualeetza Indian residential school. And so many of them had been destroyed previously. And the ones that have been archived had no mention of my grandparents specifically, but also had no mention of most of the other attendees also. So that was a really difficult, painful set of documents to navigate. And I end the book by saying that I really wish I had known my grandparents and had gotten to know them, even if that was second hand through other relatives. And I think part of the way I've experienced intergenerational trauma is that I didn't have a relationship with my grandparents, I didn't ever get to know them, I haven't met any family that is really willing to talk to me in any great detail about them. And that's been so difficult. And I think part of this experience and part of the understanding that I've come to is that the violence that ripples outwards from the Coqualeetza school, it really has fractured families. And I think that's most likely a very common experience for a lot of people who are in my position.

CO: Much of your book revolves around your father's absence in your life. And you write at one point, I remember meeting my dad for the first time and asking him 23 years worth of questions. I can't remember most of what I asked him. What do you want us to understand about your relationship with your dad?

JORDAN ABEL: I think that it's a complicated relationship. You know, for 23 years I think his absence in my life really shaped me and had a huge impact on me. And in part, it was because I didn't understand why there was an absence in the first place because I didn't know him and I didn't have any of these answers. And when I met him in that one time when I was 23, that was a huge turning point for me personally for a lot of different reasons. But one of those reasons was that I realized all of the questions that I wanted to ask my dad and all of the stuff that had been building up inside for those 23 years, I think it was bigger than just him. And that was ultimately the path that led me to this book I think.

CO: In that passage, you also say that you had assumed that once you were able to ask your father those questions, that it would fill some hole, and that it was disappointing that the hole in my life, you said, was still there after we met. I always thought it would go away, but I guess that's something that I carry with me everywhere now.

JORDAN ABEL: Yes. I think that was honestly a very devastating personal moment for me to come to that realisation. And I remember going into that moment, going into that trip to try to find him with all of these hopes and expectations, and then finally meeting him and asking some of those questions -- it really revealed to me that all of these hopes and expectations that I had that I wasn't able to articulate were actually there and that those expectations were part of the problem.

CO: You had the opportunity to do some archival work for this book and reading documents that became available through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. What context did that give you for your own trauma, for your own life experiences? What did that tell you about, I guess, what collectively had happened?

JORDAN ABEL: I found particular process really very difficult on a lot of different levels. But I think the most difficult part of it was that because so many of the documents I consider really importance were destroyed, the pieces that were left I think sometimes painted really strange, disjointed pictures of what happens at those schools. When I went through some of those documents, specifically about the Coqualeetza school, I remember seeing a lot of receipts for lumber that was purchased. I guess those were the kinds of innocuous documents that weren't worthy of being destroyed. And potentially any documents relating to my parents were never preserved. And those documents simply just weren't available to me.

CO: You're listening to As It Happens. I'm speaking with Nisga'a poet, Jordan Abel, about his new book, Nishga. A major theme of your book is you're trying to find your own way back to that community, the Nisga'a community, and your own sense of being Indigenous. Where are you in that journey at this point?

JORDAN ABEL: I think it's still a lifelong journey. Going back home will always be something that's a part of me. And I think part of this book is about figuring out what that means. And for a long time, I thought, it means returning to Kincolith, which is the community that my grandparents are from originally. And throughout the book, I talk about how my grandparents, I mean, they're no longer living, but none of my family is there anymore. And so I think going back home in that sense, in a physical geographical sense, doesn't quite make sense anymore. And that the place that I ultimately want to go back to I still haven't quite figured out what that is -- be it like a geographical place or a spiritual place. And finding my way through that I think has been a challenge and is the challenge of this book and I think will continue to be a challenge for me moving forward.

CO: You pose these questions in the book or you did it in a session that you record here: What does it mean to be Nisga'a? What does it mean to be Indigenous? What counts as lived Indigenous experience? And who was allowed to answer these questions? What is the answer to that?

JORDAN ABEL: You know, I think those questions are still really good ones. And I'm still asking them today. And I don't know if there's an easy answer to any of them. And I hope they're questions that we all continue to ask.

CO: Well, I just want to ask you, because it's very topical right now with writers and creators, including I guess, Joseph Boyden, and more recently, Michelle Latimer, claiming Indigenous identity in ways that some people have found quite problematic. So where do you think your story in this book -- where do you stand in that broader conversation?

JORDAN ABEL: I think it's such an important question in this, and I think this book is so much about openness and transparency. And the way I've thought about it before is that I can absolutely imagine someone who's in my position where they've been severed from their home community by way of colonial violence. But without the the documentation to prove their Indigenous heritage. And this book, I think, is very much about drawing the lines back to community I think after experiencing this really violent and difficult dispossession and trying to piece all of those things together.

CO: And so who belongs in that family, do you think?

JORDAN ABEL: I mean, I think this book is one that also complicates the idea of family as being this singular entity. Family and community, I think, exist in this overlapping multiple space where certain parts of a family can exist together and can exist apart. And likewise, certain kinds of communities can exist together and exist apart. And so I think it's really important to think about family and community as not being a singular entity at all times.

CO: Can I ask you one other thing, which is that through these past years, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, through the missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls, I have to say that I'm not alone I think in learning so much of the history of Canada's treatment of Indigenous people and the legacy of trauma that you're describing in this book. And I just wonder, does it seem to you that more Canadians have had their eyes open now?

JORDAN ABEL: Yes. There are absolutely so many people, particularly since the very public moments of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, have learnt about the existence of residential schools and and the history of Indigenous peoples in this country. And I think there are so many more that still need to do additional learning, you know, but...

CO: That's a very polite way of putting it, I have to say. [Laughter]

JORDAN ABEL: [Laughter] I think we're on the right track. You know, it's not something that happens overnight, but something that I think collectively as a society, I think we're moving more and more towards a better understanding of the actual things that have happened in this country.

CO: You say in a number of places in the book how painful it is for you to reveal so much of yourself and of your trauma. But you said at one point you were talking to a friend on a patio one day and told him you wanted to write this book because it was a book I wish I had read earlier in my own life. And I wonder if that's not just for you, but for many of us that this is a book that as painful as it was for you to write it, it's something that we needed right now.

JORDAN ABEL: Well, I really hope that the people who need this kind of book find their way to it. And I do think it's such a difficult subject matter. And I think it's such a difficult book. But I stand by that moment where I say, look, I wish this is the book that I had read earlier in my life. And I also wish that somebody else had written this book [chuckles], so that I could have read it and understood my own life better. You know, that didn't happen. But hopefully that can be a thing and a moment that other people have.

CO: Jordan, thank you for writing this book and thank you for speaking with us.

JORDAN ABEL: Thank you for reading so carefully.

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AH: Jordan Abel's book, Nishga, is currently a finalist for the B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes' Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize and Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. Mr. Abel spoke with Carol Off on As It Happens in May, 2021. For more on this story, visit our website at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

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April 18, 2022 Episode Transcript

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