Life almost back to normal in Yukon, but tourism sector needs the world to catch up

Guests: Brad Whitelaw, Viki Paulins

MG: If you listen to us with any regularity, and of course you do, you may know that we are driving an imaginary RV across the country right now for our series, Canada's Road Ahead. We're checking in with people along the way about how they're coping with a pandemic that feels like it will never end and where they are finding hope for the future. Today, we have taken the Alaska Highway up into Yukon, where there are currently two, just two, active cases of covid-19 and where vaccines are rolling out at pretty impressive rate. Dr. Brendan Hanley is the chief medical officer of health.

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We have achieved 68 percent of first dose and that's 68 percent of the adult eligible population and 35 percent of second dose is being well planned. We've had very skilled people in the planning and experienced people, weather and community nursing or our immunisation programmes. But we've had fantastic support from the communities, from the municipal leadership, from our first nation leaders, and I'd say broad support and participation. And it's really helped

MG: Yukoners now find themselves in a strange situation while still being careful about covid. There is a sense that things are almost back to normal here. Heading up north of the Klondyke Highway, we find Dawson City. This is a town, as you know, preserved in time, a relic of the gold rush along the Yukon River for those of us in southern Canada, where a third wave is taking its toll. What you're going to hear might hurt a little. We start our Dawson City tour at Bombay Peggy'ss for Happy Hour.

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DAN SOKOLOWSKI: I'm doing a Prosecco because we just came off a nice day trip on the Dempster Highway and this is very refreshing to kind of pick you up after a long drive.

LULU KEATING: This is a tradition that when you go on the Dempster Highway, you have to have a drink to the gods, appease the gods of the Dempster. It's pretty dangerous up there.

DAN SOKOLOWSKI: My name is Dan Sokolowski I. I work at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, where I produce the Dawson City International Short Film Festival. And I'm also the artist in Residence coordinator.

LULU KEATING: My name is Lulu Keating and I'm living in Dawson City and I'm an independent filmmaker and I've been living here for about 17 years now, although

DAN SOKOLOWSKI: it feels awfully normal to be in here. It feels strange and context to watching outside news, but it feels very normal and very lucky to be normal.

LULU KEATING: It definitely feels as if it's like this community is like an island in a stormy sea and just off the coast there are people who are floundering. But here it it feels like a sanctuary. And a lot of ways they're there was, I think, one case or two that we're medevacked on immediately. And in this whole year, it has an impact on our lives as seriously, as dreadfully as it has in other parts of the world.

DAN SOKOLOWSKI: Yeah, well, like we just had our film festival, which is a pandemic film festival. But again, being lucky, living in Dawson, we were able to have in cinema screenings. With the pandemic, we decided to do a Drive-In theatre, which we'd never done. And it's really become a really wonderful thing. And now everybody wants to do them all the time. So sometimes good comes out of making changes that you're forced to make. Well, what's giving me hope for the future, I think, is on the whole, when you see people kind of band together and specifically here in Dawson and the Yukon, and once the restrictions came about, everyone played by the rules. And it's nice to just see that people actually are smart enough to to understand that, you know, let's just do this. Let's all buckle down and we can get through.

MG: All right, with happy hour out of the way, let's head to something that many of us haven't been able to enjoy in well over a year. A live show.

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[Music]

[Applause]

LANA WELCHMAN: My name is Lana Welchman, so I'm sitting here in the ballroom at Dinner Carajo, which is the home of the Klondyke Institute of Arts and Culture, and we just finished watching a live music performance. It means a lot to me to be able to watch live music again. It's been a long, hard year. We are a- tend to be a people who like to move and travel quite a bit. And we've all been stuck here for the past year here in Boston. So it's nice to start returning to some sort of normalcy. It also means a lot for me personally. I also am a musician. I'm getting ready to play a show next week, the first one since late 2019. So it's been it's, you know, great to kind of get back, start getting back to normal. I think just being able to connect with people, connect with music again and be able to use our voices. That's such an important place to be right now while being mindful that we are still in the midst of a global pandemic and, you know, stay in keeping our communities safe

MG: Kind of hurts hearing live music. So life is almost back to normal in Dawson City, but there is a bit of a catch. This is a town that relies heavily on the movement of people, whether it's tourists coming to escape or miners coming for work. It's a town built on welcoming outsiders, not exactly ideal during a pandemic. Brad Whitelaw is the owner of Triple J Hotel and the Yukon Spirit Paddle Wheeler. Viki Paulins is the manager of Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall. Good morning to you both.

BRAD WHITELAW: Good morning.

VIKI PAULINS: Good morning.

MG: Vicki, I got a little pain in my heart there, hearing people enjoying live music and going to a pub, something that so many of us elsewhere in the country can only dream of. Make me jealous. How does it feel to be able to enjoy these things?

VIKI PAULINS: You know, it feels good. It's good for the heart, good for the soul. But I mean, it's not without also, you know, feeling bad almost in a way that there are so many people across the country in the world right now who are unable to do that. And I think the word that comes to mind the most is grateful. I think we're just all very grateful for the situation we're in right now.

MG: What about you, Brad? I mean, what is life like? Not it's not quite normal, but it's almost normal and.

BRAD WHITELAW: Oh, yeah. For a great future is for me, it's been quite an adjustment personally. You know, I've taken more focus on looking after my own personal life and my wellbeing, but my ventures are a totally different thing because these are privately owned and I'm all tourism based. And 2019, before the pandemic, I had three different multimillion dollar businesses that employed about 100. And since then, I've sold one of those. And the other one is the paddle wheelers at a service, just because we don't have visitors and my hotel, I'm grateful for all the assistance we got because my employees all want to come back to work. They'd prefer not to collect the CERB. These are very hardworking frontline people and they all want to come to work. So we're opening and through the aid we're maintaining. But that doesn't last. Yeah, I don't know how long these programmes might last for the assistance. So a lot of my future is up in the air as far as my ventures are concerned.

MG: I want to ask you more about that. But, Viki, for people who've never been to DOS and maybe some of the even has never seen a photo of it. Describe your town for us. What does it look like?

VIKI PAULINS: It is beautiful. It is a beautiful little community tucked between some beautiful rolling hillsides, mountains on the edge of a confluence where two rivers come together to describe it physically. The vibe here is usually very friendly, optimistic, with a very creative town. A lot of really great people, great businesses and opportunities to offer folks here. And the general sense of caring for one another is just really prominent in this community. And it's kind of like a fun place to go. It's a great destination. We have a lot to offer, very fun in a normal year

MG: In a normal year,

VIKI PAULINS: More fun in a normal year.

MG: Remember those, Brad? What do you love about living in Dawson?

BRAD WHITELAW: Mostly the characters and people. We do live in dirt streets and boardwalks. Parks Canada. I believe this is one of their largest place for their assets. These buildings are just facades. They actually are restored relics from the Klondike gold rush. And with that term and in the summertime when there's 24 hours of daylight, it's go, go, go. And the streets are full of people and that's outside people, outside money. And we really miss and they look forward to the day that they're back.

MG: You mentioned you had three multimillion dollar businesses that were running and you had to sell one.

BRAD WHITELAW: Yeah, it was a big game out sitting in front of about 40 horses and quite a large area. You know, you just keep trying to project forward and where we might be. And I'm not as young as I once was and able to- I've been doing all these for about ten years now, and I'm approaching 60 or the time to maybe start pulling back anyway. So maybe it's a sign, but it's been a lot of adjustments and between hope and doubt as to what to do. But I think just to continually focus on looking after myself in the best I can be, and then that's what I'll project forward to my businesses. During these times, it's kind of like, you know, a deer out in the middle of a frozen lake. I just can't get my feet underneath me or seem to reach out to shore yet. But there's assistance and, you know, there's great help out there. So I'm just waiting for more cards to drop and see where I'll be.

MG: It sounds like a lot of sleepless nights trying to work this out.

BRAD WHITELAW: Oh. Oh, well,

MG: Viki, you are the manager of Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall. The name itself would suggest that this is not your average casino. Describe the experience there.

VIKI PAULINS: Yeah. So we are certainly not your average casino. That's correct. We provide a gold rush theme. So as you walk in the doors, so we usually have a stage show on three shows a night, starting off with a cancan show and kind of working its way to become more of a progressive show as the night goes on. So on a regular year, there's three of those every night that we're open throughout the summer season, all of our dealers and Zafrin period costume. And we just try to give it a real, you know, classy, gritty gold rush feel over there. So we do have table games, slot machines. You have a poker room, full bar and then a stage show. So it's a lot of hustle and bustle. You know, often we have nights where we're at capacity and capacity versus 400 people shoulder to shoulder, just hooting and hollering and then and having a really great time, of course, as you can imagine, is not looked that way over the past year. It is a very quieted down version of what we want and what we're used to. But, you know, we've thankful to be open at all, to be honest. So we will take what we can get.

MG: If you had I mean, it's, you know, trying to figure out wins and losses is tricky. But I mean, how much is business down, do you think, over the course of the pandemic?

VIKI PAULINS: Yes, significantly, I would say, like a lot of our business does come from outside of the territory. We are lucky to have a great Yukon community who has still come up to support us throughout this time. But we do normally have quite a few people travelling through tour groups or just independently, in RV's, just like coming up to Dawson and coming to our venue night after night and, you know, paying for admission and spending money there. So without that, we've noticed a huge decrease in revenue over the past year. So, yeah, hopefully we hopefully see that pick up.

MG: Well, this is also the time of the year. I mean, you start to think about summer, but you really start to think about spring and the snow starts to melt. Spring brings with it, you know, the promise of something new. How does your town change when spring and summer arrives?

VIKI PAULINS: I would say, well, physically, it gets very muddy, but the people get very happy or, you know, like a sense of just like joy coming out of people, you see people around where people are out of their houses sort of feel like going out again. Normally speaking, of course, I think even in the spring, I think it's just been such a long year and such a long winter is very cold for a long time. I think people are just feeling kind of some relief that summer is around the corner. And I think this year with summer, people think, you know, hopefully there'll be some brighter days on the horizon for all of us with the way that things are going up here in the territory.

MG: How quiet was last summer?

VIKI PAULINS: This year is extra special.

MG: How quiet was last summer?

VIKI PAULINS: Very quiet. So from my perspective, we were close for several months. So, of course, ultimately quiet. And when we did start opening up to BC for a while, we did see a little bit of influx of people coming in, but not even a fraction of what we normally would see in the summer.

MG: How do you keep your spirits up, Brad, as you go through all of this? I mean, you talked about focussing on yourself rather than in some ways, you know, trying to to really look at the business that this is an opportunity to kind of look inward. How do you do that? Because it's a lot to carry.

BRAD WHITELAW: Yeah, this undeniably was a very long past winter where we live like very close to the Arctic Circle, 64 degrees north. So it is cold, but what can really weigh in is the darkness. And so that made for a really long winter. It helps to evolve into a bear, kind of you know, you just kind of get a little lethargic and lay down. And much like Vicki says, now that the sun's back, you can see a rejuvenation of people coming back. But I take a lot of strength and solace from the people that I've employed for. They've hung around me for so long and it's the same returning people. And and in 2019, I had 100 employees running these three companies and we did about four and a half million dollars in gross sales. Last year. I did less than a million and employed maybe 40 people. And these are local people that, are a about town, and we just see a real empty streets and it's heartbreaking, you know, like what should be a busy day to look down and you don't even see a vehicle really from being here so long and seeing all the years when it's just full of bustle and liveliness. It's quite wrenching to see this adjustment.

MG: Just let me ask you both before I let you go. I mean, we've been doing this across the country, talking to people in communities about the year that's been, but also the years to come and what the road ahead looks like. I mean, where, Viky, do you find optimism when it comes to maybe the summer or maybe what follows the summer?

VIKI PAULINS: Right, I think I pulled most of my optimism out of our incredible staff. I had to completely mirror what Brad said. We have such incredible staff that works with us, that have been with us for years. Brad and I actually share a lot of the same stuff. We have some staff in Los Angeles. We've got some really incredible people with us. So I I'm hopeful that for, you know, this upcoming year at least, that we let people stick it out with us and and stay with us to build what our establishment is going to look like going forward. You know, we try to have our staff involved with a lot of the decision making and like just the plans on how we were going to operate this year to make sure we're doing so as safely and as best we could. So I'm looking forward to continually working with our team, see how we can adapt going forward, provided that, you know, maybe some restrictions are going to lift up a little bit. We'll have a little more freedom in our jobs. Maybe they won't. I hesitate to speculate too much because I speculated all last year and every day something new happened, you know? So we're ready to ride this out the way it is right now. And if things change and we are able to open up a little more or facilitate some more people in our venue, we'd be very grateful to do that. I do think that is going to happen eventually. I'm hesitant to say when, but we are looking forward to be able to open up more and hopefully invite tourists back into our community and, you know, get those businesses thriving again. But for now, we're just very grateful for newcomers to travel around to the communities, hopefully this summer and, you know, come visit us and, you know, spend money internally and see if we can get each other through.

MG: This whole thing has been so unpredictable. I mean, can you survive, if this does not change and, you know, we get another wave, a fourth wave, a fifth wave, he says with his fingers crossed that it doesn't happen, would you be able to hang on just on local clientele?

VIKI PAULINS: I you know, I don't know. Like I know we operated last year at a bit of a deficit. We are budgeting this year as and the year the deficit. You know, how many years in a row can you run a deficit and still come out at the end? So I think depends a lot on what kind of help we have from the government for the tourism, tourism industry, for all industries. We've been really lucky to capitalise on the wage subsidy programme that was available to us last year, hoping that that will be available this year so we can, you know, get a little help covering some of those fixed expenses. And then hopefully we just keep newcomers coming through Dawson from all over Whitehorse, the communities, you know, we'll be scraping by already. I don't know how many years we could do this.

MG: What about for you, Brad? I mean, you talked about three quarters of your income, essentially the profits disappearing. How long could you hang on? Just on on local business alone?

BRAD WHITELAW: It's not easy here at all anymore. And as it stands right now, but I've got a firm grip on what we do have right now and just going to keep walking forward and accept the changes and repurpose where I can. And the rest is just those are just material things.

MG: That's a good reminder. I mean, it's not easy, but it's a good reminder and a good lesson for for us all. I hope spring is a bountiful one in summer, too. And that you get back to what did you say, Viky, the hooting and hollering?

VIKI PAULINS: The hooting and hollering. And that's right.

MG: I hope that that resurfaces sooner rather than later. It's great to talk to you both. Thank you very much.

VIKI PAULINS: Thank you.

BRAD WHITELAW: Thank you.

MG: Man Brad Whitelaw is the owner of the Triple J Hotel. Viki Paulins is the manager of Diamond Tooth Gerde's Gambling Hall in Dawson City, UConn. Next week, our road trip across this country comes to an end in beautiful British Columbia. Your CBC News is next. And then.

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[Protestors chanting]

Say his name.

Daunte Wrihgt.

MG: Another black man killed by a police officer in a very public trial, some are calling the most important in America in decades. We take you to a very tense Minneapolis, Minnesota, in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Daunte Wright killing heightens tensions around Derek Chauvin trial

Guest: Pastor Curtis Farrar, Karin Marley

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, between an unpredictable vaccine supply and too many packed ICUs, how Canada is coping with the third wave of covid-19. But first, to the United States and another police shooting.

[Music: Theme]

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[Sound: Protestores noise]

VOICE: Y'all didn't learn from George Floyd.

MG: He didn't learn from George Floyd, the voice of a protester in Minneapolis after the death of yet another unarmed black man at the hands of police, Daunte Wright was shot just kilometres away from the courthouse, currently hearing the case of Derrick Shervin, the former police officer accused in the murder of George Floyd last year. Dante Wright's death has shaken a city that is already on edge. Georgia Fort is a freelance journalist covering the Shoven trial for the Racial Reckoning Project at the Association of Minneapolis, Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations. She is in Minneapolis, Georgia. Good morning.

GEORGIA FORT: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. How would you describe the mood in Minneapolis overnight?

GEORGIA FORT: Well, I'll say it is extremely tense. As you heard from that protester, not much has changed. And we know that when George Floyd was killed, there was a global response. And a lot of people who are residents here was hoping that that was going to be as worse as it got. And here we are months later, the third week in the Derrick Show trial, and another man is killed by police. So, you know, folks are- there on edge. They're hurting. A lot of especially black men and women have been traumatised from seeing people who look like them killed over and over with little to no accountability. And so we see a lot of people are describing this moment as, you know, the sequel to last summer, because people are tired and they don't know how to make change. They don't know how to make this stop. And so people are taking to the streets again, using their voice, demanding justice now, not just for George Floyd, but also for Daunte Wright.

MG: Right. You mentioned accountability yesterday. The officer who fatally shot Dontae Wright was charged with second degree manslaughter. The suggestion was that she somehow grabbed her handgun instead of her Taser. How are people reacting to the charge coming down?

GEORGIA FORT: Well, people are saying it's not enough. If you look historically within this community, there was another officer involved shooting Mohammed Noor. I'm not sure if you are familiar with that. He shot a woman by the name of Justine Damond and Mohammed, nor identify as a Somalian Muslim. Justin was Australian and it was very similar. It was an accident. And he received stiffer charges and likely probably, you know, a stiffer sentencing. And so because that set a precedent for the first officer being charged and convicted, as well as the largest payout settlement at the time, folks are using that to say, you know, if you're going to convict this man who was Somali-American, Muslim and give him these stiff charges, then you should hold the same level of accountability to white men and women in uniform as well.

MG: This is all happening in the midst, as you mentioned, of the Derek Chauvin trial. And you've been covering that when you take a look at the proceedings thus far and what some of the witness testimony that's been heard is what stands out to you in terms of how this trial is unfolding.

GEORGIA FORT: Well, I will say, I think that the prosecution has done the best job that they can in getting extremely credible witnesses on the stand to testify on their behalf. And so when you look at the chief of police taking the stand and totally denouncing the use of force that we saw Derek Chauvin use on May 25th, where you see people like 911 dispatcher's medical professionals, I think that they've done a very good job. And just yesterday, Derek Chauvin requested an acquittal, although his defence's motion was denied and they tried, they attempted to bring someone on the stand to basically discredit everything, the foundation that had been laid by the state. And it didn't go over very well. The prosecution got up there during cross-examination and really pulled out the inconsistencies of that witness's testimony,

MG: suggesting that George Phillip had died because of perhaps previous drug use or a pre-existing heart condition or other matters,

GEORGIA FORT: Correct. Correct. Yes. And so, you know, what stands out, I think, is just, especially for the prosecution side. Right. We're only a few days into the defence, their case, but just the prosecution's their witnesses. The overwhelming consistency in their testimony is that this use of force is not what's trained by MPD is against their ethics. And it was excessive.

MG: The testimony, so much of the testimony just in watching it from a distance has been incredibly emotional. And I just wonder what with the effect of that is on a community, as you say, is already grappling with a lot of trauma. How are people, because people are watching this and they're watching it in real time, how are people reacting to what they're seeing and hearing on the stand?

GEORGIA FORT: Well, I think that after last summer, the community learnt how to take care of itself in a sense. And so we're seeing what we call healers. We're seeing therapies, different people who can offer services for self care step up in this moment and either volunteer their service or they are receiving funding from another entity that really wants to prioritise people's mental health in this moment, their physical health. And so we're seeing and we saw this last summer, too, just an outpouring of of support to be mindful that this is very stressful for people to relive

MG: What's at stake when it comes to a verdict.

GEORGIA FORT: Well, I think, you know, with the world watching. It's bigger than just Minnesota, you know, what's at stake is not just justice for George Floyd. Well, we've seen over these last few months is that this trial has become the trial for every single family who lost a loved one to the police and never got a trial, never got any charges brought forth. And so they're looking at this trial for a conviction. What's at stake is, I believe, whether or not we can truly see substantial change within the American policing system. This case has the ability to really set a precedent for changing the way policing is done across this country. And so I think that there is a lot at stake. And as we get closer and closer, I know Monday the judge has said that we can expect closing arguments to begin. And so as we get closer to a verdict, the reality sets in that especially here, we all have to start preparing for the best case and the worst case scenario with that verdict.

MG: I just wonder, just in the last minute or so, you mentioned, you know, what happened last summer. You're working for the Racial Reckoning Project. And people talked about what unfolded last summer in the wake of George Floyds death as a racial reckoning. And people were watching this around the world. How much change has has Minnesota seen since since, you know, the death of George Floyd and the beginning of that reckoning in some ways.

GEORGIA FORT: Well, I think the community has absolutely gotten stronger and there is a bit of a sentiment that the community has to take care of the community and it cannot depend on any government entity or anything like that to do so. So the community has gotten stronger. I think that initially after George Floyd was killed, there was a number of resources that were allocated to this community. A number of non-profit organisations that received a huge, tremendous influx in donations. But in terms of policing, I mean, again, Daunte, right, a 20 year old father was just killed accidentally. So in terms of policing, we haven't seen much change there.

MG: Georgia fought. It's great to speak with you. Thank you very much.

GEORGIA FORT: Thank you for having me.

MG: Georgia Fort's is a freelance journalist covering the Shoven trial for the Racial Reckoning Project at the Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations. 30TH Street and Chicago Avenue is the intersection in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed at that same intersection. You will find the worldwide outreach for Christ Church. Pastor Curtis Farrar has been with the church for 40 years. Pastor. Good morning to you.

PASOR CURTIS FARRAR: Good morning to you.

MG: There is a lot going on in your city right now. How are you doing?

PASOR CURTIS FARRAR: I am doing pretty good. I share the same sentiments as the journalists do concerning our community and and the policing in our community, not only in our communities, but the community, but all over the world. I mean, all over the United States. You can see that there's a major concern with how we are protected by law enforcement. And I am greatly concerned because I can see that the communities at this point need some serious answers for what has been going on for the last I don't know how many years now. This is [unintelliglbe] of killing Daunte Wright, it's as though someone shine a spotlight on a problem that needed to, you know, we need to see what was really going on when they pointed that spotlight on him. We could really see is what the problem really is and not only us here in Minneapolis and all over the world. Well, even now to see.

MG: The trial is also putting a spotlight on it, right? I mean, it has led to people, as I say, around the world, paying close attention to this. And you've been paying attention to it. I know. And Georgia was saying a bit about how the community is taking care of itself in the midst of this. How are people in your community and in your congregation feeling is all of this unfolds at the same time?

PASOR CURTIS FARRAR: Well, like I said, I tell you the ironic thing about this whole thing, the young lady Daunte Wright's child's mother goes to my church. That was so unusual for us to be right across the street from George Floyd and Duante Wright's child's mother goes to my church. So I'm seeing an experience in the frustrations of all of the levels. I mean, something else happening on this magnitude, someone else being being killed. So I could see the frustrations and the need for justice at this point, because I think the community's feeling right now is between anger and rage. And I am greatly concerned that if we don't see, if the community doesn't see, don't see justice coming out of this trial, Daunte's or George Floyd, then I'm just afraid that we're going to lose confidence in the justice system. We understand that justice is supposed to be blind. But I think that. People start to feel like they started to feel like justice just having a real expensive pear shaped.

MG: Let me ask you about the neighbourhood that you're in. Your churches, right at the intersection of a place now called George Floyd Square. How have you seen that neighbourhood change since last summer?

PASOR CURTIS FARRAR: Well, you know, when it happened, when George Floyd was was murdered there, I was coming out of my church that night and I saw it happening. But, you know, we've seen police over there at that store in times past. So we thought it was just, you know, something that was just happening and it would pass and the guy would be taken down and arrested. So I was going home. And then I got a call. I got home and see it, well, they just killed him. I said, what? You know, so it was shocking to me. But then the next day, I noticed that it was primarily black people coming out, marching and protesting, you know, but after the third day, a second and third day, it was all kinds of people coming out, white, black, red. And that was a change because I lived long enough to see riots before, because the killing of black people for us, for me it's been going on for a lot of years. But this particular time, George Floyd. It was as though it was time for the world to see. A lot of people didn't know, didn't realise that this was really going on, that police officers, not all of them, but a lot of those officers wasn't really enforcing the law?

MG: WWhat do you see as your role in this? I mean, we were talking about taking care of the community and you hold these these Saturday morning meetings for the community healing circles. What do you see as your role for a community that, as you say, is is angry, is exhausted and feels as though they're seeing history repeat itself?

PASOR CURTIS FARRAR: Well, I feel like my responsibility is to bring some kind of healing and to inform the community that if there's going to be permanent change. It is going to take God now, this is what I actually believe, I believe this is one of the reasons we're gonna have me there, to live in Chicago. I mean, this has been happening for years, but God allowed it to happen right down to it in Chicago. I've been there for 38 years. Then when I first got there, there was a lot of gang activity, a lot of killings. And as a matter of fact, I have a son and all 13 of his friends were murdered. That's so much right there on that corner, right there in that general vicinity on the south side of Minneapolis. So I've seen how the church can influence a neighbourhood. I mean, if that church is real and they have respect for their church in all of that and the power of God, I watched it. And so people's lives were changing. And a lot of the gang leaders and ganger's go to my church right now at this time.

MG: So are you optimistic coming out of that? I mean, we have about a minute or so left. But I mean, given that work that you've done for 38 years and the change that you've seen, given this last year, are you optimistic?

PASOR CURTIS FARRAR: Well, I'm optimistic, I'm optimistic if people would realise that it's going to take God to change the hearts of man. You know, we've seen this before and we've had leaders come out in and people with good ideas, but if the heart of man is not changed, then that individual is not going to. These changes, the changes that you made, is not going to be consistent. It's not going to last because it's a hard problem, it's a people problem, you know, so I'm seeing all of this and I'm saying to everyone in that neighbourhood that if we don't put God in our affairs, in our neighbourhoods, we've left God out of everything, out of our schools, and we can see the difference out of our neighbourhoods. So what I'm saying is that racism is a hard problem. It really is, and it's going to take God to really change the hearts of man.

MG: I'm sorry. I was just going to say we'll have to leave it there. But it's really important to speak with you. You're right there on the corner. And you've seen this unfold not over just this summer, but over the last many years. I really appreciate speaking with you. And thank you very much.

PASOR CURTIS FARRAR: Thank you so much for inviting me.

MG: Pastor Curtis Farrar is with the Worldwide Outreach for Christ Church. We reached him in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An update to this story earlier this morning. The defence and the Derek Chauvin trial rested its case without calling Derek Chauvin to the stand.

[Music]

MG: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio one, my name is Matt Galloway. It is important to talk about difficult subjects and a good reminder of that can be found in our e-mail inbox. This week on the programme, we spoke with three people who dealt with miscarriages. And of course, they're not alone. One in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage. We heard stories from you that we wanted to share. And just a warning. All of these stories deal with the loss of a pregnancy or the loss of a child. And some may be very difficult to hear. Senior producer Karin Marley is here to help me tell some of these stories. Karen, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. There were a number of people who wrote in who have had multiple miscarriages. This first letter writer asked to remain anonymous. She writes: I suffered six miscarriages. All happened within the first trimester. Nevertheless, there was some devastating impacts and the consecutive losses deteriorated my mental health. During my sixth loss, I was training for the job I currently hold with the federal government and was about to take an exam. I felt immense pressure to complete this exam. I had an immediate supervisor who tried to be supportive but did not do a great job. I only took two days off and it wasn't enough. My mental state was terrible and I was in no position to write this exam. I did anyhow and failed, adding even more stress and depression to my plate. Things need to change.

MG: Joanne is in Halifax and she went through five lost pregnancies. We asked her to tell her own story by reading a bit of the message she sent to us

SOUNDCLIP

During my fourth miscarriage. I searched endlessly for programmes that provided bereavement support for women like me. Since the compound, grief was overwhelming. It was only then that I found a single office in Halifax that provided counselling for my particular type of grief. I feel that if I, as a nurse, struggled to find information in care, then it is likely even more challenging for someone without an intimate knowledge of the health care system. We need care from those we seek treatment from, and we need programmes to be well communicated so that we do not have to suffer in silence.

KARIN MARLEY: All three of our guests from earlier this week talked about how important it is to talk about this kind of grief with family, with friends. Katrina also says that sharing is important. She tells us: I lost twins at nine weeks pregnant in October. I decided to write and share my story publicly. It felt good to put my story to paper. It was a form of therapy for myself, but also a way to honour my babies. I have learnt how important it is for families to make time and space to honour the tiny lives lost, whether it's getting a tattoo, writing a poem, naming their baby or planting a tree. These things remind us that miscarriage was not just something that happened to us. They were lives that were lost. They have lives that deserve to be remembered, no matter how short.

MG: We also heard from fathers, grandparents and other loved ones as well. Walt Sepak writes: As a potential grandparent, I was walking on air when my daughter told me she was pregnant. 10 weeks later, she phoned me in tears from the hospital after an ultrasound. I was devastated because she was in pain and a thousand kilometres away. When she told me 20 percent of pregnancies are affected this way, I was shocked by the lack of education about this is said.

KARIN MARLEY: Cerita, is coping with a really recent loss. She says: I'm currently going through a late term pregnancy loss. It has been really hard to navigate this. How do you grieve for the ideas and plans for your future? How does your body recover from this? How do you ever find inspiration to make art again? The people you interviewed were right. It is horrific and it is a loss that you can't get over in a couple of days.

MG: And this last letter is from Stephen, who went through the loss of an infant with his wife last year. Steven says: I found myself constantly pulled between wanting to be present and strong to support my wife, but also feeling incredibly vulnerable and in pain for my own loss. I won't ever forget my friend who told me that if I wanted to support my wife, I would need to find support for myself and that it was OK to be incredibly not OK with this. I think one of the best ways to support those dealing with infant or child loss is creating a space. We're discussing and expressing grief are not only common, but encouraged. These are not easy stories to tell and certainly not easy stories to write. But as we heard over the course of the last couple of days from you, they are really important. Thank you very much to everyone who wrote and who listened. And thank you, Karin, for helping us read through these letters.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer at The Current. And you can write to us at The Current at CBC Dot Seet. We do read every single thing that you send to us and some of those letters end up on the air as well. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

There is this huge plume of ash hanging in this air. Silent, deadly, dreadfil. It could just feel a change in the mood in the town.

MG: That plume of ash rained down on the island of St. Vincent last Friday. The. Volcano has been erupting ever since, will head to the island and speak with a Canadian medical student studying there who dropped her books to get food and supplies to those who need it most. That's in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

Vaccine supply issues force clinics to cancel appointments; and students help St. Vincent evacuees

Guest: Dr. Kevin Smith, Andre Picard, Claire Matlock

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current covid cases are skyrocketing in many parts of Canada and in some regions, the who, the when and the where of the vaccine rollout plans are far from clear. In Ontario, the provincial government is facing criticism over a lack of clarity about details of a plan to vaccinate people in the worst hit areas of that province. The University Health Network oversees several hospitals in the Greater Toronto area and has recently had to close one vaccine clinic and decrease capacity in another. Doctor Kevin Smith is president and CEO of UHN. Kevin, good morning.

DR. KEVIN SMITH: Morning, Matt.

MG: Help me understand this. Why our vaccination centres are closing or reducing the number of shots being administered as a third wave rips through the province of Ontario.

DR. KEVIN SMITH: Mostly not because of supply of vaccine.

MG: It's as simple as that.

DR. KEVIN SMITH: As simple as that. So we simply don't have enough vaccine for the population and for the good news, which is we're having more and more people sign up.

MG: So the vaccine tracker, which you can look at online, says that 76 percent of the four and a half million doses delivered to Ontario have been administered. That leaves 24 percent that have not been administered. And people have said there are vaccines that are sitting, for example, in freezers. Where are those remaining vaccines?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: So it's a great question. Yesterday I was calling around to say, does anyone have any vaccine in freezers and could we borrow that vaccine? And to a person, the answer was no. So I'm not exactly sure in whose freezers they're sitting. But I suspect if they are sitting at all, there is a latency between having booked an appointment. So perhaps you called in a couple of days ago. A few days ago, you booked your appointment. It's for tomorrow. And the only vaccine that's sitting in freezers are doses that are already allocated to an individual.

MG: Why isn't there enough supply? There have been accusations that perhaps the Ontario government overpromised and underdelivered when it came to getting vaccines into people in the areas that need them the most. Why isn't there enough supply?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: So right today, as an example, the interruption in the supply chain from Moderna, we'd anticipated to receive more Moderna. And frankly, each week the numbers change a bit. So we're anticipating a greater number. We might get less. Some weeks we're anticipating a greater number. We might get more. And ultimately-- but most of the hospitals are dealing with two vaccines, the Pfizer vaccine and the return of vaccine, the AstraZeneca vaccine being dealt with more in pharmacies and family doctor's offices. So the two we're working with, the supply chain gets interrupted, as less comes to Canada, it's delayed even a week, unfortunatley we then have inadequate amount of supply to meet those we've committed to.

MG: The federal government says there are enough vaccines. So square this for me. I mean, do you know why you're not getting more if the federal government says that there are enough vaccines?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: I think there probably are enough vaccines on order, many vaccines on order, but for example, now that we've said AstraZeneca is not appropriate for those under 55, we've again limited our flexibility. So there's a group of people who have registered 18 to 49 year old, almost 23,000 for us in one postal code area, who previously we might have thought AstraZeneca would be another option. It is no longer an option. And I think, unfortunately, much of the arrival of the vaccine that's been ordered is later, or the perfect storm is variants came about. And they are very aggressive. A surge is occurring at the very same time. We're seeing very sick people get hospitalised and at higher numbers. It is the perfect storm. And if we had more vaccine two weeks ago, many of those individuals who had been inoculated would now be protected. Unfortunately, the timing of surge, variant and vaccine didn't coincide in the way that we hoped.

MG: You have the capacity to vaccinate through your clinics something like 35,000 people a week?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: We do.

MG: MG: How many doses are you expecting to get in the next few weeks?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: So next week we have about 2,000 doses confirmed, and the following week about 3,000 doses confirmed.

MG: Are the doses that are here getting to the right people in the priority areas? There has been some suggestion that perhaps and it's not just in this province, but across the country that vaccines need to be redirected from the less urgent areas, if I can put it that way, into those hot spots where we see the highest number of covid cases, does that need to happen?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: I believe that very much needs to happen. So just as we, when we started the vaccine program, that we are first going to vaccinate the long term care residents because that's where mortality was greatest, I do believe now we're at a point where we need to say an area of the province or the country that has far less burden of illness and far lower mortality. We need to pause and redirect that vaccine to the hotspots, not only for those in the hot spots, but the people we're talking about are often those doing precarious work or work that requires travel, like truck drivers as an example. And if we don't bring it under control in the hotspots, it will simply spread and spread and spread.

MG: Why are we just figuring this out now, a year into the pandemic?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: You know what, I don't know that there's one reason for that, not as much as I don't believe anybody during this pandemic did anything but get up every day to try to do the very best job they could. All right. The challenge is, you know, structurally, Canada is a unique environment where we don't have a national health system. We have a provincial health system. The interface between our various levels of government, public health with mostly with municipal governments, hospitals and physicians, mostly aligned with provincial governments and and health policy at a federal level. It's a pretty complicated structure. Then add to that that as a population and a purchaser of drugs, we're about three percent in the purchasing marketplace and 35 million out of seven billion. You know, when you look at where did it go, it went to those places that are large users and frankly, that had manufacturing facilities. So I think this is a many year approach to both manufacturing, the delivery of the system, the interface between the various levels of government, all very complex, and then in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that said, this is the this is the platinum, we everyone in the world wants to get a hold of these vaccines. And unfortunately, we're not getting them as quickly as we'd like.

MG: People have said that we won't vaccinate our way out of this third wave. What else needs to be done to ensure that the intensive care units in the hospitals that you run aren't completely overwhelmed? And I mean, they're very close now.

DR. KEVIN SMITH: They are very, very close. We won't vaccinate our way out of a third way. Absolutely. But vaccination is one of the most important components of longer term control. That's what we need, in my opinion. A continued public health measures, possibly extended public health measures,.

MG: Which would include what?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: Travel restrictions, both international and and cross province travel for interprovincial, curfew, possibly, further scaling back of open facilities, more aggressive monitoring and enforcement of public health measures. And it's a fairly short period of time once we see those millions of doses that were promised arrive, get people inoculated 10 to 14 days later, have them virtually protected from the disease, and then spread that that more greatly if it exists. And it's a big if, if people observe the existing and hopefully extended public health measures, then, you know, we have a real shot at saving our summer.

MG: What about better protecting those people that, as you said, need to go to work and need to travel to get to work, ensuring that - and again, this has become some sort of political football - but ensuring that they have the capacity to take time off work and not worry about keeping the lights on.

DR. KEVIN SMITH: 100 percent, we have to be mindful that many of us are fortunate enough to be able to physically distance to live in housing that gives us the ability to observe public health measures. But there's a population of people, those who often are most affected by this disease, who are underhoused, who are doing precarious work, don't have sick time and strong benefits, and who earlier in this pandemic made clear, even with symptoms, it's a choice between my rent and feeding my kids. I'm going to go to work. And frankly, the postal codes we've selected as needing this vaccination most are the postal codes where those individuals live.

MG: In the last 30 seconds or so that we have, what are you most concerned about in these next few days and weeks?

DR. KEVIN SMITH: KS: I'm most concerned about the surge that will translate into ICU requirements and both for the patients and the staff who are extremely tired. They've been at this for 15 months almost, and I'm obviously very concerned about the individuals who will be affected by this disease. It's been a long time. There's been a lot of loss and we know what the solutions are, although health measures, rapid vaccination and following the rules.

MG: Dr. Kevin Smith, good to speak with you again. Thank you.

DR. KEVIN SMITH: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Dr. Kevin Smith, president and CEO of the University Health Network. Those unpredictable vaccine deliveries and overflowing excuse are problems not only found in Ontario, much of the rest of the country is feeling the pain of the third wave as well. There was a sliver of good news yesterday. Health Canada once again endorsed the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe for adults of all ages. Health columnist Andre Picard has been keeping an eye on the state of vaccination and how provinces are faring. Andre, good morning to you.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of what you've just heard from Kevin Smith there, just about the vaccine rollout and what's happening in the jurisdiction that his hospitals include?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, I think we can summarise what he said by saying, you know, 90 percent of all our problems are related to supply. That's what it's all about. And that's not an easily resolvable problem. And then on top of that, we have other issues of equity, of fairness, of politics. So this is a very complex and not easy to solve problem.

MG: How does this compare to what's happening in the rest of the country? He's talking about Ontario, but elsewhere. What's going on?

ANDRE PICARD: There's the similar. The issue is similar everywhere. Everybody has a supply problem. What's different elsewhere is how it's being dealt with. So I think Ontario, unfortunately, has distinguished itself throughout the pandemic, is making these grandiose promises without actually having a plan. There's just this constant shift in strategy. It's as if the premier gets up there and he announces something and the bureaucrats are going to be behind him going, oh, that's what we were supposed to be doing. Everything seems to be a surprise. So it's not as chaotic elsewhere, but the fundamental problems are the same.

MG: The federal government says that millions of doses are arriving each week, and yet there are these issues with supply. So where's the disconnect there?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, you know, we've spent in Canada about eight billion dollars on vaccines. We've ordered 400 million doses. Everything looks great on paper, but these contracts are backloaded. So they're all coming later. And nobody in the world has all the supplies they want now. So everything's back loaded. And then we have additional little hiccups that come every day. A Moderna is not coming at this time it delivered. Pfizer came early. We made a big deal of that. And it's back on its regular schedule and it feels like a shortage. We have the AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson issues with clotting. So it's all kinds of just a piling on of what are essentially minor issues, but it just creates chaos overall.

MG: Well, on those minor issues, I mean, the phrase is doom scrolling. You can spend all your time looking at your phone, kind of going through the bad news context can be important here. So is there anything we're missing in those minor issues?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, I think the context is what we talk about every week. It's about keep our eye on the on the long game. And the long game is it's looking really good coming up to July. And we knew there was going to be problems. We just didn't know exactly what they were going to be. So we have to keep focussing on getting vaccines into arms and not, I think, obsessing overly on the sheer numbers. But as Dr. Smith said, making sure the right people get the vaccines as promptly as possible.

MG: Let's talk about AstraZeneca. Health Canada said yesterday it's no longer restricting the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but we know that some people are waiting until they can get different vaccines. They're essentially vaccine shopping, that appointments for the AstraZeneca vaccine are being cancelled, are going unfulfilled. What do we need to do to ensure that people believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe?

ANDRE PICARD: I think it's a real problem. There's a trust issue there. So I think scientifically the issues are fairly rare, very rare, very rare chance of getting this blood clot from this vaccine, but it's just a trust issue. AstraZeneca has had one little issue after another and people just don't have faith in it. So it comes to the point where do we have to do like Denmark? Denmark has just said we're not using this vaccine anymore, throw it overboard. Canada can't afford to do that because unlike Denmark, it has very little virus circulating now. It has lots of Fizer and Moderna. So it becomes this trade off. So I think in Canada we have no choice but to keep using this. We have to just keep reminding people, you know, it's become tedious to say it over and over again. But the benefits far outweigh the risks of this vaccine. So get it if you can get it.

MG: Well, you've written about this in the paper saying that in some ways we've lost our ability to put risk in perspective when it comes to the vaccine. What are you getting at there?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, you know, humans are not great at managing risk at the best of times. We ignore common risks because otherwise we would essentially go crazy. So we worry about really rare things. And then it's just in a pandemic situation, everything is amplified. So we've made you know, we've got this real big panic almost about these vaccines and blood clots. And in the grand scheme of things, everything we do daily is far riskier. You know, I said in my column that scientists keep saying you have a much greater risk of being injured in a car crash driving to your vaccine appointment than you'll ever have from getting the vaccine. But it's hard to make that balance in our everyday lives because we just worry about rare things.

MG: Let me go back to the rollout issue. We saw that some provinces were breaking with the age based rollout and starting to target specific population groups. How is that being received, because you can imagine the people who thought they would be in line to get the vaccine suddenly see themselves being pushed, if I can put it that way, further down the line, for people who need to get the vaccine now, because as Kevin Smith was saying, they're working in areas where they can't social distance, where they need to go into the office, where they have to travel and where they may not have paid sick days.

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, you know, we started this vaccine rollout. It was pretty clear we had to vaccinate people in long term care, front line care workers. And we started saying in January after that, it gets complicated, it's about choices. And now we're having to make those hard choices. I think it's sensible. It's ethical to to now target people most at risk. But that's not been our policy to date. It's been strictly age based. So making that shift, people are going to have their noses out of joint. There's no question people are going to feel put upon. But we have to make choices and we have to be clear about that, that everything we do in the pandemic is about trade offs and vaccinations are a really good example of really, really difficult trade offs that we have to make.

MG: Is there any province that is handling the vaccine rollout particularly well?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, you know, I think everybody has their challenges. Again, we I think we have to look to the Atlantic provinces are doing this well, but you have to look at their trade offs. So take Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia only books appointments when they have vaccines so they don't have all these problems of cancelled appointments, et cetera. But they have a lot more vaccines on reserve so they can afford to go slowly because there's no vaccine circulating. That the challenge is different in provinces like Ontario and Quebec, where the pandemic is raging. You just want to do things really quickly and that just create panic. It creates changing policies every day. So it's nobody's doing it perfectly. But everybody has different, slightly different challenges.

MG: Kevin Smith was talking about ICUs. And again, in Ontario, they are very full. He's worried not just about those who are in those beds, but also those who would be monitoring those patients in the burnout from doctors and nurses and health care professionals. How does that compare to what's happening in the rest of the country? Are we seeing the intensive care units at straining point elsewhere?

ANDRE PICARD: We are. And, you know, Ontario gets a lot of attention. It's the population centre. It's the media centre. But we're really seeing I think we're not paying enough attention to what's going on out west. Saskatchewan per capita has a bigger hospitalization problem than Ontario. Things are really pretty dire there. British Columbia has a lot of people in hospital. It has data that's measured differently. So they stop counting people in ICU after they're there a certain number of days. So it kind of gives a false impression about that there are fewer people in hospital. So this is an issue almost everywhere, of course, with the exception of the Atlantic provinces. Again, it's a problem across Canada and it's getting much worse every day.

MG: You mentioned British Columbia. The premier there, John Horgan, has raised a couple of times the idea of restricting entry into the province. There has been discussion of some sort of greater limit to interprovincial travel. How much traction are you seeing around that idea? Do you think there's the appetite for that? And do we need to do that as these variants spread?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, we talk about that intermittently in Canada. Every time there's a new wave, we talk about what can we do, what different and new restrictions can happen. I think there is an appetite for it. People really want to stay in their bubbles. They've seen that, you know, the Atlantic bubble works very well. So maybe B.C. should cut off Alberta and vice versa. So I think these questions are going to keep being discussed. We're having that same discussion around Ottawa. There's an explosion of cases in [unintelligible] just across the bridges from Ottawa. So should they restrict travel there, as we did in March 2020? I think these things are going to be discussed more and more as the third wave picks up steam

MG: Just before I let you go. Things feel tense. And I think people across this country, maybe with the exception of in that Atlantic bubble, although things are changing there as well, people feel really on edge. What do you think the next few weeks are going to look like?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, we are on edge. You know, this is after more than a year of this are our souls are battered, if I could put it that way. And I think we have to just try and keep that eye on the long game. We have a lot of vaccines coming. We're going to have most Canadians vaccinated by July, despite all the hiccups, the things that we do keep working. If we wear our masks, if we physically distance that works against variants, it works in the third wave. We just have to keep doing the boring old stuff and and keep our our heads down for a few more weeks, a couple of more months. And we will get through this.

MG: Andre, thank you.

ANDRE PICARD: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Andre Pacard, health columnist with The Globe and Mail.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One, my name is Matt Galloway.

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Oh, Gosh. Watch it. Holly it really erupt! My God!

MG: It was a sight unseen in nearly 42 years on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. La Soufriere volcano has been erupting since last Friday, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes, many left without power, water or food. And the prime minister has said it will take months for the island to recover. Claire Matlock is a Canadian medical student studying in Kingston in the southern region of St. Vincent. Claire, good morning.

CLAIRE MATLOCK: Good morning. How are you?

MG: I'm well. What was it like when that volcano erupted last week

CLAIRE MATLOCK: where so many of us here in St. Vincent have been ready for this since the early New Year? We were told by our government and scientists that La Soufriere was set to go and we were bracing for that. But then nothing happened for months. And I guess Mother Nature had her own agenda. They carried on and we almost forgot about it until last Friday. And then everything happened at once. The evacuation orders, the preparations for ashfall. Everyone was running around. You know, it's happening. It's happening is happening right now. This is not a drill, obviously, for many foreigners like myself. This is a new experience, seeing the atomic mushroom cloud launch into the sky in the distance. But our good friends and neighbours here, many of them have lived through this back in 1979 as children. So they knew the drill. You've got about eight hours on the clock between when it erupts and when the ash falls. So there is a lot of teamwork on the island. But down the hatches, get everyone inside by water, by candlelight, by supplies and brace. And then the morning after was a sight to see.

MG: Well, describe that. I mean, this atomic mushroom cloud of ash, what was the morning after like?

CLAIRE MATLOCK: Is frightening and mesmerising. I think the best comparison would be a really heavy blanket of snowfall, except inches of this grey toxic ash on every surface. And it's very powdery and fine. So it coats everything in the film, infiltrates every corner. You leave your kitchen window open, a crack in your kitchen is covered the next morning. I've never seen anything like it.

MG: Power's been out. There was no running water for days. What is the situation like today?

CLAIRE MATLOCK: So much better today. More optimistic. So we have a blue sky again and the water came back through the taps, although nobody trusts it. But we're still filling up our gallon jugs of water. I say, though, you know, after that initial kind of headline worthy eruption, the real work starts. So things are deceivingly better. We had a rainfall that helped to wash away some of the ash, but we've still got thousands of people in shelters and in private homes that were just taken in by friends and family. And, you know, after the headlines, they have to go back to their homes in a few months. And they've had their roofs have caved in. They've lost their crops and their farms. So the real work begins now.

MG: Tell me about how you're helping out with that real work. I mean, you're studying down there, but drop the books and go to work.

CLAIRE MATLOCK: Yeah, we're in final exams here, and it was hard to focus knowing that so many people were displaced. And so I'm 27. I love social media. I use Instagram. So I do what I always do. And I post pictures and stories. And I posted a story saying, hey, you know, I'm ditching the books for a day and I love my school. But I also want to help people and I'm going to run out and buy groceries and deliver to the shelter. If you want to chip in five dollars, here's my email. Here's how you e-transfer. And then thousands of dollars poured in. And I was so humbled and overwhelmed and my friends and I linked up with some of our local Vincentian friends and they navigated and they called the shots. They gave us the numbers. We drove to the shelters. And then we started this little grassroots operation, the bandits. We just drive around and deliver groceries.

MG: What is that like? I mean, in the midst of all of this with with people, you know, facing this crisis that, as you say, the media may pay attention to for a minute and then it's going to continue for months.

CLAIRE MATLOCK: People are, I mean, if you saw the shelters, you walk into a converted public school or parish and there's just 18 beds to a room or yoga mats on the floor. And imagine just throwing everything in the backpack and leaving your home and not knowing when you're going back. And so folks are just eating dry foods and canned foods and nothing refrigerated and they only have the clothes on their back. And so, you know, you walk in and you bring, you know, a grocery cart of food and it makes their day and it means so much. So the more we can do that, the better.

MG: Blue skies, as you say, are back but the volcanologists are saying that the activity in this volcano could continue for weeks. So how much of that is of a concern? Is that for people who are living there?

CLAIRE MATLOCK: So for us down south, we have for about an hour and a half south. So it's a lot safer for us here. And we see things in the distance and we hear the rumblings and feel the earthquakes, but we don't feel it as immediately as that red zone up north.

MG: You hear the rumblings, though?

CLAIRE MATLOCK: Yeah. Yeah, intermittently. But we're not in that region. We're in what they call the Green Zone. So we're safe and it's just in the distance kind of thing for us. We deal with the ash fall and the thunderstorms, but this is going to go on for months and people can't go back until it's safe.

MG: That's really hard to imagine. I mean, again, for an island that has been, you know, without this kind of eruption for 40 years, to see this kind of disruption that's going to go on for a long period of time must be really hard.

CLAIRE MATLOCK: Yeah, it's it's similar to, I would say, covid in a way where what can you do? Life carries on in between the eruptions and people mask up and the air quality is very poor and everything's kind of OK, but it's not OK. It's sort of a feeling in the air. I think Canadians are now they're accustomed to going into their third lockdown.

MG: And you have to keep studying for your exams as well.

CLAIRE MATLOCK: Yes, of course. Always studying. I think any med student can attest to that.

MG: When are the exams?

CLAIRE MATLOCK: They start next week, but we've been granted a very generous- they've postponed them for us after they saw the work that we were doing and also with the electrical and the water situation, they called them off this week. We're very thankful to our school.

MG: Well, I'm sure a lot of people are very thankful for the work that you were doing. And I wish you the best, not just there, but in the exams and in your health. Take care of yourself.

CLAIRE MATLOCK: Thanks so much.

MG: Claire Matlock is a Canadian medical student studying in Kingston in St. Vincent. That is The Current for this Thursday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Que Topower, speaking with the Canadian country singer Brett Kissel. But the inspiration behind the single from his new album, What is Life? You'll hear that coming up in a few moments. I'm Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current. Take care. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: Theme]

The Current Transcript for April 15, 2021

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Life almost back to normal in Yukon, but tourism sector needs the world to catch up

Daunte Wright killing heightens tensions around Derek Chauvin trial

Vaccine supply issues force clinics to cancel appointments; and students help St. Vincent evacuees

Thursday April 15, 2021 Full Transcript

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