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The AIH Transcript for April 1, 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: Underground Economy. A Radio-Canada report reveals the extent of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien's involvement in a proposal to import nuclear waste from other countries and bury it in Labrador.

CH: Their service deserves more than lip service. Ottawa plans a belated apology to the families of those who served in an all-Black battalion in the First World War. But one relative says the government is duty-bound to do more.

CO: Grandbaby, you can drive my car. In 1897, George Foote Foss built the first gas powered automobile in Canada, and now Ron Foss explains why he is remaking his grandfather's largely forgotten invention.

CH: Gecko chamber. A New Zealand ecologist, and his colleagues left no stone unturned, literally, to find a rare lizard. And when they finally found the reclusive reptile, their excitement was off the scales.

CO: Living in an April Fool's paradise. Over the years, As It Happens has amused some and infuriated more with pranks. Tonight, we will revisit some that had you howling in one form or another.

CH: And hail, hail the wolf gang's all here. A Mozart scholar took on the daunting task of completing the great composer's unfinished sonatas, and he'll tell us about making arrangements to make the arrangements. As It Happens. The Thursday Edition. Radio that warns anyone else who wants to try this, it's so-nat-a simple thing to do.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Chretien Nuclear Waste

Chretien Nuclear Waste

Guest: Marie Maude Denis

CH: Labrador is known for its beautiful, untouched northern wilderness. But now it's emerged that a former prime minister was involved in promoting it as the ideal place for a nuclear waste storage site. The Radio-Canada investigative show Enquete has revealed that Jean Chretien acted as legal counsel for a group that was pursuing the idea of burying nuclear material deep in the ground in northeastern Canada. In an interview, Mr. Chretien said Canada has a responsibility to help dispose of nuclear waste because it produced so much of the uranium used around the world. Marie Maude Denis is an investigative journalist and a host with Radio-Canada's Enquete program. We reached her in Montreal.

CO: Marie Maude can you just first of all describe, as far as you can see from these letters, what was the vision for how nuclear waste might be stored in Labrador?

MARIE MAUDE DENIS: It's exchanges of emails and letters that are going on over several months in 2019 and 2020. The people exchanging these emails are potential Japanese investors. And in one of the emails, one of the promoters says this is a critical first step for securing funds to move the project forward, and we understand it's funds from the Japanese. So attached to that, there's a letter signed by Jean Chretien who promotes the idea of making Canada a destination for spent nuclear fuel.

CO: And Jean Chretien was he the one who proposed Labrador as a great site for this?

MARIE MAUDE DENIS: He's acting as a lawyer, as a counsel for the promoters who are clients of his law firm, Dentos. But Labrador is in the Precambrian shield. And we spoke to different scientists and a geologists at Ottawa University who said there's possibly a good site geologically in Labrador, but no exploration has been made so far because there's no nuclear plant in Labrador. That's the very surprising thing in the correspondence. It's never been achieved to put nuclear waste permanently from another country in another country.

CO: When you first approached the former prime minister, Jean Chretien, with this issue, how did he respond?

MARIE MAUDE DENIS: Well, at the beginning, it seemed like something not really important and pretty vague and which happened a long long time ago. But when we called them back about a month later to say, listen Mr. Chretien we have the letter you wrote to the Japanese to promote the idea, he decided to change completely his strategy and decided to sit down with us for an interview to promote the project. And he said during the interview that at no point he ever did spoke to anybody about this project, nobody in government, he didn't do any lobbying at all. Today, as parts of the story are coming out, we had a reaction from the premier of Newfoundland, Andrew Furey, who said to declare that when he was a candidate for leadership last summer that Jean Chretien had spoken to him about the project. And a few minutes ago, Dwight Ball, Newfoundland's former premier, said that Jean Chretien had also talked to him about the project. So it seems that he was a little more active than what he told us during the interview.

CO: And in the letters, there are references to that there are these successful elections or people that are onside, including Dwight Ball. So was the impression given to those who might be interested that they had the government on side.

MARIE MAUDE DENIS: Well, the name Jean Chretien speaks for itself for the potential foreign and Japanese partners, because they refer to him as the 20th prime minister of Canada. But there's another lawyer at Dentons who wrote an email to the promoters of this nuclear waste potential site right after the 2019 federal election. So the email goes like this, 'GOOD NEWS' in capital letters, 'Liberals back. Better news, Jean,' talking about Jean Chretien, 'has been appointed by Justin Trudeau as his trusted advisor. He will be privy to all policy moving forward.' So I asked Jean Chretien like, isn't it a way to, like, market your contacts for clients of your cabinet. And he said that's wrong, it's not true. I'm not Justin Trudeau's trusted advisor, I meet him three or four times a year, I didn't do any lobbying for that project. And he said it was an abuse on the part of his colleagues at Dentons who refused to comment what we had found.

CO: When you spoke with Jean Chretien in what he said was that the reason why he was involved with this, he said Canada has been a top supplier of nuclear fuel for many years. And he said, I've always thought that it is only proper that Canada should ultimately become the steward and guarantor of the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel after its first duty cycle. So it that not a fairly reasonable thing to say?

MARIE MAUDE DENIS: Well, our story is not about saying if it's a good or bad project, it's just to make it public because all of these discussions were happening in secret. Jean Chretien strongly believes that nuclear energy is the solution to climate change, and that if we solve the problem of managing nuclear waste, well, then it's a good solution for the planet.

CO: Any evidence from what you could see that Jean Chretien or the people he was doing this with stood to profit or benefit from this project should it go through?

MARIE MAUDE DENIS: Well, for sure. For sure. Well, Jean Chretien is paid by his law firm Dentons. So he's working for the clients. He's not volunteering for the project by any means. And what he said is that if there's some countries ready to pay for it, well, then they pay for it and they put the nuclear fuel in Labrador. So I don't know what type of financial structure they had in their mind, but this didn't seem like humanitarian work at all.

CO: We will leave it there. Marie Maude thank you very much.

MARIE MAUDE DENIS: You're welcome Carol.

CH: Marie Maude Denis is an investigative journalist and host with Radio-Canada's Enquete program. She's in Montreal.

[Music: Synth Music]

Sherbrooke 1897 Car

Guest: Ron Foss

CH: George Foote Foss was 21 years old when he built his first car. He didn't have any blueprints or any real automotive experience, for that matter. Plus, it was 1897, so Mr. Foss's car wasn't just the first in his neighbourhood in Sherbrooke, Quebec -- it was the first-ever gas-powered car in Canada. The one and only Foss Mobile was sold a few years after it was invented and never seen again. But his grandson is working to get the Foss Mobile back in gear. Ron Foss is the executive director at Foss Mobile Enterprises. We reached him in Burlington, Ontario.

CO: Ron, I understand the original car is gone. So how do you even know what it looks like?

RON FOSS: Well, that's true. Yeah, it was sold in 1981 and hasn't been seen since, despite many attempts to try to find it. But we do have old images and photographs of the car, about seven or eight of them.

CO: What did the original Foss Mobile look like?

RF: It was very very basic and very simple and also very small. People would be quite surprised when they see the completed tribute. The framing of it would look like bicycle frames. The wheels were racing sulky wheels or large-sized bicycle wheels, and then simply a wood box for the body and a seat, which we used to joke as a family that my grandfather took out of his mother's living room and cut the legs off of. [Chuckles] It looks that simple and basic.

CO: Now, there were no cars in Canada. So what inspired your grandfather -- decide he is going to build one?

RF: Well, he'd made a trip to Boston and saw cars being rented as trials that were electric. And he had some experience with electric motors. He had built his own outboard motorboat and knew that the batteries didn't last very long. He was guaranteed a trip of two hours and it lasted about 20 minutes. And so on the train home, he felt that there was a much better way to build the automobile. He certainly knew and was aware of combustion engines because they were being used in other ways and decided that the combustion gasoline engine was the way to go.

CO: But he was a bike mechanic, right?

RF: That's correct. And a bit of a machinist. He had a bit of a machine shop that he was growing.

CO: This is at the very end of the 1800s. So where did he get the materials in order to build a combustion engine?

RF: Well, he would have had to forged them. He had a small forge and he would have made the castings for them and forged his own steel. A lot of the framing would have come from old bicycles. He had some ideas from designs he had seen in Scientific American and other places in France and the UK and in some degree, the States were beginning to make automobiles and combustion engines. So he had some ideas from these plants and journals that he had, but the rest of the cast he did all by itself.

CO: How well did the Foss Mobile work?

RF: Surprisingly well. It had a couple of unique features that early automobiles did not have. It had the engine mounted in the front, which helped to distribute weight and keep the vibration from under the seat, which was a large complaint for early automobiles that had the engines mounted under the seat. It had the gear shifting arrangement on the steering column, which wasn't done again until the early 1930s. So he was a first in many ways of building the car and he drove back and forth on the hilly streets of Sherbrooke and back and forth to Montreal for four years.

CO: What was the reaction on the part of people?

RF: [Chuckles] That's the story we used to get told most as children. It scared everybody, particularly the horses and the young children. It made lots of noise. You have to take yourself back in time with only one of these showing up on the streets. I mean, I think some people thought it was demonised in some way because there was no horse in front of it0.

CO: [Chuckles] But now it did catch the attention of somebody in the States, Henry Ford. What impressed him about the Foss Mobile?

RF: Well, my grandfather actually searched him out first for their first encounter because he had heard that Henry Ford was or had built this vehicle in the States. And so they met just outside of Detroit and had a couple of conversations about the possibility of building cars. And then a few months later, Ford approached my grandfather with a more legitimate offer to build cars together because he felt that the Foss Mobile had some characteristics that were more interesting to him than the one he'd built on his own. But they just couldn't come to terms. My grandfather just wasn't quite sure of the individual and was very leery of investing in something that was still really early in the curve in relation to acceptance. You know, there's as many stories of early vehicles being pulled out of the mud by horses rather than the vehicles driving on their own.

CO: [Laughs] Who knew there was a future for these things. So he drove that around, scared a lot of kids, and then sold it for, what, 75 dollars, right?

RF: Yeah, he listed it for about 300, I think, for a year or so. Didn't really have any active buyers and ended up selling it. He was, by this time, a distributor for automobiles in Montreal. And in fact he had taught Sam McLaughlin, who is ultimately the founder of General Motors Canada, how to drive a vehicle.

CO: Did Grandpa Foss leave any hints as to where that car might be? Could you track it down?

RF: We've tried many many times as a family. My father and I used to drive around sometimes on weekends and stop at the odd barn or shed in hopes that we might uncover it somewhere. But no, he didn't. We don't even know the name of the family or the person who bought it. A couple of years ago when I started this project, I got the Vintage Automobile Club of Montreal to do a scavenger hunt, but it hasn't turned up. And a few years ago, if you had Googled Foss Mobile, you would have not found anything on the Internet. And today we dominate probably the first five pages of Google. So the story is getting out there and nobody's come forward to say that they found the car.

CO: No just the story -- but you are recreating this machine. So how close are you to being able to actually get on the road?

RF: We are about 90 percent done. I felt that if my grandfather could do it 125 years ago with virtually nothing, that I could do it with all the technology and the availability that we have at our fingertips these days. And it started with the location of a motor of that period. We then found a chassis and a body that is identical to what would have been used in the Foss Mobile. And so while no original parts of the Foss Mobile are being used, we are very fortunate to be using period correct parts. And we hope to be finished by, I think, maybe June of this year.

CO: Wow. And what will you do with it?

RF: The plan is to put it into a museum. We will show it around in parts of Ontario and maybe down to Sherbrooke, Quebec in that area. But the ultimate plan is to donate it to the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa.

CO: Wonder what your grandfather would think about the plans now to have electric cars replace combustion engine cars.

RF: He probably would still have his doubts based on his experience [laughter] but it has advanced considerably since then.

CO: Great story, Ron. Thank you.

RF: You're welcome. Thank you.

CH: Ron Foss is the grandson of George Foote Foss, who built the first-ever gas-powered car in Canada in 1897. Ron is building a tribute to the one of a kind Foss Mobile, and he's in Burlington, Ontario.

[Music: Guitar Music]

April Fools Pak

CH: Every night on As It Happens, there's at least one story that sounds too good to be true. It's proof that truth is often stranger than fiction. But one episode a year, for decades, we've been known to cleverly or clumsily disguised fiction as truth and try to trick you with an April Fools Day prank. Tonight, we thought we'd share some of our favourites. Up first, the time, As It Happens picked up a fake story from the British monthly Soldier magazine about the bearskin hats worn by London's Royal Guards. The article claimed the fur was sourced from Canada and was causing problems for the guards because it was continuing to grow. Sure, now that seems ridiculous in 2021. But at the time it still seemed ridiculous. But nevertheless, from 1980, here's Barbara Frum's conversation with make-believe Major General Charles Finley of the Irish Guards from London. And from Winnipeg, a Canadian expert on the issue, Colonel Cyril Frisby.

BARBRA FRUM: Major general,

CHARLES FINLEY: Hello Barbara.

BF: Perhaps, major general, you should say what's happening in Britain before we go to Colonel Frisbie for the Canadian experience.

CF: This first came to my attention from the press this morning. And they seem to have blown the whole thing out of proportion. Really all that it is seems to be that the hair on the Bearskin does appear to grow. I think it is only because of the contraction of this skin over the past few years. They do, in fact, need to be trimmed reach year for the first four or five years or so.

BF: Now, Major General the reason we called Colonel Frisby is because I gather these Bearskins are now coming from Canada?

CF: Yes, that is correct. They are all now from Lapland or Canadian.

BF: Colonel Frisbie do you have any experience of such a problem? It sounds farfetched to me?

CYRIL FRISBY: I'm awfully interested in this because I was involved in 1947. I moved to Winnipeg after the war and having been with British intelligence. I suppose the local constabulary in Winnipeg got on to me for this reason because they were faced with quite a similar problem. That is the buffalo robes or the buffalo coats worn by the constabulary they were spouting small horny-like semblances. You talk about shrinkage of the skin. This was an actual rejuvenation of the bone marrow cells that was still in the hide.

BF: And the fur would grow?

CYF: No problem with fur at all. But these small, well I should say, not small they started off this way. I mean the immediate solution was to excise them, but this ruined the entire coat and fell to pieces. And the problem was getting quite embarrassing for the chaps because some of these horns were about six or seven inches. So hats were pushed off an in 20 below weather in the middle of winter. So there were frostbitten ears and that sort of thing. It was a question of and electrolysis we used.

BF: On the budding horns?

CYF: Sometimes the best solution is the simplest. Of course, it's not always obvious. It removed the horn problem and took all the hair out of the robes. But the chaps were then able to wear them as light a trench coat — just the hide.

CH: Colonel Cyril Frisby. Up next, another royal roast. In 2011, we reported that a New Yorker article that claimed poutine was Canada's national dish had prompted the Royal Family to add it to the menu for a distinguished brunch to celebrate the marriage of William and Kate. Here's Carol's conversation with New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin, who, as you'll hear, was in on the joke.

CO: Mr. Trillin, are you aware that the Office of Royal Protocol is designing this Canadian course for the wedding brunch based on your article?

CALVIN TRILLIN: Yeah I was very honored because I didn't know that the Queen — I assume it is the queen — Read the New Yorker, let alone my article. So yes, obviously, I was very pleased too of course.

CO: It’s doubtful the queen read it. I mean there are people — there is a Royal Protocol Office — probably it was a functionary within that office that…

CT: I prefer to think is the Queen, who at bed time switched on the Lamp and read the New Yorker with great anticipation. And gets to my article and says poutine, the national dish of Canada. Why of course.

CO: Well, it doesn't actually say that. The headline of your article is, “Funny Food! Is a National Joke Becoming a National Dish?”

CT: Well, I don't write the headlines.

CO: What exactly is the premise of your article?

CT: The premise of my article is that the poutine may have been becoming the national dish of Canada and I believe the statistics that I quoted from The Globe and Mail survey was that more Canadians had eaten poutine than had been in a canoe or seen a moose.

CO: But you write in this that, “As a punch-line poutine has a lot going for it.”

CT: That's true.

CO: You describe the cheese curds used on the poutine as, “cheddar before the taste is added”. And these are not exactly flattering things that should be in a national food…

CT: Well I meant it very nicely. Yeah, I think that the fact that the national food is poutine is something to be proud of. It’s a nice, hearty Canadian national dish. And you have to remember I didn't choose it as the national dish. I’m a simple reporter.

CO: Who did?

CT: The Canadians chose it as a national dish.

CO: The Royal Protocol chose it as national dish. The Canadian government had apparently a different idea of what should be there and this has been somewhat imposed on Canada. But just did go back to the article though. I mean you say about the taste of Poutine you say the best you can come up with is quote, “It's surprisingly inoffensive.” Is that, in fact, a comment on the Canadian character?

CT: The Canadian character is inoffensive, but not surprisingly. I mean it isn't any surprise that Canadian character is inoffensive.

CO: Well, I mean, I guess from a Canadian point of view, you know you are a well-respected writer and you’ve won many awards. But, as you point out, you're not Canadian despite the time you spend in Canada. And not only are you an American, you come from a country that rebelled against the monarchy. You went to war against this monarchy…

CT: Yeah, but we went to war against the monarchy for good reason. For things like mushy peas and spotted dick and bangers and mash — that's why we went to war. I thought it was a good decision.

CO: But now you have a Yankee suggesting the food that Canada will contribute to a royal wedding. I mean can you just appreciate how Canadians might be a bit ticked off by this?

CT: Well, I think you're blaming the messenger. It's not my fault that Canadians like Poutine more than they like food sophisticated people eat.

CO: So do you think that by virtue of this poutine being at the royal wedding that it will raise the profile? Even though it’s suggested by an American? Do you think they'll feel at one with the royals if they…

CT: [Sound: Laughing] at one with the royals. Yes, and you know the royals really know how to put on the dog, so if they serve Poutine I think it's going to elevate to dish.

CH: Well, hindsight is 2020. But if there's one April Fool's Day story that really got As It Happens' listeners mad, it was the one about the three-nie. Back in 2008, we told you the Royal Canadian Mint had a plan to introduce a new three dollar coin into Canadian currency. And most of you were change averse and took to talkback to add your two cents.

MURRAY JUDGE: Yes, hi there, it's Mary Judge calling from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. My point is why are they making it bigger? In England aren't the more valuable coins smaller? I mean they get up to $10 coin it is be as big as a pizza pan to be carrying around in your pocket. They don't need to be so huge do they? I don't know? I'm just saying!

[Sound: Loud beep]

MARILYN ANTHONY: Hi, this is Marilyn Anthony, from Toronto. I grabbed the phone immediately that you gave the number after talking about this new three dollar coin that we are going to have inflicted on us. As our population is aging, this is getting to be a hardship just to carry money around. Between the loonie and Toonie and the quarters, you already have your shoulder falling off from coins. I'm sorry, I go to the gym to do my exercise. Not carrying coins.

[Sound: A loud beep]

LARRY SHAFFER: My name is Larry Shaffer, in Sudbury. The three dollar coin: Hate it, hate it, hate it and the name is even more ridiculous.

[Sound: A loud beep]

KEER BROWNSTONE: Oh hi, it’s Keer Brownstone, I'm calling from Toronto and I've got an idea for the triumvirate to put on the face of the coin. It should be Larry, Curly and Moe — The Three Stooges. They could be there to represent what did that fellow say? Oh yeah, the greatest minds in Canada, who have come up with this fantastic idea of a three dollar coin. Story I can't stick around to talk more about this. I'm just off to my lab to invent the metal pocket. Bye.

CH: From 2008, just some of the calls we received after we aired an April Fool's story about the Royal Canadian Mint's decision to introduce a new three dollar coin called the three-nie.

[Music: Guitar Music]

Part 2: Musicologist completes Mozart's unfinished songs, admits it was 'a bit presumptuous'

Black World War 1 Unit Apology

Guest: Barbara Porter

CH: Right now, the wait is on for an apology that's more than 100 years overdue. During the First World War, Black Canadians who volunteered to serve King and country were barred from enlisting in the regular army. For some, their only opportunity to contribute to the war effort was to join an all-Black unit known as the Number Two ConstructionBattalion, where they served as labourers. Last week, at a ceremony in Nova Scotia, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that the federal government plans to apologise for their treatment. Barbara Porter's grandfather and two great uncles all served in the battalion. She's also on the board of directors of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum in southern Ontario. We reached her in Windsor, Ontario.

CO: Barbara, you heard the defence minister promise that an apology is coming. Are you pleased to hear that?

BARBARA PORTER: Yes, I think it's a little late, but I'm glad that they're finally getting around to it.

CO: When he says they will apologise for the way that this battalion was treated. What's he referring to? Tell us how this Number Two Construction Battalion was treated within the forces during World War One?

BP: Well, they were a segregated unit, you know, in 1916. They were treated as second class citizens, you know, below standard living conditions, living standards were probably less than what their White counterparts had. Not good for them at all.

CO: Not just the treatment, but the very definition of this battalion, right, because it was the Number Two Construction Battalion. What were they recruited to do?

BP: Well, they were recruited to do exactly that. They built roads. They put fences, barbed wire up, you know, help with the railroads. If somebody got shot and killed out on the battlefield, they were the ones that ran out there to retrieve them. So their lives were in danger just as well as anybody else. But the difference with them and the other people is that they didn't have a gun to protect themselves. You know, in this day and age, with building the roads and everything, they would have been called engineers. But back then, they were just probably called ditch diggers.

CO: So they were assigned no personal weapons. They had no part of the fighting, but they were there on the front lines doing that kind of work.

BP: And risking their neck. Like I said, going out into the battlefield to go and collect somebody that may have been injured or shot or dead.

CO: A number of family members of yours were -- the men in your family -- were in this unit. What did you learn from them? What did you hear, what's been passed on in your family about how this segregated unit was treated?

BP: Well, I was too young to hear exact stories from them. I knew that they were in a war. I know that I had an uncle in the Second World War that used to tease my uncle from the First World War that they had guns in the Second World War, whereas in the First World War they didn't have anything to protect themselves. You know, they never really spoke about it -- even my uncle that came back from the Second World War, never really spoke about his experiences there.

CO: That was true of most men that came back from the war, isn't it?

BP: Mm hmm.

CO: You did some research, though. What did you learn?

BP: For them to volunteer and want to volunteer to go into the war and then being turned away because of their skin colour, which is ridiculous. And finally they put the Black battalion together, the Construction Battalion, and it was just basically to do the dirty work. But these men still went and served our country. They did all the heavy work, the hard work, and they risked their necks just like every other man that was out there fighting in the First World War. And they came back to the same Canada, segregated, you know, discriminated against, a lot of them didn't get veterans pay or had problems trying to find somewhere to live, trying to find a job. This is what they came back to.

CO: When you set out to do the research, to learn the whole story of the Number To Construction Battalion, did you find much material? Was it documented very well?

BP: Well, this has been over several years. And no -- when I first started out, it wasn't. And I think the first thing I found was the names of the men. The names was the only thing I could find. And as the years have gone on, more information has started to come out. So, yeah, it's been a long journey for sure.

CO: What would you like Canadians to know about this battalion?

BP: I want Canadians to know that this battalion was a brave battalion. They went out, they did their work, they volunteered, they did the job that they were assigned to do. They put their lives at risk, just like the other men that were there. They are not in our history books. Like I mean, if it took me until I was like in my 30s to find out about this, it's not in our history books. There's nothing that I ever learnt in school. And I want this to be put in our history books to start telling the truth about how Blacks contributed to this country. We're talking about men that were born before Canada was even a country, and they're not recognised as the heroes that they were. And this is something I really would like to see Canada put in the history books, start teaching our Black children and all children, for that matter, about the true history of Canada and how different cultures contributed to it.

CO: So the defence minister is going to have an apology for how they were treated. Is that enough then, given how little is known about this battalion -- what else would you like to see happen?

BP: Personally, I think that the apology is coming. I'm glad that it's coming. It's a little late. But I think that we need to go back even further and start apologising for slavery. I think that once we start recognising that Blacks were here and contributed a lot to building this country and our children start to learn this and we start to educate people on this, I think that we will grow as a country. The second battalion, they deserve respect and we need to celebrate them as heroes.

CO: All right, well, I think a good beginning, at least, is the apology Barbara. And I appreciate you telling us about this. Lots of people would like to know more. So thank you for that.

BP: Thank you.

CH: Barbara Porter's grandfather and two great uncles served in the Number Two Construction Battalion in the First World War. She's on the board of directors of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum. We reached her in Windsor, Ontario.

[Music: Guitar Music]

David Williams

CH: It's not a lockdown, but a shutdown. For the next four weeks, all of Ontario will be under the same restrictions to try to get a grip on the surge of COVID-19 cases across the province. That won't change much in the most populated regions that were already in a lockdown. And that isn't sitting well with more than 150 ICU doctors in the province. They've signed an open letter warning that the government's plan won't do enough to reduce infections and that if more isn't done soon, they could run out of ICU beds. Right now, 421 patients are in intensive care units with COVID-19. That's an all time high. An earlier today, journalist John Michael McGrath asked the province's chief medical officer, Dr. David Williams, who is responsible.

JOHN MICHAEL MCGRATH: Dr Williams, this is a failure. This is a policy failure. We were warned about the third wave. We have failed to avoid it. Who is responsible for this failure? Did you give the cabinet bad advice or did the cabinet fail to follow better advice that the public wasn't made aware of?

DAVID WILLIAMS: So I have to first say I don't agree it's a failure. All along, we said receiving the advice that we would have to monitor the situation. We have to increase our monitoring of the variants. We have to make recommendations, as we did each week from my table to the cabinet to move more quickly, to put more health units into areas of lockdown, which we did, and increase the restrictions on each one all the way through. Those policy and regulations were enhanced and moved on as rapidly as possible. If you recall, the original projection is that if we didn't do anything today, we would be at 5,000-6,000 cases a day. We are not there. We would like to be less than 2,000, yes, I'd like to be less than that -- we would like to flatten the curve and not have a curve. So while we have made decisions and has success at the variance, have moved in steadily and progress there. So we have made some indent. We have slowed the rise, not adequate in my mind -- we have to take more stringent actions and that's what we're planning to do and to put some things in place today.

CH: Ontario's chief medical officer, Dr. David Williams. Today, the province announced a four week shutdown to slow down the spread of COVID-19.

[Music: Guitar Music]

Joe Biden

CH: It's opening day for Major League Baseball, and some players are already looking ahead to the All-Star Game in July, but not in a good way. MLB players have been expressing their reservations about playing the game in Georgia. The state recently passed restrictive new voting laws that, amongst other things, would severely toughen mail-in ballot requirements and reduce the number of polling stations. Players say those changes will disenfranchise voters of colour, so they want the All-Star Game moved out of Georgia. And yesterday, US President Joe Biden added his voice to that call.

JOE BIDEN: I think today's professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that. People look to them, they are leaders. Look at what's happened with the NBA as well, look at what's happened across the board. The very people who are victimised, the most, are the people who are the leaders in these various sports. And it's just not right. This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they're doing in Georgia and 40 other states, what it's all about. Imagine passing a law saying you cannot provide water or food for someone standing in line to vote -- can't do that? Come on. Or are you going to close a polling place at five o'clock when working people just get off? This is all about keeping working folks and ordinary folks that I grew up with from being able to vote.

CH: US President Joe Biden speaking to ESPN yesterday about Major League Baseball players demands to move July's All-Star game out of Georgia.

Finishing Mozart

Guest: Timothy Jones

[MUSIC: Mozart's Sonata in B-flat Major]

CH: This is sonata in B-flat major for piano and violin, which an astute ear will recognise as the unmistakable work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Timothy Jones certainly hears the great composer's signature sound in that piece, but he also hears himself. Mr. Jones teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London. And the sonata you just heard is featured on a new album of unfinished sonatas by Mozart, which Mr. Jones spent the last seven years completing. We reached Timothy Jones in London, England.

CO: Professor Jones, we just heard 30 seconds of your first cut on that album. Is that your work or Mozart's we just heard?

TIMOTHY JONES: No, that's all Mozart we just heard there.

CO: And how much of what is on that cut is you?

TJ: Well, I come in at about three minutes into the track, which was the point at which Mozart stopped working on that piece very abruptly.

CO: Do you think people would be able to tell the difference?

TJ: I don't know. [Chuckles] That's a great guessing game that they'll have to play, I think is where Mozart stops and I start.

CO: And you're not going to tell them where that is?

TJ: No, I'm not. [Laughter] I think they could work that out for themselves.

CO: Have you tested people? Have you tested experts or colleagues, anybody to see if they can discern the difference?

TJ: I've not tested them formally, but there have been plenty of instances in the last seven years or so where quite well-known musicians have been playing some of these completions. And they've either said "Oh I think you've gone wrong there," -- and it turns out it's something that Mozart wrote. Or occasionally and it's very nice when this happens, they'll say, well I particularly like what Mozart did at that point -- and it turns out it's me rather than Mozart. So some people have to look quite carefully at the scores to work out.

CO: Do your colleagues also think you're a bit presumptive to finish the work of Amadeus Mozart?

TJ: [Laughs] I mean, I think I'm a bit presumptuous to have done this in a way. But I see these comparisons -- and I'm not trying to write fake Mozart. I'm not trying to sort of put myself on a pedestal next to him. I mean, it's rather like, you know, if you were a pianist and you're playing Mozart kind of concertos, in the first movement there's a big gap in the score, you've got to improvise a cadenza. And nobody sort of bats an eyelid when a pianist takes over from Mozart in the middle of a concerto and plays their own music suddenly. So I see what I've done with these fragments is like performing them rather like performing a cadenza.

CO: But it's more than just a cadenza, isn't it? I mean, tell us what you were working with and what you completed.

TJ: Well, it all started off about 10 years ago. I was writing a book that was quite boringly technical about how Mozart's music is very expressive and dynamic. And I became particularly interested in trying to figure out what I could learn from the music he hadn't finished, as well as the pieces that he had. And the more I looked at these fragments and there were over 100 of them that date from the last 10 years of his life, some of them I think he probably had abandoned. But quite a lot of them are still work in progress on his desk at the time he died. And the more work I did on these, and it was again it was technical work. I'm thinking very precisely about when he'd written them and what implications that had for the way we look at his other music. And I found that if I could find out possibly say more efficiently what I wanted to do about these fragments in notes rather than in words. And so one thing that I was really keen to do was to get across the idea that I haven't got a clue how Mozart would have finished these unfinished pieces. But I wanted to sort of dramatise the fact that they are all very open ended. And that's what led me to make more than one completion of these fragments, to sort of hammer home the idea that this music could have gone in all sorts of different directions had Mozart carried on with it.

CO: People have compared it to books where you can choose the ending. Is that fair?

TJ: [Chuckles] I suppose so. Yes exactly. So I mean, the sort of choices I had to make compositionally, almost moment by moment means, you know, I could have done many more than I have. But sure, I mean, you can certainly choose your own version on this disc.

CO: Now, what you are describing is that you're very familiar with Mozart, you know his style, but you had to understand what period of his work this comes from, right, each fragment because of how his style evolved, his thinking, he matured, he was different. So how much of it did you have to find context for the actual finishing of these fragments?

TJ: Well, you know, that's what most of the work actually went on, pinpointing as much as I could the precise context of the work that he'd done on the fragments. And from that then asking hypothetical questions to his composition of interest at the time, or else he was writing, as you say, how his style was changing because it was changing pretty rapidly in the last 10 years of his life. So most of the work was actually spent just doing that spade work and asking the questions. And then when I came to write the actual music, I did it very fast. He composed music in layers onto the score. Often in his manuscripts you can see different coloured inks where the different layers went in different times. And we know that he wrote very quickly because lots of his family talk about how he could be sort of lazy for months on end, but then when he started working very rapidly and very intensively. So most of the composing I did on my 30 minute commute into central London by work.

CO: Why didn't Mozart finish these pieces? Why are they just fragments?

TJ: I think a lot of them probably date from the last three years of his life. He'd have a burst of activity where he stopped lots of pieces, and then he'd have them there ready -- I assume he wrote enough that when he went back to them sometime later, when he needed them for a concert or for publication, there was enough information on the page, for him to just pick up where he left off and finish things. But a lot of the late stuff is changing music for sting string quartettes. And I think that that was just sitting there waiting to be finished off. But if you look at what happened in the last year of Mozart's life, he became very very busy and in demand -- I mean, crazily busy might have been one of the things that killed him in December of that year, which is overwork. So I think, you know, having another three or four months, he probably would have returned to these pieces.

CO: I mean, this is always a controversy around the completion of unfinished work. Is it possible that Mozart would not have liked you to have done this?

TJ: I'm sure he wouldn't have liked me to have done it, and I'd much rather he'd done it. I mean, some of the fragments are very short and they're only about eight bars long. And you can tell when he's abandoned the fragment because he'll usually use a piece of paper for something else. He'll either start writing down some -- presumably he was doing his weekly accounts in the margins of the page or he would really start sketching materials for other pieces. Now, all the fragments that I completed don't have any of that. They are just scores that just break off, basically, and they often break off in an interesting moment in the form where he gave himself enough information about not just the way that the things were being patterned, but the rate at which they were being developed, that it would have been very easy for him to go back and then work out what he was going to be next. He's given himself enough clues to know what he had in mind.

CO: We want to play one of the sonatas from your album. Is there a suggestion after we finish this conversation that something you're most proud of?

TJ: Well, the fragment that I think is the most wonderful is the G Major Sonata. I really regret the fact that Mozart didn't finish that. I think it would have been a masterpiece because it's so confident and it's quite unlike any of his other violin sonatas.

CO: All right. So be it. We will do that. Professor Jones it is fun to talk to you.

TJ: Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed.

CH: Royal Academy of Music Professor Timothy Jones. You can learn more about Mr. Jones's work and listen to more of the unfinished Mozart sonatas that he completed on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: String Music]

Indoor Dining

CH: Restaurant owners in Ontario and their counterparts in some regions of Quebec have had a lot to commiserate about lately. Both provinces recently eased outdoor dining measures in many areas, only to reverse the rules several days later. It's frustrating. But Ontario restaurant owners got a little bit more warning and time to revert back to the old rules, whereas restaurant owners in Quebec have until 8 p.m. today. Dani Michelle Ouellet manages the restaurant, Le Hobbit in Quebec City. She spoke to the CBC about her restaurant's plan borne of that frustration to sell everything in its kitchen from eggs to veggies to milk out on the sidewalk tomorrow.

DANI MICHELLE OUELLET: We were extremely frustrated and surprised, to say the least. It was totally unexpected. We know the main goal is to get rid of the virus. And we understand the government's decisions to close non-essential businesses. But it's the lack of transparency and the impulsive decisions that leave us with tons of food that was ready for our clients this weekend in our cold storage. So our chef started today to transform some of the food. So they started to marinate some stuff. And we're preparing a sidewalk sale tomorrow. So we invite people to come by before doing their grocery shopping so they can, I don't know, pick up some eggs or milk or whatever, and we'll sell whatever we can. And then afterwards that, the cooks will continue to transform everything to make sure we don't lose anything and that we don't have to throw anything away because that's the last thing we would want.

PETER TARDIF: Do you have to ask the city for permission to start selling whatever's in your kitchen, not just prepared food, but eggs and vegetables and milk? Do you even care to ask for the city's permission at this point?

DANI MICHELLE OUELLET: [Chuckles] We haven't really looked that up. It was a really impulsive decision on our side yesterday when we got the memo that we had to close. And we're going to do it until we get a notice or something. [Chuckles] Well we just wanted to make some noise and to show people that it's not -- like a restaurant you can't just open and close within days. It involves a lot of time and a lot of money. And we're all going to have to restart everything in two weeks or whatever whenever we get the okay, we're going to take it day by day and try to find ways to keep us smile on.

CH: That's Dani Michele Ouellet, restaurant manager at Le Hobbit in Quebec City, speaking to Peter Tardif on the CBC program Breakaway.

[Music: Synth Music]

Part 3: N.Z. scientists finally track down geckos so rare, it wasn't clear they still existed

Rare Gecko Discovered

Guest: Ben Barr

CH: It's a great feeling when you find something you've been searching for, like when you stick your hand between the couch cushions and feel the distinctive shape of your missing credit card. Or if you're a lizard expert who's been looking for a mysterious, rarely seen gecko and suddenly it turns up. In both cases, there is euphoria. But admittedly, the second case is a bit more significant, especially for Ben Barr, who is a lizard expert and whose colleagues finally found rare Cupola geckos in New Zealand last month. Mr. Barr is an ecologist and a science advisor to the New Zealand Department of Conservation's Lizard Technical Advisory Group. We've reached him in Whangarei.

CO: Ben for how many years have you been looking for this Cupola gecko?

BEN BARR: So I've personally been looking for it about two years, but there's been other people that have been looking for it as well. So there's been five expeditions to try and locate this strange creature.

CO: And why was it so important to you?

BB: Well, I've always loved the lizards since I was a child. But I think for this particular species, because so little was known about it and it appeared to be so rare, I guess the scientific community was pretty afraid that it may have gone extinct.

CO: And only two have been found in the past many decades, right?

BB: 53 years, yeah. So the first one was spotted in 1968. And then again, a gentleman stumbled across one in 2007. So, yeah, so two solid records in 53 years.

CO: So take us to this time. You were in some place called Nelson Lakes National Park. That was where the gecko had been seen previously. So you were looking high and low. Just describe maybe your search.

BB: Yeah. So good question. So we really had no idea where to look. So there's a variety of habitats in Nelson Lakes National Park ranging from, you know, river, forest, right up to subalpine and alpine where there, you know, no trees live. So we didn't know which of these habitats that it lived in. So it was essentially a little bit of a needle in the haystack. So we tried all these different locations. We eventually got a little bit of a lead that it may have been an alpine species. So we got a chopper into this particular location and we spent five days up there. And I was getting to the point where I was starting to lose a little bit of hope and then, yeah, we found them.

CO: Okay, so you're lifting a lot of rocks, right?

BB: Basically. Slightly more scientific than that I guess [laughter] lifting a lot of rocks.

CO: [Laughter] All right. Describe your moment.

BB: My colleague Marieke caught the first one and she just came up to me and she says "Ben I need to talk to you." And I knew that she had found one. And I kind of lost it a little bit and gave her a big hug and we sort of screamed and jumped around a wee bit. And then, of course, I wanted to have a look at it because it's been the object of my thoughts for quite some time. So we had a close look at it and took lots of photos and other scientific measurements and that sort of thing. And, yeah, we were over the moon. I personally hadn't found one. And so, you know, there's a certain sort of a feeling you get when you find something you've been looking for. So the one that I found was a couple of days later, we found three in total.

CO: And where did you find your Capulo gecko?

BB: Yeah. So it was about two kilometres away, which was exciting as well, because, I mean, the population was at least not a single point on a map. So we were high in the mountains. And yeah, I lifted this rock and we're talking rock 10,563 -- I've lifted that many rocks and I don't even have fingerprints anymore. So I lifted the rock and it was underneath and at first I was like, oh, there's a stick, it looks like one. And yeah, I wasn't quite sure because I've been looking for so long and there was never anything under these rocks I was turning. And there it was. So I picked it up and it was amazing.

CO: How did you react?

BB: Yeah, probably said a few choice words and yeah, pretty much I was just screaming and yahooing and got a little bit emotional and yeah, it was just a massive sense of joy, relief, euphoria. Yeah. Crazy. I likened to sort of having a child -- well you know, being there with my wife...[Laughter]

CO: [Laughs] You're a man, you think that's like having a baby. But you didn't drop the rock, I hope.

BB: No, not at all. No, I picked it up and picked up the gecko and did my screaming.

CO: Okay. Describe what this little guy looks like.

BB: Oh they're beautiful. So they've got big beautiful eyes and cheeky little grin. They're kind of like the back patterns are like lichen -- if you know what that is, it's like that sort of bark, tree bark. And if you look close they've got these neat little orange and brown spots on their back, they're superbly camouflaged. They lick eyes clean to clean them because geckos don't blink. So they're really the best animals ever, really.

CO: How long did you spend with your gecko before you had to let him go?

BB: Probably about five minutes, it takes us to process them. We would like it to be longer, but you want to make sure that they have the least amount of stress possible.

CO: And your colleague, the one that she found, I understand that was a female perhaps.

BB: Yeah. So the first one she found was, yes, it was an escalation of excitement, really. So the first one that was caught was an immature female. The second one that I caught was a male. So that's a good, good start, but they are two kilometres apart. So the third one we found was a pregnant female. So when we found her, then we kind of knew, okay cool this population has a glimmer of hope to survive now.

CO: So now what piece of knowledge about geckos have you filled in now? Because there was so little known about these, you didn't even know if they still existed. So what have you been able to contribute?

BB: Well, yeah, that they exist is an incredible thing. To find it is huge. So we know the types of habitat that it lives in, which allows us to manage it and those places. We took some genetic samples, so we'll be able to see where it fits into the web of or the tree of lizards in New Zealand. So we'll be able to categorically define exactly what species it is. Yeah, and just to know how it behaves and the types of things that it eats and where it lives. It's all really important so that we can ensure its long term survival.

CO: And you've accomplished what you set out to do for these years. So that's the biggest accomplishment probably.

BB: Yeah. I mean, to have one in the hand and to actually hold something that you thought was possibly gone forever. And to actually hold it and see it there alive, staring back at you, breathing was quite an amazing sort of a feeling.

CO: Wonderful. Congratulations Ben.

BB: Thank you.

CO: All right. Take care.

BB: All the best.

CO: You too. Bye bye.

BB: Bye.

CH: That was New Zealand ecologist and lizard expert Ben Barr in Whangarei. And we've posted pictures of the gecko he found to our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Piano Music]

Pretty Darn Cute

CH: Pretty, Darn, and Cute are aptly named They are triplet calves that a cow on Gloria Jackson's farm gave birth to earlier this month. Ms. Jackson is a cattle farmer and school board trustee in Quesnel, BC. She talked to the CBC about the calves and the unlikelihood of their birth.

GLORIA JACKSON: They are three and a half weeks old now. And they just started eating hay and they just play and run around and make everybody laugh and smile and so we're pretty excited. They're all heifers, all females. And yeah, I named them Pretty, Darn, and Cute.

CAROLINA DE RYK: We just love it. Such great names for them. Did you know that there were triplets on the way?

GLORIA JACKSON: Oh absolutely not. No, I run a herd of about a hundred and so yeah they just start calving and what happens happens. It's one of my bigger cows but certainly she didn't look, you know, overly large or anything like that. And she definitely took me by surprise and she had them all by herself, which is rare for them to be able to do that. And she really loves them and she takes care of all three, which is really really neat and feeds all three. But I supplement them as well with milk in the morning and night.

CAROLINA DE RYK: And I understand for a cow to take care of all three calves, this being a rare circumstance there, that's not always necessarily the case.

GLORIA JACKSON: No, absolutely not. Yeah, quite often for me anyhow, you know, and in prior experience when I've had twins, quite often the cow will kick off one of the twins and you end up bottle feeding the other one. So the fact that she actually takes care of all three and watches over them is pretty neat for sure.

CAROLINA DE RYK: How are people responding to the story of these triplets?

GLORIA JACKSON: Yeah, lots of congratulations. Lots of Wow, I can't believe it. And I had the vet out to check them over because it's a rare event and I just wanted to make sure I was on the right track with them. And, you know, they're actually very healthy. And she was blown away too by how good a shape they are because quite often, you know, triplets are not quite often, it doesn't happen very often. But you'll have one that doesn't make it or two that don't make it. But this is truly rare for sure.

CAROLINA DE RYK: So does it mean that these three calves are keepers?

GLORIA JACKSON: Yeah, I hope so. So that's my plan right now because they're all heifers, they are females, they will breed back. And I do keep my heifers. So yeah. So we'll see how they look in the fall and I'm very attached to them of course. So I really adore them. So I'm hoping that'll work out and then come fall I'll keep them and they'll become part of the big herd.

CH: That was BC cattle farmer Gloria Jackson speaking with the CBC's Carolina De Ryk on the program Daybreak North.

[Music: Banjo Music]

Ireland Future of Work

Guest: Heather Humphreys

CH: The pandemic has changed how and where a lot of us do our jobs. And in Ireland, the government wants to capitalise on that and make sure some of those changes stick. This week, it published a five year policy called Our Rural Future. It's a plan to get people out of Dublin and working in less urbanised areas around the rest of the country. The plan includes creating hundreds of remote working hubs and a pilot scheme to use rural pubs during off hours as community spaces. Heather Humphreys is Ireland's Minister for Rural and Community Development. We reached her in Dublin.

CO: Minister Humphreys, are we going to find you working remotely from an Irish pub any time soon?

HEATHER HUMPHREYS: Well, of course, we're very anxious as a government to allow people the choice to work remotely. And we're looking at a number of different ways in which we can support that. One of those ways is to develop remote working hubs across the country. And indeed, we have spoken to the Irish Vintners Federation and we're saying to them how we can repurpose pubs that are closed during the day and sometimes they're closed during the week, they only open on weekends. So I suppose it's about the diversification of hubs. But that's only one part of. The policy, is government saying to remote workers, we want you to come and live in rural Ireland and through the rollout of high speed broadband, the development of hubs, and other infrastructure, we're going to support you in making that move.

CO: Now, this isn't the first time that Ireland has attempted to get people to move out of the big cities, to move into rural areas. And you're not the first country to try that. Canada has tried to move some of its civil service work out of big cities, and it generally doesn't work. So what is it about this particular time, I guess, the global pandemic that makes you think it might work this time?

HH: Well, this is about people. It's not about buildings. In the past, when we looked at decentralisation, it was the case of we providing the buildings and we're asking workers to go there. This is not about that. This is about people. It's giving people the choice through digitisation, through the rollout of national broadband that you can have the connectivity you want in your community and it allows you to work for the multinationals and still live and work in your own community. And I think that's the most important thing. And to support that it, we're rolling out coworking spaces and hubs right across the country to facilitate that. And we know what it's like at the minute, people are travelling long distances to work and the commute could be two hours -- if we can reduce commute, which is halved, because of remote working during COVID, it means a better quality of life, it means reduced emissions, and also means you have more time to spend with your family. I do believe it's a win-win for everybody. So this is a once in a generation opportunity. We want to grasp it. And I want to cement remote working into the culture of rural Ireland.

CO: You're promising to increase the broadband. So what investment are you going to put into that?

HH: Yeah, well, we're rolling out a national broadband plan. It's a 3-billion euro investment and it's a seven year project. So what we are going to do is we're going to deliver high speed broadband to every single home and business in the country. It's a huge project. It has started -- the contracts were signed last year and it is something that is going to change it rural Ireland. It is akin to rural electrification. So the amount of cable that will be needed to connect every single home, would go around the globe almost four times. So that gives you an idea of the scale of this project. But we have the boots on the ground and we hope to have 60,000 houses passed by the end of this year. And we will continue to roll it out. But in the meantime, for people that can't get the broadband in their home, we will create these working hubs and provide the facilities, they are good office facilities where you can work in your local village or in your local town and that will have the high speed broadband that you will need so you can get the connectivity that we all want when we're working.

CO: And that's the entry -- that's the pubs you're referring to. These pubs would be those hubs.

HH: No, no, no, no. We'll have coworking spaces. The pubs is just a pilot scheme that we are rolling out in conjunction with the Vintners Association. So we're going to look at a number of the pubs initially, maybe a small number, and we look at what kind of services we can provide there. So maybe you could have the local development association, it could be a meeting place for them. Maybe you could have a community library, you can get maybe a projector and have a community cinema. So it's about using these premises that are closed during the week or maybe closed during the day. And it's for somebody can go in, maybe get a cup of tea and have a meeting. And if they want to go in with their laptop at this high speed broadband that they can use that.

CO: What evidence is there that the people who already live in rural communities would welcome this exodus, potential exodus of people into their villages and pubs?

HH: Well, I think people in rural Ireland want to see families coming back. A lot of Irish families have educated their sons and daughters, they've had to go to the cities for work. They haven't been able to return because the jobs aren't there. But now, through digitisation and through a changed world that we live in, they're now going to have an opportunity to go back to their communities and set up with their families there and continue to to have high quality jobs.

CO: And what about housing prices, property taxes? Is that not a concern for people already living there, that these things will be driven up in cost as people -- as the populations expand?

HH: Yeah, well, we have a lot of towns and villages right across Ireland where we have vacant buildings where we have maybe dereliction in some places. So we want to incentivise people to come back and repurpose these buildings, empty buildings, in the centre of towns, and we'll go to incentivise them to move back in and breathe new life into into towns that the population has left over the years. So this is a very focussed measure that we want to get town centre first. So we want to repurpose those buildings and we want to get people living back in there.

CO: All right, Minister Humphreys, we'll leave it there. And good luck. Thank you.

HH: Thank you very much. Thank you.

CH: Heather Humphreys is the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Minister for Social Protection in Ireland. We reached her in Dublin.

[Music: Guitar Music]

Secret Code

CH: US Strategic Command is responsible for the country's nuclear arsenal. So when it sent out a weird tweet on Sunday, people wondered, what is the significance of this mysterious gibberish? Well, it was hard to say. I mean, I guess I'd say it like[tries to pronounce ";l;;gmlxzssaw"]. But there are three semicolons in there as well. So your guess is as good as mine unless you're at a QAnon, in which case your guess is far more elaborate than mine. Regarding that random seeming string of letters and punctuation tweeted by US Strategic Command, one QAnon follower tweeted 'Some Anons ran it through cryptographic decipher software, and one option that came up for the cryptogram was QAcquited. Make of that what you will. Could be something, could be nothing.' See, that's an important caveat because where QAnon is concerned, everything could be something, but is always nothing. As was proven once again when a journalist with The Daily Dot filed a Freedom of Information request and received a prompt response from US Strategic Command, which reads in part, "The command's Twitter manager, while in a telework status, momentarily left the command's Twitter account open and unattended. His very young child took advantage of the situation and started playing with the keys and unfortunately and unknowingly posted the tweet." It is kind of a relief it wasn't some kind of secret emergency message. But if you're into conspiracies, I guess that's code comfort.

April 1, 2021 Episode Transcript

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