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The AIH Transcript for February 19, 2021

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening. I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Bare minimum. Justin Trudeau says he'll scrap minimum sentences for some drug offences, just one reform to address the disproportionate imprisonment of black and indigenous people. But our guest says it'll take more to right, what's wrong.

CH: No news is bad news. Australians are waking up to another day of news free Facebook right now. And the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald says the social media giant's protest against paying media companies feels more like a tantrum.

CO: Hit and miss and hit and miss. He has survived two assassination attempts and now a Russian opposition activist has learnt the name of the government agency and the individual agents who tried to kill him.

CH: Copy that. Scientists in the U.S. clone one of the country's most endangered species in the hopes of bringing the black footed ferret back from the brink of extinction.

CO: Bear bottom, a woman in Alaska answers the call of nature only to have nature answer back, with teeth because she was just the only human occupant of that outhouse.

CH: And they took their needlepoint, but they didn't get one. Two Florida women try to get around state age requirements for getting the vaccine by dressing up like their apparently clueless idea of elderly women, complete with gloves and bonnets. As It Happens, the Friday edition, radio that detects delusions of grandma.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: C22 Drug Crime Bill

C22 Drug Crime Bill

Guest: Donald Worme

CH: Justin Trudeau has high hopes for his plans to reform the justice system. The prime minister's new bill would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for a series of drug related offences. He says they've contributed to what his government calls the shameful over imprisonment of black and indigenous people. Here's Mr. Trudeau speaking with reporters in Ottawa today.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We know that certain measures disproportionately affect indigenous, black Canadians, racialized Canadians. We have the numbers and the stats to prove it. We need to address systemic discrimination and racism as we committed to. There are always more things we need to do. But this represents a big and significant step forward in fixing what is wrong with our justice system that because of systemic discrimination, continues to disproportionately punish black and indigenous peoples in ways that is simply unacceptable.

CH: That was Prime Minister Trudeau in Ottawa today. Donald Worme is a founding member of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada. We reached him at his office in Saskatoon.

CO: Mr. Worme, you just heard the prime minister say he is making a big and significant step. How big is this step from your perspective?

DONALD WORME: Well, thank you very much, Carol. I mean, I'm always going to be the first one to be cheering any significant steps forward in improving the justice system as it impacts indigenous people. And while this may be true to some degree, my concern is that it simply does not go far enough. Now, I recognise that the prime minister says there is much to be done, but the real work has to be taken on at a more fundamental basis. And by that I mean there has to be efforts made to change the socioeconomic position that indigenous and black Canadians occupy, because, frankly, the correlation between involvement in the criminal justice system and the grinding poverty that these communities face is really well known.

CO: Right. But isn't it's a vicious cycle, isn't it? Because incarceration creates problems as much as it exacerbates ones that already existed. So taking one piece out of that vicious cycle, does that not at least arrest some of the issues that you're talking about?

DW: Well, certainly it does. And again, you know, I don't want to be a wet blanket and we certainly don't want to discourage positive steps moving forward. But addressing systemic discrimination is far more nuanced than minor tinkering is going to be able to address. I'm very fond of quoting my former boss, the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, when he described what systemic racism is to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage back in 2017. And he says while systemic racism, it's that stuff that's left over when you take all the racists out of the system. The point is, is that the system itself has been built upon racist principles and procedures that unfairly target and discriminate against indigenous and black people.

CO: That over incarceration of indigenous people. What does that look like in Saskatchewan courtrooms where you practise law?

DW: You know, I hear the prime minister saying that they have the statistics to prove that these efforts have affected indigenous people negatively. Well, we are those statistics. And the fact of the matter is, the provincial correctional centres, at least here in Saskatchewan, I would submit, is upwards of 85, 90 percent indigenous people. We have not experienced the promise of Gladue where the Supreme Court had denounced the overrepresentation of indigenous people being incarcerated in this country, where there was broad recognition that the criminal justice system has to quote again, Justice Sinclair at the Manitoba Justice Enquiry, failed indigenous people on a massive scale.

CO: But now we know that the incarceration rate of indigenous people went up when the Harper government passed mandatory minimum penalties for drug offences, some firearm offences. Repealing those mandatory minimum penalties doesn't mean that people won't go to jail. Will that make a difference?

DW: I can agree with that. And yes, they may not be, they may not have mandatory minimum sentences imposed upon them. But if you take the racists out of the system, the system itself still functions in a way that continues to negatively impact indigenous people, black people, people of colour. That is a truth in this country. And those are the issues that need to be grappled with beyond the tinkering that's being done in eliminating mandatory minimums.

CO: What's it like for you as an indigenous lawyer, you see so many indigenous young people coming through the system, going to prison. What's it like for you personally?

DW: I never like to talk about my personal experience because, quite frankly, it's a sad experience, it's one where I'm representing the grandchildren of people that I represented when I was a young lawyer for virtually the same crimes. And these are crimes that have a connexion to the poverty ridden lifestyle that they are subjected to. So it's horrifying in many ways.

CO: And I understand you've had to cut down on your criminal practise because it was just so gutting to see these kids and the grandkids of earlier clients coming through the system.

DW: Groundhog Day is over and it needs to be over for all of us, and it needs to be over for indigenous people in this country. It's time that the measures that are necessary to deal with the real issues that bring these kinds of terrible statistics to the forefront can finally be dealt with.

CO: You represented the family of Neil Stonechild, which is now 30 years since that kid died of hypothermia after being abandoned by police. You this week gave a community impact statement at the hearing for the man convicted of killing Barbara Kentner with a trailer hitch. Do you think the federal government, when you read this bill, do you think it's aware of what you have seen in the Canadian justice system?

DW: I think there is an awareness there. I think that obviously, as any government in power, there are many different opinions to have to try to deal with and try to grapple with in order to see the country function and move and move ahead. I hope that they are hearing the pain in the voices of those people that have been detrimentally affected, particularly indigenous people and people of colour. I'm hopeful that there is going to be these kinds of changes and soon we don't have the luxury to sit around anymore. Our children don't have the luxury for us as adults in this community to simply say, well, we give up.

CO: If you could speak directly to the prime minister about this, what would you say?

DW: I would say that there are brighter lights coming. I would say that the young people in indigenous communities have the wherewithal to stand on their own two feet and that they will be a force to reckon with, to be building the kind of society that they deserve. If we fail to do it, they will be doing it.

CO: That's a good message. I hope he hears it.

DW: Thank you, Carol.

CO: Bye bye.

DW: Bye now.

CH: Donald Worme is a senior partner at Semaganis Worme Lombard Legal. We reached him in Saskatoon.

[Music: Soft Rock]

Russian Poison Targets

Guest: Vladimir Kara-Murza

CH: An investigation has confirmed what Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza already knew, he's likely near the top of a government hit list. The website Bellingcat recently released an in-depth investigation confirming that members of a Federal Security Bureau poison squad were likely behind two previous attempts on his life. They've also named the agents that allegedly tried to kill him. It's the same group that allegedly targeted opposition leader Alexei Navalny last year. Mr Kara-Murza is appealing to Russian authorities to investigate the claims. We reached him in Moscow.

CO: Vladimir, I understand that today you have formally requested a criminal investigation into how you were targeted. Are there any indications that the authorities will do that?

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Well, this is now the third time that my lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, and I went to the Russian Investigative Committee, which is the main government agency responsible for criminal investigations, to file an official request for a criminal investigation into attempted murder.

CO: All right. So the two times that you know, that you were poisoned, 2015 and 2017, do you still believe that you are a target? Are you still being pursued?

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: I actually visibly see this. You know, when I drive around Moscow, there are cars following. And in fact, I managed to take a photo of one of the cars that was tailing me just two days ago. And I sent it to [inaudible], the head of the investigative unit at Bellingcat, and he managed to confirm that the licence plate on the car does indeed belong to the FSB, the Federal Security Service,.

CO: The Bellingcat investigation, as you point out, they just they've been doing really extraordinary work on this. And did so with the poisoning of Alexei Navalny as well. What do you now know about the sort of M.O. of those who are pursuing this? What have you learnt about how they target and how they track you?

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Well, you know, it's one thing to sort of understand intellectually that someone has tried to kill you, which I knew that anyway. But it's a totally different thing emotionally when you're actually being shown the photographs and the names of the specific people who did this. You know, it's really mind boggling to think that in a European country, in a 21st century, there is a squad of professional assassins in the employment of the state that is tasked with eliminating, physically eliminating political opponents.

CO: These poisonings it's not just you and Alexei Navalny. These efforts to poison people they've happened outside of Russia as well. Do you know what kind of poison was used against you? A kind of a Novacek like nerve agent was used against Alexei Navalny? What did they do to you? Can you just tell us how sick you got from this?

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Well, I had a multiple organ failure. None of my major organs work. You know, my heart, my kidney, my lungs, my liver, everything was essentially switched off. I needed a web of machinery around me just to sustain life artificially. I was both times in a coma. Both times, doctors told my wife I had about a five percent chance to survive. This was presumably a chemical agent, in fact, very likely because two of the FSB officers identified in the Bellingcat investigation belong to this specific squad, the so-called Research Institute number two, that deals specifically with chemical weapons from what we see from the troops that they've identified. And so Bellingcat has identified six different trips that these FSB officers took to the same places, to the same cities around Russia, where I was, on the same times that I was there in the months and weeks leading up to both poisonings. In fact, in the first case in May of 2015, two of these FSB officers were together with me in the city of Kazan just 48 hours before I ended up in intensive care with a multiple organ failure. So presumably this was done in the same way as was done to Alexei Navalny. Last August, presumably they entered my hotel room and put this chemical substance on clothes, because from what I understand, that is the M.O. That is how they do this. It's not through food or drink. It is through touch, through the skin, essentially. That's by the way, you refer to similar poisoning attacks conducted by Russian security services outside of Russia. You remember the attack in the United Kingdom in Solsbury in 2018. That time they put the chemical substance, in fact, the same Novacek on the door handle was against [inaudible]. So this is presumably how they operate. But again, now, thanks to the amazing investigative work by Bellingcat and The Insider, we actually know the specific people who did this. So we went with my lawyer to the investigative committee today, February 18th. We submitted that request. Of course, we harbour no illusions. As to the response we will have to seek justice through the courts. Of course, again, we have no illusions about the Russian court system under Vladimir Putin. So we will be taking this all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights.

CO: Alexei Navalny, we know that he returned to Moscow after he had nearly died of being poisoned. He is now in prison, which they had threatened they were going to do, and people asked him, why did you come back? And so I'll ask you, why do you stay in Moscow knowing that you're a target?

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Well, to be honest, the people who are asking these questions, that sort of presumes that our goal is to have a quiet, peaceful life. And, yes, in that sense, it would be really weird for someone to come back. Look, we are Russian politicians. We have to be in Russia. You cannot be in politics and be outside the country. The best gift we could give to the Putin regime is if we all just gave up and ran. So there was never any question in my mind for a second of whether or not to return. In fact, after I had finished my medical rehabilitation in the U.S. After both poisonings, I took to the plane as soon as doctors allowed me to fly.

CO: They were not successful in killing you or Mr. Navalny. But whether their targets live or die, does it not have the effect of creating fear amongst those who would oppose the regime?

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Look, just a few weeks ago, after Alexei Navalny returned here to Moscow and was arrested, there were massive nationwide protests literally from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean all across Russia. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to protest the Putin regime, to express their support for Alexei Navalny and his movement, despite the threats, despite the fact that these rallies were banned by the authorities, despite the fact that people who went to these rallies could be and were beaten up, detained, arrested, expelled from their jobs, sacked from universities and so on. And people still won because there is a growing, there's a growing public demand here in Russia for change. Putin's been in power for more than 20 years. That in itself is a mind boggling fact that you have, you know, in a European country in the 21st century, you have one man sitting in power for more than two decades. This is not normal. And the young generation in Russia is increasingly demanding change. And I think the most important lesson of these past few weeks with these protests here in Russia is that the desire for change is becoming stronger than fear.

CO: Vladimir, we will leave it there. And I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Thank you so much. Always good to be back on CBC.

CO: Good night.

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Thank you. Bye bye.

CH: Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian opposition activist and a contributor to The Washington Post. We reached him in Moscow.

[Music: Guitar instrumental]

Outhouse Bear Bite

Guest: Shannon Stevens

CH: Last Saturday, Shannon Stevens decided to make her first winter visit to her brother's remote yurt, it's about 40 kilometres north west of her home in Haines, Alaska. It was a cold day, but the two hour drive and snowmobile ride across Chilkat Lake went smoothly when they arrived at the yurt, they settled in and started cooking up some sausages on the fire outside. They watched the sunset and ate their dinner. And in the evening of this near perfect day, Shannon decided to use the outhouse. But once she sat down on the toilet seat, she got a painful surprise. We reached Shannon Stevens at her home in Haines, Alaska.

CO: Shannon, have you recovered from that trip to the outhouse?

SHANNON STEVENS: Oh, it wasn't a serious injury, so luckily I was pretty fortunate.

CO: Can you just take us back to last Saturday night and tell us at what point you realised that this was going to be an unusual visit to the toilet?

SS: It all happened pretty quickly. It was definitely a surprise. We had cooked some sausages outside by the fire, and when it started to get a little darker, we went back inside and ate our dinner inside. And we're just enjoying a nice evening. Just my brother, his girlfriend and I out at the yurt for the weekend. And, you know, it was getting to be Night-Time. And I decided to take a trip to the outhouse, as you do when you're out there. And I just went out there like normal and proceeded to sit down on the toilet and something immediately bit me in the rear. So, yeah, obviously, that was a big surprise. I jumped up and screamed. I definitely didn't think it was a bear at that moment. I was just shocked that something had happened.

CO: Wow. Everybody's worst nightmare about being in an outhouse. Is that there's something lurking down there. What did you think it was at first?

SS: Honestly, I wasn't really thinking about that. But in my head, I thought it was maybe a squirrel or something like that. It was just a single puncture wound. So, you know, people think bear bits, it's like a whole jaw or something. It wasn't anything like that. It might have, even in the end, been a swipe of his claw or something. But, yeah, I definitely didn't think about a bear or any large size animal. So I screamed and my brother heard me scream. So he yelled out what happened? And I said something bit me and he said, Are you OK? And I was checking the wound. I realised I was bleeding. So I said, I'm bleeding. And he said, oh, my God, I'm coming out there. So I stayed there, just kind of trying to address the wound while he ran out. Come help me out. And he got out there and came into the outhouse with me. He's a really good brother. And he said, OK, I'm going to take a look. And he had his headlamp and he opened the lid of the toilet seat. And there was the face of a bear, the face the size of the whole of the toilet seat right up there at the top staring right back at him. So he slammed the lid. He was like, let's get out of here. And he and I just ran back to the yurt. and stayed in the yurt the rest of the night.

CO: Oh, my gosh. And good thing you had a witness. You would wonder if you were actually seeing that.

SS: Oh, my gosh, I know. Well, so in the in the morning, we weren't sure what it was either. We were thinking perhaps like a Wolverine because they have bear like faces and we thought it's the dead of winter. It's pretty unusual to see a bear out in the middle of February. But yeah, in the morning, we went out there to survey the area and there were just tracks everywhere, huge bear tracks everywhere, all around the firepit knocked down the fire pit, probably trying to get at some of the meat drippings from when we cooked our food earlier. And then they lead from the fire pit to the outhouse where there's a kind of a hole or an opening at the bottom that would be easy for an animal to crawl through and kind of den up in that space. So I expect that's where he went. And then I encountered him not too long after dinner in his little newfound den, maybe.

CO: All right. So you had had your dinner? He had some dinner that was whatever was left and he was about to bed down for the night. And so were you until you had this encounter.

SS: Yeah. And then after we ran out the tracks, go from the outhouse back over to the yurt. and kind of circle around the yurt.. So I think, you know, he probably was going to check out what was up with us, but he never tried to break in, didn't growl up or you lash out when he saw my brother's face that close, didn't try to, like, break through the outhouse or anything like that. So, you know, I think in the end, he was a pretty friendly bear. I just kind of maybe got into his space a little bit.

CO: Well, he got into your space, too, I'd say.

SS: Yeah.

CO: What kind of bear was he?

SS: We filed a report with Fish and Game when we got back to town. And, um, Carl at the Fish and Game. He thinks that it was probably a black bear.

CO: And what does he say about this encounter, what's the likelihood of finding a bear in your outhouse.

SS: I mean, he said he's never heard of this happening to anyone else before. So it's definitely, definitely a surprise. I know people have strange encounters from time to time, but, yeah, I think this is pretty one of a kind kind of experience.

CO: And has your posterior recovered, any permanent damage there?

SS: No, I'm really OK. I was super lucky. It really is not a bad injury at all. It healed up pretty quickly just with regular first aid kit kind of stuff. And I went to the health clinic here when I got back and they confirmed that, like everything looked good and they gave me a tetanus shot to be safe. But everything's healed up and I'm just fine. It's a little bit of bruising, but it's not a big deal.

CO: Well, this bear was just saying, hey, give me some space here.

SS: I guess it was just a little love tap.

CO: I don't think you'll be able to leave it behind you.

SS: No.

CO: Shannon, good to talk to you and thanks for telling the story.

SS: Yeah, thank you, Carol.

CO: Bye bye.

SS: Bye.

CH: Shannon Stevens was bitten by a bear when she sat on a toilet seat in an outhouse last Saturday. We reached Ms. Stevens in Haines, Alaska.

[Music: pop music]

Fake seniors

CO: Remember how Mrs. Doubtfire is about two women who pretend to be older in a hilarious yet touching effort to get vaccinated? No, that is not how I remember it either, which is one reason I was puzzled by a story published by WFTV in Orlando, Florida, yesterday. It begins. Two women took a page out of Mrs. Doubtfire in an attempt to get their second covid-19 vaccine shot. Now, like one Snowbird says to another, after arriving with their luggage at their rental unit in Fort Lauderdale, there's a lot to unpack here. So we'll start with the obvious. Mrs. Doubtfire is not about that. But the gist of the story is, two women, one 34 and one 44, dressed up as women over 65 to get the vaccine. Well, to clarify, they dressed up as stereotypical elderly women from a 1970s sitcom in glasses and gloves and bonnets. You know, like women over 65 wear in the year 2021. The unsurprising part is that they got caught. The surprising part is that, as that story mentioned, they were trying to get their second covid-19 vaccine shot. Yeah. Apparently this ludicrous Golden Girls cosplay actually worked the first time because both women had ID cards proving they'd received their first shots despite being decades too young to meet state requirements. Well, that's what happens when you act someone else's age. But they gave it a shot and somehow they got one too.

[Music: Accordion music]

Part 2: Australia Facebook

Australia Facebook

Guest: Lisa Davies

CH: Facebook is losing a lot of friends this week, but its follower count has skyrocketed, with governments and users alike glued to a social media skirmish playing out in Australia. For months now, the Australian government has been trying to force big social media companies and search engines to pay media producers for content. And while Google recently signed payment deals with three Australian producers, Facebook is protesting against the plan by stripping Aussie users feeds of all actual news. Lisa Davies is the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. We reached her in Sydney.

CO: Lisa, what will people see if they visit the Sydney Morning Herald's Facebook page right now?

LISA DAVIES: They don't see very much. They just see the details of what the organisation is and a blank screen.

CO: And news content is not the only purge in this blackout I understand.

LD: No, that's right. So when this happened on Thursday morning, not only were news media, Facebook sites like ours completely sort of deleted and all the previous links posted gone. A number of other emergency services and medical Facebook pages were also blacked out, even a couple of charities. So, yeah, that was not a great a great public relations manoeuvre from Facebook either.

CO: OK, but they did intend to purge your paper, right? So what's that about? Give people in Canada a sense of what made Facebook so mad.

LD: So basically, the Australian government has been working for about 12 months to develop a media bargaining code. And this is designed to address the imbalance between the local publishing companies and media companies and the global tech giants, because digital advertising is primarily directed these days towards Google and Facebook. Yet it's around our content and our news that those ads are residing. So I think it's something like in 2019 in Australia, 80 percent of the money spent on digital advertising was going to Google and Facebook. So this has been, this is a difficult time for media around the world. And the government sought to address that. What the global tech companies were particularly unhappy with in the draught legislation was what was being described as the big stick component, which was effectively a mechanism by which if the companies couldn't reach agreements for the sort of payment of money to media companies, they would instead have to go before an independent arbiter who would make the call. So they didn't like the idea that someone outside of the ecosystem, I guess, was making that decision.

CO: Right. And this is something that other countries are trying to do, including Canada, to figure out how we can get Facebook and Google to share ad revenue. So did you suspect that they would just pull the plug on you?

LD: No, and what had been happening over the last couple of weeks is that Google had been making a lot of noise about their dissatisfaction with the code and had threatened to withdraw entirely from Australia. But the consumer reaction to that perhaps wasn't quite as sympathetic towards them as they had hoped. So they returned to the negotiating table and indeed, over the last few days has signed some pretty big deals, both with the company that owns the Sydney Morning Herald, amongst other outlets, but also News Corporation, which, of course, is the the other major player in particularly print and digital media here. So the expectation was that Facebook was undergoing the same set of conversations and our prime minister and also our treasurer have spoken directly with Mark Zuckerberg and they were very surprised by the move, as were the rest of us. I think everyone had expected them to continue negotiations.

CO: Now Facebook, as you know, argues that it's good for sites like yours, that they drive eyeballs and attention to your articles for readers and that that's what they're doing. They're doing you a favour. So what's your response?

LD: What I would say to that, is that it may well be as something of a marketplace, Facebook for our content. But really, we're providing the content. It's our work. It's our hard earned journalism. In the case of the Sydney Morning Herald, we pride ourselves on high quality fact checked independent journalism and have been doing it for a long time. The fact that they are providing access in some ways to it is, you know, we absolutely have benefited from that. But the fact is that it's also a huge, attractive quality for Facebook.

CO: What's been the reaction on the part of Australians?

LD: I think people are pretty furious, particularly those caught up in the sites that have been inadvertently impacted. I certainly don't think there's been a huge amount of support for Facebook's actions because it does look a little bit like the, you know, the bully boy tactics that they've been accused of in the past. I mean, lots of conversations that I've had are around people saying they were pretty bored of Facebook anyway. Anecdotally, I've also I mean, it's a bit early to tell, but we've definitely had a spike in people directly coming to our site and also, you know, subscribing.

CO: One of the ideas in Canada is to tax these tech giants and get the money that way. And that would address something that there's been criticism in Australia because the Sydney Morning Herald's big institution, you mentioned the deal struck with Google. Smaller outlets can't negotiate those kinds of agreements. Right. So isn't it better to spread that wealth around if the tech giants are going to have to pay for that content, shouldn't the little sites get that as well?

LD: Look, I think there's definitely some concern still about the smaller publishers. One thing I would say is that part of the reason for having that independent arbiter is so that the smaller outlets are not as disadvantaged. I do think it's a challenge. And, you know, obviously I benefit from being part of the largest Australian owned media company. But I would also hope that what flows from deals like ours would also be a bit of a precedent for those smaller publishers. You know, that would follow.

CO: All right. So just mentioned countries like Canada, many others watching to see how this struggle is resolved or if it's resolved. So it's good to talk to you. Lisa, thank you.

LD: Thank you so much.

CH: Lisa Davies is the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. We reached her in Sydney, Australia.

[Music: electronic music]

Winnipeg Car Crash

Guest: Al Imran Fahim

CH: They were returning from a trip to see the northern lights, but the three students never made it back. Yesterday morning, Al Numan Aditta, Aranoor Azad Chowdhury and Risul Badhon were driving on a highway a little over 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg when their car collided with another. The three of them were pronounced dead at the scene. The RCMP have said an investigation is underway, but alcohol was not a factor. All three were international students at the University of Manitoba, originally from Bangladesh, Al Imran Fahim was their friend and he spoke about them this morning in an interview with the CBC.

AL IMRAN FAHIM: Two of them were my roommates, Al Numan and Arnoor, so when they first came to Canada, I was the one who picked them up from the airport and they're like more than a brother to me because I was an international student, too. I just graduated one and a half years ago and we don't have any parents here. It's like our friends are like our family. They're like our mom. They're our dad. So it's like we lost good souls. And their contribution to the community is huge. Like whenever we needed help, like they're always there or even just a phone call and they're always there to help us. They were pretty active in cricket. They're pretty active in soccer. They're very active. And they're pretty brilliant students, too. Like Aditta was a student in Agricultural University of Manitoba and Aranoon is a student in statistics in the University of Manitoba. Then, Badhon he's a student in management accounting at the University of Manitoba. They're all doing good and they're all in their final year too. They'll be just graduating maybe after graduation. They're supposed to go home to see their parents. And yeah, it's very tragic, very tragic and very devastating news for all of us.

MARCY MARKUSA: And why did some people call, Aditta, you said who was studying agriculture? Some people described Aditta as a sweetheart.

AL IMRAN FAHIM: You know, the hospitality he does for us, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Lots of parents who visited Winnipeg, he never asked a question to us. He always comes to our home. He cooks something, he brings the food to us. And whenever someone needs help, he comes to us to help us. If he knows that someone doesn't have any food in their home, like during the covid time or when lots of students couldn't get groceries, he bought the grocery. He dropped it off to their place, to their homes, like he was a very sweetheart and he was very soft hearted, very soft hearted, very well-spoken. Like whenever you need something, whenever you need something, you go to him. He will try his best to help you. Even if he doesn't have the money, he doesn't have the resources. He will find something to help you out.

MM: And you have been helping Al Imran. And I understand that. Is it right that you actually you were the person that told the families in Bangladesh about what happened, the crash and tell them what happened to their sons?

AL IMRAN FAHIM: Yes, Marcy. You know what? And that's the hardest part, hardest job I've ever done in my life. That's what happened yesterday. It was really heartbreaking, like telling their parents that their boys are no more, that their kids are no more and with the families, they couldn't take it like they couldn't believe it for two hours. They said, no, you're lying. My boy is not dead, like he's in the hospital. He's not dead, he can't be dead.

MM: How are you managing? I'm just. Are you still in the space that you must be still in the space and looking around? And you were, you lived with two of these men.

AL IMRAN FAHIM: I just don't know how to feel how I'm feeling right now. And I don't know, like I'm feeling like this, like I have never felt this any time before. We're trying to be strong at this moment just to hold them up because now their bodies will be released soon. Then as part of the family's wishes, they're probably like we might have to send their bodies to their home if they wish. And if they don't wish, we have to do the funerals here. So we're just trying to be as strong as we can just to make sure that everything goes with the family's wishes.

MM: I'm glad to hear there's so many people involved, at least in supporting each other through this magnitude of the loss.

AL IMRAN FAHIM: You will be happy to know that the amount of committee members from the Muslim community, from the [inaudible] committees, from the Pakistani community, from every other communities, like how they are approaching us to share their hands of help. It's really amazing.

CH: That was Al Imran Fahim, speaking with the CBC's Marcy Markusa after three of his friends died in a car crash.

[Music: Guitar instrumental]

Black-footed Ferret Clone

Guest: Ben Novak

CH: Black footed ferrets were once a common sight on the Great Plains of the United States, then a century ago, people started poisoning and trapping prairie dogs, which happened to be the ferrets' food of choice. At one point in the 70s, the ferrets were even thought to be extinct. And today they remain one of the most endangered mammals. But this week, scientists announced what could be a conservation breakthrough. They successfully cloned a black footed ferret, which they named Elizabeth Ann. Ben Novak as the lead biotechnology scientist at the non-profit organisation Revive and Restore. We reached him in Brevard, North Carolina.

CO: Ben, how is Elizabeth Ann the black footed ferret? How is she doing?

BEN NOVAK: We get daily updates, she is thriving and growing and becoming more and more black footed ferret like every day.

CO: She was born in December, right?

BN: December 10th. Yes, she was born and she was 10 grams in size. And her last weigh in this week, she was 600 grams.

CO: And why are you just making the announcement now?

BN: Well, there's a number of reasons. One is we, of course, wanted to release good news to the world and be sure that we had a healthy, good ferret. The first few weeks of their life can be really critical for any ferret, natural born or clone. And so we wanted to know that she was going to be good. And she's in the clear. She's very healthy, but also she is a U.S. endangered species. And therefore, getting any kind of press or announcement out has to go through multiple federal departments to be approved. So that was the real delay.

CO: Right. Oh my gosh, poor Elizabeth Ann can't even get her birth announcement done without going through all kinds of bureaucracy. But now and that's also part of the news, isn't it? Because this is the first of any native endangered animal species in North America to be cloned?

BN: That is correct. And that to me and everyone involved in the team, I think is that is the big milestone because, you know, there were a number of steps that we had to go through to get permission and move forward with actually achieving this. And this is a technology that no Fish and Wildlife Service programme had actually used yet. So, yeah, we started this work with Fish and Wildlife Service partners seven and a half years before Elizabeth Ann was born. And it only took three months to actually make the embryos, do the pregnancy and bring her into the world. But it took many years and partnership building to make that happen.

CO: Now, the interesting thing about this cloning is that the DNA that was used is from 1988, it was frozen in 1988. Why did you have to go back to her, back to the ancestors of black footed ferrets in order to recreate this? Why was that important?

BN: So the black footed ferret was thought extinct and they used to range from southern Canada to northern Mexico on the Great Plains. And by 1981, there was one population left from a host of threats that it had impacted them. And conservationists got out from Wyoming State Game and Fish Department got them into captivity to start a breeding program. And in the decades that have followed, they have bred nearly 10,000 baby black footed ferrets and they have reintroduced nearly over 4000 of them to sites in the wild from Canada to Mexico, once again starting to repopulate. But all of those many generations, those nearly 25 generations of ferrets, trace their ancestry to just seven individuals that were captured amongst the last wild individuals at Meeteetse, Wyoming. And Elizabeth Ann was cloned from a female named Willa, who is captured with those seven founders. But she has no living descendants or relatives. So she brings in an eighth gene pool essentially into this population.

CO: Right. So that all these kissing cousins that you have amongst the black footed ferret population now you have one with genetic diversity. So what will you do with her?

BN: Well, she's part of the early stages of the research program. You know, as we said, this is the first time any U.S. endangered species has been cloned. And there haven't been very many endangered species in the world that have been cloned. And these early programs are going to set the bar for everything that comes next. So she will be joined by a few more sister clones, hopefully in March and some male clones for her to fall in love with. We hope that they will breed and have offspring over and over and until about 2023, we'll just be keeping these clones in their own little population to be able to say, yes, they are healthy. They are fit. They're. Every bit is wild, savvy as every other black footed ferret, and by 2025, you hope that, you know, her kids or grandkids may actually be released to the wild to join the other black footed ferrets and start enriching the wild gene pools.

CO: The whole process of cloning an animal and taking cells and making a new creature with it. So what's that like at the point when you have taken these cells, you've done the work and when you first get a heartbeat, what's that like?

BN: Well, you know, getting the news is, of course, just thrilling. It's suspenseful the entire time.

CO: Because of the limits on travel. It's been I guess you haven't been able to visit Elizabeth Ann very much. But you did get a chance to see her, right?

BN: I did, you know, for seven and a half years of just kind of paperwork and computer work and and visiting meetings. You know, I coordinate this effort with Revive and Restore and the partners. A lot of us, you know, it took more than 200 people to make this happen. And a lot of us, we were behind the scenes. We never got to actually create embryos or birth ferrets. So I definitely did not want to miss the opportunity to meet her. And in the midst of the pandemic, I bought a little retro pull camper despite the winter weather. And I loaded up my twin toddler boys and their mom. And we drove across the country. We actually visited Kurt, the clone Przewalski's horse, first and then zoomed up to Fort Collins, Colorado. And I only got to spend less than maybe 20 to 15 minutes with her. But, you know, time stopped. She's just perfect. And it was incredible to feel so much work, pay off that can have such a huge impact, not only the conservation of her species, but, you know, a turning point in biotechnologies for conservation, the world over.

CO: Congratulations.

BN: Thank you very much.

CO: Thank you, Ben. Bye bye.

BN: Bye.

CH: Ben Novak is the lead biotechnology scientist at the non-profit organisation Revive and Restore. He spoke to us from Brevard, North Carolina.

[Music: String instrumental]

Moth Problem

CH: You see a problem, you find a solution which becomes a new problem, it's the natural order of things, at least it is when we're messing with the natural order of things. A 17th century estate in Norfolk, England, is having a moth problem. Fewer visitors at Blickling Hall during the pandemic has meant a higher than usual number of insects were able to make themselves at home, by chewing holes in priceless historical treasures, including a tapestry that was a gift from Catherine the Great. As a conservator at the Heritage Trust that runs the property, explained to the New York Times, "We're not going to be complacent. I can't take the risk that we let those moths thrive". And so they are taking a different risk. Wasps, thousands and thousands of tiny wasps will be let loose in the estate in the hope that they will eradicate the moths by hijacking the moth's eggs with their own. [background sound: wasps buzzing] It's a whole thing that basically ends with fewer moths, but more wasps. And if it works at Blickling Hall, they hope to give it a try at other historical sites, too. So, again, more wasps. I mean, I get it. Who doesn't want to put their pest foot forward? But whoever hatched this plan would do well to consider the history of human interventions of this kind, because if this year has taught us anything, it's that bugs don't necessarily do what they're told.

[Music: Electronic music]

Part 3: Russia Blue Dogs

Russia Blue Dogs

Guest: Nadia Groisman

CH: Plenty of dogs are known for their coats, poodles for their luxurious curls, Collie's for their lustrous flow, Dalmatians for their bold spots. But in western Russia, a number of stray dogs are sporting a whole new look. This season, they are entirely blue. Nadia Groisman, volunteers with the animal shelter that's caring for the Blue Dogs. We reached her in Nizhny, Novgorod.

CO: Nadia, when did people first start noticing these Blue Dogs?

NADIA GROISMAN: Yeah, the news about them appeared in social media on Wednesday last week. It appeared everywhere at the same time.

CO: Wow. And so how many Blue Dogs do you think are out there?

NG: There were seven. They are all of them already at the [inaudible] hospital. It works together with the [inaudible] shelter. So it's two organisations working together. So we know what's happening.

CO: I've seen the pictures. It's stunning to see these Blue Dogs. How did people in Novgorod respond?

NG: It was like a bomb. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was shocked and people thought that the dogs would be harmed so that someone did it on purpose, that they dyed them. That the colour was put on them on purpose and they are suffering from it. So it was quite a shock for the city.

CO: How did you determine what was causing it?

NG: After the dogs were caught? It was about Thursday and Friday. It took two days to get them. Firstly took the blood tests and it showed that the dogs are OK in general. And then the food was tested and we figured out that it was Prussian blue, a very specific blue colour, which was invented in 1707. And it actually was even used in Chernobyl to cure animals, which is used also to colour Plexiglas. That's the reason why the dogs found it, because they were leaving on the territory of the enterprise, which is producing Plexiglas.

CO: OK, so this was in some sort of factory. So how did the dogs get access to this pigment?

NG: No one actually knows because dogs won't tell us. But we guessed probably like the bag of it or a few bags of it was thrown away on the territory. And probably because it was cold last week as well, probably dogs found that it was warmer to sleep in it. And then they got the colour on their fur, and then they went out and people saw them. Luckily, this colour, now it's fading away gradually. So the dogs are not so dark blue at the moment. They are already, like light blue and the dog's health is OK. There is no harm from it for the dogs, luckily. But in the beginning we were really worried about it.

CO: Yeah. A few days ago when the pictures first appeared, there are tremendous concerns around the world that there was some kind of a chemical that they may have ingested causing it. So there was quite an alarm went up, didn't it?

NG: One dog had problems with the digestion. And we firstly also thought that the reason why it was this paint. So even our doctors were using protection to contact the dogs because we were worried that this chemical could have been harmful for the dogs and for the people contacting the dogs. But by now, we are sure that it's all safe, luckily.

CO: And so these are stray dogs, I take it?

NG: Yep, they all stray dogs and they live on the territory. Used to live on the territory of this big organisation.

CO: Has this grazed the issue of all these stray dogs that are in that neighbourhood in your city?

NG: Absolutely right. Because our city is actually quite famous for this issue. In 2014, we had about 7000 stray dogs in the city. It was really like it was really crazy here because in the city centre, we always used to see, like, big packs of dogs. At the moment, their number is reduced. And this year the contract with the city was only for 400 dogs, stray dogs.

CO: Why did you have so many stray dogs?

We used to have them because before 2014, the city used to kill them. And there is a natural law that if you kill some animals, they begin to reproduce themselves faster and faster and become more and more. At the moment the program, which was introduced in 2014 with catching dogs, sterilising them, curing them, with finding homes for the dogs. Since 2014, our shelter has managed to find a home for more than 5000 animals.

CO: Good heavens.

NG: And now there are much less dogs. In 2014, it was about 7000, now only 400 to catch.

CO: And so you'll sterilise these dogs as well, the Blue Dogs?

NG: Absolutely. Yeah. One of them is already staying in the shelter to wait for the new owner. Two of them will go to one of the municipal organisations in Dzerzhinsk and with the other four, there is still an issue. So either looking for a home for them or sterilising and putting them back to the territory which they used to live, because for the dogs, it's a problem if you take them out and then you put them in some other place where they don't have food or access to the place to sleep when it's cold. So that's the issue at the moment.

CO: OK, so some of the dogs are going to be adopted.

NG: Yep.

CO: And some of the dogs will go back to where they got the blue colouring, not the place, the blue colouring, but the territory which they know. Unfortunately, it's impossible to find a home for all the dogs, some of them which used to live on the streets, they got sterilised, they got vaccinated, and they continue living on the territories, which they know. Yep.

CO: And the Plexiglas factory is they're going to do anything different with its bags of pigment.

NG: They should do because the issue was so huge, not only in our city, but also around the world, that now they should do something about their territory because even the city government got involved in it very seriously.

CO: It was very alarming to see them like that. And so I can imagine.

NG: Absolutely.

CO: Well, Nadia, thank you for telling us the story.

NG: Thank you very much for calling.

CO: Bye.

NG: Bye. Bye. Thank you.

CH: Nadia Goisman is a volunteer with the [inaudible] Animal Shelter, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. That's where we reached her.

[Music: Guitar instrumental]

Texas Ice Fishing

Guest: Alex Peric

CH: This week, Alex Peric was ice fishing on a pond when he caught a fish, and what's strange about that is that the pond is in front of his apartment, which is in Texas. And what's fortunate about it is that he caught the fish while filming an interview with the BBC. Here's part of his conversation with host Kasia Madera.

KASIA MADERA: How rare is it to see that pond in front of your apartment isover like that?

ALEX PERIC: It's like that or anything like this, obviously. So I have been around that long, but talking to elderly people and talking more locals around here, they said they've never seen ice like this. And it's kind of crazy. Just moved here, own an ice fishing company and now I'm able to ice fish. So I'm not sure if I brought down the cold weather or what happened. But it's cold.

KM: It certainly looks cold. You shared some images of the wildlife as well, having difficulties with this kind of extreme weather. And you've caught a fish live on BBC News. There it is.

AP: We have a fish on BBC news yes!

KM: I promise to our viewers that was not staged. What's going to happen with your you'll catch Alex?

AP: Letting it go, right now.

KM: Letting it go. That's a decent thing to do. Back in the water it goes. You couldn't make this up. There you go.

CH: That was Alex Peric, ice fishing in Frisco, Texas, and catching a fish while speaking with the BBC.

[Music: Calm Guitar]

Africville Love Letter

Guest: Amanda Carvery-Taylor

CH: Amanda Carvery-Taylor wants people to know something about Africville, life there was full of joy. For 200 years, black Nova Scotians lived in the tight-Knit seaside village on the outskirts of Halifax, but it might as well have been an island. Residents pay taxes, but the city didn't provide any services. In many houses, there was no running water or sewers, and the city refused to acknowledge that Africville was anything but an industrial district. That racism reached a crescendo in the 1960s when the community was completely destroyed by the city. But Ms. Carvery-Taylor says amidst all that pain, there was happiness. Her new book, A Love Letter to Africville, tells the stories of 18 former residents of the village. We reached Amanda Carvery-Taylor in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

CO: Amanda, I know you didn't grow up in Africa. Why did you want to tell the stories of those who did?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Growing up, I heard two very opposing versions of Africville, kind of thing. I'd hear things at school which always, like or in the media, and it would always reflect the negative things that surrounded the community. But it didn't really talk about the community. And then I would get my experience, my personal experience when I sat around with family or I went to reunions and there was so much happiness and love and laughter. We just had so much fun. It just was very confusing to me. And I thought, you know, other people need to see that there's a different side to this.

CO: And so what were those stories? The story you were learning in school was about this, about how Africville was a place where they had no running water, they had no sewage, no garbage pickup, and no amenities and then destroyed in the 1960s.

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: There's also the city dump was there. The prison was there. There was a hospital there. So it was just an area that kind of became a dumping ground to just put all your undesirable things down near our community.

CO: And there was an abattoir, a prison, railway tracks, lots of tracks. So the city would do whatever they didn't want in Halifax proper that would be dumped in Africville. So that's the negative side of it. What was at, the heart of it that you were hearing from people that lived and grew up there?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: The things that I hear about are just stories of experiences and life. People really enjoyed their life there. Everybody I spoke with said they would give up everything they have right now to go back and live there with their community and stories about how, you know, people who had struggles always had the support that they needed. If you were a single parent and you had to work, you knew that your children would be safe. You could send them over to a family members house. They'd be within walking distance. You knew that they'd have food. Everything was always taken care of down there. And people had a real sense of safety that nobody has experienced elsewhere.

CO: In the little profiles, because a lot of it's photography, you took great pictures of everybody and now, not from then, but from contemporary photos of them. And then interviews with them where they would describe what it was like and the word safe and safety comes up more than anything else, doesn't it?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Yes, it definitely does. That was every single person I spoke with at the end of our interview. I'd say, if there's one thing you want people to know about Africville, what would it be? And every single person without prompting said how safe it was, some combination of how safe it was. It's a place that just offered the ultimate safety to our community. And the more I reflected on that, the more I realised like, I experienced this and I'm not even putting words to it. I know what it feels like to be at the Africville reunion. I know what it's like when I'm with all of my family and my community and everyone around me is basically someone I have a connection to in some way. And there's just a real feeling of being able to let your guard down, being able to trust and like I let my daughter play and I don't worry about where anybody goes or what anybody's doing because I know that there's a sense of safety. And if there was anything, if my daughter fell down, somebody would go grab her and say, whose kid is this? Or if she bumped her knee, here's a band-aid. You know, I absolutely know and trust that that happens in my community.

CO: What you're describing, though, is this annual reunion of Africville, the site is now a park and people gather there. Some of them camp overnight. Where their former homes used to be, right?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Yes. Yes. People travel from all over to come home because it's like an opportunity to see everybody at once. So it really is a big event.

CO: Now these portraits are lovely and lots of beautiful photographs of everybody, especially of your dad. Can you tell us about his stories, what he was telling you about Africville?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Oh, my dad is not a talkative person, so this was such a joy to do because I got to force him to talk to me about these things. But my dad describes these really beautiful memories of being a kid. And, you know, his favourite things were just being outside with his friends, running around, playing games and and like the real innocence of being a child. And it really makes me look at things and say, you know, when we're talking about what this community lost, people say, you know, the buildings and they lost their homes and they lost items or things like that. But this is what I see, that they lost, they lost that freedom and safety and, you know, being able to run without a care and have a bunch of fun. And, you know, they'd do very silly things. He told us a story about him and his friend making their own bullets to hunt rabbits and how they had it all figured out, they thought. And as soon as they shot bullets, they realised that they just kind of went slowly and just flopped down. [laughter] But it's very like wholesome, innocent things that, you know, every child would like to do right now or those kinds of things.

CO: They were also by the sea. By the ocean. Right. And so there was a lot of stories related to the water and harvesting food from their gardens. That's really the heart of it as well, isn't it?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Oh, I mean, the ocean provided for them. So, you know, people would fish for fun. It was a hangout spot. You could sit down by the water and people would have a bonfire going and someone would throw some food on. And, you know, if anybody needed anything, you could come down and see if there was extra. And it was just a great time to always be down there. And some of the other people Nelson talked about being on the water a lot. He's somebody who still is well known for boating. And we all know him in our community. He's usually out there in the harbour somewhere. But it's nice to see those connections to that. Even as a young boy, he was still that same person, that just wanted to be out in the water having fun, making crafts, swimming.

CO: You're listening to As It Happens, I'm speaking with Amanda Carvery-Taylor about her new book, A Love Letter to Africville. There is tremendous joy in these stories, but there is that overarching outside reality that the community was... People had to pay taxes but had no services. And in the 1960s, Halifax instead of fixing this and providing for people there, they raised the entire Africville. And it's just well, I guess it took until years later to quite recently when there was actually an apology for the destruction of Africville, the source of that was racism, wasn't it?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Definitely. I mean, there's definitely a lot of racism directed at this community. We still feel it today. There's been years in the past. Where in the middle of the night at the Africville reunion, you'll see someone goes down to the park and spray paints graffiti or something to, you know, it's just racism. We still experience it. We still definitely go through it. But it is sad because the city had opportunities after the Halifax explosion. They had a great opportunity to fix the structuring down there. These people are already paying for it. So there was no reason to not. So I think it was just a really big missed opportunity due to racism.

CO: There's one of the stories Beatrice Wilkins, you can tell us about her story, because there's something quite shocking about that.

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Yeah. So Beatrice, as a child, witnessed her mother deliver her own baby, wrapped the baby up and had to walk across. I think it was 15 sets of railroad tracks to get to the abattoir, to get a police car to take her to the hospital because the police car would not go into Africville.

CO: So and there was no health services inside Africville that she could turn to.

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Well, her grandmother was a midwife and her grandmother delivered the rest of them. But she wasn't in Africville at the time that she went into labour.

CO: Now and another big part of the story is and we return to this, the story many times on CBC and on As It Happens, and that's the Seaview Baptist Church. And how do people talk about the importance of that place?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: The church is it was probably the most important building down there. Just because it offered a space for not just religious services, but community support, it was a gathering place, it was a meeting space, it was youth activities, things like that. So it really served the community. But the spirituality in Africville is something that is carried forward at full strength. That's the thing that keeps us together our spirit of Africville. We have gospel singers. We have preachers. Bernie Flint in the book, she actually went on to minister her and her husband in the prisons and to deliver ministries, to other people. It's really a beautiful thing. And our community was always where the celebrations would be. We had a big community and people really felt safe there visiting. So a lot of the celebrations would be at the Seaview Baptist.

CO: And part of that apology for the destruction of Africville that Halifax and the government of Canada made in 2010 was to pledge 250,000 dollars to rebuild that church. And so what does it look like now?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: It's a museum right now. Yeah, it's the same outside of the Seaview Baptist. It looks the same, but it's not a functioning church. And I like to make that clear because people can't show up for services there. But it is a beautiful museum run by Juanita Peters, and she does a great job of documenting our history there. And there's lots of artefacts and things like that. And she's got some great plans for the future with it as well.

CO: In the course of interviewing these people, talking to them, taking their pictures, and they obviously felt comfortable with you. They're very candid photos. So what did you learn? What lessons did you take away from this?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: I learnt so much. I think one of the biggest lessons for me is that we as the the second generation outside of Africville. We're carrying these traditions forward. And sometimes we don't even realise that they are tradition, but we're keeping that history and those traditions alive and well. And I learnt so much about the history that we're just kind of I don't know, not mentioning I think people think that their lives were very casual and that, you know, this was not the importance of my life in the Africville story where I see it as very differently. I learnt about how many outsiders stayed in Africville, people travelling like to stay there. Basically anybody who was of colour would stay there. That was where they felt most comfortable in the city. There were four stores in Africville, there were barbers in Africville, they had everything that they would need. It was just completely full. They really didn't need to go outside for anything.

CO: And that feeling of safety that they had, the travellers, the visitors had and the residents had when they were in Africa, Bill, was that largely because outside Africa they encountered such racism?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Yes. Yeah, for sure. It was just the place where you felt comfortable. There were white people that lived in Africville as well. And people don't often mention that, but it definitely was an experience for many people.

CO: You start your book with a poem that you wrote 15 years ago where you describe what you learnt about Africville in school. And could you read part of that for us?

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Sure. See, I knew what Africville was to me, it was something just like family, biggest reunion I ever been to and my sister and I knew the moment we were there, you could feel the love in the air perched high on shoulders, Daddy would hold us as we slowly made our way through trailers and tents, visiting auntie this and uncle that hearing stories of the good old days, my family's mischievous ways, bringing smiles and my daddy's contagious laugh. I knew then that the history books were only explaining half, but when I'd ask him to tell me about Africville, my daddy would remain still. I celebrated every year listening close so I could hear those treasured stories and memories floating around with each breeze. I pieced together bonds and relationships because for me it was quite a trip, figuring out that being my cousin's cousin meant you were my cousin, even though there was no blood between us. But the thing was, this community was built like family, bonded to one another, like a child to its mother through struggles and adversity. They created history. They built something so strong together stood the test of any weather. And I was only getting to experience this year for one weekend a year. I came to realise one day what the city had taken away when my daddy's voice rang in my ear explaining that people who called it slums didn't live there. He finally explained the start that Africville was a piece of his heart and he'd be walking around with this piece missing all the while wishing that we could have known love that way. His heart hurt to know that we wouldn't get to play the way he was raised alongside Cousins, community, worship and praise. He didn't know how to tell his baby girl that someone had destroyed his world. And though the wounds had healed, those scars were all too real. People had said to get over it because time had passed, but their words cut like glass. Now it's up to you and me to relay this history of Africville. We keep telling these stories and keeping each other's hearts full. We take care of each other. Focus on the love here and make sure we understand the values of community, the strength of our people and the spirit of Africville.

CO: Amanda, thank you for telling us about the spirit of Africville.

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

CO: Take care. Bye bye.

AMANDA CARVERY-TAYLOR: Bye.

CH: Amanda Carvery-Taylor is the author of the new book A Love Letter to Africville. It was published this month by Fernwood Publishing. We reached Ms. Carvery-Taylor In Halifax and we have more about her book on our website, CBC.ca/AIH.

February 19, 2021 Episode Transcript

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