Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2023

The Current Transcript for August 24, 2023

Host: Susan Bonner

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Now is not the time for on the job training. We don't need to bring in a rookie. We don't need to bring in people without experience. The real choice we faced in this primary is this. Do you want a super [unintelligible] puppet or do you want a patriot who speaks the truth?

SUSAN BONNER: Feisty Republican presidential hopefuls debate for the first time without frontrunner Donald Trump. He chose not to attend, but he can't avoid his intensifying legal challenges. On the day he surrenders to arrest in Georgia, we assess Trump's seemingly unshakeable popularity within his party and look at the 2024 presidential election that is so far shaping up to be an unprecedented rematch. Could a criminal defendant beat an unpopular president? That's coming up in a moment. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

We've been talking about proposing for well over a year now. And after that abortive coup, I don't think any of us expected. But guess is life expectancy to be more than I think we predicted. Three months. It looks like it's two months.

SB: Yevgeny Bergwijn's presumed death in a dramatic plane crash is widely believed to be political retaliation for his failed coup against Vladimir Putin. Labelled a traitor by the Russian president. The Wagner Group leader was an important player in the war in Ukraine. In 30 minutes, we'll look at what this means for the war and any dissent in Russia. And then author Gloria Dickey travelled the world studying eight species of bears. An animal beloved and besieged by humans will bear down on all things bear in 45 minutes. Plus, in an hour, we'll continue our presentation of the CBC podcast One in Six exploring the physical and emotional toll on one couple trying to get pregnant. We begin in the U.S., where the 2024 presidential race is heating up. Good morning. I'm Susan Bonner. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Rowdy Republican debate didn’t dwell on Trump

Guests: Tim Naftali, Molly Ball, Alice Stewart

SOUNDCLIP

We need to send Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline. Let us be honest, as Republicans, I'm the only person on the stage who has been bought and paid for. So I can say this. The climate change agenda is able to us. Can't we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation that says when a baby is capable of feeling pain, an abortion cannot be allowed? Most pressing need of the American people from a national security standpoint is our southern border.

SB: You have Ron DeSantis, you've got Tim Scott, you've got Mike Pence. They all voted to raise the debt. And Donald Trump added 8 trillion to our debt. And our kids are never going to forgive us for this. It was described as an event with an elephant not in the room. Republican candidates took to the stage in Milwaukee last night for their first debate of the presidential primaries and covered a lot of ground from abortion to climate change to support for Ukraine. Donald Trump did not join them. The former president, who holds the lead by a massive margin, has created his own counterprogramming. Instead, with a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. For more on last night's debate and what to look for in the race ahead, I'm joined by Molly Ball. She is Time magazine's national political correspondent. Welcome, Molly.

MOLLY BALL: Good morning. Great to be here.

SB: It's good to have you. Let's start with. What we learned last night as we saw the candidates and we look at this race.

MOLLY BALL: Sure. Well, I think for a lot of Republican primary voters, this may have been the first time they really tuned into the race and got to know any of the candidates who aren't Donald Trump. Obviously, they all know Donald Trump. Most of them still very much like Donald Trump and the other candidates have been trying to capture their attention. So without Trump on the stage, they had an opportunity to do that. The sort of frontrunner among the candidates for current former Florida governor Ron DeSantis at centre stage since he is the leading candidate among the non-Trump candidates. But he wasn't necessarily the centre of attention last night. And I think for a lot of voters, the takeaway may have been an awareness of the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been gaining some traction in the primary and who was the focus of a lot of attention last night.

SB: Yeah. Was that the biggest surprise for you, the attention that this newcomer to politics, the self-described outsider, took?

MOLLY BALL: I was most surprised by the lack of attacks on Dos Santos, since he is the highest polling of the eight candidates who were on stage. He and his campaign, and I think most of us observers expected that the candidate, the other candidates would focus on attacking him to try to take over his position in second place. But instead he was sort of I'm not going to say that he was overall an afterthought, but in a lot of the most contentious exchanges of the debate, he was not part of them. There were a lot and there were a lot of attacks on Mr. Ramaswamy, which I think although, you know, he took some quite harsh fire from the other candidates, particularly the more traditional republic, if he represents a much more sort of populist sort of Trumpist ideology. It was it was still surprising that they chose to attack him and in doing so, potentially elevate him in the minds of voters.

SB: Let me pick up on on the DeSantis thread that you that you bring up. It's been reported that his campaign is is is struggling. What is what happened last night? Tell us about what could happen with his campaign going forward.

MOLLY BALL: Well, it's possible that the other candidates didn't bother to attack him because they don't think it's worthwhile that he has that the support for his campaign, which, you know, when earlier this year he looked like a potentially formidable challenger, was polling above former President Trump in some states and even in some polls nationally. But his support has collapsed to the extent that, as the moderators pointed out last night, he's he's 30 or 40 or more points behind Trump in most of the polls. So the other candidates may have simply left him for dead and moved on to try to get some some positive attention for themselves instead of even even bothering to attack him.

SB: It's been pointed out that Trump's polling numbers are, in fact, higher than all the other contenders combined. And yet he was barely mentioned last night until I think it was about an hour into the debate. Let's just hear a little bit about what was said about Donald Trump.

SOUNDCLIP

Let's just speak the truth, okay? President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century. Obviously, I'm not going to support somebody who's been convicted of a serious felony or who has this is disqualified under our Constitution. Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of president of the United States.

[Cheers]

SB: Molly, what do you make of the way the contenders handled the Donald Trump issue?

MOLLY BALL: What was most striking to me was how little they and the audience seemed to want to talk about Trump, particularly this issue of the indictments and the tremendous amount of legal issues that the former president faces, including, as you mentioned before, the fact that he he plans to to turn himself in to the authorities in Georgia today, this very evening. And all of the candidates and the moderators and the audience seem to view this as sort of an icky topic that they would have preferred to just not discuss at all. But, of course, he is the far and away frontrunner in the race. And as you just played in those clips, there are differences of opinion, stark differences of opinion about the things that he's alleged to have done with Ramaswamy forcefully defending Trump. That was clearly a popular position with the audience and many of the many of the lines and sort of ideas coming from Mr. Ramaswamy are very, very Trump like compared to the other candidates. And then on the other hand, you had some of the lower polling candidates, like former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, saying that they would not support a presidential candidate who was convicted of a felony, which was it was not clear if that was a majority position on stage or not.

SB: So what about Trump's decision to avoid the debate? Good strategy. Will it help him or hurt him?

MOLLY BALL: You know, it is sort of politics 101 that when you're leading by such a large margin, there's no reason to take the risk of doing a debate. But Trump doesn't like to be accused of sort of playing it safe in that way or doing a conventional political strategy in that way. So instead, he wanted it to seem that he was counter-programming. The debate, by participating in this pretaped interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The interview itself. Obviously, plenty of people watched it, but it wasn't very interesting. It was there was not a lot of conflict in it. He didn't make a lot of news in the things that he said. So it was much more a sort of safe strategy, conventional strategy runner. If you're doing that well, there's no reason to sort of lower yourself to the stature of the of the also rans.

SB: Okay. So missing the debate, that interview with Tucker Carlson, the surrender today. Any of those things, anything at all able to shake Trump's hold on the Republican Party, in your view?

MOLLY BALL: I doubt it. You know, if there's one thing that we've learned about about Trump over the years, it's that he thrives on any kind of attention, positive or negative, and he's very good at monopolising it. And that has been the case throughout this primary. It has been almost impossible for any other candidates to cut into not just his support, but his sort of overwhelming share of the attention paid to Republican candidates. And that comes primarily, you know, not from the media or anyone else. It's the voters who are driving that, the Republican primary voters who still feel a strong attention for Trump and who continue to pay attention to him. So even as you know, he stays in the news thanks to the authorities, it's his response to those things and the voters response to those things that has kept him in the spotlight and kept him very, very safely in that in that top position.

SB: Well, if the debate showed us anything last night, it showed a lot of energy on the Republican side. How does how does that match up against what Democrats can expect with Joe Biden in the general and a potential matchup between Biden and Trump?

MOLLY BALL: Well, you can't compare a primary to that to a general election. And the Democrats are not going to have much of a primary, it seems, with, you know, no candidates have really serious stature challenging the current president for his renomination by his party. But I think you're right to point out that there could be an enthusiasm problem on the Democratic side. The party in power always suffers from a sort of complacency with its own voters. And the current president is quite unpopular. And he's never someone who has had that Trump like ability to whip people up and create a lot of attention around himself. Now, that's obviously worked well for him so far. And there were some derisive references last night among the Republicans to his sort of basement strategy in 2020, where by staying out of the fray and letting Trump monopolise the spotlight and remind people of how much they didn't like the former president, that was a good that was a successful strategy for for President Biden before. But I but there are certainly some Democrats who are concerned that all the attention paid to the Republicans, while they believe that most of the Republicans ideas are unpopular, the current president's going to have some ground to make up there.

SB: It's been good to talk to you this morning, Molly. Thank you so much.

MOLLY BALL: Thank you.

SB: Molly Ball is Time magazine's national political correspondent and she joined us in Milwaukee.

SOUNDCLIP

SB: Should you think it's possible that there's open conflict? We seem to believe so. I don't know, because I don't know what it you know, I can say this. There's a level of passion that I've never seen. There's a level of hatred that I've never seen, and that's probably a bad combination.

SB: Donald Trump, as Molly mentioned, chose a different audience to speak to last night. And that interview with Tucker Carlson on X, formerly known as Twitter. But that was just a prelude to the big event. Trump today is surrendering to officials in Georgia. In the history of American elections, there's never been anything quite like this. Tim Naftali is a faculty scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Good morning.

TIM NAFTALI: Good morning.

SB: What did you think of Donald Trump's interview last night with Tucker Carlson and and in both the tone and the content?

TIM NAFTALI: Well, it reminded me of what is what was always said about the French royal family. Trump seems to have learned nothing and remembered everything. It was not a particularly interesting interview. In fact, it really wasn't an interview. It was Donald Trump giving us his his continuing denial of the events of his own presidency. I thought that the discussion of January six then and and you had a clip from Mr. Carlson's efforts to get Donald Trump to say that we were on the verge of a of a new civil war. His comments on January six were were appalling. The former president talked about how much love there was in the audience, and then, as he is wont to do, he explained how it was the largest audience that he had ever had are failing to discuss the implications of the riot on the capital and the fact that it it was an attempt by his followers and I would argue by him to to actually overturn the election that day. So the listener, I think the listener got a sense of of Trump's greatest hits, and there was very little sense of what the new campaign for the for his restoration would really involved. He did have a new a few new lines about China, but by and large it was the same set of grievances that he ran on in 2016.

SB: So Donald Trump now faces four criminal indictments. They'll probably be a bit of a circus today around his surrender in Georgia. Can you give us the put this in context for us in terms of the presidential history of your country?

TIM NAFTALI: Well, I have in my study a picture of Grover Cleveland. Not because I'm a great fan of Grover Cleveland, but Grover Cleveland is the only president of the United States to have two numbers because he was there was eight an entire term between his first and second term. And he was in the late 19th century and he didn't run for re-election. His party put him up for a second term. There is almost nothing that makes him like Trump or Trump like him. But it is the only time in American history that you had the prospect, a real prospect of a former president becoming president again. Theodore Roosevelt was a strong third candidate when he ran in 20 in 1912, but he was not likely to be the president of the United States again. So this is the very first time that the United States faces in the modern era, the possibility of a president who is a former president becoming president again. And, of course, this is the only time in American history that any former president has been indicted, not four times, not even once. So you have the prospect of an indicted former president potentially becoming president, United States, and should he be found guilty in one of the earlier the four indictments. He could indeed be elected president as a convicted felon.

SB: Extraordinary. Doesn't even seem like that, like a strong enough word when you when I listen to you describe that, you know, at the heart of of the latest charges against Donald Trump that he's facing in Georgia and the federal charges are the alleged attempts to steal the 2020 election. How do you see that affecting the 2024 campaign?

TIM NAFTALI: Well, I'll tell you this. I don't think the United States had an alternative in terms of how to react to the January 6th. I think it was absolutely necessary that the judicial institutions at the federal level and in the case of Georgia, at the state level, responded to what happened in 2020 and early 2021 for the very fact that there is nothing more important than defending the public's right to vote and their right to have their vote counted. But that's not the same as what is the effect on 2024. And it's very good question. So I think that up to now, the effect on 2024 has been to, as Molly Ball mentioned, to to give Trump the kind of negative energy that he feeds off of and to keep it to keep him out there and and to keep him popular among a very large swath of the likely primary voters in the Republican Party. What we don't know is what a year of this will what effect a year of this will have. Let's not forget that we're a year away still from the from the Republican convention. And there is the possible. But only that at least one of these cases will come to trial by next summer. And the case that is the most damaging, that is most likely to come to trial. It doesn't have to do with January six. It has to do with the president keeping classified material right materials in Florida. And we just don't know what the effect of that case might be on his electability. You see, one of the things Republicans who vote in the general election want is someone who will win and a case that a number of the so-called also rans are making right now is Donald Trump is a sure loser against Joe Biden.

SB: But haven't we been hearing that argument for a long time? Every time there's a new charge, every time there's a new revelation or a new scandal, and yet the needle doesn't move.

TIM NAFTALI: Well, then don't keep him. Let's keep in mind that we're talking about likely primary voters, not likely general election voters. You can't become president of the United States solely with the primary voters of your party voting for you. You need the independents. And Donald Trump's numbers among independents are not very good. So this is why if you if if Republicans look at this coolly a year from now, Trump may be their worst option. They don't think as one party any longer. But I'm just saying, it's a year away and let's not let's not write history before it happens. I just we're in an unprecedented moment and there is a drip, drip, drip to these traditional realities for Donald Trump. And he may look like a sore loser in 12 months. And Republicans don't like to nominate sore losers.

SB: Well, Tim, thank you very much for your time this morning. Appreciate your perspective.

TIM NAFTALI: Thank you, Susan. My pleasure.

SB: Tim Naftali is a faculty scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He's in New York City. The CBC news is next. Then.

SOUNDCLIP

People believe that bears were perhaps one of our closest relatives, owing to the fact that they can move about on two legs. And they're very intelligent and they're very curious.

SB: It turns out bears aren't actually related to humans, but these animals do hold a special place in cultures around the world. Coming up, an intimate look at those creatures, what we misunderstand about them, what can be done to protect them and why humanity has been obsessed with them for centuries. That's all coming up when the current returns in six minutes. I'm Susan Bonner. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

Russian mercenary chief presumed dead, why bears fascinate humans

Guests: Catherine Belton, Gloria Dickie

SB: I'm Susan Bonner. You are listening to The Current. It was a scenario many had predicted. A plane crashed in Russia yesterday, killing all ten people on board. And Wagner mercenary Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and other Wagner group leaders were listed as passengers. When the erratic frontman led an armed mutiny towards Moscow in June, President Vladimir Putin called Prigozhin a traitor, but he allowed him to leave Russia peacefully to live in Belarus. Catherine Belton reports on Russia for The Washington Post. And she's the author of Putin's People. Catherine, good morning.

CATHERINE BELTON: Hi. Thanks for having me on.

SB: It strikes me that Ferguson was once one of Putin's people. What went through your mind last night when you saw this plane crash and heard the news?

CATHERINE BELTON: Well, I guess we shouldn't have been surprised, but we were. I mean, everyone was surprised when Prigozhin launched his mutiny and was crazy enough to kind of launch this march on Moscow to demand the ouster of the Defence Minister and the chief of staff of the Russian army. And I guess this mutinies had just as a dramatic dénouement. No one believed that. You know, the whole plane carrying most of precautions. Top commanders could just be pulled out of the sky like that. But I guess some we still don't know what happened. Exactly. The investigations have only just been launched. Investigators must look at the black box and retrieve it from the plane. There are all kinds of rumours swirling. We don't know whether there was a bomb planted on the plane. Others are pointing to Russia's own air defence systems being deployed. But what we do know for sure, even though the Kremlin is silent, this looks very good for Putin because it's really restored his authority. I mean, we know that Putin takes a very harsh stance on people who he considers are traitors, of course. I'm not sure we're ever going to know the truth of what happened, whether Putin has personally given your order. But we know that Putin had a very strong reason to desire precautions, death, because this mutiny that he launched, it was absolutely unheard of to march on Moscow like that. And for Putin to have appeared quite so weak in the eyes of the elite afterwards, when he was seen as having not really done anything, is having agreed to give Prigozhin safe passage, even though he directly challenged the Kremlin. And then Boghosian was still swanning in and out of Russia, even even after that sort of collecting his money, collecting his pistols, and even getting invited to tea for the Kremlin. I mean, Putin had looked really very weak.

SB: Well, yesterday U.S. President Joe Biden said about the crash, there's not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind. Why? What about the timing? Why now and why this way?

CATHERINE BELTON: I think, you know, I mean, for various analysts and sort of business people in Russia have pointed out that Putin couldn't really act immediately against Prigozhin because this prigozhin was somebody who really essentially acted as a shadow of the Kremlin to promote Russian influences, influence across the Middle East and Africa. He was sort of deeply intertwined with the Russian security state. And to take him down right away would have involved too delicate unravelling of affairs. So it took some time and he didn't seem to dare to move against him, but to take him out in this way, to shoot down an entire plane, which included some pilots and the crew, you know, and to take out the entire top command, that's a very demonstrative signal to the rest of the Russian elite that the same fate could await them if they dare to show any independence.

SB: And what about all of the the thousands of mercenaries who had played such a large role under Prigozhin in the war in Ukraine? How will they view this, the death of their leader?

CATHERINE BELTON: Well, you know, we've heard from some people who've been in contact with some members of the Wagner group, and they say that most of the fighters there are in shock. The commanders don't know what to do. I mean, everyone's very surprised that, you know, Prigozhin and several members of his top command were all flying on the same plane. For one, it's very strange. Normally, they wouldn't have risked that, but they seem to think that the security had been guaranteed by Putin. Putin would keep his word. And they were flying in to Russia for goodness knows what next assignment. So what I did stay in touch.

SB: Was this then a purge and perhaps more than just an assassination of of prigozhin.

CATHERINE BELTON: Well, I mean, the entire provoking a minute paramilitary group has now been decapitated because, I mean, at least according to the Russian aviation authorities, it was not only prigozhin on board, but also his three of his top commanders, including the founder of the Wagner Group itself, Dimitri YUTKIN, who was really the quiet force behind the scenes while Prigozhin was was the front line essentially. So yeah, they're out there decapitated and essentially I think Wagner is done. I mean, the rest of the fighters, they may go and migrate to the many other private paramilitary groups that have been set up by other individuals who are deemed much more loyal to Putin and much more reliable.

SB: So you say that you think that Wagner is done. I was going to ask you if the end of progression was perhaps the beginning of something else in Russia.

CATHERINE BELTON: Well, I think unfortunately for the Russian elite, I mean, downing an entire plane sends such a strong signal that I don't think we're going to see any protests for quite some time. I've spoken to some Russian businessmen today, and certainly they're saying that the overriding mood is that of fear. It puts Putin very squarely back in charge and everyone can see the consequences of challenging him.

SB: And among the general population, same kind of sentiment.

CATHERINE BELTON: I think the general population might be quite kept in the dark a little bit. I mean, the state Russian state media has you know, they've been sort of playing down the whole event yesterday. I mean, there's been brief mentions of the plane being downed outside of Moscow. They've quoted the Russian aviation authorities as saying that Prigozhin was on it, but they haven't really commented on the broader context or even mentioned it even mentioned the mutiny. So I think the broader population probably has other concerns at the moment, because if you remember just last week, the ruble was devaluing pretty rapidly and it hit general Russians pockets pretty hard.

SB: Well, Catherine Belton, good to get your perspective this morning. Thank you so much.

CATHERINE BELTON: Thanks for having me on.

SB: Catherine Belton reports on Russia for The Washington Post.

[Music]

SB: You are listening to the Current. I'm Susan Bonner.

SOUNDCLIP

[Noises]

Oh, my life. It's just gone absolutely mad. All of a sudden, they just gone from gentle feeding teddy bears to just a whirling, massive teeth.

SB: That whirling mess of teeth is a sloth bear. And if it wasn't clear from that BBC report, it's the deadliest of the eight bear species on the planet. Bears hold a special place in many cultures and societies, but humanity's history with these animals is often draped in cruelty. Gloria Dickie's new book is called Eight Bears Mythic Past and Imperilled Future. She is the global climate and environment correspondent at Reuters News Agency. Gloria Dickie, hello.

GLORIA DICKIE: Hello. How are you?

SB: I'm well, thank you. Those slot bears sound pretty scary. Where do they call home?

GLORIA DICKIE: They live on the Indian subcontinent and they're one of the bears that used to be a bit wider ranging. But, of course, you know, did a habitat pressure there. Their homelands have shrunk a bit, but I would say that they're one of the world's least known bears. And probably most Canadians, I think, have never heard of Sloth Bear.

SB: No, and certainly not like that. You went in search of them yourself. How close did you actually get?

GLORIA DICKIE: I would say we're about 20 feet away. We were staying at some kind of forest cabins in the Indian state of Gujarat, and a mother and a couple of cubs came in to to feed on some some seed pods at night. And so we kind of went out we were hiding behind her a vehicle kind of as protection to to watch them.

SB: What makes these sloth bears so aggressive?

GLORIA DICKIE: Scientists don't quite know. There are a few theories. I think one that I found really interesting was that they share the landscape with tigers and in a lot of, you know, habitats and ecosystems, bears are kind of the top predator, especially when thinking about Canada. But in India, they've got the tiger to contend with and tigers will go after sloth bear cub. So some people think that perhaps they've kind of evolved to be quite aggressive, have a really low throttle point, as I think I wrote to deal with tigers. Other theories go that maybe their eyesight's not so good, so they kind of startle quite easily. I personally kind of like the Tiger theory.

SB: It's a good one. You explored the history of of each of these species of bears and the sloth bear's history is so fascinating. They're rescued, in some cases rescued dancing bears. What does that mean?

GLORIA DICKIE: For many, many years, sloth bears were dancing bears, and they accompanied a group of kind of nomads known as the calendar, people travelling across Asia as a as basically performers. So they would they would take these bears when they were cubs, when they were quite young. And, you know, they'd attach a rope through their a muzzle or a chain and they would tow them from town to town busking along the way and they would make the bears dance by doing things like training them on hot coals that they would go up on, on two legs and kind of sway to and fro. But in the past few decades, India has cracked down on this. And more or less, most of those dancing bears are now in sanctuaries across India today and no longer dancing.

SB: So much cruelty in that story. The title of your book is Eight Bears. Can you give us a quick rundown of them?

GLORIA DICKIE: Right. So I guess the species that most people tend to be more familiar with are, of course, the American black bear and the brown bear, of which the the grizzly bear is a subspecies. We've got the polar bear up in the Arctic and then the panda, which is a bear. And most people kind of waver back and forth on that one. And then we also have the lesser one, the lesser known bear. So the sun bear, the moon bear, the spectacle bear, which lives in the Andes and the sloth bear.

SB: How would you describe the evolution of of the way humans have regarded and interacted with bears?

GLORIA DICKIE: We have a really layered history with bears. I think back in kind of the Greek philosopher times, you know, we saw people believe that bears were perhaps one of our closest relatives, owing to the fact that they can move about on two legs. And they're very intelligent and they're very curious. And some people have observed that when bears are skinned, when their fur is removed, they actually look quite a bit like a human underneath, which is a bit horrifying, I suppose. But so people thought that perhaps we were related. And then eventually, as Christianity came to dominate, comparisons between animals and people were a little less savoury. And so we kind of saw the bear fall from grace, and it became more of a cajoling, you know, entertainer. And then eventually, of course, with settlers moving west, we saw a lot of bears extricated from their their native lands and near extinction in some cases, especially in the case of of the grizzly bear down in the U.S. But beginning around the 1970s, people started to adopt a more conservation mindset. And we saw a lot of bears begin to bounce back in North America.

SB: For many of us, our first beloved toy is the teddy bear. What can you tell us about the origins of of of the teddy bear?

GLORIA DICKIE: So the teddy bear came about when US President Theodore Roosevelt was on a bear hunting trip down in Mississippi, and he and some of his hunting companions were separated. They ran on a head where they encountered a a black bear, which apparently had swiped at one of their hunting hounds. And so they tied the bear to a tree. And they said, well, you know, when Teddy catches up, he can he can shoot the bear and finish it off. But when Teddy did catch up, he said, well, no, that's that's not, you know, kind of in good sportsmanship. And so he left. He refused to shoot the bear, allegedly. He asked one of the hunting companions to kill it, still with a knife. I think that detail made it out of the news. And instead someone drew a cartoon comic called Drawing the Line in Mississippi, which featured a little fairy, a bear that we would recognise as a teddy bear today. It had very round ears and looked different. And that apparently inspired a toymaker to make the first teddy bear.

SB: I want to play you now a clip from the PBS show Nature, and it's about another bear that you also tried to get to know.

SOUNDCLIP

The Andes Mountains in South America, home to this continent's only bear. White facial markings are a clue to its name, the spectacled bear. But to many of us, it's far more familiar as the storybook character of Paddington, who came all the way from darkest Peru. Like its fictional counterpart. This bear has a sweet tooth. Although in these cloud forests, marmalade sandwiches aren't an option.

SB: Tell us the story about Paddington and how a bear from deepest, darkest Peru ended up as Paddington Bear.

GLORIA DICKIE: Well, Paddington kind of predates the species, I guess, if you will. So when Michael Bond was writing Paddington to begin with, he had this concept of a bear, of course, a stowaway. And he'd written that Paddington came from deepest, darkest Africa. When the manuscript went to his agent, his agent pointed out, Well, no, there are no bears in Africa, so you need to choose a different origin for for your character. And so he didn't want to use one of the more common, more, more known bears. He wanted it to be a little bit mysterious, a little bit elusive. And so eventually, while researching, he came across the spectacle bear, and so he scratched out darkest Africa and changed that to darkest Peru.

SB: Well, we can't talk about cuddly bears without talking about the panda. What kind of encounters did you have with a panda?

GLORIA DICKIE: The panda was a very, I think, culturally unique bear in some ways. Whereas, you know, there's fewer than 2000 left in the wild. And of course, across much of China, it's a it's a vast habitat. And so my kind of approach to the panda bear was looking at some of these these captive breeding centres that China has established. And so they do have a program at one of these panda bases where you can volunteer as a panda keeper for the day. And so I signed up, I went to the Dujiangyan Panda base in Sichuan. And you're paying to do this, I should clarify, do. I spent the day, you know, shovelling up panda poop, got to feed a panda, break up bamboo for the pandas to eat. There did used to be the option that you could take a photo with a panda with that kind of you're putting your arm around it. I think that that is no longer permissible post the COVID era. But it was kind of a way to get, you know, foreigners come in and they got to get as close as they possibly can to a panda.

SB: The efforts to to get the panda off the endangered list have been quite controversial. What's the status of of the pandas now?

GLORIA DICKIE: So in 2016, we saw the panda status be upgraded to no longer being considered as endangered as it once had been, despite fewer than 2000 remaining. And there was some issue over how pandas were being counted, because when they did this kind of panda census of the Panda survey, they were looking in a wider area than they had before. So it's a little hard to question, well, did the population actually improve? But at the same time, you know, so much money and time and resources have gone into panda conservation, I believe more so than any other species in the world, that you have to feel a little bit hopeful about the pandas future and the fact that, you know, China's population has peaked. So they're facing habitat pressure at this point. They managed to hang on this long. Hopefully they can continue to do so.

SB: You write about panda diplomacy. Tell us about that.

GLORIA DICKIE: So this is basically, I guess, how a lot of people know pandas today. When you see the pandas that were in the Toronto Zoo or the Calgary Zoo in Canada, you know, to some extent, that was perhaps a part of panda diplomacy. And so essentially that goes that China offers to give zoos pandas when it feels like it has positive relations or wants to ensure positive relations or trade deals with different countries. And so it's kind of a diplomatic tool, bribes, if you will. China. Calls them friendship envoys. We're different countries around the world will receive pandas after doing something that China likes.

SB: Well, one bear that doesn't need any diplomatic efforts is the black bear. Canadians know them well. We see them in our woods. Some people see them in their backyards, rummaging through garbage bins, even on the outskirts of cities and towns. How has this proximity to humans changed the lives of those bears?

GLORIA DICKIE: The American black bear is the world's most populous bear, so there is nearly a million black bears in Canada and the U.S.. That partially explains, you know, why people have some encounters with them. But at the same time, we do see bears moving into areas drawn by food. And so in that case, especially in places where you have a lot of bears, perhaps kind of mountain resort towns that don't have good regulations on what to do with garbage, we see bears basically staying up all night. In some cases, they're no longer hibernating. Bears hibernate to deal with scarcity, but if food is available year round, there's really no need. And so they can just stay up and eat and eat and eat all night long.

SB: Gloria, what's your favourite bear?

GLORIA DICKIE: I am quite partial to the polar bear. I think, you know, perhaps part of that is being Canadian. That's kind of icon of northern-ness. But I also just really love the Arctic. And I think of the bears as well. The polar bear in some ways has the bleakest trajectory because it is so heavily impacted by climate change. Polar bears depend on the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, in the ocean to get their food. They kind of stick out over seal breathing holes. A seal pops up for air and they pounce. They haven't really adapted to be able to get enough calories that they would need for their large body sizes on land. And so what's happening with climate change, of course, is all of that Arctic sea ice is melting and disappearing. And so as goes the ice goes the polar bear. And scientists in some cases think very few of the remaining populations will persist much beyond 2100 as they're being forced to kind of fast or starve, if you will, for longer and longer periods of time waiting for the sea ice to come back.

SB: What about the this the sport hunt for polar bears?

GLORIA DICKIE: That is a that is a controversial topic. Canada and Greenland or Denmark are the only countries that have polar bears, that still allow polar bears to be hunted. Obviously, in Canada, a lot of the hunt can or tags are given to Inuit communities. And some of those communities have asked for more tags, especially with recent attacks on people in some of those remote northern communities. They think there's too many polar bears nearby now. But scientists are very critical of this. And, you know, with this population facing such a large crisis in the future, they're like, why are we hunting these bears?

SB: You you met someone who was attacked quite viciously by a polar bear. What did she tell you?

GLORIA DICKIE: Yeah, there's a woman named Erin Green. And I think, you know, in at least in sort of the polar bear community, she's pretty well known because there are so few people, of course, who have been attacked by polar bears and lived. But Erin was one of those unfortunate people who was walking through an alleyway and she was attacked by a polar bear that came out of the darkness. And luckily a man nearby jumped out and saved her. She, too, was attacked and they were both, you know, medivaced out to have treatment. But she actually she wasn't from [unintelligible] originally, but she actually moved back there because she felt, you know, like the community very much supported her and that also people outside of Churchill couldn't even fathom what she'd gone through.

SB: Are the attacks becoming more frequent because the polar bears are being challenged with with their feeding grounds?

GLORIA DICKIE: We are seeing some increases in frequency, especially kind of the kinds of bears that are getting into attacks and the time of year. And so when scientists looked at this, they have seen, you know, in more recent decades, especially, I think around 2010, we started to see a bit more conflict, which makes sense because polar bears are spending more time on land near human communities and they're more food stressed in some cases.

SB: As the ice retreats and grizzly bears move into. In some cases, polar bear territory. What does that do to the future of the polar bear?

GLORIA DICKIE: So polar bears are actually, I guess what you could say, the newest bear on the block. They evolved the most recently and they evolved from brown bears. So the two are very closely related and they can actually mate and have fertile children who can keep basically mating. And so eventually, if you kept doing that, you would probably see that brown bear DNA kind of subsume the polar bear DNA. Scientists have identified some of these hybrids known as paisley bears or polar bears. Basically a polar bear and a brown bear mate. And they have a hybrid child.

SB: Well, is there serious concern in the scientific community that at some point the white polar bears would be no more because of the influence of the of the grizzly?

GLORIA DICKIE: I think it was said that it's a bit of a race as to whether or not, you know, the. Here is faster or there's more interbreeding faster. So which one? What kind of went out? Who knows? But I think more so it would be the loss of that sea ice that pushes them to to extinction.

SB: What would be lost if bears were no longer among us?

GLORIA DICKIE: Yeah, we spoke a bit at the beginning about kind of that, you know, cultural connection, believing that bears were once our closest relative. And even though that might not be the case, we still maintained an incredibly close connection to them. Over the years. Bears and humans inhabit many of the same places. We've kind of followed the same paths in populating the world. They appear time and time again in our stories. So I think, you know, just beyond the intrinsic value of having these animals a keystone species on the landscape, our lives are also the richer for having these animals around, and our stories are richer as well.

SB: Well, it's been it's been a delight to talk to you about these bears. Thank you so much.

GLORIA DICKIE: Thank you so much for having me.

SB: Gloria Dickie's new book is Eight Bears Mythic Past and Imperilled Future. Coming up after your regional update, we'll continue our presentation of the CBC podcast One in Six. It explores the challenges and emotional toll for couples trying to get pregnant. I'm Susan Bonner. You're listening to The Current.

Back To Top »

CBC podcast One in Six – Ep. 2

SB: I'm Susan Bonner and you are listening to The Current. All summer we've been playing some of the best CBC podcasts. Today we're continuing the series One in Six. Jen White and her husband, Neil Hyde, are from Saint John's. They're sharing their story of struggling to get pregnant. Here is episode two.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Feel like there's some music playing like this romantic coming, music playing, seagulls are...

JEN WHITE: It's October 2018 and I'm in the middle of my sixth round of intrauterine insemination or IUI, the make or break cycle. But forget the date. These cycles have their own calendar. Today is day seven. Just before we get ready for bed. Neil has to give me a shot. It's called going l f a follicle stimulating hormone. Yeah. Okay. There is nothing soothing or romantic about what's about to transpire. Yeah. Okay. Okay. This makes me want to vomit, but... I've been afraid of needles since I was a little girl. When I was about five, I had to get some blood work done at the local children's hospital. I was told once it was over, I could pick out a knitted finger puppet from this large drum sitting nearby. But it didn't go well. The technician couldn't find the vein, and neither could the next person. I was jabbed over and over again until they could finally draw my blood. The nurses felt so bad I walked out of there with a puppet on each finger and a big frown on my face. Their little smiles looking up at me couldn't mask the fact that I was officially scarred for life.

[Music]

JEN WHITE: You're in charge. The nurse showed you how to do it. She tried to show me how to do it, and I refused.

NEIL HYDE: Sure did.

JEN WHITE: So.

NEIL HYDE: All right.

JEN WHITE: If you want to walk us through Neil.

NEIL HYDE: Yeah, here we go. This is. This is our business, and everyone else is now. Yay! So we got the little box here with the needle in it. We got some alcohol swabs a little. Petroleum jelly size container. This is what the needle's going once you're done. And an instruction booklet, which, uh, which we got. Look, Jenna, the picture of a person doing it himself.

JEN WHITE: Are they crying?

NEIL HYDE: You can't tell.

JEN WHITE: You can't see their tears. You can only see the injection. So.

[Music]

JEN WHITE: It's not just the physical pain of these needles that gets to me. I feel everything deeply. My mom, Ellen, says, Even as a kid, I was emotional.

JEN'S MOM: You're also sensitive to things. We were watching it with a movie and one afternoon something on TV and you were sitting in my arms and you had your blankie and you were sucking your thumb, maybe four years old. And it was about a woman. And uncannily enough, she was disappointed in us being able to have a a baby. So she was having some problems there and she was crying about it and whatever. And I didn't think you were paying any attention at all. I thought you were half asleep, dear. And you looked at me and you said, Mom, did you cry because you wanted to have a baby? Did you cry because you wanted to have me like that woman? And I was actually in shock and of course, immediately burst into tears. You got more hugs than you bargained for that day, right? I don't think I've ever told you that story before.

JEN WHITE: No. You haven't. That's really sad. And also, what a weird, weird foreshadowing.

JEN'S MOM: Totally weird. Weird foreshadowing, right?

NEIL HYDE: Okay, so it looks like a pin like legit and you twist off the top, which is about half of it.

JEN WHITE: Neil is getting the needles ready while I keep looking in the other direction.

NEIL HYDE: Okay, so now Jen has to pick an area, wipes an area with another swab and steps. Then one or both of us will cry, and then we're done.

JEN WHITE: I say. Stab, stab, stab though, because it's, just be one stab, right?

NEIL HYDE: Yeah. It just says to 90 degree angle into the skin press injection button down as far as it will go. Might bend the needle if you're going into Greendale. We never really read that part before, but it was implied. So we've got to keep it in for 5 seconds and then release the dose setting up. Yeah, we've done this before.

JEN WHITE: It doesn't matter.

NEIL HYDE: Oh.

JEN WHITE: Doesn't matter.

NEIL HYDE: Well, I've got a Prime Neil here, so we've got to do something.

JEN WHITE: So the part next to my belly.

NEIL HYDE: Here I go.

JEN WHITE: Huh?

NEIL HYDE: It's okay. Swab. Oh, right. There was not a tire losing air. I was breathing at four. Five. Hey. Hey. Bam bam baaa baam. That's amazing.

[Music]

JEN WHITE: I had no idea how many needles would be involved in trying to make a baby. But we've come this far, and I figure why not add a few more? I'm going to try acupuncture. I know. I know. We all just heard how I reacted to one needle. But I figure lots of people get acupuncture, right? And they wouldn't do it if it hurt, Right. There are many studies on whether acupuncture can help improve fertility. And they don't all agree. But I'm desperate and I'm willing to try anything at this point, even if it involves my needle nemesis. And if it doesn't help me to conceive, maybe, just maybe, it'll help me manage the stress of everything.

BENJI MUNDEN: Service actually is probably one of the most relaxing things you're ever going to experience.

JEN WHITE: Back to Health is a natural healing clinic in Saint John's. I take a seat in the waiting area and pretty soon Benji Munden calls me into another room. She's a registered acupuncturist who's been in practice for about 20 years. She sees lots of fertility patients and I know she has a lot of experience, but I'm still kind of worked up about those needles.

BENJI MUNDEN: So first things first. So I would start with how long you've been trying to get pregnant, and you have said two years.

JEN WHITE: We run through my medical background and I mentioned that I'm an anxious person by nature with a stressful career. Yes. But Benji is confident that this will help me relax right now.

BENJI MUNDEN: People always think it's going to hurt, but it doesn't. It has. With the needles that we use with acupuncture, incredibly fine. They have. They are probably as fine as two pieces of hair put together. They're tapped in through a little tube. You don't even feel them enter. So people get kind of nervous about the treatment first. But as soon as that first needle goes in, you realise it's it's very painless. And then all that all that nervousness kind of goes away. And then the natural effect of the acupuncture takes over. You have a lie down? Yeah. Okay. So. All right, so I'm going to start with this point here. It's called the in. It's helps with it's mainly a calming stress free point.

JEN WHITE: And it's right between my eyes.

BENJI MUNDEN: There. Yeah. Yeah. And it's painless. Okay. And it also with regard to fertility, it helps to stimulate the woman's sex hormone. Oh, okay. Great. For libido and mental emotional relaxation. Okay. Pressing for me now. And don't. That's it. That feels so far a little scary, but it's okay.

JEN WHITE: Benjy does a dozen of these needles on my wrists and in my legs. She says they will calm my hurt and my stress and will increase blood flow to my liver, spleen and kidneys.

BENJI MUNDEN: And that is it. That's it. Well, one more on your other side there. And we are done with the acupuncture side and let you relax. And enjoy your treatment. Have a half hour to yourself. I'm going to turn the lights down. Okay.

[Sound: Phone ringing tone]

NEIL HYDE: [Unintelligible]

JEN WHITE: Hi, Neal.

NEIL HYDE: Hil.

JEN WHITE: I just left the acupuncture appointment.

NEIL HYDE: Oh, okay. Yeah. You feel ventilated.

JEN WHITE: I feel more even. I feel more pincushy than I did before.

JEN WHITE: Okay.

JEN WHITE: So then after I got up to get dressed again, she said to take your time. And I didn't really understand that until I stood up. And you feel not woozy but yes, you just feel weird. And then when I came down, when I came down the stairs, my legs felt a little wobbly. So...

NEIL HYDE: Well done.

JEN WHITE: I don't know what those needles did, but, okay, I got to go back to work.

NEIL HYDE: Cool. Well, that's good. I'm glad we're well and there's no tears. And if you feel like you have to let me [unintelligible].

JEN WHITE: If nothing else, I'm more relaxed.

NEIL HYDE: See? Exactly. That's perfect.

JEN WHITE: Apparently, it could take a few appointments to get the maximum benefit of acupuncture. At this point, anything that can help with the stress is worth trying. All of the uncertainty, the high hopes, the secrecy, the shame. It takes a toll. And I haven't even told you about the other drugs yet.

[Music]

NEIL HYDE: It has two bags here. A very large plastic bag and a smaller paper bag inside.

JEN WHITE: Such goodies inside.

NEIL HYDE: I can't remember.

JEN WHITE: Well, so this is the one that starts tonight. I have a little blue pill bottle of [unintellgilbe]. Perfect.

NEIL HYDE: Perfect. That's great.

JEN WHITE: Yeah. Which are the little, the little pills that make me go crazy. Not in a good way. Like, not like girls gone wild.

NEIL HYDE: Well, no.

JEN WHITE: But girls got extremely. Hormonal.

NEIL HYDE: [Unintelligble]

JEN WHITE: Fun fact, Letrozole is a drug that's used to treat certain types of breast cancer in women who are post-menopausal. It makes me feel really edgy. Like I could blow up at anyone at any time for any reason. So then that's followed by what, you know, that I lovingly refer to these as as the yoghurt tubes.

NEIL HYDE: They well, they look exactly like yoghurt tubes that you'd buy in the grocery store. And we got 16 of them.

JEN WHITE: Yeah. Yeah.

NEIL HYDE: They're fun.

JEN WHITE: Essentially, they look like tampon sticks, I guess. Tampon? The drug is called [unintelligible] applicators, filled with a vaginal gel. It contains progesterone, a hormone that changes the lining of your uterus. It's supposed to make it easier for a fertilised egg to attach itself there. So they're kind of gross, but that happens later. And then finally, what they call the trigger shot, [unintelligible].

NEIL HYDE: Oh, what's this? Oh, that's a trigger. I'm sorry.

JEN WHITE: The trigger shot contains hormones that kick start ovulation. So once a follicle is large enough, you take the shot to release the egg within it, and then the insemination takes place about 24 to 36 hours later. Did I mention that all of these pills and injections cost more than $600? Yeah. We'll talk more about cost in the next episode. But all of this is to say there's a lot weighing on my mind. All of these big, intense feelings I'm having lately. The hormones definitely aren't helping. I thought this journey would get easier over time. I know the doctors, the nurses, what's involved in the procedure. But by my fourth IUI in the spring of 2018, after doing a few treatments back to back. I hit a wall. All of the pain and anguish was building up and I wasn't speaking to anyone about it. I became so overwhelmed I felt like I could crack at any moment. My anxiety would kick in the second I left the house because I didn't know what would set me off and opened the floodgates of tears. But therapy never occurred to me as an option. I'm strong enough. I can handle this on my own. I told myself until I couldn't anymore.

[Sound: Phone ringing]

JEN WHITE: I could barely keep myself from crying when I made the call, admitting that I needed help. At the time, Dr. Sara McCauley was a psychologist assigned to Women and Children's Health at the Janeway Children's Hospital in Saint John's. I wear my sunglasses into the hospital, too, and scurry to the elevators like it wasn't bad enough. I can't make a baby on my own. Now I'm admitting I can't handle all of the mental turmoil that goes with it. To make matters worse, her office is on the third floor directly across from the birthing unit. Another painful reminder of my empty uterus. I'm sweating all over. Dr. McCauley invites me in for my first ever therapy session, and she has a big smile and a warm presence that puts me at ease. I sit perched in a chair. Not really sure what to expect, but as we talk, I settle into my seat and the walls start to come down.

DR. SARA MCCAULEY: I can't tell you how many people have come to me not just feeling sad and upset. The grief, the loss, the regret, but also feeling really betrayed. Really ignored. Really isolated. Absolutely let down. And it's a sense of despair that the world doesn't care about them the way that they really hoped that they would and that they always trusted and thought that they could rely on the world to care. And it's not that the world doesn't care, it's that they just don't get it. They don't realise. They think, Oh, well, you didn't hold the baby in your arms. It could have been worse. And truthfully, it can't be worse. There's nothing worse than not actually having the baby you're meant to have, because partly people don't recognise it, but also all the time and planning and effort that goes into it. That's not time you ever get back is something that you're investing that hopefully you get to enjoy someday. There's a lot of shame and guilt and self-blame about our own bodies. There's so much that's unknown about women's fertility and reproductive health, and no matter how perfect we fed ourselves and cared for ourselves in our entire lives. Every woman I've ever met thinks to herself somewhere in the back of her brain that it's somehow my fault. Which brings me to another reaction that people can have. So the sense of loss of control, it can be really helpless. I also really noticed that people's identity as a woman, as an adult's, as a wife, as a partner, as a potential mom, they get really messed up. And when our identity is threatened and that goes to the core of who we are, it goes to the core of Do I even feel like I'm a good person? Am I worthy? Am I good enough? And we like to grow up thinking that if we just work hard enough, we can somehow make the world a meritocracy. Where you work hard enough, you can get everything, you can do anything, be anything. The world isn't fair. And that is a really harsh reality call.

JEN WHITE: These are all feelings I've felt. I really thought if I followed all of the doctor's orders, did all of the right things, that we'd have a baby by now. Why is this so hard? And why is it that some people who don't even want kids can get pregnant? But after all of this work, I still can't.

DR. SARA MCCAULEY: A lot of what I try to do is even spell out for folks that this is normal. It's a normal response to a horrible situation. It's like they're in a fog. They're literally not able to focus. Their attention is very short. Often folks going through chronic stress, especially this kind of complicated bereavement, chronic stress of fertility treatments, is going to be distracted. They're going to be impatient. They're going to be easily irritable. They're going to be saying things and doing things they wouldn't normally.

JEN WHITE: I've tried so many things to have a baby, and every time it doesn't work, I feel like my world gets smaller, a light gets dimmer. The fact is, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'll never be a mom and Neil won't be a dad. And I'm afraid for my own mom. This would break her heart. I feel like I've lost so much of myself when all of this is over. Will there be any of me left? Will it be worth it? So much of this journey is out of our hands. We're at the mercy of medicine and biology. But Dr. McCauley reminds me that there are things I can control.

DR. SARA MCCAULEY: I like to try to give people kind of a get out of jail free card and say, you don't have to go to these things. I don't mean to be like harsh about this or anything like that, but I've never had really meaningful conversations with people at baby showers. So maybe what we need to be doing in that case is taking the pressure off of ourselves and saying, you know, I'm so happy for you. I'm so thrilled. I don't want to be around the big crowd today, but tomorrow or next weekend. I really want us to get together and do a paint night or let's have a girls day or go, go, go get a pedicure or even I need to not necessarily see a pregnancy bump right now, but I'm really thinking of you and I'm going to support you by sending you little text messages every day, little jokes. There can be ways we kind of avoid our triggers at the same time as not avoiding the world.

JEN WHITE: Here's something else I can control the story that I tell myself about this fertility journey. Acupuncturist Benjie Munden said something that has stuck with me ever since my appointment. Something that has offered me so much clarity and has totally changed the way I talk about infertility.

DR. SARA MCCAULEY: And which I don't like saying that word ever. So I'm not going to say infertility. Okay. I'm just going to say that that is blocking you from having success right now.

JEN WHITE: Why don't you like saying it?

DR. SARA MCCAULEY: Because it sounds like it sounds like it's something you're never going to overcome. It is saying you're infertile. I don't believe you're infertile. I believe that there are things that are imbalanced right now that are preventing you from success. But I don't see any of these reasons as a one that's going to stick. Okay, I like that. Sounds good to me. Yeah. And you know, there's also there's also positive thinking, too. And when you keep saying the word in fertility and it doesn't help with what we're what we're trying to achieve, it is kind of negative. Yeah. Yeah.

[Music]

NEIL HYDE: Okay. All right. Oh, so that happened?

JEN WHITE: Yeah, that happened.

NEIL HYDE: Tuesday. Day for Halloween.

JEN WHITE: Day 12 of IUI cycle number six, the main event, the insemination. The odds are low with Iowa, and the stakes are high. If things don't work out this time, we're out of options for having a baby. In my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. They don't offer in vitro fertilisation here, so we'd have to travel off the island.

NEIL HYDE: Yeah. So?

JEN WHITE: So. So the day started with you. What happened? Without too many details, horrible details.

NEIL HYDE: So yeah, 1:30 I had appointment to drop off my sample. The option is to do at home or, or up there at the clinic. So I decided to come. Come on, do it. Did sample the things, put it under my arm. Plan to do quick route to the clinic, which is quite cutaways and ways 1520 minute drive which is a lot for Christine Jones and yeah got gotten got to there just just in time.

JEN WHITE: Neil drops off his sample to the lab where they perform what's called a sperm wash to separate the best sperm from the rest of the sample. At the time, this procedure cost $150. And yes, sperm wash later appears on his credit card bill. An hour later, we're both at the clinic for the insemination appointment. Neil picks up his sperm sample from the lab.

NEIL HYDE: You, you have to hold it clenched in your hand in a little test tube and make sure to keep it warm and that kind of things and bring it from one room to the other. But it feels like you're carrying an Olympic torch, though.

JEN WHITE: They call it the torch. That's how this all started. Yeah.

NEIL HYDE: Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. So it's my, my, my little celebratory Olympic moment. There's no flame set on fire.

JEN WHITE: That's probably a good thing.

NEIL HYDE: Yeah. So, yeah, you you take over the rest of it. How did, uh. It was pretty. Pretty standard. Pretty well, [unintelligible] with your part?

JEN WHITE: Yeah, it was fine. We were in the same room that we did the exam the last exam in, um, where they do the ultrasounds. Sometimes they bring us to other exam rooms to do this. So it was. It was kind of nice, I guess, to be in the same room.

NEIL HYDE: Same nurse, too.

JEN WHITE: Yeah. Same. Yeah. Same nurse, too.

NEIL HYDE: Yeah.

NEIL HYDE: I've now been artificially inseminated six times. And can I just say any sense of shame or sheepishness I had about my body is gone. I just do not care anymore. So many people have seen my vagina, a rotating cast of doctors, nurses, residents. And by now it's normal. I'm in a sterile room in the clinic with the harsh overhead lights slightly dimmed. I'm lying down with my feet in the stirrups, a thin disposable sheet covering my bottom half, Neil by my side, holding my hand, and a nurse injecting sperm through a catheter up into my uterus.

[Music]

JEN WHITE: From my end. I just know it's extremely uncomfortable. It's not very romantic. It's just a lot of awkward muscle contractions and pains in that part of my body. The procedure itself is fairly quick and easy. I have to lie down afterwards for 15 minutes before we can leave. Now it's just the resting part. Then from this part out, in two days time, I have to start the gross. I call them the yogurt tubes.

NEIL HYDE: Yeah. Yeah, right.

JEN WHITE: It's pretty gross. And I hate doing it every day. But I have to do it every day now until the test, which is coming up.

NEIL HYDE: Your pregnancy test. Yeah. So it starts Thursday, November 1st, and then 15 days after the IuI November 14th is the pregnancy test.

JEN WHITE: Yeah.

NEIL HYDE: Big day. Everything went really well.

JEN WHITE: Walking in there today, I am thankful that you're here and you're very supportive. But I do. I hate this entire process. And that's nothing against the nurses, the doctors, the system itself. It's I just wish we didn't have to go through it. I don't know how to make it happen.

NEIL HYDE: I'm lucky that my work allows me the time to do things like this and in a very discreet manner. And I can work from home as well. In these times when are resting, want to be here and make sure you're okay. But yeah, I mean, there's not much I can do, So I do whatever I can to be there for you and hold hands and make silly jokes and bring the torch back and forth.

JEN WHITE: Thanks for today.

NEIL HYDE: Thank you. We got that. Amazing. Thanks for an being, incredible strong and tough.

JEN WHITE: Here we are.

NEIL HYDE: We'll get through it.

JEN WHITE: So that's intrauterine insemination or IUi. The pills and the needles are brutal. The procedure might be more cold and sterile than you ever imagined. And then comes the cramping in my uterus from forcing all of that sperm up there. But that's only half the fun, because after the procedure, I have to wait 14 days to take a pregnancy test. The dreaded two week wait, and the doctors and nurses warned me not to check before then because the test could be inaccurate. No peeking. It's also the time when I'm not supposed to do a lot of activity. So while the gym could be really useful right now to help unleash some of these pent up emotions, I'm not supposed to be doing that. Not to mention the fact that my ovaries are jacked up on so many hormones. A nurse tells me they're kind of hanging from my fallopian tubes like giant walnuts. So even if I was tempted to do any kind of running or jumping, I run the risk of my ovaries twisting over on themselves. A pain I'm told I don't want to experience. Yeah. No, I'm good. I'll just sit here and watch TV.

SB: Tune in tomorrow for episode three of the CBC podcast One in Six. You can find the whole series and other podcasts on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio one for q. And don't forget, you can catch up on anything you missed on the Current or any other CBC program on the CBC Listen app. I'm Susan Bonner. Thank you for listening to The Current.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Thursday August 24, 2023 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This