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The AIH Transcript for August 4, 2022

PAUL HUNTER: Hello. I'm Paul Hunter.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Good evening. I'm Talia Schlanger. This is As It Happens.

[Theme]

Prologue

TS: Tonight:

PH: The scene of the crime. In a rare move, jurors tour the Parkland high school where 17 people were killed before deciding the fate of the shooter. A journalist who was there describes the unsettling scene.

TS: Sick and tired. The nurse staffing shortage in B.C. is leaving hospitals in the lurch -- and one veteran nurse says there's no quick fix.

PH: Reasonably gentle giant. A B.C. family out for a boat ride is befriended by a humpback whale the size of a schoolbus -- who treated their boat as a plaything for about an hour.

TS: Going it alone. We remember Albert Woodfox -- one of the Louisiana prisoners known as the Angola 3 -- who spent decades in solitary confinement, all the while maintaining his innocence.

PH: Dairy-tale endings. With hard times hitting the ice-cream truck industry, we take stroll into our archives for a big scoop of the good old days when the Big Gay Ice Cream truck was born.

TS: And… Under the surface. News that long-necked sea-dwelling lizards also lived in fresh water has energized Loch Ness monster believers. But it has the paleontologist who made the discovery wishing people would dive a little deeper.

TS: As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio that knows you can't please-siosaur everyone.

Part 1: Parkland Jury Tour, Loch Ness Plesiosaur, Encore: Big Gay Ice Cream Truck

Parkland Jury Tour

Guest: Terry Spencer

TS: Before, it was just a building. A place where high school students in Parkland, Florida, went to class, learned from their teachers and talked with their friends in the hall. But on February 14, 2018, that building became a crime scene, when a gunman went on a shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School -- killing 17 people. Since then, the shooter -- Nikolas Cruz -- has pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder. And he is now facing a trial that will determine whether his sentence will be life without parole or the death penalty. Yesterday, in an effort to make that decision, jurors visited that building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as part of the sentencing trial. Terry Spencer was also there. He walked through and saw the horrific reminders of what happened four years ago. He's an Associated Press correspondent in Florida. We reached him in Fort Lauderdale.

PH: Terry, how prepared were jurors, do you think, for what they saw at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School yesterday?

TERRY SPENCER: Factually, they were very prepared. They'd sat through three weeks of just heartrending testimony. They saw surveillance video of the shootings. They saw cell phone videos that had a lot of the sounds. They'd seen crime scene photos of bodies in the hallway. So they were factually prepared. Whether they were emotionally prepared that's hard to say. You know, we're all human. Juries are humans. It would… might be very difficult to be emotionally prepared for what they went through yesterday.

PH: So what actually happened at the building yesterday? Take us through it.

TS: Jurors arrived in two vans. There are actually 22 jurors. There are the 12 who are on the panel, plus 10 alternates. And they were accompanied by the judge, representative of the prosecution team, the representative of the defence team, and Broward County sheriff's deputies. And they were taken to an area where they were allowed to get protective clothing if they wished it. And then they were taken through the building the way that Nikolas Cruz went through the building. They were not allowed to ask any questions or communicate with each other. Under Florida court rules, it's supposed to be a silent tour based on their own memories of what they learned prior to being there. They were told they couldn't even point to things. And they were in the building, we were told, for approximately an hour, and then they were put back in the van and then taken back to the courthouse. Meanwhile, myself and four other reporters were allowed to go into the building for a half-hour.

PH: How rare is it for a walk-through of a crime scene like that to happen?

TS: It is very rare. I spoke to attorneys, and most of them have never had one. I spoke to one attorney. He's been doing cases since 1988. He said he's had over 150 jury trials. He said he's had exactly one site visit. But because this was in a building, and it was such a major case, and there was no desire for that building to be used ever again, they were able to seal it off and preserve it for this particular day.

PH: What's it like in there? I mean, how unchanged is it since it became that crime scene?

TS: The only thing that's missing since the crime technicians left are the bodies and some personal belongings, like backpacks and purses. Otherwise, it looks just like a time capsule of Valentine's Day 2018. In the stairwell where Cruz prepared his gun, there is still a stuffed teddy bear, dirty but sitting there where it was left. You walk into classrooms; there are still laptops on desks. In this one English class. They were studying Romeo and Juliet, and all the books were opened to this one particular scene. There were bags of Valentine's gifts that were just left. There was one bag that I will always remember. It was just a pink bag, and it had a single red what was at one time a red rose in it, but now the rose was wilted and next to it was a card. There are bloodstains all over the floor. There is glass charred. You're walking on broken safety glass everywhere. In a classroom, it was Holocaust studies, they had just textbooks that were there. There was a blood-covered book called Tell Them We Remember. It sat atop a bullet-riddled desk. There was a we will never forget sign in that classroom. Two children died in that particular classroom. In this English class, they were writing essays about Malala, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head by the Taliban and survived and won a Nobel Peace Prize. In an essay there, somebody wrote a bullet went straight to her head, but not her brain. We go to school every day of the week, and we take it all for granted. We cry and complain without knowing how lucky we are to be able to learn. And the fact that we knew where certain students had died. You could go to that spot, and you could see the evidence of their deaths. And that just really hit home. Particularly for those of us who are parents, I think. But everyone in general.

PH: Terry, my… my hair is standing on end. I asked you if you thought the jurors were prepared for that. Were you prepared for what you saw?

TS: I've been a crime reporter for most of my 35 years. Crime and courts. I think the way I coped with it was is I had just built it up so much that it was just going to be so awful that when I actually got in there, it couldn't reach that level. I think that helped me cope. But… and I also think the fact that we were rushed, you know, they'd given us 30 minutes. We had to get in there and get it done as quickly as we could. So we worked as a team, the five reporters, but it was a lot of see something, write it down, see something, write it down. So we didn't have time to linger and think about it. It really wasn't until I got home last night that I had a real chance to think about what we saw. Even when I was writing the story yesterday, it was sort of... you're just trying to be in a professional mode and not let things get to you. I think for me, actually, this week, the hardest thing was hearing the statements from the parents, the parents and the spouses of the dead. They got to go into court this week and make a victim impact statements, tell about the person they lost. They were all just horrible and heartbreaking. Athletic Director Chris Hickson, he died a hero. He burst through the doors. There is surveillance video. He hears the gunshots. He just comes bursting in through the doors, and Cruz shoots him, and he falls, and he tries to get back up, and then Cruz shoots him again. Well, he has a son in his 20's who's special needs. And they brought him last yesterday, you know, to talk to him, to get his statement about his father. And he just said that he and his dad had this weekly ritual where they would go buy doughnuts, and he misses him. And it… it just broke your heart.

PH: Why did prosecutors believe it was important for jurors to do that tour as they try to come to a decision on whether the gunman will get the death penalty or life in prison?

TS: Well, I think their official reason will be that it's necessary so that they'll understand what happened. You can look at all the pictures you want. You can look at all the surveillance video that you want. But until you're there in the building, you can't really understand what Cruz did until you see it for yourself. The defence will argue that the reason why they did it is they want to get that emotion into the jury because it has to be a unanimous vote for him to get the death penalty. That the prosecution wants to close the deal with any jurors who might be thinking, yeah, it was horrible, it was awful. But Cruz had his own problems. Maybe he doesn't deserve death. They wanted to get it into their emotions that he deserves it. And I think that's what the defence would argue is why they did it.

PH: What have current students at the school told you about what it's like to see that building right in front of them on campus every day as they continue to go about their classes in other buildings?

TS: What they will say is that it's hard. Now, none of the students who are currently there were there when it happened. The freshmen who were there in 2018 graduated in 2021. But the students that I spoke to were there when it happened -- and still had to be there for one or two or even three more years -- said it was just a constant reminder because it's a three-story building. It is the most dominant building on campus. And they just talked about how every day it was just there, and it reminded you of what happened, and there is just no way to avoid it.

PH: Oh, gosh, Terry, thank you. Thank you for your reporting and for helping us understand all of this. It is an awful story. I appreciate your time.

TS: All right. Thank you.

PH: Bye-bye.

TS: Terry Spencer is the Associated Press's Broward-Palm Beach Correspondent. We reached him in Fort Lauderdale.

[Chillhop]

Loch Ness Plesiosaur

Guest: Nick Longrich

TS: People in search of the Loch Ness Monster are relentless. Quick to collect any blurry photograph or intriguing zoological explanation that surfaces from the murky depths of Scotland's most persistent creature fascination. Which is how Nick Longrich found himself in the crosshairs of the Nessie community this week. Mr. Longrich is a senior lecturer in evolutionary biology at the University of Bath. He's also one of the authors behind a new paper published in the journal Cretaceous Research. It's about Plesiosaurs -- long-necked aquatic reptiles that swam the seas while dinosaurs roamed the Earth. And his new research backs up a theory that plesiosaurs may have been able to survive in freshwater. Well, cue the U.K. press: "Loch Ness Monster bombshell" declared The Daily Express. "Totally plausible", even, according to the Telegraph. We reached Nick Longrich in Kodiak, Alaska.

PH: Nick, let's clear this up once and for all. Does your research mean the Loch Ness monster could plausibly, maybe at one point, have actually existed? And that it was, in fact, a plesiosaur?

NICK LONGRICH: Ah, not really. I guess what I would say is that what it shows is that one aspect of this scenario where there's a plesiosaur in Loch Ness is plausible, which is that, you know, could a plesiosaur exist in freshwater? Yeah. Other aspects of this scenario just don't work. I mean, plesiosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, and there's no fossils of them after that point. It's unlikely they survived that long undiscovered. Loch Ness is a fairly small lake. If you… I tried to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and I think it could support maybe like five Loch Ness monsters, not a viable population. It's just not big enough. And then it's a young lake. That whole area was covered under ice, under ice sheets and glaciers 20,000 years ago. So it's not like it's been stable since the Cretaceous period, and they could've just hung out there. So, you know, you never know anything for certain in science. Future data can always prove your hypotheses wrong. But for all intents and purposes, it's extremely unlikely, if not impossible, a Loch Ness monster exists, and it's a plesiosaur.

PH: You wouldn't know that from the U.K. tabloids and newspapers right now, though, would you? You look at those and you might think that's what you discovered. What do you think about all the coverage this has brought?

NL: We were just kind of joking around and having a bit of fun and referencing the Loch Ness monster. It kind of took off. And there was one word we used in there, "plausible", again in reference to one aspect of the story. And they kind of, like, ignored the words before and after because it made a better story. And so, I don't know. I have mixed feelings. Part of me is like I'm… I guess I'm trying to be a serious scientist, and I'm getting wrapped up in cryptozoology and pseudoscience. But on the other hand, it's sort of harmless fun. Like, it's kind of misinformation maybe, but like, not all misinformation is necessarily harmful. You know, I'm just thinking, like, you know, it's… it's been a rough few years, man. [PH laughs] Like, we've been through a global pandemic. There is a recession. We have World War Three underway. Like, I think people are in the mood for something a little light and fun and trivial.

PH: And gosh, it's got us talking about science, right? So, look, let's switch to science. Let's switch to science.

NL: Yeah, sure. Okay.

PH: If it's not the Loch Ness monster, what have you uncovered about plesiosaurs?

NL: Well, we found some plesiosaurs in a place we, you know, maybe wouldn't have expected them in a freshwater ecosystem. So, I was, you know, studying some plesiosaur bones, plesiosaur skeleton from some marine animals. And then, a day or two later, I was, you know, looking at some fossils in Morocco from some freshwater river deposits. And I recognized a… a plesiosaur arm bone. And I'm like, well, that's really stunning. What's that doing there? And then, we started looking for more material, and some vertebrae turned up and some teeth and then more teeth. And it turns out they're fairly common in freshwater. Well, marine animals enter freshwater for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they get lost and swim up rivers. Sometimes they just enter briefly to feed opportunistically. A few can tolerate freshwater to a degree. Things like beluga whales and the Irrawaddy Dolphin can move into freshwater and then move back into salt. And then, some are fully adapted to freshwater. You have river dolphins that have evolved like four or five times. So, given how common these are, we think these are probably either freshwater tolerant or fully freshwater animals.

PH: You said Morocco.

NL: Yeah.

PH: Is it true you found a bone in a market in Morocco? Or a fossil?

NL: In a rock shop. You know, it's a… it's a rock shop. You know, they sell, they cut and polish limestone. They have big slabs with Ammonites in them. And… and they sell the stuff for tables. And they had a little room in the back with a few bones. And, you know, I looked at one of these things and said, well, that's a plesiosaur. So, you know, it's just… there's a lot of fossils in Morocco. And there's a lot of research left to be done on them. And we just keep finding new things over there.

PH: Did you really haggle it down to $20? [chuckling]

NL: I forget what it was. I might be… I might be crediting myself with my haggling skills. And… but the reality is those Moroccans are pretty canny negotiators. It might not have been that low.

PH: [chuckling] So now that we know that these creatures lived in the ocean, saltwater seas, and as well in freshwater, how does that change our understanding of them?

NL: Yeah. So, I mean, to be fair, there have been other reports of plesiosaurs from freshwater. And this particular family, they are called the leptocleididae, is known almost exclusively in kind of mixed environments, marginal marine, brackish water or fresh. So this whole group might have been, to a degree, freshwater-adapted. And there's other groups that show up in freshwater, but it kind of emphasizes this was a pretty, pretty common pattern for them, which is interesting because other marine reptiles don't really do this. The the ichthyosaurs never show up in freshwater, the mosasaurs maybe became adapted to freshwater once, and the plesiosaurs seem to have kind of repeatedly invaded freshwater. So there's something different about them. Maybe their physiology, maybe their swimming adaptations where they could inhabit these environments pretty readily. But it shows they were, you know, a very widespread, adaptable, opportunistic group and really successful. They were around for over a hundred million years, and they exploited a huge range of ecosystems.

PH: Forgive me because I'm going to bring Loch Ness up again. [chuckling]

NL: Yeah.

PH: Having said all that, for those who are listening, because they really want to believe that there's a monster out there --

NL: Yeah.

PH: Have you got any word of hope for them? Anything you can say that, maybe?

NL: Oh, man. I guess what I'd say is that [sigh], you know, we know less than we think we do. We tend to be overconfident in what we… we know. And… but we keep finding surprising things out there. And that's why we do science. If we knew everything and we were never going to be surprised, there would be no point in doing paleontology or looking for things. In the modern world, there are things we found in the past few decades that we didn't know existed. There was a group of insects called the mantophasmatodea that seemed to go extinct for tens of millions of years. And they popped up alive in South Africa. There was a… a tree called the Wollemi Pine that again had seemed to go extinct, and it showed up in Australia alive and well. And then there was the, you know, the coelacanth -- this fish that seemed to go extinct 66 million years ago and then turned out to be… turned out to still exist. Things like that are rare, and they're rarer than ever because we've explored all these nooks and crannies. We've done a really good job sampling increasingly. There's still going to be things out there that we haven't found yet.

PH: Thank you so much for your time.

NL: Yeah. Okay. No problem.

PH: Thanks. Bye-bye.

TS: Nick Longrich is a senior lecturer in evolutionary biology at University of Bath. We reached him in Kodiak, Alaska. And for more on this story, you can visit our website at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[chillhop]

Encore: Big Gay Ice Cream Truck

TS: As you might have noticed, it's summer. And depending on where you're listening to this there's a good chance it's very hot. Which is one of the reasons we've been a little bothered by a chilling report of trouble facing a summer tradition: the soft serve ice cream truck. Last month, the New York Times reported on the quote "melting profits" in the industry. A lot of these trucks run on diesel fuel, which is through the roof. But according to the Times, the price of sprinkles has also exploded -- doubling in a year to about $60 US a bag. This is of course bad news for ice cream lovers, but also for As It Happens because over the years our program has aired many interviews ice cream truck operators. These people are a true Triple Threat. They serve ice cream, they drive huge diesel trucks around busy cities, and they somehow withstand multiple hours of ear-splitting ice cream jingles. So, we're going to dive into the As It Happens archive today for this 2009 interview with Doug Quint -- who guest host Robert Harris reached on a busy summer day inside the brand new Big Gay Ice Cream truck in New York's Union Square.

[sc]

ROBERT HARRIS: Doug, what makes the Big Gay Ice Cream truck gay?

DOUG QUINT: I think really the only thing that makes it gay is me. [chuckle] But, you know, of course there is more to it than just me being inside a truck. I’ve got my boyfriend here and that kind of makes it even more gay. You know, I decorate the truck. I have my own topping menu that we devised at home. And really, we just try to have a great attitude with the whole thing and have fun. So, I mean, part of the… part of the gay in the title is sort of an old-fashioned gay.

RH: So, how did you decide to do this?

DG: Well, I have a friend who has driven an ice cream truck for a couple of summers. We're both musicians. We both went to Juilliard. And she plays the flute. I play the bassoon. And over the winter, the depot where she drives out of told her they were looking for drivers, so she put a Facebook status message up that said, if you're interested in driving an ice cream truck, let me know. And I saw that and I just finished my doctoral exams and I passed all of that stuff in May. It's also my 20th summer in New York, so I really liked the idea of doing something on the streets of New York. So all of that sort of lined up and I found myself driving an ice cream truck. And the name of the truck came when I needed a name for my Facebook group page, and I just asked everyone to please come support me and my Big Gay Ice Cream truck. And it was born.

RH: How have the people of Manhattan responded to the idea of a publicly homosexual dessert vehicle?

DG: Ninety-nine per cent of the people just laugh their butts off at it, which is exactly how it should be. And the other one per cent are horrified, which is exactly the right ratio, I think.

RH: Horrified. And how do they express their horror, just out of curiosity?

DG: They just… they scowl and storm off. Or they call my truck three or four letter names, which really makes me laugh, because somehow they bought into the idea that the truck really is gay. [both chuckle]

RH: So, what are your flavours and toppings today? If I were, you know, lucky enough to be in Union Square this afternoon instead of sitting in a radio studio in Toronto, what would I be… what would be tempting me?

DG: We have some dust. We take wasabi peas and mill them in a spice grinder until they're powder and dust those over cones. We have ‘nilla wafers that we crush up and dulce de leche that we squeeze over cones. I usually put those two together. I have brandied peaches that I’ve made to a puree, olive oil and salt together. [RH chuckles] And… let me look in the cabinet here and see what else I’ve got. I also look in there and I see some crushed mothballs. And then our secret stash of caramelized bacon.

RH: Wow. The bacon's very big these days, isn't it?

DG: What we do is make an ice cream sandwich with two chocolate cookies, chocolate ice cream and then caramelized bacon for a layer in there.

RH: Sounds fantastic.

DG: And we had a… we had a competition to name the thing over Twitter. And it's been officially dubbed the “Choinkwich”.

RH: You know, so Doug, ice cream trucks usually have a jingle and you're a professional bassoonist, a classical bassoonist. So I figure you could use the opening to “The Rite of Spring”, but you probably… that wouldn't, like, be the greatest jingle. It doesn't seem to fit your image. So where did your jingle come from?

DG: Well, we're actually writing… we're not playing anything. And there's one company that dominates the industry here, and you hear their jingle all over the place. And it's pretty much driven everyone insane. You always hear “Pop, Goes the Weasel”. And a friend of mine said she was up in Harlem and heard an ice cream truck playing “Send in the Clowns”, which is really kind of incredibly depressing.

RH: But only in Manhattan. Only in Manhattan.

DG: Yeah. And so, my truck has a couple of these standards on it, but I refuse to play them because they make my skin crawl. So, about a month ago I asked a friend of mine, Jane Wiedlin, who we wrote “Our Lips Are Sealed” for the Go-Go's, if she would think about writing us some theme music. And in the middle of the night, I had just gotten home from driving a shift, about 2:30 in the morning, and I had an email from Jane saying I finished the song, and it was a demo of her playing it with a guitar and singing my theme song, “The Gig Gay Ice Cream Song”, which flipped me out. I mean, this is an old idol of mine. So here she is. She's written a song for me which I'm going to have turned into bells. I'm going to have them converted to bell sounds so that when I'm rolling around, certainly by next summer, I'll be playing “The Big Gay Ice Cream Song”.

RH: So, there is going to be a next summer, you're pretty sure, for you?

DG: Yeah. At this point, people are asking if we want to franchise it. We’d incorporate it as Big Gay Incorporated. Once the season winds down and I'm back playing the bassoon, we're going to spend a lot of time figuring out what the next step is, but I don't see how I can keep truck [?]. Once the ice cream truck’s out of the closet, nobody put it back in.

RH: [chuckling] Anyway, Doug, thanks for making a… brightening up us at the end of a hard week. We really appreciate it.

DG: You’re very welcome. I would like to drive my truck up there and see you. But the way the thing operates, I think it'll probably take me at least a week to get there, so.

RH: Well, it'd be worth it. Let us know. Let us know because we'll be waiting for you.

DG: I will. Thank you for talking to me.

RH: Okay, bye-bye.

[/sc]

TS: From our archives, that was guest host Robert Harris in 2009 speaking with Doug Quint in his brand new Big Gay Ice Cream truck in New York. And, by the way, despite recent reporting on the industry's troubles, The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck is still thriving.

[chillhop]

Part 2: B.C. Nurse Shortage, B.C. Whale Family

B.C. Nurse Shortage

Guest: Adriane Gear

TS: In small-town British Columbia, emergency departments are routinely shutting down due to lack of staff. The island community of Alert Bay is facing a two-week overnight closure. A hospital in Clearwater, B.C., is set to shut down its ER for five days… again. But now, the problem is shifting to major hospitals which are struggling to retain… anyone, especially nurses. One veteran nurse calls the shortage the worst she’s ever seen. Adriane Gear is vice president of the BC Nurses’ Union. We reached her in Burnaby.

PH: Adriane, people across the country have been hearing these stories for months now, many of those stories told on this program. But can… can you give us a sense of how bad the nursing shortage in British Columbia is right now?

ADRIANNE GEAR: On any given day, it is not uncommon for inpatient units to be running with, you know, 50 per cent staff or less. This is complicated by the fact that there's actually more patients than there are funded beds. And so, I'll give you an example. If it's a unit that, you know, maybe there’s supposed to be 25 patients and 10 nurses. There could be, you know, five nurses with 30 patients. And, you know, anybody who is admitted to hospital these days requires a lot of care. These are acutely ill patients. And this is not just a one-off. This is something that's being experienced around the province in all care environments. I mean, we're talking about inpatient care. We're talking about emergency departments. We're talking about ICUs. We're talking about care that's provided in home and community and in long-term care. There… there's a dire nursing shortage everywhere.

PH: That is a long list. Have you ever seen anything like this?

AG: No. I can tell you that I'm a nurse of a more vintage age. I've been nursing since 1993, and I have never seen it like this. None of my colleagues have either. We are really at a very… in a very critical situation, is how I can… that's the only way I can characterize it.

PH: Why are nurses leaving hospitals, threatening to quit, in British Columbia?

AG: Well, frankly, the working conditions have… have really eroded. You know, day in and day out, nurses are exposed to violence and threats. Earlier on in the pandemic, nurses came to work every day not knowing if they were going to be provided appropriate personal protective equipment. Talk about not feeling very valued. For the last 10 to 15 years, you know, working short has been a reality. But you might be, you know, one nurse or two nurses short and certainly not like every shift. It's just gotten so much… so much worse. And, you know, people go into this profession because they want to make a difference. You know, they want to provide appropriate care for patients and hopefully help them along in their… in their… their journey. This constant situation of feeling, you know, this moral distress that you're… you're not doing enough for… for the people that are looking to you to… to provide the care. And this… this sort of, you know, threat. It feels like a threat because, you know, you're not… you're not meeting your practice standards. And, you know, what if something goes wrong. And so, you know, this isn't like the odd shift. This is how many nurses are feeling every day that they're working. Brand-new nurses that are… have literally just graduated in the spring are saying things like, I didn't sign up for this. I can't do this. I'd rather go work as a server or… or do anything, you know, other… other than be in health-care right now. And so, that's, like, that's really sad. These… these --

PH: Sorry, I'm just going to jump in because you sound so frustrated. You know, and what we're hearing from the health minister in B.C., Adrian Dix, is, you know, he has said the shortages are mainly caused by people calling in sick. And that the province, he says, is working toward recruiting and retaining more nurses. What do you think of that? What do you make of what the province is doing right now?

AG: Well, I would first… at first, I'd like to respond to his comment because I've certainly heard from many of our members that, you know, that just is really sort of [chuckling] kicking someone when they're down. Are people calling in sick? No doubt. COVID rates are on the rise. Our hospitalization rates are on the rise. Nurses are at a breaking point. They get sick just like anybody else. They get injured on the job just like anybody else. And to sort of reduce this problem to the fact that people have just called in sick is really not acknowledging what's going on. So I just feel like on behalf of my members, I really just need to let you know that that's not a perspective that we share. I imagine there are some recruiting efforts. The challenge is this is a national and international situation. All areas are short of nurses. So that's really a challenge. Where I see an opportunity is really focusing on that retention piece. You know, there's… there's examples of people having to work like, you know, 24 hours. I mean, that… these are, for the most part, men and women of, you know, family age where they've got, you know, kids or they've got parents dependent on them. Nurses are humans, they're not robots.

PH: I can't tell if… if you hold out any hope that the situation will improve. Do you?

AG: Well, I have to… I have to have hope. You know, nurses are hopeful, but hope is optimism and a plan. And so, while we have some optimism, what we need from the government is a plan. And so, we have been asking for years of this government and previous governments for health human resource strategy. Again, this isn't something that just happened overnight, or that was borne out of a pandemic. This is a shortage that has been forecasted for many years. And… and I'll give you and example, the British Columbia government, their own market outlook… or labour market outlook in 2019, projected the need for almost 24,000 nurses by 2029. So this was a projection done in 2019. And that was before the pandemic, right? So at that time, there was some acknowledgement and recognition that, you know, if we could come together, this shouldn't be a political issue. This should be something that, you know, all levels of government can work together on. And, you know, just even acknowledging the dire situation would… would go a long way. But we need to do everything we can to keep our new grads. You know, to keep our nurses that are ageing at that retirement age. You know, maybe attract nurses back into the profession that have left. There's lots of innovative things that… that could happen. And, you know, we're not… we're not seeing a lot of evidence of that.

PH: Adriane, we're going to have to leave it at that for the moment, but I thank you for your time.

AG: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

PH: Bye-bye.

TS: Adriane Gear is vice president of the BC Nurses’ Union. We reached her in Burnaby.

[ambient]

B.C. Whale Family

Guest: Aleks Mount

TS: Seeing a humpback whale off the coast of British Columbia might not be a totally regular occurrence. If you're there in whale watching season, chances are you might see one in the distance. And Aleks Mount was out with his family doing just that this week, but what ended up happening off the coast of B.C. was far more thrilling than expected. He joined us from Cumberland on Vancouver Island.

PH: Aleks, so set the scene for us. Where were you when you first saw the humpback whale?

ALEKS MOUNT: It was in an area here locally in Georgia Strait, which is between Vancouver Island and the mainland. So, yeah, we were just heading to, you know, do our seasonal whale watching tours on our boat. And saw the whale a couple hundred metres away. I stopped the boat right away, killed the engine, and I saw it diving down and turning towards us. And then it just popped up a few seconds later, right under the boat and scared us quite a bit at first because it never happened before. And it shows it's a little bit intimidating.

PH: It was literally, like, right under your boat? Like, right… like, right there?

AM: Yeah, it… it appeared right to the side of the boat.

PH: How… how big is it?

AM: Hard to tell, but my boat is 19 foot, and I'd say double… double of it, twice bigger, at least. You know, humpbacks grow and grow to, I think, about 17-20 metres. I might not be fully correct. And they are up to a 40-tonne weight.

PH: Holy cow! So what's going through your mind at this point? What… what's… what's the vibe on the boat when this is happening?

AM: Well, I had my two kids and my ex-wife with me, and the youngest kid is nine. He got really scared. He got crying, and he was really scared seeing it because, you know, he felt in danger. And then I was worried, too, because you don't know what they're going to do and the size of them, right? You don't know how clumsy they are or not. Although, I watched a lot of footage previously, you know, researching about humpbacks and see their behaviour because they approach boats, that's not new. And once in a while, you know, they can hit the boat or land on it, or there's some accidents happens, too? So, I wasn't sure what it was going to do. And the kid was crying, and I had a thought going through my head to… to… to leave. And the whale was right circling right under and around, very close, very close to the boat. So I just thought maybe start the engine and leave. But then I thought it might startle the animal, and it could do some sudden move and make things worse. Like, all we had to do was flip its tail, and the boat would be in the air. So, then I realized, you know what? I don't think it's a good idea to start the engine and leave. We can start with we can also hurt the animal with the propeller. So it made… made sense to just... just… just go with it. Just go with it and see what happens. And probably 10, 15 minutes into all this show, we kind of start trusting it's that it's… you what it is what it is doing.

PH: Wait a minute. Ten or 15 minutes?! How long did it hang out at… at your boat?

AM: Around an hour.

PH: An hour?!

AM: Yes. [PH chuckles] That's what makes it extra incredible, is I know they approach the boats and, you know, they'll do appearance and maybe five, 10 minutes. But an hour is… I haven't heard of it.

PH: And it's close enough for you to touch if you wanted to. Is that right?

AM: Yeah. Yeah. [PH chuckles] A few times. It was… all you had to do is just lean forward a little bit and touch it.

PH: And this giant thing, could you… did it have a smell?

AM: No, their breath smells a little bit rotten. [PH chuckles] That's… I smelled it before. If you're close enough, if they get close enough to you and exhale, you can smell it.

PH: Through the spout? Did it do one of the did it do one of the whale spout things?

AM: oh, it… it did a lot of things. It wasn't just, like, diving in and out. It was flapping its tail like it was waving with its hand. It was flapping its fins, surfacing his nose up and his mouth, and just circling around the boat, and rubbing it, tugging it. It actually hit the board at one point with its fin, put a little dent on the railing and… and scratches. But we actually really like it now because it has a, you know, has a mark from the whale. I mean, how cool is that, right?

PH: I… yeah, that's pretty cool. Some say that the whale may have mistaken your boat for another whale and was kind of singing a love song for what it thought was another whale -- flirting. What do you think was going on?

AM: You know, I think they're way more intelligent than that. They know that's not another humpback whale. [chuckling] No, they… they're pretty intelligent.

PH: So, what was he doing? He was just saying hello to you.

AM: Playing. You know, in general, wales and worker wales, they're like highly evolved animals and they are… they have a social aspect to their lives. You know, if you observe them, they understand caressing each other, right? And touching each other and affection and the pleasure of it and social. They're very social creatures. They… like, if you look at the animal kingdom, they're way more… they're more involved than others in that sense. So, that was just a social interaction, and they were just getting a kick out of our reaction, I guess. Just curious to see what we do, how we react. But I'm sure it knows that that's a boat.

PH: Now that it's all said and done, what does it feel like for you to have been so up close and personal with a humpback whale and for such a long time?

AM: Absolutely fortunate and lucky. I'm grateful that animal picked us for that. And yeah, there's no other words for it. It's just so, so like. It's… it's experience of a lifetime. It's, you know, they'll never… probably never happen again. And… and it doesn't happen often for that period of time. So it's… I just know… I realize how rare it is.

PH: We're all envious, Aleks. Thank you so much for telling us your… your story. Bye-bye.

AM: Thanks for your interest. Bye-bye.

TS: Aleks Mount and his family had a VERY close...and lengthy...encounter with a humpback whale, and he joined us from Cumberland on Vancouver Island.

[chillhop]

Goaty

TS: Since June, a mysterious stranger has been criss-crossing Northern Ontario. Travelling solo, he disappeared as quickly as he arrived, popping up first at a Pow Wow where he was politely shown the exit... appearing next just down the road near Whitefish Bay... then an hour away, cruising Main Street in Kenora. The traveller in question has been given the nickname "Goaty". Because, well... he's a goat. Right now, he's being cared for on a family farm in Kenora, and the next stop on Goaty's adventure will be an animal shelter in London, Ontario. But first, his current caretaker, Amy Mosionier, has to get him there.

[sc]

AMY MOSIONIER: He is good today, so far, looking for hopefully some donations to get him on his airplane and to London to his new sanctuary.

REBECCA ZANDBERGEN: And so, you are now trying to put him on a plane?

AM: We are. So I've been in contact with a few different people who drive, like, freight. So he would have been going with like a bunch of other goats on a big truck. For us to wait for that would have been, like, September, middle of September. So we just didn't have the time, time to wait and everything else. And, yeah, I wasn't giving him up to just anybody because of his rehoming issues that he's… he's had here. So we made the final decision to just get him to his… his sanctuary, where we know he's going to live out his life happy as ever.

RZ: [chuckle] Any idea how old Goaty is?

AM: Well, he doesn't have a very big goatee, so to speak. So Billy Goats normally have, like, a huge goatee on the front and he still has a little baby face. So, I'm going to assume that he is probably a year, maybe a little older.

RZ: Oh, okay. And what shape was he in when he was discovered in Kenora?

AM: He looked fine. [both laugh] He had a nice, pudgy belly. He was obviously eating pretty… pretty good stuff along his journey.

RZ: And so, you can't keep him because you don't have enough hay to feed him?

AM: Well, we just don't have space. We don't have any other goats or any other livestock. We just have horses and cows there. With the way our economy and stuff is nowadays, we just can't… can't do it.

RZ: Even little Goaty?! I'm sure… that face… come on!

AM: Yeah, I know. [RZ laughs] I know. If it was my farm, I would keep him 110 per cent. He is like a little lapdog, honestly.

RZ: Oh, wow. He's a nice goat then, is he?

AM: Oh, he is a lover, for sure.

RZ: So, will you miss him?

AM: I will miss him. 110 per cent. He is a sweetheart. I'm going to be in tears when I have to send him on the plane. For sure.

RZ: Awe!

AM: The girls are good down there. They'll be sending me some updates and stuff. And we'll be able to keep in touch.

[/sc]

TS: That was Amy Mosioner of Kenora, Ontario, speaking to Rebecca Zandbergen of CBC's London Today.

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August 5, 2022 Episode Transcript

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