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The Current Transcript for March 30, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

SHEREE FITCH: He built his house and he created the hobby farm and got his tractor, the things he wanted. I remember the day he was diagnosed, he said, You know, I have no regrets. I've lived the life I've wanted to live. And not everybody can say that.

MATT GALLOWAY: For years, the Nova Scotia children's author Sheree Fitch has made kids laugh with her wacky characters doing wacky things. These days, she is drawing on her creativity in a different way, finding joy in the wake of her husband's diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer's. In 30 minutes, Sheree Fitch and Gilles Plante on living in the moment, keeping a sense of humour and seeking out light in dark times. Also this morning, we will talk about the legacy of the folk artist Maud Lewis, whose work is seen everywhere here and is a powerful tie to home for those who have left this province. But we are here in Nova Scotia to mark a difficult day. The findings of a public inquiry into Canada's deadliest mass shooting will be released this morning, shedding light on how one man was able to kill 22 people over a span of 13 hours and how the RCMP lost and is yet to regain a community's trust. And so we begin in the small rural town whose identity changed three years ago. Good morning from Halifax. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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PORTAPIQUE

Guest: Serena Lewis

SOUNDCLIP

[drilling sound]

SERENA LEWIS: We as a community felt a great loss. And what one incident and one person tried to take away from us was something that we had to fight to get back.

MG: We're visiting Portapique this morning where Erin MacKinnon and her neighbours are framing up a new community hall.

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ERIN MACKINNON: This is the boys bathroom. Okay. I know that's really exciting.

MG: This area of Nova Scotia is where three years ago, Canada's worst mass killing began. But what we find here on this building site is light.

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[laughter]

ERIN MACKINNON: Okay, so this is the kitchen that we're standing in right now.

MG: People who live in Portapique have big plans for this little community hall.

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ERIN MACKINNON: Oh, yeah. We have Christmas dinner for the whole community. If all of a sudden, you know, another Fiona comes, let's hope it doesn't. But if another Fiona comes, we are able to open our doors up with a generator and have people come here and prepare hot meals for them. It's just such a great opportunity. I mean, the possibilities are endless.

[drilling/construction sounds]

ANDREW MACDONALD: We started to realize that the greater Nova Scotia community and the national community didn't really know how to help us. This gave them an outlet to actually give us practical things. We don't need memorials, you know, they can give money or they can make a quilt or they give us nice cards or all sorts of things. We got all of those things which we do appreciate. But this gave someone like, well, hey, I sell two by fours and you guys need a bunch of those. We literally wanted woodchips and saws and nails and bolts and wood. It's soaring up by the day. I got one two days ago for $4,000 of OSB lumber. That's going to just allow us to literally put the thing together.

MG: Andrew MacDonald was shot during the mass killing. He'd rather not talk about what happened, but he says the sweat that he has poured into this building is healing.

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ANDREW MACDONALD: It makes you feel strange and you don't understand it. There's confusion and all sorts of feelings. Anger comes out of that, I think. But at the end of the day, I think we all understand it's like getting struck by lightning. It's one of those things that happened once for a moment, and, you know, all we can do is just move forward, not to not honour the people that had passed. Certainly that memory is very important. And what happened to them is very tragic. But for us that need to continue to live here, we need to figure that out. So we can be sad and angry all we want. But at the end of the day, it doesn't help anybody. So if we can turn the tide, so to speak. We literally have that happen twice a day here. So yeah, turning that tide and building that sense of community through the hall or however else we're doing it.

ERIN MACKINNON: Soon after, we found out, you know, Andrew's going to have a baby and we were very excited about that. Like life was going on and things were happening and, you know, rose is going to be here and it's like it's so nice. Like we just started celebrating. And so, you know, the stages of grief passed by much quicker than I would ever have imagined.

ANDREW MACDONALD: Yeah, roses too. Yeah. So and another one coming in June.

MG: The idea for the community hall and the new log playground beside it began when Andrew knocked on Erin’s door. They’d never met.

SOUNDCLIP

[knocking on door, dog barking]

ERIN MACKINNON: You know, Andrew showed up on my doorstep shortly after the incident. You know, he just said, I have an idea, you know, and I just want to help the community. I want to kind of like fight for community back. I want to get to know my neighbours because I never really got to know them before this. And I thought, wow, what an awesome idea. You know, we were all sitting there in our own griefs. And it was kind of just like the ball started rolling and, you know, we started talking about things and he's like, well, what's one of the most important things you think that people would need? And of course, our children are what hurt us the most in this situation, like how they were hurting was hurting us. And of course, a lot of us had said a playground. It didn't have to be anything really big. It just had to be a place that we could start growing community again, you know, trusting again. One of the things I did was I started walking with a friend. And we started walking through the community and we talked and we weren't scared. You know, the biggest thing is you just connect. And that's probably the biggest thing that helped to get over this was, you know, it was a community torn apart in a moment. And we're taking tons of moments to bring community back every time. Like I was explaining this to the contractor that came and I said, you know, every time you drive a nail into a bore down there, it’s a slap in Wortman's face, okay? And I'm not afraid to say Wortman because I don't think he has power. And we don't get the justice back anymore because there's no justice that would have been done even if he was still here, that a criminal system could have given him that would have given us back what we deserve for justification. And that's with any crime. You know, you're stripped of that. But every time that, you know, you donate a dollar, every time that you show up for work day, every time that you do something well in your own community, that is building back things that, you know, we lost through COVID and we've lost as this sense of community.

ANDREW MACDONALD: It's not going to be perfect, but the community built it. So like we're not worried about whether, you know, we're going to paint the walls at the end of this. We're all going to do it as like a painting day. And it's not going to be great, probably, but it'll be pretty good and it'll be fun. And everyone will learn how to paint or learn how not to paint, but it's part of it. So that's what gives it the character.

ERIN MACKINNON: Yeah. When Timber Herd comes to put the big rafters up and stuff for the pavilion, you know, we're going to have a day there just to celebrate. And, you know, it's one of the last stages. You know, we can actually help stand it up together, like we can lift the last rafter up as a community and stand it. So it's going to be exciting.

[construction sounds]

MG: A few minutes down the road, Serena Lewis stands on her front porch waiting to greet me. The sun comes out as we pull into her driveway.

SOUNDCLIP

[car doors closing, footsteps, greetings]

MG: Serena is a grief counsellor and a social worker and was one of the frontline workers consulted by the Mass Casualty Commission. She lives in Great Village, one of the small towns of neighbouring Portapique.

SOUNDCLIP

SERENA LEWIS: If you love antiques and you love the Bay of Fundy, we're proud of our high tides, the contrast of the low tides. We border onto Portapique, so we've had an identity change. But, you know, some really remarkable people.

MG: Serena's home is under construction after post-tropical storm Fiona made it unlivable. And so we decided to talk outside standing on her back deck. Window frames destroyed in the storm are at our feet, and a tangle of branches and debris is piled in the yard.

SERENA LEWIS: You know, I thought at first it felt like a double whammy. But I would almost say it's probably been a triple whammy as we've been living through a pandemic in rural communities with limited resources. And then we lived through a mass shooting. And then to live through a hurricane that's done extensive damage to properties, but also just a complete weariness for people.

MG: You said the community had had an identity change. Can you tell me more about that and how that has shaped what the community is now.

SERENA LEWIS: I often think it's like a club that you don't want to belong to. We'll never forget. You know, in September 911, we think about things like Columbine and all of the different things that have happened over the years. And I think as people talk about Portapique, we feel that shift in identity, especially over the last couple of years. So, you know, it's a work in progress to kind of figure out who are we now in all of this?

MG: How are people doing, do you think, this week as the release of this report gets closer?

SERENA LEWIS: I think it's almost like if I were to ask you about the shade of green and how many shades there are. I think that's a really good way of describing kind of how people are doing because I think it's a lot more complicated. I think there's people now that don't have a voice. They've died. Some people are stumbling through trying to make ends meet economically through all of this. Some people have been processing trauma. They have some internal and external resources. And some people, I think the thought is really going to come off over the next couple of days when we stand and or kneel, however we might look at this to hear what these recommendations are going to feel like for us.

MG: You described the shooting, but also the years after as kind of like an earthquake in some ways. You compared it to an earthquake. What did you mean by that?

SERENA LEWIS: I think we're very reactive. So we think about an event, but we don't think about the aftershocks. And really, that's what you live with. And, you know, years ago, I did a talk called Keeping the Casseroles Coming: A Maritime Perspective to Grief. I think we're really great about writing in. I think we're reactive. I think there's a lot of condolences. There's a lot of attention. But as media pulls away, as other tragedies unfold, our attention goes all over the place. And so I think it's really been problematic to think, you know, how do people mobilize, how do they get back up after a tragedy of this magnitude?

MG: That name is really evocative. Keep the Casseroles Coming?

SERENA LEWIS: It's not that we're not deeply appreciative of all of the support that we have had, but there's a difference between being reactive and being responsive. And as we're watching, you know, society continue to shift, are we shifting with it? Is that what the recommendations are actually going to say? Is it time to start looking at a longer term response plan when people are impacted by trauma?

MG: You've been really involved in helping to advocate for your community and working to try to get this community and the people in the community the supports they need. What has that been like for you?

SERENA LEWIS: This has been incredibly difficult. Of all of the ways that you academically know, the research, the people that I drew upon globally, the silence has felt very demeaning. Myself and several of my other colleagues have advocated at every level of government. I know that we're going to look through this lens of different things, look, and everybody's going to be looking for something different in these recommendations. But, you know, there's physical safety that was completely broached for us. We were not safe. I'm not sure that we feel safe yet, but there's the psychological safety that to me has done an incredible amount of damage. And again, knowing these things and trying to put these things forward, I mean, we know about adverse childhood experiences. We know the impacts of trauma. We know that there are forgotten mourners in our elders. You know, I keep saying that this is small c culture. This is a rural community. These are rural communities that have been affected. We have not been resourced before this. And I think what gets really challenging is I look at the people who have been trying to shoulder the pain of this. So we already had pretty full caseloads. And the thing I hear over and over again is how are we supposed to deal with Canada's largest mass casualty event on the side of our desk with no additional consistent resources? How do we get coordinated and work together instead of all of these fragmented silos? So when I say that the silence has been demeaning, I really honestly mean that. When we know better, we need to do better.

MG: Who in particular were you looking to hear from? And it's not about holding people to account, but it is about holding people to account because those governments that you say that you were reaching out to will be here in the next couple of days talking about what happened and talking about the recommendations and speaking to the community about how they, those levels will do better. Who were you hoping to hear from?

SERENA LEWIS: Last week, as we were getting a bit of a debriefing from the Mass Casualty Commission, they made a comment about handing the baton over, which really struck me as odd thinking, you know what, I don't think the baton ever should have been taken from us. If trauma survivors are not involved in planning and coordinating, then it's not trauma informed. So I hope that we’ll really look at what a public inquiry looks like going forward. We need to know that every level of government intersects when a traumatic event happens of this magnitude. The municipality, you know, there's been money allocated for grief resources for a memorial. We're not mobilizing. I think our provincial government, education, justice, health, health. You know, people at the helm as prime ministers and leadership roles, this is the time we need to see demonstrated leadership. We need to listen more than tell. So I think that's the key to this. Like how can we help instead of here's what you get. I don't know that I want to call people victims, but there's been a lot of people victimized by this. And that's the impact of trauma, right? So how do we know if we have done enough? And in my opinion, absolutely not, because we have not coordinated. And that's a big piece of this. And looking at this and a two-year mark and a five-year mark, we're already seeing the hard facts. We're losing people to suicide. Substance abuse is increasing, domestic violence. When the alert goes off, I mean, we may see that as a positive in the recommendations, but we also have not stopped to work with people that when those alerts go off, what happens to their nervous systems?

MG: Somebody said that today that when you get one of those Amber Alerts and everybody gets it on their phone, that there's a visceral reaction because of what happened a couple of years ago.

SERENA LEWIS: And that's trauma. Our nervous systems are in high alert. We need to teach people how does trauma set in us? How does it affect our families? How is it pulling our families apart?

MG: You're straddling a couple of different worlds in this. One is the professional as a grief counsellor, but the other is the personal part because you live here. This is your community. And I just wonder what that's like for you to try. You're coming at this from two different worlds in some ways.

SERENA LEWIS: It's the hardest tension I've ever had to hold in my life. I know what research tells us. And trying to do that sensitively with people that I love and care for, it's hard. The night that all of this happened, you know, my own children were on the other side of the barrier. I want these communities to be healthy again for my kids, for everybody's children. I want our seniors to feel safe again. You know, somebody who doesn't even really understand the impact of trauma said to me the other day, an 83-year-old man, he said, you know, Serena, nothing really feels the same around here anymore. And I thought, what a way to articulate how everything has changed.

MG: Are you optimistic that what comes out in this report will offer a roadmap to give you what the community needs?

SERENA LEWIS: One of my mentors taught me a long time ago about the danger of hope. Waiting for these recommendations, I don't want to be hopeless, but I sure don't want to be hopeful. I am trying to stand in the land of being hope free and dealing with what's in front of us on this day. And what I see are widespread impacts of trauma and grief. I am also not naive to look at other inquiries.

MG: If you look elsewhere, what should we be learning from? Where should we be learning from and who should we be learning from?

SERENA LEWIS: Somebody said, at least we're not like the United States. And I said, one thing I commend about the United States I said is they're actually naming the problem. And in Canada, we need to do this. We need to stop looking at this in isolated events. Violence is growing. Violence is disturbing our schools, our homes, our workplaces. It's changing how safe we feel. Are we going to look at this and look at what are our values? In 10 years time, do we want to look back and think we could have circumvented something right now with what we know about trauma? I think this is a really big paradigm shift that we need to be thinking about in Canada. Why don't we go back and start looking at emotional health first? And how do we get people through things like this? How do we process trauma and grief? How do we talk about things? So I don't know. From what I've seen, I don't think it should take a report for us to do What evidence tells us should have been done in the first place.

MG: And if we don't, we broad society, but those who have hands on the levers of power as they say, if they don't learn from this, what's at risk, do you think?

SERENA LEWIS: I think the cycle of abuse and violence are going to continue. When you hear people who are now getting guns that never had guns, because if systems can't keep us safe, then we start to take ownership ourselves to keep ourselves safe.

MG: And that's what you're hearing.

SERENA LEWIS: Absolutely. Through and through.

MG: How are you doing in all of this?

SERENA LEWIS: I'm weary. It's a collision of feeling frustrated, tired again. Enduring a tremendous amount of damage in this hurricane has taught me something very wise that there's not a cap on the amount of tragedies we'll go through in our life. So there's a humbleness to this to understand that this is exhausting. And that is our own healing process too of paying attention to what we can do. Some days we feel like this is bulldozing us over. But to me, I will say over and over again, the silence has been the most impactful piece of this for me. If we had been mobilizing and doing the work, it would have felt different three years later.

MG: I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you. I'm sure it's not easy. And it's not going to be easy here over the next few days, but thanks for having us here.

SERENA LEWIS: Thank you, Matt. Thank you for caring about our community.

MG: Serena Lewis is a grief counsellor and social worker in Colchester County, which includes Portapique and Truro, Nova Scotia. We spoke on her back porch in the community of Great Village just down the road from Portapique. We will bring you the details of the Mass Casualty Commission report tomorrow on this program as we continue our special coverage here in Nova Scotia. We'll hear from family members, we'll hear from one of the commissioners behind the report, the RCMP and more. That is tomorrow on The Current. Your CBC News is next. And then, a conversation with the children's author Sheree Fitch and her husband, the retired journalist Gilles Plante. He's living with early onset Alzheimer's. Theirs is a story about love, about life, and about seizing moments of joy together. It is beautiful and it comes your way in six minutes. My name is Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. Stay with us.

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SHEREE FITCH

Guests: Sheree Fitch, Gilles Plante

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway in Halifax and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, a couple of stories that bring Nova Scotia's heritage to life. We will hear about a surprise find at an antique market, an artefact of maritime rumrunning and high drama on the high seas. The novelist Ami McKay certainly knows a great story when she sees one. And you know that painting by the folk artist Maud Lewis, colourful one, three black cats? We will meet a woman who has made a sweater with that design. She says it is her connection to home. But first, getting to know another beloved Nova Scotian.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

SHEREE FITCH: [laughing] That's okay. What if there was a purple planet with purple people on it? Would those purple people play whatever purple way they wanted? What if everything was purple? I mean, a whole purple world and there was someone just like me, I mean, a purple sort of girl. And if there was a purple girl, how purple would she be?

MG: The Canadian children's author Sheree Fitch can always find something funny even in life's hardest moments. Here she is rhyming off from memory one of her most beloved stories, Mabel Murple.

SOUNDCLIP

SHEREE FITCH: What name could rhyme with Purple? I must dream up a proper name. I've got it. Mabel Murple. Now that I have named her, I have to dream of what she's like. Would Mabel Murple ride upon a purple motorbike? I think she might. Now watch my lips. Mabel Murple motored merely through muddy purple puddle. She said I'm a purple person, I’ll roar away my troubles. She wore a purple helmet and purple leather gloves. She's a purple motor biker whom everybody loves. What is that purple blur? Mabel Murple, yes, it's her.

MG: Sheree lives and writes on a hobby farm in River John, Nova Scotia. The farm is called Happy Doodle Do.

SOUNDCLIP

[walking sounds]

SHEREE FITCH: I learned to read in a tree at my grandmother's house, an oak tree that was a lot like this.

MG: She lives on the farm with her husband, Gilles Plante, a retired CBC journalist.

SOUNDCLIP

[walking sounds]

SHEREE FITCH: And he loves it. And it's funny because when we met, we were older, right? We were 38. He’s like I always wanted to have a farm and a tractor and a barn.

MG: And a bunch of animals, including a sheep called Popcorn.

SOUNDCLIP

GILLES PLANTE: Popcorn. And what's the name of the other one? That's what Alzheimer’s does. [laughing]

MG: Six years ago, Gilles was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. And now Sheree says she's drawing on her imagination, as always, to face these pages of their lives. And what she's found is a story that still has a lot of joy.

SOUNDCLIP

[walking through the woods]

SHEREE FITCH: We started last week making Trails through the Woods. So part of it is like to make some nature trails that I love. I will love that. I want poetry every couple of… like little poetry panels as you go through the woods. That would be fun. [laughing]

MG: Sheree Fitch and Gilles Plante join us from their kitchen table in River John, Nova Scotia. Good morning.

SHEREE FITCH: Good morning.

GILLES PLANTE: Good morning.

MG: Gilles, how are you doing?

GILLES PLANTE: Good. Yeah. I cannot complain because if I was listening to what I was told, I… Now it’s totally gone.

SHEREE FITCH: That's okay.

MG: It's okay.

SHEREE FITCH: I think you were saying if I hadn't known it would be this good when they diagnosed you seven years ago, you'd never would have believed it. I think I can kind of sometimes read his mind.

GILLES PLANTE: It was supposed to be, they said five years of reasonable functioning. We’ve passed that. It’s what, seven now?

SHEREE FITCH: Yeah. We're on year seven now. Yeah.

MG: Hmm.

GILLES PLANTE: I'm not complaining because it's not perfect, but it's not as bad as we were expecting it to be.

MG: Sheree, what about for you? How are you doing today?

SHEREE FITCH: Well, this is wonderful. Gilles wanted to do this. And, you know, Gilles was a journalist and he thinks it's important to tell true stories. So I'm good and I'm happy to be here too.

MG: You're at home, as I mentioned, at the kitchen table. Can you just describe where you live?

SHEREE FITCH: It's a fishing village in rural Nova Scotia, a small fishing village called River John. We are home Gilles built and it overlooks the River John. We can look up the river and see an iron train bridge. I love that bridge. It's such a symbol. You know, a bridge is a big symbol for me. But the river is below us and it's beautiful. And across the road, we have critters, lots of them, bunnies and sheep and donkeys and hens and our hobby farm that we dreamed about when we met each other so many years ago. And Gilles, you know, created this place. And there's a bookshop over there on a dirt road too.

MG: That's a lot. What does it mean for you to be there?

SHEREE FITCH: For me, it's a childhood dream come true. It is. I always wanted to be Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, you know, and live in a storybook. And it feels like a writer's dream as well because you need a lot of solitude and a lot of silence. And we're in nature. It's like I live in a beautiful tree house and it's one Gilles made. So yeah, it's pretty amazing. We're very lucky and privileged. And Gilles worked a long, hard life in order to be able to retire when he did. And luckily, he retired at 53 and the diagnosis came at 60. But in the meantime, he built his house and he created the hobby farm and got his tractor, the things he wanted. I remember the day he was diagnosed, he said, you know, I have no regrets. I've lived the life I've wanted to live. And not everybody can say that, you know. So I'm happy for him and me that we live in a place that's so beautiful.

MG: Gilles, what do you love about the place that you live in?

GILLES PLANTE: All my life, I was told that I need to do something or something would go wrong. So I have to keep busy. So when you have animals in a big place, there's always something to do.

MG: And you're out. You have a workshop and you’re out in your workshop pretty regularly?

GILLES PLANTE: I like to be in my shop and doing things.

SHEREE FITCH: And I worry about his fingers and the saws, okay. Just so you know.

[all laughing]

SHEREE FITCH: So, you know, like the conversation kind of went like, okay, Sheree, I want to die happy doing what I do. But, Gilles, I mean, it's dangerous. And he's like, but Sheree, I would rather die doing what I like to do. And I'm like, yeah, but this way, there'll be a lot of blood. Like those are the kind of conversations we have. We have to laugh about it because I have to learn to let go. It's certainly been a learning curve for us and it is every day. Wouldn’t you say, Gilles?

GILLES PLANTE: Well, dangerous for you.

SHEREE FITCH: Dangerous for me.

[all laughing]

GILLES PLANTE: If you don't know how to use it, then it’s dangerous. But if you know, I've been doing that for many years. I wouldn't live that place. They would have to pull me with a truck.

SHEREE FITCH: Yeah. He’s like I would never leave this place for anything.

MG: They'd have to drag you out.

SHEREE FITCH: Yeah. Yeah.

MG: Sheree, can you talk a little bit about the diagnosis? What do you remember about that?

SHEREE FITCH: So about a year before that, I was starting to notice things, but, you know, it doesn't register at first. Now, Gilles’s mom had died of Alzheimer's, so, you know, you kind of at the back of your mind. But then a couple of things happened. Like Gilles and I are close. We're a good team. And it was just different. I couldn't put my finger on it. He was not quite himself. And I said, Gilles, there's something going on. And he looked at me and he said, yes. But I can tell you, Matt, when we got that phone call, and it was a phone call to confirm it, well, Gilles took the phone call and he's like, oh, Sheree, you were right. I was wrong. I've got Alzheimer's. I was like, oh my God. And there was this part of me that was relieved, which sounds weird, but I was afraid that it was a brain tumour or something and that I would be losing him fast. So, you know, in a heartbeat there, it was like, oh God, thank God it's only Alzheimer's. Did I really say that? And it's really hard to hear for the first time. But also, I'm very aware there are a lot worse diagnoses now, especially we know that.

GILLES PLANTE: I feel that I am in a good place. And even if I die tomorrow, I say, okay, I've done my time and I wait for her on the other side.

MG: Sheree, where does that come from, do you think? That no regrets thing. I have nothing to complain about. I think a lot of us would complain. A lot of us would feel regret and there's nothing in there. Where do you think that comes from?

SHEREE FITCH: I know this is going to sound over-the-top, but truthfully, Matt, I met Gilles and I couldn't believe there was a human being like him. And that's just the truth. I mean, I was 36. I was on my own with two children. And when I'm happy being with nobody the rest of my life, then I meet this beautiful French man who is so clear and so solid and so truthful and honest, and somebody who's taught me, I believe, how to be a better human being. And so it's very pure what Gilles is and him coming into my life. It's true, though, Gilles. And people who know us, like they're like, yeah, sure, he's okay. But then they meet Gilles and they're like, oh wow, Have you met Gilles? Like he's an incredible guy. And what we have here, I mean, the bookshop and everything, people think, oh, it's me, it’s Sheree Fitch and Mabel Murple. No, it's Gilles who looked across the road and said, yeah, I think we could have a little bookshop there in the summer. And so he is the best partner a writer could ever have. He's kind of like everybody says, you know, Gilles is that quiet force behind me. But that kind of acceptance of reality I think is what you're talking about. It does alter your relationship with what you think about living every day. And Gilles also, you know, being somebody who is very much in the present, he taught me like, Sheree, switch the channel. Don't go to the future. Don't go to the past. Let's switch the channel and be right here now. He never had to take meditation classes and everything like I did and tried to chant for years. He just is that Buddha nature that is so accepting of what is. And you know, Matt, that acceptance of what is is the key to not suffering in this disease. So it took me three years. It took him all of one day to say this is what we are living with. I said, oh, we have to stop the bookshop. He's like, why would we do that? We're going forward with our life just as if everything's normal and everything's okay because it is, Sheree. And he was right. And I would have just folded shop and I'm sure I would have. I just thought, oh my God, what's happened to us? But no, like we continue on. We go forward. We take each day. That’s Gilles and I've learned from it. I don't know where it comes from. I used to say that to him. I used to say like, where did you come from? And he’d make jokes and I go, well, how come you are with me? And he’d go, yeah, well, you're never boring. And then he’d go, and besides, I was raised Catholic. I'm not anymore. But you know what? We have to suffer before we get to heaven.

MG: Let me ask you. You wrote a thing that picks up on a bunch of the stuff that you've been talking about in the local paper. And one of the things that you wrote about when it comes to living with somebody who has Alzheimer's is this idea of following the joy. What does that mean?

SHEREE FITCH: So kiss the joys that Flies is a line from William Blake. I love the poet William Blake. And it's that notion that you can't cling to anything. You know, you kiss it and let it go and you kiss it and let it go and you kiss it and let it go. And to me, living with Alzheimer's is very much like that. Nothing's predictable. It can change each hour, sometimes every five minutes. And so that ability to kind of be in that joyful moment and let it go because you can't compare with what was. And that was what I learned after three years is if I kept comparing about what was, you know, then I would be sad. If I could see Gilles as who he is now and who I am now in this new relationship as it ever changes, that can be a source of great joy, great humour, a lot of positive. It's when you look at what was or if you're afraid of what will come that you suffer. I mean, that it seems overwhelming. And I'm not saying that I don't have times like that where I get angry that, you know, why would this beautiful man get ill? Yeah, of course I have. But it doesn't last very long because I look out that window. I know the man I've had in my life. I know what we've had. And so I'm grateful more than anything else. I'm grateful. And I did have to look around a lot when the first diagnosis came out. Every time I looked at information, everything seemed so negative back then, like seven years ago.

MG: What do you mean?

SHEREE FITCH: Oh, it's like, oh, this is a horrible disease and it's a nightmare and oh, you're going to hate your spouse and oh, they're going to… like it was just so much coming at me that seemed so negative. And I kept thinking, no, no, there's got to be a way that this can also be something you journey forth together. And it's a different kind of life, but you've got to find a way to hang on to this joy and this beautiful part of who we are together. And Gilles still has his wisdom mind. I keep saying memory is one thing, but his wisdom mind is still there. I still turn to him and go, what do you think about this?

MG: You also wrote that fear isn't useful, which I thought was really interesting because again, the fear of the unknown, the fear of what might be coming could consume somebody. But as you said, you have to live in that moment. You have to be very present.

SHEREE FITCH: Of course, I'm terrified of what life will be without Gilles. But I've watched my mum be a widow. I've watched friends who've lost their husbands. I've watched. And so we go on. We do go on. And we find that resilience somehow. And you do. It sounds corny. You count your blessings, but you find a way to be grateful for what is. And I mean, that takes a lot of work sometimes to be okay. I'm not saying it's easy because it's not, but there has to be an intention. And I do refuse to be a victim of the darkness. I always have. I write nonsense for a reason. Not because I see the world that way, but because I know that in order to balance the darkness, there has to be the creation of light. And that's why I write for kids. It's a literature of optimism.

MG: Have you been writing, I mean, nonsense? I don't know that it's nonsense, but people know you certainly as a kids writer who is writing all sorts of funny, wacky, strange things. But have you been able to write that kind of writing in the midst of this?

SHEREE FITCH: Oh, very good question. You nailed me. No, the answer's no. I've been finding it really, really hard to go to nonsense. And I'm actually not. I'm working on something else, and it's kind of keeping me company like a best friend. I don't know whether it'll ever get published. I'd like to think it will. But you're right that that bubbling up of silly, nonsensical wordplay is not it. I have to go to a different place to find that now. And I do want to write Great Granny Dirty Green, but she's not talking to me too much right now. So yeah, because you have to be honest on the page and you can't lie to the page, I don't think. And in order to be yourself and be true to the page, you know, it's certainly a mindset that's much more difficult to access now. Yeah.

MG: Gilles, for you, what's the hardest thing about the disease?

GILLES PLANTE: Well, it's the disease. And because I don't suffer, there's no pain for that. When I saw my mother at the time, they didn't have all the medication that I have. And when I was going to see her, she didn't even recognize me. But she was like me. And she wanted to have conversations because she was so lonely. I'm not interested in either to live just for live. One, I won't be able to take care of myself and or do. And if I get up in the middle of the night for a walk in the middle of nowhere, I don't want Sheree to have to deal with that stuff. If there's a way we can have… I know.

SHEREE FITCH: Medically…

MG: Because after the diagnosis, you said that you wanted to pursue medical assistance in dying, MAID. And that's because you didn't want to live in that way.

GILLES PLANTE: Yes. It's also a burden for your partner, the diaper and all that stuff. I'm not interested in that. So I want to go.

SHEREE FITCH: So I should say that that was the first night he got diagnosed. When we sat down, he told me that.

MG: He made that decision the first day.

SHEREE FITCH: Yeah. The first night, he looked at me across and he said, and just so you know, I am not going like my mom. I am going to find a way to go before then, which of course upset me. And for about two years, I probably argued with him about that. I was mad. I said, don't you think I love you enough to take care of you like other people do? And I was so mad that, you know, I said, we didn't say in good times and good and bad. We said in hard times and happy times. And we did say in sickness and in health. And I said, you know, I believed in that. And then one night, Matt, after about two years, you know, it was an ongoing conversation. I mean, it's weird to be arguing about why do you want to die and why do you want me to help you die? And it's just so messed up. And then this one night, I looked at him and I said, I just don't understand. And he said, Sheree, it's not about you. It's about what I want. And you know what, Matt? That's probably the second time, maybe the third in our whole married life that he ever said, I want what I want. And in that second, I realized that as weird and twisted and messed up as I thought it was, that I would have to find a way to love this man enough to help him do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. One of the things that the doctor said is Gilles, how do you define quality of life? And at one point Gilles said, well, I don't want to be in my diaper. And I said, I'm sorry. Incontinence is not a reason for you to die. And I don't care. You know, I was really mouthy about that. And the doctor said, actually Gilles, I agree with Sheree. She's right. No, Gilles, what is the point? And he kept asking the question. And finally, Gilles said, and I think this is what we all agreed on. He said, when I can no longer get up and get dressed and go do the chores with the animals and don't want to do anything else, then that's no longer the life I want to be in. Yeah, I'll be piggy backing him over there to do the chores.

MG: You were going to read something for us.

SHEREE FITCH: I don't even call it a poem. I call it moments. Here it is. Gilles has heard it twice. So. Sometimes it seems we live inside a poem I am writing, one I do not want to finish, one in which there's no rhyme scheme or predictable rhythm, and one I have to keep revising and revising and revising because I don't know really what it is I'm even trying to say. And so we dance. And in between the increasing silences between us in that space, oh, the thought of that used to make me so sad. But now that we're here, we discover what springs from so much silence is a beauty beyond words. But I can't resist words. So I have this urge to tell you that it seems we live inside a poem, inside a hammock of grace, inside this home you built. You built this house. This is the house that love built. This is the poem that goes under this dome beneath the sky, the dome of exquisite now, now, now. Et au-dela.

SHEREE FITCH: Et au-dela, Matt, is what we said in our wedding vows. Gilles’s was in French and mine was in English. And I said, I wouldn't say till death do us part. I said, I'm not saying that. It'll be like today and forever and after and that's what we're going to say. We wrote our own. And Gilles said, oh, okay. He said in French, we have an expression, et au-dela. And it means and beyond. And we're living that.

MG: Sheree, why is it important for you to talk about this? It's really hard.

SHEREE FITCH: Well, to be honest, Matt, I had no problem speaking about Alzheimer's because I believe like Gilles said to me, I'm not ashamed of it. I want people to know it's a disease and it's not my fault I have it. So it was really Gilles's lead from the very beginning. But to be honest, Matt, we only told our closest friends about it. This would be the first time that we're actually saying this publicly. And I asked Gilles, do you want to do this? And I thought he would say no and he said yes. So I'm doing this because I do think it's important to break the taboos about what living with Alzheimer's is. It isn't a total nightmare all the time. You can create these moments of joy and hang onto them and let them go too, but you also can face really tough things together. Gilles was diagnosed in 2017. We had a son die in 2018. I don't remember much, Matt, about that year, but I can tell you that my Alzheimer's husband took care of me more than I took care of him that year. So, you know, there's that. Wanting people to know how much a person can do instead of how much a person is losing, that just is extraordinary to me. How much fun we still have, how we dance, I want people to know that there is a way to endure this disease that isn't this total dark disaster nightmare.

MG: Can we end by talking about living? I mean, we’re talking to you at the very beginning of spring. And this is the time of the year after a grinding winter when people are starting to look forward to the things, right? Little things are poking up from the ground and the sun shines a little bit more and it feels warm on your body. What are you looking forward to as this season takes hold?

SHEREE FITCH: I know one thing is that we were in the hurricane last year and we're going to be rebuilding a barn. Now, we can't rebuild the big old barn that it was, but Gilles bought this property because of the barn. He was like, that's the barn for my tractor. So the hurricane did a number on it and we are going to be rebuilding. This is a repair year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty wonderful here in the summer kayaking, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

MG: Yeah.

SHEREE FITCH: Yeah, This is the best time. This is the best. Coming out of the winter is the best part of the year and summer to look forward to. It's great.

MG: Gilles, are you going to get out there and build that barn?

GILLES PLANTE: Well, I’ll do my best. And it's easier because you don't have to be very fancy. A barn is a barn.

MG: But you built the property. So I think your best is probably pretty good. It's really quite something to talk to you both. This is a hard conversation, but there's a lot of beauty that's in this as well. And I really appreciate you being willing to share that with us. Thank you very much.

SHEREE FITCH: Come to Happy Doodle Do farm sometime, Matt.

MG: Yes, please. Any time. Like be careful. There'll be a knock on your door before you know it.

SHEREE FITCH: Okay. Take care.

MG: Thank you very much, both of you. Thanks.

SHEREE FITCH: Bye.

MG: Sheree Fitch is a Canadian children's author, writer and poet. Gilles Plante is her husband. They live in River John, Nova Scotia. And if you'd like to see a picture of Mabel Murple’s Book Shoppe and Dreamery the purple bookstore that Gilles built, you can go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And we put up that piece of writing that Sheree read for us as well on the website. It's called Moments. Well, coming up after your regional update, the sweater that people fell in love with online. We will find out why. It was also a labour of love for the woman who made the Maud Lewis sweater. And later, a maritime tale about mobster's, rumrunning and the I'm Alone shipping company. The great novelist Ami McKay will be here in 90 seconds. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current from Halifax. Stick around.

[Music: Theme]

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I'M ALONE RUMRUNNER SEAL

Guest: Ami McKay

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current from Halifax. Still to come, we will meet the woman who made a sweater inspired by the art of Maud Lewis. And if you think, well, it couldn't possibly get any more Nova Scotian than that, have a listen to this. Ami McKay and her husband stumbled on a treasure earlier this month at an antique market in New Minas, Nova Scotia. I have no idea. I'm not an expert what this thing would be worth in dollars, but it is a very valuable piece for its connection to the history of this place. Ami McKay is a novelist and playwright. She's at home in Scots Bay. Ami, good morning.

AMI MCKAY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What did you find?

AMI MCKAY: Oh my gosh. Well, it is this incredible, to me, it's like a work of art. But anyway, it's an impression seal. You can picture it like the ones that notaries use. It's about that size. And it is a cast iron, so it's quite heavy. And it's got this beautiful long handle. And you press down on it on paper work in order to make an impression. It would have been used for companies and, you know, for verifying paper work back in the day. And I saw it, I love the way it looked. My husband who's a maker kind of had this notion that we could fit new seal plates on it and use it maybe for our personal library or for artwork. I've been making cyanotype and paper art during the pandemic. So we kind of thought we would repurpose it and the price was right. So we brought it home. And once we got it home, I started looking at it more closely. And that's when we figured out that actually the history of it was far more intriguing than we ever expected.

MG: I was going to say, give us a snapshot of the history.

AMI MCKAY: Yeah. So I didn't really look at it too closely when we were there because it was sort of crowded and I wanted to get through the place. And also I was kind of looking for old typewriters. But anyway, there was a label on it that I saw when we got home that had been quite grimy, and I kind of cleaned it off a little bit and it said, I'm Alone Shipping Company Ltd 1923. It was typed. And right there, the name I'm Alone, I thought, what could this be? Because the actual plates on it, someone else had put these plastic plates on it that said something about a carpet company and it looked modern and so that didn't match up. So we started Googling and we found out that the I'm Alone Shipping Company was actually this front, and that the I'm Alone was a purpose built rumrunning schooner from 1923 built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and that this seal would have been used in conjunction with it, this company that they opened as a front for shipping during the 1920s, during prohibition in the U.S. And from there, this whole other history began to unravel, which was quite exciting.

MG: This schooner, this is the most successful rumrunner of all time. Is that right?

AMI MCKAY: That's right. Yeah. You know, when we think of a schooner, we think of a tall ship. We think of these three masted beauties. And of course, it had all that, but it also had two 100 horsepower engines on it. It had a radio system that could pick up signals from a thousand miles away. So it was fast, it was keen, the crew was small but nimble, it was this Captain Jack Randall and this crew of eight men, and they were kind of from all over the place. A lot of them were local, but some of them were from further afield. The cook was a person of colour from Belize, and they were all fairly young. Captain Jack was 45, but the rest of the crew, they were all in their late twenties, early thirties, and they were getting away with it. They were running along what was called Rum Row in the Gulf of Mexico. After picking up rum in the Caribbean, contact ships would come out from the U.S., meet the ship, and they would do the exchanges there in what would have been considered treaty waters, right? So they could get away with it. And the U.S. Coast Guard really wanted to catch these guys. I mean, they were gunning for them literally. And in March of 1929, on March 20th, they were spotted by the U.S. Coast Guard ship, the Walcott, and the Chase began. And Walcott got close enough to them to say, hey, you guys need to heave too. And Captain Jack stood on the back of the ship and basically said, no way, we're not doing it.

MG: In saltier language. I’m suing you.

AMI MCKAY: Oh yes, I think so. And so the Walcott wasn't really prepared for an all-out fight, but they were in what was called hot pursuit. And so they began to pursue and the seas got stormy. And about a day and a half later, they got backup from another Coast Guard ship called the Dexter. And it was the Dexter that again pulled up alongside, shouted out to them, heave too. Captain Jack said, absolutely not. I won't. And then machine guns started to be fired.

MG: Goodness!

AMI MCKAY: Other high powered ammunitions went off and the ship actually was shelled and sunk and the crew went down. Sadly, one of the crew members drowned. He died. And the rest of the crew was then taken in and they were taken back to New Orleans, which was the closest U.S. port and thrown in prison. But it made all the papers of the day. The city of New Orleans kind of hailed these guys as heroes because they were sick of prohibition. And so they became this kind of odd, you know, rumrunning celebrities of the moment. And then, the Canadian government got involved because the Canadian government sent an ambassador to Washington within five days and said, look, that was a Canadian ship. You shouldn't have done that. These were treaty waters. We're going to sue you. And it went into arbitration for a few years. And there was this back and forth and back and forth. It was quickly proven that it was a rumrunning vessel, but that wasn't enough to kind of settle the dispute. So but it was proven actually by a cryptographer from Chicago named Elizabeth Friedman, who had cracked the code on the paper work. Some of that paper work probably bore the seal that I have that they were using code words that meant alcohol, rum, malt and so on

MG: Come on.

AMI MCKAY: For their shipping manifest. Yes. But it wasn't until they found an overdue library book that the U.S. was able to make the case that this wasn't actually a Canadian ship. It was owned by a U.S. mobster named John Magnus who was based in Boston. And the way they did that was this library book had been in one of the contact boats that was supposed to meet the I'm Alone that day. And those guys, when they saw what was happening, they hightailed it back to shore and they burned the contact boat. But the library book survived. So when U.S. agents went down and found this contact book and were trying to nail, you know, the U.S. side of the story and to get out of paying the Canadian government what they might have owed for the ship, they found the library book and they found that it had been checked out to someone who was a known associate of John Magnus. And then that's how they made their case that they didn't have to pay as much as they would have had to pay. So in the end, the ship was lost forever and the expense for the ship was never recouped. But each of the crew members was paid a small fee. And the widow of the sailor who died, her name was Amanda Mengi, who had three small children at the time, she received a settlement. And to me, that's kind of where the story continues. I'm kind of chasing after different names and so on just to see where history takes it. But what an amazing tale.

MG: You can tell a story. I'm not surprised as the author of a bunch of great books, but that is some story. So I have to let you go. But I have to ask you one final thing, which is this sounds like a book. That sounds like a novel. Is this the roots of some great story that will be coming out from the vintage typewriter of Ami McKay?

AMI MCKAY: Time will tell. You know, it takes a lot of research behind this stuff, but it does have all the bones and some hidden in the closet. And so yeah, I have another novel first, which is actually based on a cache of old letters that I found by accident many years ago. So I have great luck when it comes to these things. And for now, the seal will be a muse on my desk.

MG: I literally cannot wait to hear more about this. It is an incredible story and you tell it so well. Ami, what a pleasure. Thank you very much.

AMI MCKAY: Thanks so much, Matt.

MG: Ami McKay is the author of three bestselling novels, The Birth House, The Virgin Cure and the Witches of New York. She has a new novel, as she said, about to come out. What a story that is, told in kind of one big gulp, which is the best kind of story. The I'm Alone has become a bit of a legend for its career on the high seas. It's commemorated in song as well as perhaps in book form coming in future. This song is by the Irish Rovers, I'm Alone at Lunenburg.

[Song: “I’m Alone at Lunenburg” by the Irish Rovers]

MAUD LEWIS SWEATER

Guest: Grace Tompkins

MG: Irish Rovers. A little bit of rumrunning music there. I'm Alone at Lunenburg. This is The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway. I'm in Halifax. You can't be in Nova Scotia and not talk at least a little bit about Maud Lewis, one of Canada's most beloved artists. Now, more than 50 years after her death, she is more popular than ever, as we've told you on this program before. Her folk art is selling at auction at record prices. It's everywhere here on mugs and postcards and posters. I was running along the waterfront and there's a billboard featuring a couple of cows in honour of an exhibition of her work at the art gallery. And now, that work has found its way onto a sweater. Grace Tompkins made said sweater, and she's here with it. Grace, good morning.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Good morning.

MG: Okay, people can't see this, but you have to hold it up so I can see it. It's a very nice sweater. Can you describe? It's lovely. Can you describe what I'm looking at?

GRACE TOMPKINS: So you're looking at a hand-made crocheted sweater with the infamous Maud Lewis’s three black cats on it, one of the versions with a pretty bright background. Lots of crochet, embroidery and love went into it. So.

MG: Maud Lewis is having a moment.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yes.

MG: Why in that moment did you decide that this would be a good thing to crochet or work onto a sweater?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I love this painting. And you know what? I can't pinpoint why. It is just so quirky. I love it. And I decided to put it on a sweater because I saw other people putting famous works onto tapestries and tote bags and stuff like that. And I make sweaters all of the time. And I thought, oh, well, I could put my favourite painting onto a sweater. So I did and it went viral.

MG: It did indeed. I'll talk about the viral part of it in a moment. What do you love about the painting?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I have a print in my living room. I have it on an apron. I have a pin of it. I have it just kind of all over the place and slowly accumulated them. Yeah, I think it just reminds me of home. It's very iconic. I like cats and it's quirky and colourful.

MG: When you say it reminds you of home, tell me more about that. What does it kind of stir up in you?

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah. So I'm originally from Truro, Nova Scotia, right outside of Truro in like a smaller community called Valley, often confused with Annapolis Valley. And when I think of Nova Scotia art, I think of Maud Lewis and folk art in general. And the sense of joy that it brings when I think of it is the joy that I feel when I'm home. And I'm very sentimental about home. I'm very Nova Scotian and this kind of just represents that joy.

MG: What does that mean, very Nova Scotian, for somebody who's listening elsewhere in the country?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I get told all the time that I'm extremely Nova Scotian from the way I speak to the sayings that I say that people are just sort of like, what did you say?

MG: To crocheting Maud Lewis on a sweater.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah, to crocheting Maud Lewis on a sweater. Like I don't know. I just find different ways to bring home with me wherever I am.

MG: Before you made this, had you been crocheting for a long time?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I started crocheting in the winter of 2021. So I guess around this time is like my two year mark of crocheting. But I kind of got obsessed with it and was crocheting all the time. So this was like my favourite project and my most time intensive.

MG: I mean, as somebody who does not crochet, how long would something like that take to make?

GRACE TOMPKINS: This Maud Lewis sweater, The base of the sweater would probably take like oh, I don't know, 80 hours. And then I spent 20 hours fiddling with all the fine details like all the individual flowers are embroidered on. And the eyes of the cat had to be made a certain style to like kind of emulate what Maud Lewis did. And it's not easy to do that from something like painting where you can, you know, put a brushstroke wherever to something like crochet where you have certain numbers of stitches and everything. So yeah, it was about 100 hours, I would say.

MG: That’s a long time.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah.

MG: Did you feel in the middle of it like, what am I doing? Why am I spending this time on it?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I would say I try to do this as something that I love. And if it becomes something that I stress about, then it's not something that like is a stress relief any more for me. So yeah, I mean, I've played around with it. But if I thought, okay, that looks good, let's move on to the next thing. And then all of a sudden, it was done.

MG: So you could have just done this for your own pleasure. You kind of make this thing, nobody knows about it but you and family. You put it up online.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah. I started chronicling my crochet items I guess about a year ago. I don't really remember when I started it, but I just made an Instagram account and my friends followed it.

MG: What's the Instagram account?

GRACE TOMPKINS: It's called Grace's Handmade. Little plug. I don't really know why I started. It's kind of a way to have a creative outlet. My sister has a Instagram and she posts her own art on there. Not crochet art, but like digital art and felting and like all this really cool stuff. So she kind of inspired me to do that. So I literally had 50 followers for the longest time. I was just posting whatever. I didn't care.

MG: And what happened then?

GRACE TOMPKINS: And then in December, I was making my sister's Christmas gift. And still to this day, it boggles my mind. I don't know why it went viral. It wasn't anything like this. It was, you know, someone else's pattern that I just made. And it literally blew up, had two and a half million views on it. I woke up one day with 10,000 followers. And then kind of from there, I started kind of working with the Maud Lewis, making a chart, making the sweater, posting like work in progress pictures. And a lot of my Nova Scotia followers were like, oh, I love it. Like, this is going to be so cool. And my mom was joking. She was like, oh, when you post the finished product, I can't wait to see the reaction from Instagram. And I was like, okay. Like it's just going to be another sweater for a lot of people because they're not going to like have the connection to it that I did. But then everyone, not everyone, but a whole lot of people did. And it just kind of went crazy from there.

MG: When you say a lot of people, I mean, what sort of response did you get?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I posted it on Twitter and then I woke up and there were half a million people looking at my tweet and news agencies contacting me and people asking for the sweater and asking for the pattern and asking me to buy the one off my back. I was like, you don't even know what size it is. You know, it was so weird.

MG: There are a lot of people who connected with you, but I mean, in all the messages that you got, you got a message from a descendent of Maud Lewis?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I did, Yeah. I had a really, really nice conversation with Maud Lewis's great granddaughter. It was really sweet to have that connection. Like from me just admiring someone's work to speaking with someone who has a connection. I know it might be a difficult connection based on their family history and their story alone, but nonetheless, she told me like, oh, this painting was actually her grandmother's favourite. And I thought that that was so cute. She was like this exact version with the darker green background and the three cats. And that just kind of made me smile and I felt very connected.

MG: You weren't tempted to sell that? I mean, you said people wanted to buy the sweater off your back. So you weren’t tempted to send it out the door for a bunch of money?

GRACE TOMPKINS: No. This is for me and it's my hobby. It's something that I love and I'm not looking to like jump at this opportunity just because I'm in school full time

MG: You’re doing a Ph.D.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah, I'm doing a Ph.D. I probably shouldn't spend all this time crocheting. And yeah, I don't know. It's something special to me. And if I'm going to, you know, make a pattern for this or something so other people can make it, that's kind of the first step. But I want to get it right and not feel rushed and enjoy the process also.

MG: You said you became obsessed with crocheting in 2021.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah.

MG: So I mean, that was a wild time, right? In the midst of the pandemic and everything that's going on. You’re in Truro.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah.

MG: It's not so far away from Portapique where there's again, a lot of really difficult feelings that are kind of coursing through that moment.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yes.

MG: And people found like different ways to cope with the moment.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yes. I was home during the tragedy in Portapique. Even though I wasn't directly affected by it, especially in these rural communities, you don't have to search far to find like a one degree connection, to feel the impacts, to be sad for your community or neighbouring communities. So it definitely affected me. And for the following year, I would say I was very, very stressed and anxious and saddened for my community. And crocheting, honestly, was one of the ways that I kind of took the negative energy. I couldn't focus on school, well, maybe I can just crochet a row or try something new to distract myself, get something positive in my life. Like there was a lot going on during that time for sure. So the timing is not a coincidence. This was a result of, you know, trying to work through that on my own anxieties and stuff. And it's been such a good stress relief for me. It's something that is close to home in many, many ways.

MG: You said earlier, you describe yourself as what, as very Nova Scotian?

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah.

MG: There are a lot of people, I would think, who would want to get their hands on something like this or want to see it. What are you going to do with it now?

GRACE TOMPKINS: I really want to wear it to the art gallery. That's like the first thing I want to do.

MG: To their art gallery in Nova Scotia?

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, go look at the paintings and stuff like that.

MG: You'll be mobbed. People will see it and they’ll say, that's the sweater.

GRACE TOMPKINS: I'm working on a pattern so other crafters and crocheters can make their own because I don't have the capacity to make the hundreds that have been requested. I'm kind of talking with the art gallery, just making sure that I'm not stepping on any toes or the copyright laws and stuff like that. And they'll be interested to see what I come up with in the future. So we have that relationship where it's like, okay, you just let us know if you make something. And we'll see if it's something that we can offer to the public who walk through their doors, which is really cool.

MG: It's a lovely sweater, but it's also just a really neat story.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Yeah. I think at first, I didn't understand why everyone wanted to talk so much about this. But there's a lot of negative and I'm happy to have like a piece of the positivity here. This craft has provided me with so much light in times of darkness. And it's been very positive and very fun and unexpected.

MG: Thanks for bringing us some of the good. I appreciate it.

GRACE TOMPKINS: Thank you.

MG: Grace Tompkins is from Truro, Nova Scotia. You can see a photo of the sweater on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. As Grace said, everyone here has felt the weight of the tragedy of the mass shooting three years ago. And we're here in Nova Scotia today because the Mass Casualty Commission is releasing its report into what happened. We will have full coverage of that tomorrow on the program. But I'm joined in studio now by CBC reporter Angela MacIvor. She has been covering this from the moment of the shooting all the way through the inquiry. We talked to her a number of times on the program about this, and she's here now to talk a little bit more about what is expected today. Angela, good morning.

ANGELA MACIVOR: Good morning.

MG: How are you doing this morning, given, as I said, the sweep of your involvement in telling this story, getting to this point where this report is about to come out?

ANGELA MACIVOR: I guess the best way to describe it would be anxious. It's a big day. It's a really big day. And I can't help but think back, Matt, to April 19th of 2020 when everything started and we first learned that there was something happening in Portapique and then things just escalated. So today, I'm thinking about that. And I know most Nova Scotians probably are as well. It will forever be in my brain, engrained there. So I'm thinking about that and of course, the families of the victims who have pushed for this inquiry, and I'm left wondering if this will meet their expectations.

MG: How do you think broadly people are doing? I mean, we were up near the community and speaking with some people yesterday, and that sense of anxiousness is really profound and really pronounced sentiment. People are looking for answers, but they're wondering what the answers are going to be. Is this something that you think people want this report to come out or are they looking forward to this or are they trying to move past what happened?

ANGELA MACIVOR: I don't know if people are looking forward to it. They're just kind of waiting for it to see if it rises up to what they had hoped it would be. There's been a lot of criticism, as you know, we've reported through this process the last year or so, that the commission itself wasn't doing things the way that people thought they would. So, you know, there's just that one inkling from I think the families in particular and the residents who are wondering like, will they come through with this? Will they come through with it and will they make meaningful recommendations? So everyone's just kind of holding their breath.

MG: I think there are a lot, something like 3000 pages, apparently, is what we're hearing the report is. But is there over all of that, a question that people want answered?

ANGELA MACIVOR: I think that everyone knows the answer that they want. And I shouldn't say everyone, but the consensus is that RCMP didn't do their best that day. That's how people feel. That's what's been revealed through the inquiry. And so will those gaps and those mistakes by RCMP not only be highlighted, but how strongly worded will this report be? And I think that that's what people are waiting for because, you know, from the beginning of this, the inquiry said this isn't a court of law. We're not assigning blame. But many people are still expecting that.

MG: And then what happens? I mean, what does this moment signify to you in the course of this story?

ANGELA MACIVOR: Yeah. So I wouldn't say it will be closure. Someone put it to me that it would be the end of this chapter. And I think that's a good way to describe it because, you know, for the families, their pain will never go away. And this is something, you know, that everyone in this province will think of for probably the rest of their lives. For many people, they won't think about it every day, but people affected will. And I know for us as journalists, there will be an exhale, obviously, when this intense time is over. But then we'll get the opportunity to start peppering the questions and hopefully now get some answers now that people can finally talk about this report. Because for so long, it's been wait till the final report. Wait till the final report. So that's really when our job picks up, I think.

MG: We'll be listening for your questions and for your answers. Angela, thank you very much.

ANGELA MACIVOR: You're welcome.

MG: We caught CBC reporter Angela MacIvor as she was heading out the door to Truro where the Mass Casualty Commission will release its final report in a few hours time. I'm heading there as well. And tomorrow on this program, we'll bring you the main findings from a commissioner and reaction to the report from a family of one of the victims. We'll also speak with the RCMP. That is The Current for today. It's Thursday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway in Halifax. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Thursday March 30, 2023 Episode Transcript

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