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The AIH Transcript for August 2, 2017

Hosts: Piya Chattopadhyay and Karen Gordon

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay.

KAREN GORDON: Good evening, I'm Karen Gordon. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

KG: Tonight:

PC: Escaping from where they escaped to. After the earthquake in 2010, people fled Haiti for the United States. And now, so many Haitians are fleeing us for Quebec that Montreal has opened Olympic Stadium to asylum seekers.

KC: Giant baby steps. In groundbreaking research, American scientists have corrected a mutation linked to a fatal heart condition from the DNA of human embryos.

PC: Taking a stand on things people sit on. A Norwegian anti-immigrant group expresses deep-seated fear and hatred over a picture of women in burqas on a bus. Not realizing it's actually a picture of empty seats.

KC: Food and food for thought. Over her remarkable career and books, the late Judith Jones promoted authors who needed no introduction, and two who did, at the time: Julia Child and Anne Frank.

PC: A story that will inspire you to raise some toast. Not because you're saluting prisoners who escaped from an Alabama jail, but because the key ingredient in their escape was for peanut butter.

KC: And in the UK Caterpillar's are going viral. I mean, they're so hot right now they're blowing up. I mean all of that literally: they're being taken over by a virus which orders them to sit in the sun until they explode. As It Happens, the Wednesday edition. Radio that reveals the full story all at once, and in small bursts.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Montreal asylum seekers, Oslo bus, exploding caterpillars

Montreal asylum seekers

Guest: Marjorie Villefranche

KG: Under Montreal’s “Big O” tonight, there are more than 100 beds set up, ready for asylum seekers. Montreal's Olympic Stadium is not a building you'd expect to see as a makeshift welcome centre. But after the city's YMCA facilities and other buildings hit full capacity last month, there was no other option. In July alone, Quebec saw more than 11-hundred asylum seekers walk across the border from the US. And refugee advocates in Montreal say the vast majority of these recent asylum seekers are from Haiti. Marjorie Villefranche is the director general for Maison d’Haiti. We reached her in Montreal.

PC: Ms. Villefranche, just how busy has your organization been assisting Haitian asylum seekers these past few weeks?

MARJORIE VILLEFRANCHE: The past six weeks, we were all very busy and it's increasing. Every day, I would say 25-30 families.

PC: And so that's what? About how many people?

MV: Probably 100 people.

PC: 100 People every day! What is behind this sudden surge of Haitian asylum seekers coming to Qubec.

MV: This is the question everybody is asking because we don't understand. Probably it is because they know that the TPS will be over in January. What we know that they told us is that they are afraid that you know they are going to deport them back in their country. So they did not want that. They are trying to find another place where they can seek asylum. That's why they come here.

PC: You said the word TPS — the letters T-P-S. This is the “Temporary Protected Status” that are given in the U.S.?

MV: Exactly. Yes, exactly.

PC: OK. Can you explain what these TPS are in America and why many Haitians have relied on them for the past seven years?

MV: Since the earthquake of 2010, a lot of Haitian was in in the United States and then they gave them that TPS that allowed them to leave in the country with a working permit. But they had no statues — no legal statues — they are not permanent residents. So now, the TPS is getting to an end. So that's why they are afraid that they are going to send them back in the country of origin.

PC: So what has changed? Why is the ending as you understand it?

MV: Well, I know is that the TPS was renewed, but that we are coming to an end in January. And they heard that they will not renew it. So they fear that they won't they will not renew the TPS. So that's why they are coming here. Even though Mr. Trump didn't say a word about Haitian per se, but the way he speaks and the way you know he talks about the refugees, everybody's afraid of that. It's like a panic that they are you know rushing to come here before they close the border. I don't know.

PC: And the U.S. government has said that seven years after the earthquake Haiti's economy has recovered, displacement camps have closed and the rebuild has been extremely successful. What do you think of that?

MV: Well, it's the same thing that we see here in Canada. The government of Canada says the same thing.

PC: If the situation in Haiti has improved then why are people coming to Canada from the United States and not going back home to Haiti?

MV: This is the official declaration that the situation has improved. But the proof is against it because how come, if the situation has improved, how come we have so many people running out of the country? But the situation is very difficult for them. You have the security and the situation it is hard and it's hard living. So I suppose I understand why they don't want to go back there.

PC: And on what grounds then are Haitians in Canada applying for refugee status from the United States?

MV: I don't know. You know, everyone who crossed the border has its own history and its own experience because every story is unique.

PC: As you know, to claim refugee status has to be either the fear of prosecution based on race or religion or political opinion or sexual orientation or risk physical violence. And you're not sure under which of those most of these people are coming to Canada?

MV: I don't really know in which they're going to do it because, as I'm telling you, every story is unique. You know, every life is unique. So I don't know what they're going to say to the immigration.

PC: Are you concerned at all that many of these Haitians may not have their refugee applications approved?

MV: Of course, I'm concerned about this. They are trying to find a place where they can feel secure. So this is why they are doing this because they don't feel insecurity anymore where they work.

PC: Today, we learned that the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, “the Big O”, will become a welcome centre for asylum seekers and many of those asylum seekers are Haitians. What do you think this opening says?

MV: What I can see is that they try to you know to put them in a lot of places like the YMCA, at the hotel and now they have no more places. They need the house, they need the furniture, they need to know where the kids are going to school and they need things like this. They need to know how can they work in this country. How can you know how can they leave there. So this is what we're helping them to do that because the story they have to tell, they have to explain it to the lawyer and the lawyer will help them to write it down.

PC: Come January 20 18, up to eight thousand Haitians could face deportation from the United States because of the temporary status issue. Are we bound to see even more of them fleeing to Canada in the weeks and months to come?

MV: You know, the profile of the people who are coming here they are very vulnerable people with young children. I don't think all of them will come here. I think the more vulnerable people who are living in the United States will come here.

PC: What do you think Canada should be doing?

MV: Well for me, Canada should accept the people because you know there are young families with young people; young kids and we cannot leave let them die in the border. So we have to do something. And we have laws that protect asylum seekers so we have to do that.

PC: Ms. Villefranche, I know it's been a very busy time for you and I thank you for making time for us.

MV: It was a pleasure. Thank you very much.

PC: Bye now.

MV: Bye bye.

KC: Marjorie Villefranche is the director general for Maison d’Haiti. We reached her in Montreal. For more on this story, tune into “The Current” on CBC Radio One tomorrow morning, after the 8:30 news.

[Music: Folk]

Oslo bus

Guest: Hugo Ewald

KG: It was an optical illusion that turned into a test case for xenophobia. A photograph posted on a Norwegian anti-immigrant Facebook group sparked the outrage of its members, who mistook it as a photo of six women wearing burqas on a bus in Oslo. It was, in fact, a photo of six empty seats on a bus in Oslo. You can see the photo in question on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih. Hugo Ewald reported on this story. He's an editor for the fact checking division of the Metro newspaper in Sweden. We reached him in Stockholm.

PC: Hugo, for people who haven't seen this photo, give us a sense of what it looks like?

HUGO EWALD: Well, it looks like the inside of some sort of vehicle with vaguely human forms. With one fast look, you might get the impression that it shows people in some sort of veils or draping.

PC: So it's a bus and is anyone on the bus?

HE: Well, not actually. The image simply shows empty bus seats.

PC: Can any part of you understand how someone might confuse empty bus seats for a group of women wearing burqas?

HE: Well yeah, especially if one has a very keen interest in seeing images of women in burqa. I talked with my colleagues here in my office there and several said that yeah, I understand how one can get that impression if one just simply looks at it fast.

PC: And who initially posted this photo?

HE: Well, it was posted by a Norwegian man, wanting to try out the cognitive bias in this Facebook group.

PC: What do you mean by cognitive bias?

HE: Well, the group that he posted the image in is a group on Facebook dedicated to well an anti-immigrant sentiment, discussions on the so-called Islamization of Norway and anti-Muslim sentiment, generally. And the group, as these kind of groups in the Nordic countries are, are famous for being kind of an echo chamber, where people simply post statements and everyone assumes that it's correct because it aligns with their points of view.

PC: So just to be clear, a Norwegian guy posts this to see what kind of responses a photo like this will get. What people will see in it? What biases they have on this anti-immigrant Facebook page?

HE: Yeah, exactly.

PC: OK. And so what were some of the responses once this photo was posted below the post?

HE: The response was it was harsh, so to say. People did assume that the picture actually showed women in Burqa and people said things like this is frightening. You can't see if these are men or women. If they have heaps of stolen goods under their sheets, or if it's even weapons or bombs, one person wrote. Another person wrote get them out of this country; it looks like a series of parasols.

PC: And how long was it before people on this Facebook page clued into that it wasn't indeed women in burqas on a bus. It was just empty seats on a bus they were looking at?

HE: There were some people saying things like this is yesterday’s empty of bus seats, but it looks kind of weird, one person wrote. Another person wrote well, this simply shows that people want to see what they want to see. It took a while and in Sweden, another person tried a similar thing a couple of hours later in a Swedish group of the same caliber, so to say, with the same results.

PC: Tell me more. What do you know about this far-right Facebook group, this anti-immigrant group where this photo was shared?

HE: Well, the group, which basically means “The Fatherland First”, is a group that portrays itself as a group for people who put weight in what our forefathers fought for us. It's an anti-immigrant group with about 13,000 members on Facebook. The point is to have a discussion about topics pertaining to anti-immigrant views, so to say. People are trying to show proofs of so-called Islamistisation of Norway, immigrants doing crimes and so on.

PC: Your job at the newspaper where you work is to fact check, and you track fake news stories. Do you think something like this hurts these kind of far-right groups? As is damaging their credibility, or do you think they just don't care and move on. I mean has it had the desired effect?

HE: I think the problem with these kinds of groups is that they're often kind of closed off to the rest of the social media discussions. People go into these groups in order to not get criticized for their views and in order to get some thumbs-up for their views that are well outside the mainstream. And everytime we do these kinds of fact checks, people mostly shrug it off as see it as a bias in the media, rather than something that they've done wrong. It is often brushed off as the media tries to discredit us. That's why they found this single instance of us doing something wrong.

PC: Now, you've spoken to Sindre Beyer, the former Labor MP from Norway who decided to publicize this post. What did he tell you about why he did it? What was his motivation?

HE: Well, his motivation was that he's been following this specific group in Norway, which is quite large, for a couple of months. And he said I've seen how full of prejudice of hate speech and conspiracy theories and racism this group is. So he said I’ve been waiting for a reason to show how failed with these kinds of things this group actually is.

PC: As I said, your job is to fact check and track fake news stories. What do you think this particular image and the responses to it and the reaction to the response tells us about fake news and fake imagery?

HE: Yeah, I think it shows the tendency of people to see what they want to see, this kind of confirmation bias. And I also think it shows the problem with these kind of closed off rooms that are created as a result of social media, where people can choose to only listen to views that align with their own, which makes it easier for this information and fake news to take a spread.

PC: Hugo, Thanks for talking to me today.

HE: Yeah, thank you very much.

KG: Hugo Ewald reported on the story for the Metro newspaper in Sweden. We reached him in Stockholm. And if you'd like to see a photo of the empty bus seats mistaken for burqas, you can go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Folk]

Exploding caterpillars

Guest: Chris Miller

KG: The Caterpillar's are turning into “exploding zombies”. That sounds like exposition from the scientist character in a horror movie, possibly played by Jeff Goldblum. Unfortunately, it's not. Actual caterpillars are being zombified and actually exploding. Scientists in the central UK are calling it a caterpillar “death march”, after seeing evidence of the creatures infected by a virus, basking in the sun, bursting and dying. Chris Miller is with the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester in North Merseyside. We reached him near Bolton, in the UK.

PC: Mr. Miller, how did you first suspect something strange was happening to these caterpillars?

CHRIS MILLER: I look after some peat bogs and I was doing a survey for a rare butterfly. And that just involved walking up and down and counting how many butterflies I can see. And then I saw this caterpillar, just on top of the branch of this small bush. And I thought that's a bit weird, that shouldn't be there. You know, caterpillars normally during the day hide down in underground and they don't want to be eaten by birds. When I finished my survey, I went back, had a look at this caterpillar and it was dead. And it was clinging on by its middle legs, so it's kind of in an inverted “U” shape, but it was untouched and I've never seen anything like that in my life. It's really, really weird.

PC: This raised your eyebrows, so to speak?

CM: Yeah, it did. It did. And then I kind of went home and you know I did a bit of research and I found out that there’s this kind of bacteria virus thing that infects them. And it takes over their brain and it makes them climb to a high spot and then it kills them. And then it slowly kind of liquefies the body and bits of them blob down. Those bits infect other healthy caterpillars and it's really quite gruesome.

PC: It sounds gruesome. So you see the one, you go do some research and then what? You head back out to see if your thesis that you're working on now is true?

CM: Yeah, I went back out and I saw two. You know, it wasn't just one — it wasn't a one-off. But also, when I started to look at you know a bit of tall vegetation sticking up, there’s three or four where there were just little scraps of skin of caterpillar just left behind. You know, there wasn't the body of the caterpillar. This caterpillar, it's brown and it's hairy and it's quite big and chunky. So you know you just have these little bits of thin strips of brown, hairy skin left behind.

PC: Hairy caterpillar skin on the ground.

CM: Yeah, just attached to these you know these branches and these bits of grass. So there's obviously been quite a few caterpillars affected by it.

PC: I don't know anything about caterpillars other than I'm weirdly terrified. And you're terrifying me more by telling me what you saw, but couldn't have this been done by a bird or another animal looking to feed on these caterpillars?

CM: Well, yes sure. I mean that was my first thought. You know has a bird just kind of nibbled one, decided to not like the taste of it and just left it hanging on the branch? But when I actually looked to them and looked closely, they were untouched. There wasn't any peck marks. There wasn't anything and the kind of telltale sign was the fact they got the legs in the middle and the legs were clamped on firmly onto the branch and weren’t letting go.

PC: And so since that first examination, out doing your research, what did you learned about how this this virus is able to do what it does?

CM: Well, I'm not an expert on this virus, but from what I've read, it takes over their brain and makes them climb towards the light. It's really quite crafty virus really because by making them climb high and then causing them to kind of not quite explode. It's not as dramatic as that, but that sprays the virus over a wider area. So you've got a better chance of infecting more caterpillars. But by making and climbs the top of the vegetation, they're a target for birds because you know birds fly by and go oh, that's a cheap meal that is. And, of course, the bird picks up the caterpillar and then spreads the virus to a new place where it can affect more caterpillars. So it's really quite a crafty virus.

PC: So basically, this virus renders a caterpillar basically useless other than tells it to go up the tree to the light and really march towards its death.

CM: Yeah, it's a death march. I mean the only other time that I've seen it is in a David Attenborough DVD. You know in that it was in a tropical rainforest with an ant. And this ant climbed to the top of the vegetation, died and then a mushroom grew out of its head.

PC: So you were you were astonished by what you were seeing.

CM: I really was astonished! And I've spoken to some of my colleagues and some of them have been working a lot longer than I have, you know 25-30 years. And they've never seen it either. So it's quite special. Incredibly gruesome, but I find it really, really fascinating.

PC: Are there any dangers that you're aware of with this virus spreading in this way? I mean these are the caterpillars, not individually, but collectively in some kind of danger?

CM: Well, I've spoken to one or two experts out there and what they say is that tend to get little hot spots of it and then it kind of dies down. But it never gets to like an epidemic. So it doesn’t wipeout all of the caterpillars. It just wipes out some of them. It's part of nature. Some of the caterpillars will get eaten by birds, some will get caught by this virus, others will just won't eat enough so they won't of make it into becoming a moth and others will and they'll start the next generation.

PC: You call this gruesome and that these caterpillars are essentially on a death march. What does it remind you of when you first saw it? When you were sitting there going holy crap, this thing is exploding! Or, as you said, quite exploding, but you know being quite grossed out by it. Did it remind you of anything?

CM: Well yeah, it is. You know when I read about the virus you know something's taken over your brain and is forcing you to do something against your will. So you know it's kind of like a zombie horror film type thing, but for caterpillars.

PC: Well, what do you do next, Chris Miller? Do you keep observing these things, or do you just carry on with life knowing that you've seen an exploding caterpillar up in the tree?

CM: I think I'll carry on with life and keep doing my thing. Keep going out onto the beautiful peat bogs I manage. They're really beautiful. And I know that in Canada, where you guys are, you've got some beautiful peat bogs too. So I encourage everyone to go out and visit your peat bog. Look down at your feet and you never know what you might see.

PC: And look up in the trees because you never know what you might see. Because there might be a caterpillar up there exploding like a zombie.

CM: Yeah, there might be.

PC: Mr. Miller, it's been good to talk to you. Thank you.

CM: Thank you very much.

PC: Good night.

CM: Good night.

KG: Chris Miller is with the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside. We reached him in Bolton, in the UK. You can find more on this story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

Part 2: Gene editing study, Judith Jones obit

Gene editing study

Guest: Kerry Bowman

KG: For the first time in the U.S., scientists have used gene editing and human embryos. They did it to try and remove a dangerous gene mutation from an embryo that's linked to a fatal heart disease. And the resulting study which was published in the journal Nature, could give hope to parents who risk passing on genetic diseases. Kerry Bowman is a bioethicist at the University of Toronto who's been following the study. We reached him in Toronto.

PC: Dr. Bowmen, this new study about work on human embryos to remove genetic mutations. It's been described as ground breaking. Just how significant is it?

KERRY BOWMAN: Well, it is quite significant. And it's an extension of the gene editing that's been emerging over the last couple of years because of a new technique called CRISPR-Cas9, which really is essentially cutting out faulty genes in a way that's almost transformative. Most of the research has been done in China. This one was actually done in the United States and showed a lot more success than some of the earlier trials.

PC: Well, without getting too specific. How did these scientists edit these embryos?

KB: Well, it's a complicated process, but it really does come down to simply moving into the genome and finding a single gene mutation that's defective and editing it out. What has happened previously is there was a lot of off target mutations, meaning getting results that you weren't planning on. And one of the things that you see with this study is their success rate was about 72 per cent, but believe me, this is a long, long way from bedside or what we would call “clinical application”. We're really not there yet.

PC: But even at this point, this work was done on human embryos. That work is controversial. What are the risks involved when it comes to correcting DNA like this?

KB: Well, we don't know what we don't know. And that is the problem and what we've often done, we as ethicists, we've really looked at a risk benefit equation. But with some of these emerging technologies, we don't fully understand the risks and we don't fully understand even the benefits. This is why it's really, really tough. So if you are off target mutations then, in fact, the genes could be altered in a way and we don't even know what the outcome could be. And remember these are unborn babies, so there's no direct consent. It's not like someone explaining to you or I what the risk would be and you or I were to say yes or no. You don't have that option in this. But you know there's something much larger I would argue from an ethical point of view. This is really a turning point in the human story. And I know that's a dramatic thing to say, but human outcomes have been shaped by natural selection. And this is a turning point and this is the beginning of turning away from that and designing things, rather than having natural selection be what drives us forward.

PC: I know you said in your opinion that we're a long way off from this being done in the lab to this being done on humans, per se. But in the future how might this research be used by parents say if they're trying to prevent a disease gene from being passed on to their baby?

KB: Well, it could be used in a very beneficial way in which you know if someone is carrying something like Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, there's a long list of things. That gene could be edited out and then people would be able to go on and have children without that. But what I really want to focus on here is that the big implications for this is that it affects the germline. So what that means is that all children born afterwards, descendants of the person that had this alteration, would have the alteration. So, in fact, it would be permanent for all the descendants.

PC: And what other methods can parents look towards besides gene editing if and when they're trying to prevent the passing on of quote/unquote, “damaged genes”?

KB: Yeah, you know there actually is. So what we have right now is it's a combination of two things. So what would happen is if you had a healthy couple, let's imagine, and they were carrying a gene like let's say Huntington's disease what a 50-50 chance. What they could do is go for in-vitro fertilization. So egg meets sperm you know petri dish outside the human body, creation of embryos and then you could do a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. What that means is have a look at what's going on genetically with those embryos. And let's imagine they had six embryos, they could then select two embryos that did not carry Huntington's, transfer those embryos and hopefully go forward to have a child or children. So we already have that option. But remember with this what would happen is, in fact, even more healthy embryos could potentially be created if all goes well.

PC: It is illegal in several countries, including our own, to perform gene editing on embryos that would be used to make a baby. Where ethically do you think Canada should stand on this issue?

KB: You know I think and I know this we have to have a public debate. And I know most people just moan and groan when we say yeah, another public debate. And I know the public doesn't have a single mind about this, but we really have to see what the public thinks on this. You know we're governed by some old legislation in Canada. Not ancient old, but 2004, the human reproductive act and that's a whole package of legislation. It's getting old and we have to relook at this. And we have to start thinking about you know are we going to move forward on this and in many other ways.

PC: And moving forward, you said that you know this new study is significant, but we still have a long ways to go. But what do you think it could mean for the future of human reproduction?

KB: Well, it could mean a lot. What it could mean and I now speak of the far future — the distant future — is a time when we're not only editing a way you know specific disorders, but, in fact, we're looking at enhancement. And we're nowhere near that now. But gene editing, in which we make determinations about what kind of a human is ideal, this is the beginning of it. So we could have those implications. Even if we say something like you know what, we're only doing this for therapeutic purposes and never for enhancement. The line between enhancement and therapy can be blurred at times and even that's going to be a tough position to hold.

PC: There are those who would say this is the first or at least the first of the slippery slope towards designer babies. Does that concern you?

KB: It does because you know when we look at… and again, we're speaking distant future now. But the question of what kind of people are best to be born will eventually be raised. It's essentially being raised now, and the implications would be huge. Society may look towards people with disability and see them in a far more negative way. And you know I know people cringe when the word is used, but I mean it really could open that door to a form of soft eugenics. Meaning you know the genetic health of a population in a very negative way looking at you know what the ideal human should be. But the decisions we make now will affect how we proceed in the future.

PC: Dr. Bowman, thank you for having this conversation with me today.

KB: You're very welcome. Thank you.

PC: Bye bye.

KG: Kerry Bowman is a bioethicist at the University of Toronto. We reached him in Toronto.

[Music: Hip-hop]

Judith Jones obit

Guest: Bronwyn Jones Dunne

KG: “Absent Judith, cookbook publishing as we know it today would not exist.” That's how a colleague described editor Judith Jones, when she received a lifetime achievement award for her work, years ago. And people are echoing that sentiment today, after Ms. Jones died at the age of 93. Judith Jones's influence on the American culinary scene was undeniable. Over a career that spanned decades, she worked on a number of influential cookbooks, including Julia Child's “Mastering the Art of

French Cooking”. And beyond that, without Ms. Jones, many North Americans may never have read “The Diary of Anne Frank”. In 2007, she spoke with WNYC radio host, Leonard Lopate, about cooking in her household when she was growing up. Here's a clip.

SOUNDCLIP

JUDITH JONES: Well, I think in some ways my passion for food was a protest. Because I just knew there was something better out there. And I love to tell the story about my mother when she was in her 90s saying to me Judith, I have a very serious question to ask you. I thought whoops, what's this going to be? And then she said do you really love garlic? I mean to her she couldn't believe that it wasn't an affectation because garlic belonged to something and smelled up the house, smelled up your hands.

LEONARD LOPATE: And this is what immigrants ate.

JJ: Yeah. And that was pretty much the attitude towards food in general. I think it goes back to the Puritan heritage that food is fodder, but you don't make a fuss about it. You don't talk about it.

LL: Well, they eat garlic in England now. So times have changed. Did you ever try to introduce your family to a wider range of food?

JJ: Well, I tried. I found some recipes that I had sent from when I was living in France for three-and-a-half years. And I sent my mother a recipe for a French-a-fide meatloaf and I told her you could put the garlic on top so you could remove it. But at least you'd it permeate. She said that's just what I don't want.

KG: That was Judith Jones speaking in 2007. Bronwyn Jones Dunne is her stepdaughter. We reached her in Walden, Vermont.

PC: Ms. Dunne, I'm sorry for the loss of your mom.

BRONWYN JONES DUNNE: Thank you.

PC: What was it like growing up with a mom like Judith Jones?

BJD: In the beginning, it was probably like growing up with anybody's mother. Because in the early years, she was a young editor and all of the things that happened to her in the course of her career really happened after my youth. But there was something about her that I admired enormously right from the beginning. And that's a funny word to use for… well maybe not for your mother. But it was just she was a special person.

PC: What did you admire of her from such a young age?

BJD: Well, I think, first of all, that it was always fun. It was always fun to be with Judith and my father because I was going back and forth between two families. So when I went to New York and spent weekends and holidays with them, there were always parties, there were always interesting people. Both literary lights, people who were you know were well-known in the literary world. And then you know gradually the food world took over. You know James Beard once gave a party for a book that my father and Judith wrote together and it was about bread. It was called “The bread book”. Anyway, that book was celebrated at a party in James beard’s house and he was family friend. And so I was invited to go and I was terribly intimidated because everybody else was either a famous cookbook author or a chef. And I brought my zucchini bread, which was really pretty pedestrian next to the other offer offerings that night.

PC: Well, tell me about Judith when she was young? She had moved to Paris. How did she end up going to Paris?

BJD: She went to Paris, basically as a young intern for a Doubleday. The publishing company in those days opened an office very early after the war was over and she was there for a specific period of time, which turned into a much longer period of time because she lost her pocketbook on the day before she was supposed to get back onto a boat and returned to New York. And she took that as an omen that she was supposed to stay in Paris, which she fell in love with terrorists. So instead of looking at that as a tragedy, she just looked at it as a challenge.

PC: She lost her pocketbook full of money, her passport?

BJD: Passport, money, the works, the tickets for the boat. It was all in there.

PC: She played such an interesting role in getting a book published in the United States that wasn't a cookbook. How did she see that Anne Frank's “Diary of a Young Girl” was published?

BJD: It's something that probably should be done more often. Books come into publishing houses and are if they're not coming with an agent already in place, or an editor who has already secured the book. They are put in what is called the “slush pile”. If they get read, they're read by the you know the intern or the very most recent young editor that's come into the publishing company. So that was where she was and she started reading that book and she saw that there was something there. And she had to persuade her boss at Doubleday that it was the books that they should publish.

PC: They didn't want to publish the diary of Anne Frank?

BJD: They didn't want to publish it because it was so close to the war and it took quite a while for people to really grasp that aspect of World War II. I know that sounds strange, but there was a kind of a gap in I think belief that anything that terrible could have happened.

PC: And how did you get into editing cook books after that?

BJD: Well that's a story about being, again, you know the sort of youngest editor at Knopf publishing company. And they had never done a cookbook, so the one thing that was working for her was that she had been in Paris and she had been very interested in cooking. And Alfred Knopf had eaten some of her meals. So he said let's let the little Ms. Jones you know try her hand at this. And that's how that book got started. It had been rejected all over the publishing world in America. So I think it'd even come back to Knopf, I think it had been there once before. And she saw you know what was really such an astute thing to see, which is that American housewives were ready for something more complicated than the old Fanny Farmer.

PC: Now, just to be clear, the cookbook you're talking about, It's unknown one: it's Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.

BJD: Yeah, right. I know. We talked you know very recently, Judith and I were talking about how is it possible you know this is that many years later, but what an amazing influence. Because the subject that we all love to talk about now is food, right? And I think that all starts with Mastering the Art. It just brought Americans into thinking about the creativity of food and the sort of the foods that we're not American. I think that was also part of it. These were French recipes. You had to learn how to cook like a French chef and the recipes were so good that you could actually do that.

PC: Well, I imagine amongst all the things you're remembering about your step mom, Judith Jones, today is also the reminder to young editors to read the books that come across their desk.

BJD: Yeah, right. I was an intern in college to a publishing company in New York and I remember Judith saying now remember to read those books.

PC: Ms. Dunne, it’s been very nice to talk to you. And your step mom, Judith Jones, sounds just like she was the loveliest of people. Thank you very much.

BJD: You're very, very welcome.

PC: Take good care.

BJD: Pleasure.

PC: Bye bye.

BJD: Bye.

KG: That was Bronwyn Jones Dunne. Her step mother, editor Judith Jones, died today. She was 93-years-old. We reached Ms. Dunne in Walden, Vermont. If you'd like to hear that interview again, or share it, visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient]

Calgary rescue

KG: Margaret Bell was running beside the Glenmore Reservoir in Calgary on Tuesday when she noticed an empty boat in the water. She thought she saw a beaver floating next to it. Then she realized it was a person. Ms. Bell told the rest of the story to David Gray, host of CBC Calgary's “Eyeopener”.

SOUNDCLIP

MARGARET BELL: I actually ran down to the waterside and I yelled out to him and I tried to get his attention. He was on his back kind of floundering around. And so I took my runners off, I to took my Fitbit off and I went into the water.

DAVID GRAY: So you're swimming?

MB: I’m swimming out to him.

DG: And when you reach him, what kind of state was he in?

MB: He was really disoriented and he was shaking — like really shaking. Obviously, he was quite hypothermic. I had my fleece with me and I said that I was going to throw it to him and he should hang onto that and then just float on his back and I'll pull him in.

DG: So you throw out your fleece and he grabbed it?

MB: He grabbed it.

DG: And you started swimming back to shore?

MB: Yep. And I got him onto a rock right by the water's edge, I rang out my fleece and I told him to cross his arms and I put it over top of him. I got behind him and gave him a big teddy bear hug to warm him up a little bit.

DG: Thank goodness.

MB: And then I said OK, I got to go I got to get some help because I don't have a phone. So I ran up and no one around. And then I did see in the distance someone coming on a bike and I waved him down and I said do you have a phone? And he said yeah. And I said can you call 911, I just pulled someone out of the water. And he said he you did what? I said I'm not kidding really. Can you call 911, I'm going back down to the water.

DG: So you're keeping them warm on the shore.

MB: Yeah.

DG: Just two of you there.

MB: Just two of us.

DG: And when did somebody arrive to help?

MB: Well, I don't know. It felt like a long, time so I actually said I'm going to go check if anyone is coming. And then I saw the top of the ambulance and I just started screaming help.

DG: That's quite a harrowing thing to go through.

MB: Yeah. But you know what? You don't think about it, right? I just knew that he needed help, so I just went.

That was Margaret Bell, speaking with David Gray on CBC Calgary's “Eyeopener”. Ms. Bell is being called a hero for saving a man she saw floating in the water on her morning run. The city of Calgary is planning to nominate her for an award for her efforts.

[Music: Cultural]

Peanut butter escape

KG: The last of the peanut butter men is back behind bars. Brady Kilpatrick was one of 12 prisoners who saved up packets of the spread until they could use it to escape Alabama’’s Walker County Jail on Sunday. As Sheriff James Underwood explained, quote, “They changed the number over the door with peanut butter. They hollered hey, open door so-and-so. But the number the inmates gave the worker was the outside door. And unknowingly to him, he hit that lock and out the door they went. It may sound crazy, but these people are crazy like a fox. That's it in a nutshell.” Unquote. Crafty though they were, 11 of the escapees were caught in a Jif. Brady Kilpatrick, however, appeared to have gotten away smooth. Then, late yesterday, Florida police found him just north of West Palm Beach. So now it's crunch time for Mr. Kilpatrick, as he sits behind bars at the Martin County Jail. The sheriff there is pretty sure he can keep his prisoner from skipping out. He told reporters, quote, “Look, I don't like to brag, but we've never had an escape from the Martin County Jail. And I can tell you this, he won't be getting any peanut butter.” Unquote.

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August 2, 2017 episode transcript

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