Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2025

The Current Transcript for January 31, 2025

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: We've almost got hit so many times, just like walking on the corner and cars just come so close to us and our dog and we all have to like jump back.

SPEAKER: The majority of Toronto residents prioritize safety over speed.

MATT GALLOWAY: Speed kills, the signs say, and it can cost you too. Speed trap cameras are meant to bust drivers going over the limit. As you can imagine, the drivers don't like the fines that follow. In Toronto, vandals keep chopping those cameras down and have even hurled them into a nearby pond. Meanwhile, in Alberta, the cameras are being scrapped on many highways, much to the fury of local police. In 30 minutes, the fight over photo radar and whether it actually works to make streets safer. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

JULA: It feels like in a way, he collected all of these records for me. He's there when I'm talking about the records, when I’m listening to them, and just in that space with me every single day.

MG: When a loved one dies, part of the grieving process is going through their things and finding connections with that person you lost through the stuff they left behind. When the music loving dad of an Alberta woman died, he left her his collection of 10,000 vinyl records. And so she started listening to them one by one and posting her listening sessions online. Millions of people have tuned in. In an hour, the Power of Music to Make Sense of Grief. But we begin with fresh water. Canada has a lot of it. Donald Trump would like to turn on the taps and send some of it south. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

WATER SOVEREIGNTY

Guests: Gary Wilson, Tricia Stadnyk

MG: Canada has so much water. Nearly 9% of our country is covered by it. We have the longest coastline in the world, more lakes than any other country. But in the United States, water scarcity is growing, and President Donald Trump has his eyes on Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: So you have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada and all pouring down. And they have essentially a very large faucet. And you turn the faucet, and it takes one day to turn it. It’s massive. And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles. They wouldn't have to not use more than 30 gallons and 32 gallons. They want to do that. You know, they're trying to do that. And you have so much water and all those fields that are right now barren, the farmers would have all the water they needed.

MG: Donald Trump floated the idea of tapping into Canadian water in the lead up to the election. But what was initially thought to be campaign rhetoric is evolving into a serious policy discussion. And this, as you can imagine, has experts in Canada worried about the future of this country's water sovereignty. We'll hear more about those concerns coming up in a moment. But first, I'm joined by Gary Wilson. He's an environmental journalist with the US publication Great Lakes Now. It's an initiative of Detroit PBS. He's in Chicago. Gary, good morning.

GARY WILSON: Hi. Good morning, Matt. Good to be with you.

MG: Good to have you here. Donald Trump has repeatedly brought up this idea of importing Canadian water, says that we're a giant faucet, essentially, and it would take one day to turn on that tap and the United States would have all the water it needs. What does that signal to you about his approach to dealing with water scarcity in the United States?

GARY WILSON: Well, every time I hear the big faucet statement, I have to chuckle. But it's actually a very serious issue. First, Matt, I would have to mention that in the presidential campaign, water was rarely mentioned in the runup to the election. It was all immigration. It was inflation, reproductive rights, the big ticket items. But as a candidate, Trump felt obligated to campaign in California, even though he had no chance to win there. And water is a big issue in California. It has been for multiple decades. So he took the opportunity to publicly poke the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, whom he doesn't like, by blaming him for the water scarcity. And then without any supporting information, he offered this simplistic solution that you referred to in your intro, that essentially, Canada has a lot of water in the British Columbia snow caps. Let's take it from there. You know, it kind of passed under the radar in the US, except probably in California, maybe other parts of the Pacific Northwest, but certainly not in Canada. So that's how we got where we are.

MG: California is the fifth largest agricultural producer in the world. It's reliant on irrigation. And I mean, here in Canada, a lot of what we eat comes from California. You think of strawberries, you think of spinach, everything in between. A Trump appointee to the committee that advises on transborder policy when it comes to water called this an issue of national security. When you use that sort of language, what does that say about how seriously we should be taking this?

GARY WILSON: We should be taking it very seriously. The person you're referring to is a former representative on the international joint. Rob Sisson is his name. He's a former Trump appointee to the International Joint Commission, the agency that advises the two countries on transborder water issues. Sisson is a Republican, but also known as a conservationist. And he used Trump's statements to put a spotlight on this. You know, California does have water needs. California does provide a lot of food for, you know, for the United States and Canada, other regions of the world. The issue has to be addressed. But reading between the lines, I think what Sisson was saying, and I talked to him directly about this in my reporting for Great Lakes Now, is, you know, there needs to be a rational approach. We need to, you know, to take stock of what the needs are, what the resources are, you know, develop a plan, hopefully between, you know, with successful talks between the two countries and go from there. You know, this shotgun approach isn’t going to work.

MG: There are agreements that govern and manage the water particularly in things like the Great Lakes. We're a day away from Donald Trump ostensibly imposing tariffs on Canada. The relationship between Canada and the United States is a little fraught right now. Should we put any stock into those agreements such as they are?

GARY WILSON: We should. We should. We should be, you know, holding people and including President Trump and members of Congress in the United States accountable for those agreements. The boundary waters treatment, excuse me, agreement goes back to 1909, and it's largely seen as one of the if not the most successful agreements between two countries over water issues. And water issues can be very vexing for countries. And wars have been fought over water issues. And the US and Canada have, you know, just been stellar, you know, in their management of the transborder water issues. Have there been disagreements? Of course. Have they been resolved? Yes, they have, in a peaceful manner. So, you know, we're a beacon for the rest of the world. And some people here are afraid that that could be threatened.

MG: I was going to say is the context different now, not just because of Donald Trump, but because of environmental pressures on agriculture in California, in Arizona, in development pressures in Arizona and California as well, where people are running out of water, and they look north and they see lakes and they see an abundant supply and wonder whether they can tap into that.

GARY WILSON: I think you're on to something, Matt. There is a backdrop of conversation. I wouldn't say it's in the mainstream, but it's always there. The Great Lakes, there's a compact, the Great Lakes Compact that prevents the diversion of large scale water to arid regions. Canada has a companion agreement that mirrors that of the United States, but that hasn't stopped the talk about shipping water to these arid areas. And it's something that is going to require more and more attention as the demand increases and with climate change.

MG: Can I ask a dumb question as to how you would go about doing that? I mean, you'd need giant pipes that go up towards Lake Superior, you put a straw in and you suck the water out of Lake Superior. I mean, that's the kind of doomsday scenario that I think some Canadians imagine. But is that what we're talking about here?

GARY WILSON: Matt, you know, that was the genesis of the, you know, building pipelines that would go from Lake Superior to California or Arizona. The reality of that is the logistics and the expense are daunting. But to closer regions, it's not that far fetched. And right now, just outside of Chicago, 35, 30 miles from Chicago, there are multiple cities. And these cities are outside the Great Lakes Basin who draw water from an aquifer. And that aquifer won't be able to supply by 2030. So they're going to be in the process now of building some pipelines to carry water out to these regions. And there's going to be more of that. Groundwater is under threat. And at least in the US, there's not a viable plan to prevent the depletion of these aquifers.

MG: Those communities had their eyes on Lake Michigan, right?

GARY WILSON: That's correct.

MG: And you wrote about this and suggested that perhaps the efforts to pull some of the water out of Lake Michigan were brushed back.

GARY WILSON: Yeah, there's a lot of, well, first of all, the water comes from the city of Chicago. It's drawn out of Lake Michigan. The city of Chicago is allowed to ship water outside the region based on a Supreme Court decision. So there's nothing illegal happening there. But the bigger threat, I think, is that the city of Chicago sees it as a revenue source. And then water becomes a commodity that could be traded, bought, sold, and now you're getting into dangerous territory and you're setting precedents.

MG: Water already is a commodity, though. I mean, it's bought and sold. People haul water out of aquifers and put it in bottles and ship it all over the world. So I mean, again, going back just finally to, Donald Trump says all sorts of things, but should we be, we being all of us, should be thinking differently and in a more proactive way about the commodification of water now?

GARY WILSON: We definitely should. And, you know, Ottawa’s Maude Barlow, and I assume that many Canadians or most Canadians know of her work.

MG: Council of Canadians.

GARY WILSON: Yeah, Council of Canadians. So she was, she's best known as the, probably as the senior advisor to the United Nations on water issues. She once led a campaign bringing water to Detroit for residents who had their water shut off for the inability to pay. But Maude Barlow has been sounding the alarm for a long time and trying to, you know, to rally people to understand that, to understand what she refers to as the myth of abundance of water. Canada has a lot of water, but it's not as much as most Canadians think. The same in the US. So she and others have been pleading for people to start paying attention to these issues.

MG: Glad to talk to you about this, Gary. Thank you very much.

GARY WILSON: Glad to be with you.

MG: Gary Wilson is an environmental journalist with the US publication Great Lakes Now. That's an initiative of Detroit PBS, and we reached him in Chicago. Growing US interest in Canada's water, as you can imagine, has raised concerns among some experts here about this country's ability to protect its natural resources. Tricia Stadnyk is a professor and Canada research chair in hydrological modelling at the University of Calgary. Tricia, good morning to you.

TRICIA STADNYK: Good morning.

MG: How seriously do you take President Trump's comments about turning on the giant faucet here?

TRICIA STADNYK: Yeah, look, I mean, Trump loves a good headline. We know that. And he intentionally provokes. But the reality is this is something that Canadians should be paying attention to. This is not something that just started in this election campaign or presidency. In fact, back in 2018, President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding, basically pledging to provide more water to California and using whatever means necessary to find supply. So this is something that's really been in the forefront of his mind and his administration's mind for quite some time.

MG: How has climate change, this is something that we asked Gary. How has climate change reshaped water security between Canada and the United States?

TRICIA STADNYK: I mean, ultimately, what it's done is changed the demand to supply ratio. So in the past, particularly here in Canada, supply was more abundant than demand. Hence why water issues and water pricing were so low and low on the radar and not really in the forefront of anyone's mind. But now, particularly in western Canada, as the drought from California starts to creep north because of climate change and global warming, we're starting to see demand that is far greater than supply and exponentially increasing, particularly when we look at the population growth across the West.

MG: Can I ask you, this is something, again, that I asked Gary, but I think people are just curious about it. Is it practical to move water from north to south?

TRICIA STADNYK: Look, practical, it's costly. It's expensive.

MG: It's possible.

TRICIA STADNYK: It is possible. We have proven that time and again with the massive amount of water engineering infrastructure that we have, particularly in northern Canada. We're actually masters at controlling water. And we've been doing so for many decades to produce hydroelectricity. So is it possible? Absolutely. Is it going to be easy? Absolutely not.

MG: You wrote a piece in The Conversation that said, in your words, that this country is not prepared to defend threats to water security. What do you mean by that?

TRICIA STADNYK: Yeah. Well, unlike our Southern counterparts who have a national authority that actually governs the water issues and they have legislative teeth, they can control the water and they can control the ministerial decisions across all of the states in the US, Canada has no such organization. So we do have several national agreements. The International Boundary Water Act, which my counterpart, Gary Wilson, referred to as the Boundary Waters Treaty, governs the management of water between Canada and the US. And then we have the Canada Water Act, which was ratified back in 1970. And we have the newly formed Canada Water Agency that is the first federal agency dedicated with a water portfolio. However, they are positioned as a connector or facilitator agency and have no decision making or legislative powers. So essentially, under our current legislation, provinces and territories are the legal owners, if you can call it that, of water, and oversee the day-to-day management and control of water. So it's very fragmented in Canada, and we're not well positioned as a federal or national body to stand up to this kind of rhetoric.

MG: If the United States were to actively push for greater access to Canadian water, how do you push back on that? Again, we're in the context of the relationship, whether it's trade or beyond, between Canada and the United States being in a completely different world now than it was before this election, for example. It feels like the norms, if they haven't been tossed out the windows, then certainly are on, you know, the window ledge. So what do you do about that? How do you push back on that?

TRICIA STADNYK: Yeah. Well, Rob Sisson was, you know, and I know commissioner Sisson from his former portfolio really pushing for a rational approach. And I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that we need to take stock of the resources that we have, develop a plan and allow diplomacy to take over this. As Gary Wilson had said, there's the Boundary Waters Treaty, and that water treaty has really been exemplary in the world view in terms of how we manage water between national and international borders.

MG: But is this a different time now?

TRICIA STADNYK: It is. And so I think because of the increasing pressure for demands and the reduced supply, the logistics of that diplomacy and the tone perhaps of the diplomatic action as well as the coordinated response needs to be different, which is why I'm really trying to push for raising this profile with the government. And whatever government we have next really needs to take this portfolio seriously and have a national body that can actually address this kind of issue.

MG: Why shouldn't we share more water with the United States? I mean, if we have it and they need it and we use the products, whether it's your almond milk in your smoothie or the spinach that you're having as a salad tonight or the strawberries you might be having, if we use the products that are grown using that water, why shouldn't we contribute?

TRICIA STADNYK: Yeah, that's a great question, and I get asked this question often. And really, what it comes down to is a misconception of how much supply we actually have. So in Canada, we are blessed relative to the rest of the world with a large supply of freshwater. That said, that doesn't mean that we are adequately meeting our own domestic demand. In fact, across western Canada, for the past three years, we were in quite a severe drought where exceptional measures had to be taken. Alberta as a province had to renegotiate water licences for the first time in its 118-year history. So we do have areas of vulnerability. And I think we really don't have a good handle on what our supply is and how that's changing with climate change and what the increased demand is. And until we do that, I think that we really need to be conservative in our approach of making long term commitments that we may or may not be able to stand up to in the future.

MG: Tell me more about that here. Because again, the statistic is that Canada has something like 70% of the world's renewable freshwater supply. And you could assume if you're a Canadian and you hear that stats and you take a look at the lakes and rivers around us, that we have a lot of water, we have almost an endless supply. But you say that we are in some ways water greedy.

TRICIA STADNYK: We absolutely are. So we do have the highest supply per person in the entire world of freshwater. However, we are also the largest consumers of freshwater per person in the world. We consume far more than what is actually required by the United Nations for developed, developed nations. We should only be using about 250 litres per day per person. We use on average across Canada 400 to 450 litres per person per day.

MG: Why are we using so much water?

TRICIA STADNYK: Yeah, great question. Because it's cheap. We have the lowest cost of water in the entire world, and that's because we've had so much. So we've never really had to worry about this until now. But the climate is changing and our political climate is changing and the demand is changing. So it's really time to revisit a water market, pricing of water and how we're handling our water resources as well as our mindset around water.

MG: What do we need here, just finally, in this country to take this issue seriously, not just, you know, the eyes from the United States peering over the lakes thinking I wouldn’t mind some of that water, but here, to understand better what we should be doing. If you say that governments aren't taking it seriously, whatever government comes into power next, what should it be doing?

TRICIA STADNYK: So first of all, I think education of the public around water issues, water scarcity, water pricing, where we stand relative to the world. So Canadians are constantly hearing how much water we have. That is true. That is a true statement. What we don't see is how much water we consume, how much water waste there is, and how we have a severe lack of conservation mindset and conservation policy. Up until recently, we actually were not even able to implement greywater reuse systems, for example, for conservation because it just simply didn't exist in the legislation. The building and the plumbing codes need to be updated, and we need to pave the way for having more conservation infrastructure. But the governments also need to take very seriously not only the threat to our security and sovereignty, but also the fact that there are some factions of our government that are open to opportunities, such as these opportunities have not gone unnoticed by the Alberta government. The finance minister on CBC Eyeopener just yesterday, Nate Horner, suggested for the new board and the new Heritage Fund that they could invest in things where Alberta has a strategic advantage, specifically water challenges in the state south of us and the opportunities with fresh water and freshwater infrastructure. And I think we really need to be taking a long, hard look at what that means for our own domestic water supply and our own water security.

MG: Tricia, thank you very much for this.

TRICIA STADNYK: You're welcome. Thank you.

MG: Tricia Stadnyk is a professor and Canada research chair in hydrological modelling at the University of Calgary. What do you make of the interest from the United States in our water, but also what we perhaps should or shouldn't be doing when it comes to our own consumption of water? You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your CBC news, we're going to talk about speed cameras, photo radar, and whether it actually makes streets safer. That's coming up in six minutes here on The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

SPEED CAMERAS

Guests: Devin Dreeshen, Valerie Smith, Charles Marohn

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current. In October of 2021, Valdemar and Fatima Avila were stopped at a red light on Parkside Drive in Toronto. A speeding driver rammed into their car, and they were both killed. Not long after, the city installed a speeding camera there, and it quickly became Toronto's most profitable speed camera. Since it was installed, the camera has led to more than 65,000 speeding tickets worth a total of about $7 million. But that camera also became a target.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: The infamous speed camera south of Algonquin Avenue has been chopped off its base.

MG: That was last November. Just one day after that speed camera was replaced, it was found severed again. And then in December.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: It’s happened again. A speed camera on Parkside Drive has been torn down for the third time in recent weeks. As police try to figure out who keeps taking it down, the city is planning on how to deal with this.

MG: It turns out that Parkside camera isn't alone. Across Canada, there are reports of speed cameras being vandalized.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: In Vineland and Lincoln, there is a person or persons with a power grinder and a gripe about speed cameras. Over the weekend, three of the cameras or camera housings were cut down, all of them in front of schools where locals say some drivers go way too fast.

REPORTER: Sudbury police say a total of 12 acts of vandalism have been reported since the cameras were first installed.

REPORTER: The camera was installed on the 25th side road between the ninth and 10th line. The township says it was flagged as a high speed area. They suspect someone used a chainsaw to cut the post down.

MG: In the province of Alberta, the cameras have been shot at. The government of Alberta recently announced new restrictions on these photo radar sites, including banning them on provincial highways beginning on the 1st of April. Devin Dreeshen is Alberta's Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors and joins us now. Minister, good morning.

DEVIN DREESHEN: Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me on.

MG: Thanks for being here. People have shot at the cameras in your province?

DEVIN DREESHEN: Yeah. There haven't been as many as, you know, three times in a row as some of the cameras I hear in your neck of the woods. But yeah, the main reasons why Alberta, we made the changes to photo radar was to make sure that there was public confidence in the use of photo radar. And as you had mentioned, you know, high ticketed areas that generate lots of revenue, we have that in Alberta as well. And the main reason why the provincial government made the changes that we did was to try to instill confidence that the use of photo radar would be used for traffic safety and not just to revenue, not just to generate revenue for municipalities. And I think we've found the sweet spot with the changes that we will be implementing on April 1st of this year.

MG: You haven't removed those cameras, though, from city streets, right?

DEVIN DREESHEN: No. So Total in Alberta was about 2200 photo radar sites, which is the most use of photo radar sites in the country. And with the changes that we implemented to restrict it to school zones, construction zones and playground zones should take that number down to about 650. That still makes Alberta the number one user of photo radar in the country. But it really does take it away from where people would call them, you know, fishing holes or cash cow locations that you would set up at a speed transition zone, a place where people are comfortable going one speed, but the speed limit is obviously set at a lower rate. And the flow of traffic was always giving everyone speeding tickets but wasn't actually improving any collision stats. So that's why we made these changes to make sure that again, we could instill confidence that photo radar was being used for traffic safety.

MG: You made that announcement about scaling back the use of speed cameras while you were wearing a barbecue apron with the words cash cow in a circle with a line through it. Why was that part of your message that these are cash cows?

DEVIN DREESHEN: Well, I didn't make up the term cash cow. It's the previous NDP governments and PC governments in Alberta have called it that, and I think most drivers do as well in certain locations. So we're going in for a little flair of the theatrics to make sure that people knew that going forward, if you did get a voter radar ticket, if you do get a photo radar ticket in the mail, that it's because you're going by someone working in a construction zone, you're going by a school zone where kids are playing and, you know, you shouldn't really be speeding, obviously. So that’s why we really wanted to make that visual impact. Going forward, if you got a photo radar ticket, it was because, you know, you're in a vulnerable area where people are obviously conversing with vehicles. And we wanted to make sure that they knew that they should be slowing down, obviously, in those sensitive areas.

MG: I mean, it's only a cash cow if you drive over the speed limit, right? I mean, the way to avoid having to pay the ticket is to not speed.

DEVIN DREESHEN: True. But also, when you look at what makes road safe and traffic safe is going in the flow of traffic. So if traffic is going 80 through a 60 zone as it's transitioning, if you slam on your breaks and hit 60 as soon as you're in that 60, you're actually being more of a danger to the road than going with the flow of traffic. So there's lots of other measures. That's where, you know, conventional enforcement of speeding is it takes all of those factors into consideration where if it was just speed cameras that indiscriminately just take photos of everything, you know, we've had spots where we've had tens of thousands of infractions. And when you look at the number of collisions in these areas, they're in the single digits. And so when you have a camera taking hundreds of photos and giving hundreds of tickets every day in a location but it's one of the safest locations in a city, that's obviously not about traffic safety. That's about revenue generation, the millions of dollars that it brings into the municipality. So that's changing in Alberta.

MG: Mark Neufeld, who's the head of the Calgary Police Service and the president of the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police, has criticized your announcement. He said you wearing the apron with a cash cow on it was an insult to police and perhaps was unprofessional, that you should have considered citizens who have been killed or injured on Alberta roadways. But he also says that photo radar is working. He said that Calgary had 24 traffic deaths in 2023, 25 so far this year, and the numbers have dropped considerably with the use of photo radars in the past. The chief says if we take that away, those treatments, if they're gone, the inescapable conclusion is that we get more collisions, and statistically, some of those collisions will be fatal. So is he wrong?

DEVIN DREESHEN: Well, since 2019, there's been a freeze on the use of photo radar in the province of Alberta. And since then, we've actually demanded statistics from all the 24 municipalities that use photo radar. And we've actually seen in the case of Calgary that the photo radar collisions or accidents at photo radar locations have gone up.

MG: So just to be clear, though, the chief says that the numbers have gone down. And he says that if you take these cameras out, that the roads are going to be less safe, that aside from the money issue, that the roads will actually be less safe. I just wonder if there's something that you know that he doesn't in that regard.

DEVIN DREESHEN: Well, there's three, three municipalities in the province, Hinton, Leduc and Fort McMurray, that have taken the photo radar out back in 2013. And when we, 2023, I apologize. And when you look at the statistics from when they've pulled out their photo radar back in 2024 compared to what they were before when they actually had photo radar, so photo radar statistics compared to without photo radar in the exact same community, their collision rates actually went down. So it's actually unique in Alberta because we have so much data in so many different communities that communities that actually removed photo radar actually saw their collision rates go down. And that's even with, you know, population increase over that time frame as well. So it is quite an interesting story when you actually dig into the numbers of photo radar.

MG: And for people just finally, before I let you go, for people who would say that this is politicking about public safety, that not just a photo op, but that you are appeasing those who are upset because they have to pay a fine and that that can impact public safety, what would you say to them?

DEVIN DREESHEN: Well, there's three and a half million licensed Albertans to drive on our roads, and driving is a privilege. And it's something that we always try to find out ways that we can engage with the public to make sure that they're driving as safe as possible. And obviously, we have winter. And so getting those messages out, whether it's going by snow ploughs or driving safely or not stunting, not driving impaired, all of these are really important traffic safety things that we do as the Ministry of Transportation and Economic Corridors to make sure that drivers are safe. Photo radar is a tool. That's why we're not banning photo radar. We're just limiting its use to try to instill confidence in, you know, Albertans in the use of photo radar going forward.

MG: Minister, I'm really glad to have you here as part of this conversation. Thanks for being here this morning.

DEVIN DREESHEN: Thanks, Matt. Take care.

MG: And you. Devin Dreeshen is Alberta's Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors. He was in his riding of Innisfail-Sylvan Lake this morning. There are moves across this country to evaluate speed cameras. The city of Winnipeg has asked the province to expand its photo radar program. Newfoundland and Labrador is planning to expand theirs as well. Valerie Smith is director of Road Safety Programs at Parachute Canada. This is a charity dedicated to injury prevention. Valerie, good morning to you.

VALERIE SMITH: Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. So drivers who get the ticket don't like photo radar, but from your perspective, what does the research show about the effectiveness of speed cameras? Does it make roads safer?

VALERIE SMITH: Yes, it absolutely does. So we know from a variety of studies, both internationally, right here in Canada, that speed cameras are effective on a variety of levels. So they slow people down. And when we, when people slow down, we know the number of total collisions is reduced. And in some studies, we've seen collisions were reduced by almost 55%. We see that same trend when we look at reduction in injury collisions where people are actually being hurt and sent to the hospital. In those cases, we've seen up to a 31% reduction. And then we also see from the research that these speed detection devices in many communities have reduced serious and fatal injury collisions by up to 45%. And these are good studies that are being done all over the world.

MG: Why do you think there's a discrepancy between what you're saying and what the minister is seeing?

VALERIE SMITH: So what I heard from the minister is he's speaking about these isolated cases where statistics have increased where speed cameras have been set up. But I would argue that the majority of areas where speed cameras have been set up in Canada and overseas, we've seen reductions. So of course, you can always pull some stats out that make and rationalize your case. But in many cases where speed cameras are set up and if you're seeing an increase, there's so many other factors. You know, there's these super sized vehicles that are on the road and reducing visibility to pedestrians. There is distracted driving. We know that's increasing. So there's lots of other factors. But I would argue that speed cameras are working effectively, and we know that.

MG: Do you understand why people hate them? I mean, and it's not just going and chopping them down, but the fact that the minister was talking about you come out of a zone where you're driving at 80 kilometres an hour, switches to 60, and suddenly you get dinged or thousands of people get dinged because there's that quick change and you haven't eased off the gas quick enough. Do you understand why there are strong feelings, to put it politely, about them?

VALERIE SMITH: Yeah, I mean, completely. There's going to be pushback. But you made a really good argument. I mean, people that are getting the tickets, they're speeding, right? And so I don't really get it why, you know, I wonder why some people think it's okay to ignore the law and to drive fast. And they get cranky and they get upset when they get a ticket.

MG: To the minister's point, I mean, this isn't a partisan issue. He called it a cash cow, but says that that phrase has been used by NDP and conservative governments. People are annoyed maybe that they get the ticket, but they also wonder where the money from the ticket goes if millions and millions of dollars are being collected. What should happen with the money that's collected from those tickets?

VALERIE SMITH: Yeah, so that's a good point. And in many cases, there are some jurisdictions, when they collect the revenue, which can be significant, it goes into a general pot. And I think there's a lack of transparency there. I think governments, municipalities, provinces need to work much harder to demonstrate where the funds are going. And there are jurisdictions that are redirecting revenue back into safer roads, into highway safety, into police and court accountability. So there is a perceived idea around the cash cow, but in fact, automated speed enforcement is expensive. You know, it's expensive. The technology is expensive. It's expensive to implement and it's expensive to roll out. And what people don't understand is in some cases, it's about 30 to 50% of the revenue that's being generated is being expensed to the rollout of the program.

MG: But for the, and it's not profit, but for the money that's made on top of that, I mean, in Toronto, there was that one camera that has generated something like $7 million in fines. Where specifically should that money go if this is about making streets safer?

VALERIE SMITH: I would say it should go into a road safety fund. It should go into improving our roads. In many cases, we have intersections all over our country that need to be improved. We can look at road redesign. We can look at engineering our roads to make them safer. It doesn't have to just be speed enforcement. That's one piece of it. We can look into using those funds to raise awareness to our citizens on why we're doing these programs. You know, the more citizens that are engaged around this and recognize that it's of value to them and their family, the more political will we’ll have to keep going with it.

MG: You're in a small community, and I mean, we were talking about the cameras being chopped down in bigger cities. Why does this matter to you in the community that you live in?

VALERIE SMITH: Well, I'm back and forth between Toronto and Kraemer, where I live, and I have a 15-year-old daughter. And whether she's in Toronto or whether she's in the small town I live, people are speeding. Right outside the door on a county road in Kraemer, there was a fatality about two years ago. And this is on a country road where people were supposed to be going 50. And we're seeing speeds of up to 90 on curved country roads. So I think it matters anywhere. And again, coming back to that cash cow piece, the money has to go somewhere. And people get upset because they're getting fined and they're having to separate with their money. In that case, I would just say don't speed. Whether you're on a highway, whether you're on an urban road, go the speed limit. You know, you're not going to get where you want to go that much faster by speeding.

MG: Valerie, we'll leave it there. Good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

VALERIE SMITH: Thanks so much, Matt.

MG: Valerie Smith is director of Road Safety Programs at Parachute Canada. It's dedicated to injury prevention. We reached her this morning in Collingwood, Ontario. Charles Marohn is a civil engineer and the founder and president of Strong Towns. It's a non-profit advocating for safe, livable cities. He wrote an article for his website saying that speed cameras are not the answer. He's in Brainerd, Minnesota, this morning. Good morning to you.

CHARLES MAROHN: Good morning.

MG: What is the argument against speed cameras? You said that they are an evolutionary dead end.

CHARLES MAROHN: Guy, I don't know it’s I argue per say against speed cameras in all instances. But speed cameras as like the answer, as the thing we do, and then now we clap our hands and walk away like we accomplished something is really the wrong approach to traffic safety. I mean, this entire conversation today kicked off with you telling a story about how someone was killed on an intersection. You then installed a traffic speed camera, and now it's the most profitable camera in Canada. Well, okay, you're getting a lot of people for, you're fining a lot of people who are speeding. Are you actually reducing speed? Would that have actually saved the lives of the people who are killed? That's really, really questionable.

MG: And so if hitting people with a fine isn't the answer, what do you do? I mean, maybe there isn't one answer, but how do you start this? How do you go about getting people to slow down?

CHARLES MAROHN: Well, I think the first thing we have to do is understand why people speed. I mean, this is not like a social deviancy for the most part. When you go out to a street and 95% of the vehicles are going over the speed limit, you can say, you know, we're broken people and we're all deviants. But the reality is the streets are designed, they're overengineered for speed.

MG: Well, and as the minister said, part of this is about going with the flow of traffic. If everybody is going at 100 kilometres an hour in an 80 zone and you are plodding along, you may be a danger, right?

CHARLES MAROHN: That's absolutely correct. When you're on a highway, if you look at a highway situation, you want the flow of traffic to be consistent. And so if the speed limit is artificially too low or if you're slowing people down artificially, you're going to create a lot of instances of crashes. You're going to induce crashes where you wouldn't otherwise have them. I think, though, when you switch onto a local street, this is where we get into tension because when we have complex urban environments where cars are turning in and out of traffic, where you have intersections, where you have people walking, people biking, there the design ethic needs to change. And it needs to be about designing streets that actually get people to the speed that would be safe. And for the most part, we don't do that. We over engineer our local streets as if they were highways and then put artificially low speed limits on them and, you know, get mad at people or say people are deviant if they drive the speed the street is designed for.

MG: Okay, so speak as a civil engineer. How do you engineer those streets such that it leads people to drive at a slower speed?

CHARLES MAROHN: Essentially, you need edge friction. You need a driver to feel uncomfortable when they are driving at a speed that is unsafe. So if we need to lower speeds, we narrow up lanes. We bring in the curbs. We add trees on the edge instead of take them out. All of the things that we do to make a street wider and safer for driving at high speeds, we do the reverse when we want to lower speeds. We create that edge friction. You want the driver to have some tension. And drivers, when they have tension, will take their foot off the gas.

MG: That if it doesn't seem like a highway, people are going to drive like a highway. If it feels like a city street, people will drive slower.

CHARLES MAROHN: That's exactly right. And I think we have to start with the idea that people are good. I mean, people are not, no one gets up and is like, I'm a, you know, don't care about the law. I'm going to drive as fast as I want. We have spent a lot of resources, a lot of money overdesigning, overengineering streets for speeds. Speed cameras just are not a good compensation for that.

MG: And yet, it's often cheaper to, I mean, cameras I'm sure are expensive, but it's often cheaper to plonk a camera down in a neighbourhood rather than redesign the street, right? Or at least, people believe it's cheaper.

CHARLES MAROHN: Well, as someone who is very concerned about traffic safety, I feel like the evolutionary dead end is the notion that when we plop the speed camera up, we've actually done something. Like, okay, now we're done. We solved this problem or we’re taking care of it. I've said speed cameras can be part of the answer if we have an ethic that we're going to go out and actually fix the street. So if we know a place is really unsafe, people are speeding through here, there's a lot of complexity going on, this is a dangerous spot and we put up a speed camera, all of that revenue that we collect at that spot should go back to actually fixing that spot. It creates all kinds of weird incentives when the government is essentially making money off of this bad situation. The goal of every speed camera program should be to have the camera go away because we fixed the street.

MG: So you take that money and you re-engineer the streets so that you don't need the camera in the first place.

CHARLES MAROHN: In the most extreme instances where we have to use cameras, that should be the end result.

MG: Where have you seen this work? In the studies that you have done and looking around the world, where have you seen it actually work such that the street is re-engineered so that people will drive slower?

CHARLES MAROHN: I have not seen these two things linked, and I think that is the problem. There are lots and lots of examples of cities going out and re-engineering streets to get lower speeds. That is very common. That's being done all over North America, including in Canada. We were in Medicine Hat a couple of years ago, my organization, Strong Towns, working with them, and there were a number of streets where they had put up plastic bollards and other things to get lower speed limits in school zones and in other areas. The problem with speed cameras or automated enforcement is that once you go down that route, the incentives to actually go out and fix stuff kind of go away. And you get what you quoted the police chief earlier, is kind of an enforcement mentality and this kind of thing you can't back off from otherwise you’re anti-safety or, you know, anti-police, that kind of thing. So I feel like I have not seen an instance where these have been paired.

MG: I just wonder whether it does change any behaviour, though. I mean, I have no idea. And it's not, you know, more virtuous than anybody, but I just don't know how much it costs when you get the ticket in the mail. But I'm assuming if the ticket is substantial enough, doesn't that slow people down? You think, wow, that's a lot of money. Maybe I won't drive that fast next time I drive down the road.

CHARLES MAROHN: There is no doubt that it will change behaviour. I think the question is like how does that change in behaviour relate to safety? So a lot of times, the studies that are done will say, hey, here's the number of tickets we issued or here's the speed change at this spot. What happens 10 feet after that speed zone? I mean, what happens once you get through that area? And what happens is that people who know the cameras there, they essentially, you know, teach to the test. They know what the test is. I've got to be a certain amount above the speed limit here to avoid that camera. I will be at that amount or slightly below. And then once I get through that camera, I can resume my normal driving behaviour. That's pretty common.

MG: I think it's interesting, just finally, that you said one of the key things is to understand that people are good, that people generally want to have, you know, safer streets in the communities that they live in, but that we, we as a society haven't given them the tools to do that.

CHARLES MAROHN: I feel like we put drivers in a really vulnerable situation. I know there's a lot of talk of, you know, road rage and people changing when they're behind the wheel. And yes, all those things happen. Driving is a really tense experience in a lot of ways because the design says go fast. We've engineered the street for ease, for you to drive very, very quickly, and then we have all this tension that doesn't allow us to do that. It's a tense situation.

MG: Chuck, it's good to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

CHARLES MAROHN: Thanks so much. Take care.

MG: And you. Charles Marohn is a civil engineer, founder and president of Strong Towns. He was in Brainerd, Minnesota. Are speed cameras cash cows? Is it actually a way to slow people down, photo radar? And if not, how do you get people to ease off the accelerator? You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

JULA: After he passed, I was the one in the family who got to have the records, and it took me a while before I even wanted to be in the same room as them.

MG: Jula’s father was the biggest music lover she had ever met. And when he died, she inherited his collection of 10,000 vinyl records. She's now listening to them one by one. We'll talk about what she's learned about her dad through music coming up.

[Music: Theme]

DAD RECORDS

Guest: Jula

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current. When someone close to you dies, part of the grieving process is being reminded of them, sometimes in the most mundane ways. Maybe it's smelling one of their favourite foods. Maybe it's seeing a film you saw together or hearing a song that takes you back to them and the times you shared.

SOUNDCLIP

JULA: Welcome to another day of listening to my late father's record collection. What are we going to listen to today? I picked one that I really associate with my father, The Monkees.

[Song: “The Monkees (Theme song from the Show)” by The Monkees]

JULA: My favourite song off of this album would be the first song, the theme from The Monkees. By far, not the best song of the album, but growing up, I used to always watch The Monkees TV show with my father. But as I'm listening, I can truly just imagine the title screen from the TV show. And it's a fun, energetic, carefree song with that classic guitar solo cheery in the middle section.

MG: This is Jula. We're only using her first name because she worries about her name and location being shared online. A few years ago, her dad died, and one of the many things they shared was a love of music. Jula inherited her dad's record collection, 10,000 vinyl albums, and she is listening her way through it. Every day, she pulls an album from the shelves and shares the music and her short reviews on TikTok and Instagram. And with a combined audience of more than half a million followers, it seems that her listening project has struck a chord. Jula, good morning.

JULA: Good morning.

MG: I'm sorry to hear about your dad.

JULA: Thank you.

MG: This is such a neat project. And one of the reasons that we wanted to talk to you was about what it tells us about you and about your dad and about the connection that music can have and about the things that people leave when they die. Tell me a little bit about your father and who he was.

JULA: My father's name was Richard. He was an English literature teacher and an accordion player, as well as a shy singer songwriter.

MG: He played accordion in like the Polish hall.

JULA: Yes, that's correct.

MG: What did he love about music? I mean, tell me a little bit about the connection that you had with him over music.

JULA: Yeah, he loves music. He was probably like the biggest music lover to this day I've ever met. He was a big collector of vinyl and CD's. He was always listening to something. And almost every single memory I have of him somehow either has music in the background. And anytime he played anything, he would describe to you what you're listening to, tell you back story over what you're listening to. He was obsessed.

MG: Do you remember when that started? Do you remember the first memory that you have of him where there was music kind of in the air?

JULA: There's so many. Almost like I have so many memories of just playing, like playing with my dolls. And he would be if he was there, he would be sitting there playing his guitar while I was playing with my dolls. So I have a lot of memories of him actually singing his own music to me. I have a lot of memories of him playing a vinyl or a CD while I'm playing, or we would go for walks and we would play this game where he would tell me to say a word and he would, he would tell me a song that has that word in it. And he was a really, you could say any word, and somehow, he knew a song that had that word in it.

MG: Like do you remember an example of that?

JULA: I can't remember what the song was, but he was, he would, sometimes he would like prompt you. He'd be like, say like, say like, like printer, and okay, printer. And then he would just, I don't know, he would just go off. I can't remember exactly.

MG: And he had a huge collection.

JULA: Yeah, he had a huge collection. He also had CD collection, but he had a really big CD collection as well, but I didn't get the CD's.

MG: So how did this start for you? I mean, he dies, you inherit this collection, and then you try to figure out what to do with it. And one of the things that you do is you start to listen to it, but then you start to post those listening sessions online. How did that start?

JULA: Yeah, it was actually kind of a slow process. After he passed, I was the one in the family who got to have the records. And it took me a while before I even wanted to be in the same room as them. Actually, I just moved back into my family home, which is where the records are living. And when I moved back, I put my bed into the room with the records because it was the nicest room with the most sunlight. And so every day, I was just confronted with them. And this started in April. And I just started to slowly listen to them as just part of my morning routine. And one day, I had a friend over and we were listening to the records, and I was talking to her about how much I miss having a dialogue about music and how much I miss just like playing, because this was my father's music, so how much I miss like listening to his music and then hearing about it or talking about it with him and how that's been really obviously gone from my life. And my friend made the suggestion that I should post about it online. She was like, that's what social media is for. Like, I'm sure you'll find at least 20 people who also like this music. You're, you know, they'll talk to you about it. That's what people use, that's what people use social media for. And so then in September, I just made a video and posted online and it blew up.

MG: More than 20 people watched it.

JULA: Yeah, it was really fast.

MG: Like something like 14 million people have seen that video?

JULA: Yeah. I was like sitting there. I was so embarrassed when I first posted it. I like blocked people that I knew from my life. And I just like asked my closest friends, could you like my video? Could you follow me? And by like a couple hours, I had over 10,000 followers.

MG: Can I go back to something that you said earlier, which is that you had moved your bed into that room where the records were and that you were confronted with them. What were you, I mean, they're physical things, but there's something more than that, right? What were you confronted with?

JULA: Yeah, there was a lot. Obviously, I was confronted with his, his loss. Actually, quite after he passed away, I moved out of the house just to go to university. But I hadn't been in that room or in that space for a while. When I would come home to visit, I would never go into that room. And sometimes, we would talk about it. Like Jula, what are you going to do with the records? Everybody was always saying, you can sell them if you want to, or you can just go through them and pick the ones that are your favourite. And so when I was in that room, there was just like a big, even though they took up so much space and they were so big, it felt like a big loss and not a gain. And then also just I didn't know what to do with them. I knew how much my father had loved them. And I was thinking how they take, like they take up so much space or why did I inherit this? I'm like, do I even want to listen to them? And it was just a slow process of just being like, okay, maybe I can begin by listening to a record in here that I know and I don't associate with him and I've listened to in my own life. I listen to a lot of my mom's favourite albums from there. And then one day, I just pulled a random one and started listening to it. I was actually surprisingly really comforted by that experience.

MG: What was the first one that you pulled out?

JULA: I don't remember exactly. I think it was The Hollies. It's like a Hollies album. I listened to like the title, The Hollies one. But it was some Random Hollies album, I think.

MG: And all of this is the stuff that you didn't know before? Like you're discovering this as you're kind of pulling the records out of the stacks?

JULA: Yeah, some of them I know, like, or sometimes I know the artists, but I've never listened to the whole album. I'll just know their hits. And sometimes, they're just really deep cuts for me that I have no clue where they even come from.

MG: You're about a hundred records into his collection now.

JULA: Yeah.

MG: I want to spin one, and then we'll get you to talk about it. Have a listen to this.

[Song: “Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes” by Paul Simon]

MG: That’s Paul Simon and “Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes.” Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing with him there. Tell me about Paul Simon and what hearing that did to you.

JULA: My father loved, loved, loved, loved Paul Simon. I actually still have some of his T-shirts that have Paul Simon's face on them. And he loved it. He thought Paul Simon was one of the greatest or is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. And he would actually get into these really big discussions with my mom because my mom's a big Leonard Cohen fan. So I have a lot of memories of like him playing Paul Simon and then my mom being like, no, no, like Leonard Cohen is better. And they would talk and they would both like read books of their respected singer songwriter and just kind of share facts with each other and songs. Yeah. I remember…

MG: Keep going.

JULA: I remember listening to Graceland a lot with him. And just like such a… I remember even like I think dancing to that record with him, where I would like put on little performances to “Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes.”

MG: He was also a huge Burton Cummings fan?

JULA: Yes, a big Burton Cummings fan. He told everybody that he was the biggest Burton Cummings fan. He loved him.

MG: Let's play a little bit of Burton Cummings. This is “Break It To Them Gently.”

[Song: “Break It To Them Gently” by Burton Cummings]

MG: Why do you think he loved Burton Cummings so much?

JULA: I know he really resonated with Burton Cummings’ life. And I know Burton didn't have a very good relationship with his father. And my father really resonated with a lot of the lyrics. A lot of his sadness that he was going through really aligned with Burton's, so he felt like Burton Cummings was his friend.

MG: And he’d seen him in concert, right? I mean, what is the story about this photo that was in one of the Burton Cummings records?

JULA: Oh yeah, he saw him in concert every time he had a chance. I think, I'm sure I've even seen Burton Cummings. My mom and I were laughing about this, about how she's like, I don't know, she's like, I think I've gone to at least 10 Burton Cummings concerts. Yeah. He loved him.

MG: Are there records, I mean, 10,000 records is a lot. And there are things that you might know and there are things that you don't know. In pulling things out, are there albums that you've been surprised by, something that you'd never heard of before, you didn't know anything about, but you pull it out and you put it on the turntable and were surprised by it?

JULA: Yeah, there's a lot. I would say almost any time I listen to a record, I'm surprised by it in one way or another. Even I did Zamfir, the Pan Flute guy. And I didn't know he was such an icon at the time. So I was listening to it and I was like, this is like a strange record to be in his collection. And all of my commenters were like, this was such a big album. It used to sell on TV. Even just like the little facts about records can also be super surprising. Something like a Pan Flute album I would never think would be so iconic in the mainstream.

MG: It was a big deal.

JULA: Yeah.

MG: It was a big deal.

JULA: Did you know it?

MG: Yeah. But I don't know that I had the record, but I knew of the record.

JULA: Okay.

MG: Yeah.

JULA: Did you see the TV commercials for it?

MG: That's probably where I saw it. Yeah. I'm of the age where they would be advertising it on television. Is that where your dad got it? He saw the TV commercials and bought it?

JULA: I'm not sure. That's just what all my commenters were saying. They were like, I am sick of this commercial back in the day.

MG: Tell me about The Jazz Butcher.

JULA: Yeah. I just recently listened to that album a couple days ago. I've never heard of it before, but it was perfectly right up my alley. It's such a cool album. Kind of sounds like The Smiths a bit.

MG: Why don’t we hear some?

JULA: Yeah, please do.

MG: Okay. This is The Jazz Butcher and a tune called “Partytime.”

[Song: “Partytime” by The Jazz Butcher]

MG: That’s The Jazz Butcher and a song called “Partytime.” How do you think your dad heard about a record like that?

JULA: There could be many different ways. He could have found it at just the record store. He might have liked the album cover. It could have been somebody else that he liked. He could have read about how they liked it.

MG: It sounds like he has pretty eclectic tastes, though. I mean, from Zamfir to The Jazz Butcher to Burton Cummings. There's a lot that's in there, right?

JULA: Yeah, there's a lot. There's also some orchestral, but I kind of stay away from that right now.

MG: You'll get there eventually.

JULA: Yeah, maybe when my verbs get better at describing music.

MG: What have you learned about your dad in doing a project like this?

JULA: I just learned just the depth of his, I mean, I always knew he loved music, but the depth of that goes much further in just how eclectic the taste is. I learned about maybe how much even cooler he is than I had thought. Maybe when I started to get a little bit older, I would kind of judge his music taste as I got into more underground or experimental music. I thought he listened to too much conventional music.

MG: It turned out your dad was pretty cool.

JULA: Yeah, I've been debunked on that theory.

MG: Has it, I mean, we were saying earlier that grief is such an unusual thing because it's not linear. It's also not something that you can predict where it's going to come from and how you're going to deal with it. And people deal with it in any number of different ways. But having access to him through this record collection, has that helped you in dealing with grief?

JULA: Yes, absolutely. This whole project for me has in a really nice way made me deal with my grief maybe for the first time in the happiest way. I feel like my project that I'm doing right now is in service and for him and with him. I think any music lover who spent their life so dedicated, thinking, listening and making music would be so honoured for somebody to share their music collection. He always wanted to be a disc jockey. So in a way, I'm like kind of like the modern day social media sharing music in that way. I think this would make him so proud and honoured. And this has made me tremendously deal with my grief because I feel like I'm doing something for him and with him even after his passing.

MG: But you're not doing it in isolation. I mean, I mentioned that 14 million people saw that first video. There's a lot of people who have been following along as you're doing this, as you're making your way through the collection. Why do you think this has struck such a chord with people?

JULA: I'm kind of shocked even still that it's struck such a chord. Even though I'm talking to people and getting comments, it's still kind of, maybe because it's me. But people, I think a lot of people like have inherited their parents collection or they associate music with their families or their friends. I think music really can capture a time in our lives, and listening to things bring that back for us. A lot of people also have their own music collection, and watching somebody who's much younger than them talk about the music that they grew up listening to is very fun. And, you know, I think that the temporality of life in contrast with these vinyl records kind of freeze, it’s like kind of freezing time in a way that is much more poetic than I had thought.

MG: Do you like the fact that, I mean, again, this is a collective sort of experience. It feels like you're sitting down with a bunch of other people and they’re in rooms all around the world and you're listening to the same record together.

JULA: Yeah, absolutely. My comments section and my DMS are so much fun to read. I get a lot of my friends tell me how much they enjoy just like reading my comments section. Like your videos are great, Jula, but reading the comments section is so fun. People are really there listening with me. And I feel like beyond the videos, I feel like I've created like a little bit of an online album of the day listening party. And that's been such a treat for me and I think for my viewers as well. Yeah, it's really sweet to see how much people are engaging and continuing that dialogue with me.

MG: You have a 10,000-record collection to make your way through. How many records have you listened to so far?

JULA: Almost 150 that I've documented.

MG: And how are you, like are you starting at A and going through Z or are you just kind of picking things randomly out of the pile? How are you doing this?

JULA: I'm just picking things randomly. I have a little bit of a system to know which ones I've already listened to. So now, I'm just kind of seeing where I haven't, where has more gaps, but just random.

MG: What are you looking forward to? I mean, you have a lot of listening still to go.

JULA: Yeah. What am I looking forward to listen to?

MG: Yeah. And as this whole project, because it's not just listening now, it's something even larger than that, right?

JULA: Yeah, exactly. For listening, I think I'm excited to when I find like a local band. I'm sure there's one that's in the collection, but to find something from my city that he picked up would be fun. I haven't seen anything like that yet. And then for my project, I'm not sure. I'm just enjoying this process. And everything's still pretty new for me, so just listening every day and being incredibly grateful to everybody who's listening along with me.

MG: You said something earlier that your dad would be proud of you.

JULA: Yes. Yes, he would be so proud of me. I think he's like dancing. And it feels like in a way, he collected all of these records for me.

MG: That's a nice experience. I mean, having gone through something as hard as losing your dad, it's nice to know that he's in some ways, he's still, he's there in that stack of records.

JULA: Yeah, exactly. He's there when I'm talking about the records, when I'm listening to them, and just in that space with me every single day. And it's not something I have to avoid anymore.

MG: Thanks for taking us along on this journey with you, and thanks for talking to us about what you've learned about your dad and about the music that he loved. Jula, thank you.

JULA: Thank you as well.

MG: Jula is in Alberta, and you can join her listening party's at Soundwaves off Wax on Instagram and TikTok. This is a story about music, but it's also a story about the things we leave behind and how the people we love can find their way to us through those things that we leave behind after we die. If there is, if there's an object, maybe it's a piece of music or maybe just an object that you have inherited that reminds you of a person in your life, tell us about it. You can send us those stories or those memories to thecurrent@cbc.ca. And again, it can be a piece of music. It can be something smaller than that, larger than that, but it's about how the physical object in some ways is a portal to that person that left you that object. Again, email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. That's The Current for this Friday, the 31st of January. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. We're going to leave you with one more piece of music from Jula’s dad's collection. One of the albums that she discovered on the shelves was The Roches, a self-titled album released in 1979, a trio of folk singer sisters. These are The Roches and “Runs In the Family.” I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Have a great weekend. I'll see you on Monday.

[Song: “Runs In the Family” by The Roches]

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Friday, January 31, 2025 Episode Transcript

Social Sharing