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The Current Transcript for April 4, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

MALE VOICE: The index is designed to help you to make the best decisions possible to protect yourself, your loved ones and those around you.

MATT GALLOWAY: We are on the doorstep of a sixth wave of this pandemic if we aren't in it already, and in most jurisdictions, public health mandates have been lifted and the message seems to be ‘govern yourselves accordingly’. In 30 minutes, how to assess your own public risk as COVID continues to spread and how one community created its own tool to help its citizens make those decisions. Also this morning.

ERIC REGULY: I've struggled my entire life to understand what motivated my father. I used to think that he was a thrill seeker and only a thrill seeker. Robert Reguly was one of the most celebrated Canadian journalists of his time, a globe-trotting war reporter who is fiercely competitive and behind some of the biggest scoops of the day. His son, Eric Reguly followed him into journalism. Later, Eric is here to talk about retracing his father's footsteps to Vietnam to learn how covering that war changed a dad he didn't really know. That's in an hour. We begin, though, in Ukraine with accusations of war crimes and a story about the power of radio in a time of conflict. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Allegations of war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine and how a radio station in Ukraine is helping the war effort

Guests: Hugh Williamson and Bogdan Bolkhovetsky

DMYTRO KULEBA: SOUNDCLIP: [Bucha is the most outrageous atrocity of the 21st century. We all refer to Bucha, but we should not forget about other towns and villages in the Kyiv region, which also became the crime scene for the Russian Army].

MG: That's Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba speaking on Sunday, echoing the growing reports of Russian war crimes against civilians in Ukraine. Yesterday, officials revealed that hundreds of corpses believed to be civilian victims of Russian warfare were found in the town of Bucha. Russian officials deny the accusation and call it another quote "provocation". At the same time, Human Rights Watch published a report documenting accounts of war crimes by Russia. Hugh Williamson is Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. And just a warning some of the details he's relaying are graphic. Hugh, good morning.

HUGH WILLIAMSON: Good morning.

MG: How has Human Rights Watch gone about getting information about war crimes in Ukraine?

HW: We have teams of experts in the country, outside the country, specialists on Ukraine, who've worked on the country for 30 years, specialists in conflict situations, dealing with military affairs. We have arms experts as well, of course legal experts, and we have teams who work on open source material, such as videos and photos to verify they really are what they claim to be. So we use these different teams and approaches to verify the sort of shocking evidence we found in our report, which we published on Sunday.

MG: Where specifically have you been able to go... Your teams [where] have [they] been able to go in Ukraine?

HW: We've been in Lviv, we've been in Kyiv, and we've been in some of the areas near Mariupol, in the south as well.

MG: And again, understanding that these are horrific scenes, what are some of the stories that your teams have been able to uncover?

HW: Yeah, we've identified in our latest report two cases of summary executions, these are basically murders by Russian soldiers. In one case, six men were collected in a village and taken outside and shot. Two brothers were among that group, men ranging from their late teens, to their early 40s. The mothers and other family members couldn't access their bodies and go and bury them properly for nine days. In another case, near Kyiv, in Bucha in fact, which has been in the headlines so much recently, a man was amongst five men who had to kneel in a public street, take some of their clothes off, put their T-shirts over their head. And this man was shot in the back of the head, at close range. And then we've documented a very traumatic case of a woman who was raped multiple times by a Russian soldier in eastern Ukraine, in a school building where the women and children were hiding. She was with her five-year-old daughter. The soldier took her to a classroom in the school and raped her several times during the night. And of course, these do amount to war crimes, and then need to obviously be fully investigated.

MG: And is the evidence that civilians are being deliberately targeted?

HW: I think it's clear from these particular cases that these soldiers are directly targeting civilians. Yes, I mean, there's no other explanation for individual Russian soldiers identifying and then raping Ukrainian women. We're being very cautious. This evidence comes from the first half of March. It's taken us some time to piece it together, to make sure we are absolutely sure it is true and verifiable. We're not saying this is very widespread, but we worry that it could be. Bucha, for instance, is a small town, tens of thousands of people. Mariupol is a half a million people and it's been under Russian occupation for many weeks now. We do worry what has been happening there, and what will happen if the Russian troops did pull out as they pulled out from Bucha and it became easier to find out what's been going on.

MG: I was going to say, I mean, there is global horror and outrage at the images that are coming out of Bucha, mass graves and much, much worse. Do you see, based on what you're seeing in those reports, do you see a pattern that's emerging?

HW: As I said, we're cautious about defining patterns. I mean, we are worried that the evidence we have in the first half of March is being reinforced today, you know, through these videos and other evidence from Bucha. We're very keen to establish what happened in the more recent days in Bucha, before Russia pulled out in the last couple of days of March. If we find that evidence that we can verify that it was indeed Russian troops that, for instance, executed people and left their bodies on the streets, then we would indeed have a pattern. And the key thing is to say we need to build up this evidence because it needs to be passed to Ukrainian authorities, to the International Criminal Court, to UN bodies, to mount a proper investigation. Evidence needs to be preserved, specialists need to be able to come in, forensic specialists, in order for... Even if it takes months and longer, there needs to be accountability for these crimes, and that's why such careful information and testimony gathering is so important.

MG: Russian officials have said that these reports are fabricated. They've said that their troops are targeting military installations, not civilians. When it comes to the images coming out of Bucha, the Foreign Ministry said that the footage was ordered by the United States to blame Russia. What do you make of a response like that?

HW: I think that's how we see our role in a sense, that we see our role in being able to cut through that sort of frankly disinformation, because the evidence we've gathered, as I said, carefully done from a few weeks ago, is more difficult to refute that if we really verified the videos, we've talked to several witnesses and so on and so forth. So we need to present this clear evidence. And of course, it's actually Russia's responsibility to look into and investigate the abuses carried out by their own troops. We call on them to do so. You know, Russia is a party to this conflict. It has committed to the Geneva Conventions and so on. So on the one hand, we need to provide clear evidence that refutes this disinformation. But we need to hold Russia to its responsibilities, too.

MG: I guess just finally on that when you're looking for accountability, Russia has withdrawn from the International Criminal Court. So where does the global community find accountability in the face of evidence that you have documented in these reports?

HW: Yeah, I think we have to rely on things like the International Criminal Court. The UN, the Human Rights Council set up a commission investigation as well, a commission of enquiry. That's very important. And of course, other countries such as Germany under universal jurisdiction can mount investigations and trials as well. So there were a variety of levers which the international community can use. And we should not despair just because of Russia's stance on these issues. To push this forward, there will be justice one day, I'm sure.

MG: Hugh, it's good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

HW: Thank you.

MG: Hugh Williamson is Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. In a war like this, people are stepping up to help in all kinds of different ways. Take Kraina FM, for example. It used to be a normal pop rock radio station in Ukraine, and then war broke out and the people running the station had to flee their homes. They wound up in a small village producing radio out of a makeshift studio with a new purpose. Bogdan Bolkhovetsky is the CEO of Kraina FM. Bogdan Hello.

BOGDAN BOLKHOVETSKY: Hello.

MG: How are you doing?

BB: Good. Thank you. Now we are good. We are fully operational. We have our routines in check. So it's good now.

MG: Tell me what happened. You were, as I mentioned, a normal radio station playing rock music in Ukraine and then war breaks out. What happened in those first days after the war?

BB: Mayhem happened actually. What happened was unthinkable. It's like having a war from your neighbours who come over and start killing everybody and literally destroying the cities. So three days of absolute not understanding what's going on. Then people started getting back to senses and to make some sensible decisions, we decided to move what we could to a safer place. And then some of us, like three or four, reunited in a small village and we started broadcasting again.

MG: You went to the local military station when you got to this small village. What did you do? Tell us about that visit.

BB: Yes, we went there because they've got the announcement that everyone should show up and we showed up in the guys of this military station. Asked us about our prior experience. Did we have any army experience? We said No. Can you shoot? We said no. And they said, What do you do for a living? We say we make radio station. Which one? This one. [inaudible] They said, ok, we know where you are. Just go and keep doing the radio station because it became a lot of announcements to make and people need to hear information and just go and do it.

MG: Tell me, describe the studio that you're broadcasting from. I mentioned you're in this small village, so describe your studio.

BB: Imagine the small village and a small cottage and a small office of a bookkeeper, real, small and in a corner of these bookkeepers office in a small village. We have two tables put together and broadcast from there.

MG: How difficult is it technically in the midst of a war to broadcast?

BB: Technically, it's very difficult because we don't have steady internet connection, and even simple things need to be done like several times. So we have to make several attempts to make anything happen, and that's the most difficult part of it.

MG: But you have equipment that you managed to bring, equipment from your other studio to set up there?

BB: No, we fled only with one microphone, which was by chance in the trunk of our program director. And then we addressed some guys in Austria and they sent us in a mixing console, like three or four more microphones and three or four laptops. So we have a sort of makeshift studio right now and we haven't removed the equipment from Kyiv. It's absolutely impossible.

MG: Many people are working through the studio right now, how many people do you have with you?

BB: Three.

MG: And the people who would normally be working for your station back in Kyiv, where they?

BB: Some of them are in Kyiv, some of them around the country, some of them in Poland or in Hungary. We're all scattered now.

MG: What are you broadcasting? Describe how your content changed from being a rock station to this station.

BB: It was pop and rock station and it was mostly music. But we played all the Ukrainian language music a hundred percent. And right now, after... almost after every song, depending on the internet connection, we also play an announcement for an army. Or there's poetry which is sent to us by our listeners, by our audience, or we play an anecdote or a funny story by our military or psychological advice. But mostly, we are focussed on the announcement of like help needed.

MG: Tell me more about that. What are the announcements that you're making on air?

BB: Oh, I'll give you a very clear example. Military, they call us one day. It was like two or three days ago and said they do not have printers anymore... operational printers, and they need a printer urgently for some reason. And like in 30 minutes, they call back and say, now we have three. Stop broadcasting this message.

MG: That shows you the power of what you're doing.

BB: Yeah. It shows not only the power which we are doing the power of people who listen to this and react. We are not delivering the printer. You see, people just take the printer from home and bring to military station. And now they have the printer.

MG: You're still playing music as well. Why do you think playing music is important at this time?

BB: Because when people are in shelters, I don't know. Probably you're not aware of that. But when people are in shelters and in Kyiv, I was in Kyiv for several days and in Kyiv, air raid alert eight to nine times a day, lasting from 30 minutes to three hours. And while people sit in shelters, they sing and they sing all the Ukrainian songs. It lifts your spirit, it helps you somehow it connects you with your, you know, inner Ukrainian, I would say.

MG: You mentioned as well that you're broadcasting anecdotes, funny anecdotes. Tell me about one of those.

BB: Oh listen, it will be really hard to translate in a funny way, in a funny way. The brightest one, I guess. Do you know about [Ukrainian village name]?

MG: Tell us about that.

BB: [Village name] is a small village where Russians usually keep their helicopters. And right now, Ukraine managed 11 times, attack the helicopters. 11 times in a row, almost on a daily basis, and destroy all the helicopters and they keep sending them in. I would say it's not funny, but it's funny because 11 times they do not change the location. They send in more helicopters. At night helicopters get destroyed. That's the premise of the joke. OK? The joke is, do you know that Ukraine is asking NATO and other countries to close the sky?

MG: Yes.

BB: You heard that. Now the joke is that Russian is addressing NATO and asking NATO to close the sky over [village name]. They cannot lose helicopters anymore.

MG: When you tell a joke like that in the midst of a war, which is awful, what do you think you're providing to the people who are listening?

BB: Listen, that we have a chance, that we are fighting. That's a joke about us winning and them losing. That's a good joke.

MG: What do you see as your broader role here in the war? I mean, when the military people said, go and make radio, what do you see as the role that you're playing in this war?

BB: We keep military to move along. We try to fulfill their needs if they have any and when they have any. We're lifting spirits of people who listen to the station and we are doing the job.

MG: What does that like to be a source of comfort for people in the midst of something awful?

BB: Well, it is still awful. Everything is awful. You can only hope that someone is feeling better. It's dreadful. It's dreadful. I mean, everyone lost someone. You do not have such good news. You have usually very troubled news. Somebody died. Somebody got injured. Somebody's house was destroyed. It's like a funeral for 35 days. And if you can lift somebody up, that's good, I guess.

MG: You've been really insistent in saying that what you're doing is not heroic. Why do you keep saying that?

BB: Because I have this implication from a couple of interviews. Oh, you went somewhere. Oh, that's so cool. Oh, you're playing this plan. That maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but I want to stress this out. Exactly that what we are doing right now is absolutely nothing compared to what military is doing. Military are heroes. All the rest are just assistants at best.

MG: How do you wrap your head around this more than a month into this? That, as you mentioned, your neighbours have attacked so much of what people took for granted has now just been snatched away from them. Can you possibly understand what's happening?

BB: No one can. I mean, you just have to let it sink in and it's unthinkable. You just wait. You just realize and just look at this. But you cannot comprehend it because there is no explanation of why. What for? Why? I mean, it's just incredible.

MG: What do you want... Part of being a broadcaster is being able to tell your story to people who you don't even know. What do you want through this conversation for people outside of Ukraine to know about what daily life is like for you?

BB: For me personally, compared to a lot of people, I'm in luck. Compared to a lot of people. I know that my house is destroyed, but I still hope my mother in law is still alive. So many people know that their relatives are dead. So what was the regular life? There is no regular life. I used to have a regular life. I don't have it anymore. I used to have a house. I used to have a kid. I used to have a car. It's destroyed. I was wearing the same pants for 26 days. The same sweatpants for 26 days because that was everything I was left with. Hey, how is it regular? It's not regular at all, it's war.

MG: In the face of that. Where are you finding the determination to keep going?

BB: Do we have any options? You just support and you do what you can do. Like people who bake bread, bakers, they bake bread. People who can drive, they drive. People who do radio, they do radio.

MG: Do you have hope that you'll get back to Kyiv at some point in time again? I mean, we've been talking about how this is going to end. What is the hope that you have of seeing an end to this and getting back to the life that you had to abandon?

BB: The hope that we will win and it will end in some foreseeable future? It has to be stopped. It just has to be stopped. So many people are dead for what? You guys like it, that you don't see it and don't understand it through a proper measure. That's very good. But believe me, there is no sense into this. There is absolutely no sense! Just animals, barbarians who came from abroad. Putin is supported by 83 percent of Russian. Think about it. 83 percent, every 8 people out of 10 support what he does to Ukraine. Is this a nation? Are they human? 8 out of 10! Hitler didn't have that support.

MG: You're doing really important work and it's incredibly dangerous, but it really means a lot to the people who are on the other end of the radio listening to you. I'm really glad to talk to you. Stay safe and thank you very much.

BB: Thank you so much. And we are not in imminent danger. I just want to tell you and everything that is happening and good in Ukraine right now. Every hour proud is our military. The rest is just some assistance and some help. But military are the heroes. We are not.

MG: Bogdan, thank you very much.

BB: Thank you so much.

MG: Take care, bye bye.

BB: Take good care, bye bye.

MG: Bogdan Bolkhovetsky is the CEO of Kraina FM. Your CBC News is next. And then:

THOMAS PIGGOTT: It draws on testing information, including PCR test, percent positivity and rapid antigen test percent positivity that is reported to Peterborough Public Health. And finally, it draws on wastewater surveillance information.

MG: Peterborough Ontario's wastewater COVID signals are back at levels seen during the height of the Omicron surge. And the city's public health officials want to give residents a new way to figure out how to live their lives safely as we move through a sixth wave of COVID. The need for a new COVID risk assessment. That's coming up in about six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Stay with us.

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How Canadians can assess the ongoing risk of COVID-19

Guests: Thomas Piggott, Lisa Barrett and Samantha Yammine

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

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MG: Still to come, the journalist, Eric Reguly's father, Robert, covered the Vietnam War, that changed him. Half a century later Eric retraces his father's footsteps to get to know him better. But first, knowing your COVID risk.

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MG: Many of the pandemic's mandates and restrictions are gone. That means more decisions are being left up to you, even if you don't have to, do you wear a mask or not? Even though you can, do you go to that concert or not? At this stage of the pandemic, life is inching closer to normal, but COVID certainly is not gone, and it feels right now like just about everyone knows someone who has COVID. In Peterborough, Ontario public health officials have launched a new community risk index to help people make decisions like the ones we were talking about earlier. Dr. Thomas Piggott is Peterborough's Chief Medical Officer of Health and CEO of Peterborough Public Health. Dr. Piggott, good morning.

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. What is the Community Risk Index?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: So we launched this last Wednesday, and it's a composite index we draw from all of the available COVID-19 indicators. The data that we have at this stage in the pandemic and we presented in a transparent way for residents of our community. And with it, we've tied guidance and recommendations to each level of the index.

MG: What are you drawing from to give residents a sense of the level of risk?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, we're looking at the case rates of COVID-19. Of course, that used to be far more useful in the pandemic than it is now because in many contexts, eligibility for PCR testing has changed. We're drawing on hospitalizations and deaths. We're drawing on the percent positivity of testing that's done both PCR and we also have a unique rapid antigen test self-report survey that we're using to inform that here in Peterborough. And finally, wastewater surveillance, which has become an ever more important indicator in the continuing nature of the pandemic. So we're bringing that all together.

MG: Why, at this point in the pandemic, did you feel that the people of your city needed a tool like this?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, I think Matt, governments are certainly telling us that as we move on this journey to learning to live with COVID, we're moving away from, you know, government led preventative measures to control the virus and individual responsibility is becoming more important. But here, you know, hearing from our residents, our team felt it was really critical to create a tool that could make residents as informed as possible based on the current evidence in making their own decisions.

MG: So when I looked at the website this morning, it was last updated on the 30th of March and it said the COVID risk for your community is high. What does that mean?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, high risk means that the pandemic is very much still with us and that people are becoming infected and people will get quite sick and people will probably die in the coming weeks from this virus. In our community we have an aging population. We have a population that, you know, is continuing to get infected in this ongoing pandemic. And so high risk means that there are preventative measures that everyone should continue to be taking. And we also have special guidance for high risk populations, people at high risk of severe disease, including those who are unvaccinated, medically at risk, immunocompromised and the elderly.

MG: So just briefly, I mean, given a high risk indicator, what is it that people should do with that knowledge?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, quite simply, everyone should still be wearing a mask, and that's my strong recommendation at this stage in this pandemic. It's a preventative measure that can have a big impact in addition to the other measures that we know are important, like getting vaccinated, staying home, if you're sick, seeking testing and even treatment now. But one of the key pieces is wearing your mask and both people who are at higher risk of severe disease, but also the general public should be wearing them because wearing your mask doesn't just protect yourself, it does help protect those around you.

MG: What about interacting with other people? Again, restaurants are wide open. There aren't capacity restrictions. There are concerts that are happening. It's springtime. Should people feel comfortable in gathering indoors, for example?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, what we've done is, we've said, at least for populations that are at higher risk of severe disease, to be careful and to avoid unnecessary, you know, social gatherings or attendance in higher risk settings where you could be more likely to become infected. And you know, at this stage, we're just trying to equip people with the best tools that we can so that they're at least aware and informed of the risks that they may be taking.

MG: What sort of response are you getting to this risk index?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Really great response so far from the community. We've put out a survey. This was a pilot project and there's been hundreds of responses so far from our community and significant support from social media and through email. I think people at this juncture in the pandemic are confused. They know that we're entering a new phase, but they don't know what to do, and we want to equip them with the best evidence to make their decision.

MG: Let's talk about not knowing what to do. Your province has removed essentially all restrictions. We don't know, as you said, how many cases there actually are because testing is severely restricted. The chief medical officer of health is kind of nowhere to be seen, hasn't been made available for interviews. Anecdotally, it feels, as I said, like there are. Cases everywhere, everybody seems to know somebody who has COVID the wastewater analysis seems to suggest that as well. The outgoing head of the Science Advisory Table says that this will be known as the throw caution to the wind wave. How are people supposed to assess the risk in the midst of all of that?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, I'm concerned, in particular for people who are at higher risk of severe disease, I think we're fortunate to have reached a stage in the pandemic where if you're young, healthy and fully vaccinated, even if you do get an infection, the likelihood is that you will have a milder infection, though we don't yet know the degree of people who will have longer term symptoms, long COVID symptoms. So I still think everyone should have some prudence, but I'm particularly concerned about those who are at higher risk. I mean, the Omicron wave in our community resulted in more than half the deaths we've seen in the entire pandemic in our community and in no way is this continued pandemic mild. I think prudence is still important and we're doing the best that we can to inform our residents so that they can be aware of that.

MG: Do you think your community has been abandoned by its provincial government?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: I don't think it's my position to comment on provincial government policy. I am quite concerned about the continued risk, especially for those who are higher risk. And I just think there are things that we can do that community members can do to decrease those risks. And they come with no to nearly no negative consequences, namely wearing a mask. A tightly fitted mask like a respirator style mask continues to be a useful tool in the toolbox. So I hope that as we go forward, you know, we won't throw the baby out with the bathwater of pandemic precautions, and we'll continue to use things that we know that can save lives.

MG: As the medical officer of health for your community. If the province doesn't impose a mask mandate, we are hearing that Quebec is looking at, perhaps extending its mask mandate. Are there things that you can do not to suggest that people wear a mask indoors... But you've said that people are likely to get sick and people are likely to die in a community with an aging population. Can you impose any mandates on your own?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well Matt, there is legislation in the province that does enable certain actions to be taken. It is not as straightforward as just imposing, and I think we've heard from our democratically elected provincial governments the policy direction they're looking to take. So it continues to be something that I'm constantly evaluating because my job is to protect our community.

MG: But as you said, members of your community are confused. Can you understand why they're confused and why... This is such a hot button issue. I know that you've had people who've protested outside of your house, for example, because of things that have unfolded over the course of the pandemic. But can you understand why some of those members of the community, if you say that people are likely to get sick and die, might say, why not do something to help prevent that beyond telling people that they're on their own in some ways?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, I'm not telling them that they're on their own and we are providing guidance. The recommendation that I have around something like masking, which is again, just one tool, we're trying to do a lot more than just that. Obviously, the availability of new treatments is encouraging. But what I'm trying to do is to strongly recommend that at this juncture, but to keep a very close eye on any local interventions, including requirements that may need to be reimposed. If that's the case, I think this is not the only disease where people do get sick and die. It is obviously still very much a severe pandemic we're in the middle of. But I hope that from COVID, we learn there are things that can be done, especially like continuing to wear a mask that can save lives without significant consequences.

MG: What are you most concerned about right now?

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Well, I'm concerned that we're rushing to move on from this stage of the pandemic and we may [x3] not continue measures that could continue to save lives when they don't come with significant consequences. And at least in my local context for my community, I'm trying to do the best I can so that residents know what they can do to continue to protect not only themselves, but those around them as well.

MG: Dr. Piggott, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

THOMAS PIGGOTT: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Dr. Thomas Piggott is the medical officer of health for Peterborough Public Health and the CEO of Peterborough Public Health. While Peterborough has developed a risk index in many other parts of the country, COVID information is harder to come by, and many medical experts are saying it's not good enough. Dr. Lisa Barrett, an infectious disease specialist, is in Halifax, and Samantha Yammine is a neuroscientist and science communicator in Toronto. Good morning to you, both.

BOTH: Morning.

MG: Dr. Barrett, how well equipped do you think Canadians are to know the risks so that they can make, we can make informed choices to stay safe?

LISA BARRETT: They're not well equipped, I think Canadians are very smart human beings but, you know, just to ask the simple question every interview I do for the last four or five days. You watch infectious disease physicians and public health experts dance when you ask them hard questions, because none of this makes sense at this point, because Canadians aren't ready and don't have the tools at their ready disposal to assess something as complex a risk at a very high risk time during the pandemic. So it doesn't make sense to me, and I don't think Canadians are well-prepared.

MG: How is it possible that we're having this conversation now into the sixth wave of COVID?

LISA BARRETT: I'm a little incredulous to tell you the truth, and again, it comes back to what I just said. I think there's a lot of good information coming from an expert in science based approach around low risk tools, not lockdowns, but low risk tools that are not being maintained as rules. I mean, get rid of the mandate word. But you know, we have lots of rules in our society when things affect populations and communities. A respiratory virus affects populations and communities, and we're at a point where people are tired and need help to make great choices and information and rules like masks, like some moderation in terms of gatherings, is still what's needed until the end of this respiratory season. We keep hearing it. I have no idea why we're having this conversation right now.

MG: Samantha Yammine, do you think that Canadians are hearing the message they need to at this point in this pandemic?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: I don't really think so, and I also think it may sound a little different depending, you know which level of government you're listening to and I also think there are conflicts coming like Dr. Barrett said, from experts and then from those perhaps making the policies. I think there's just a lot of conflicting information and I think there's a jump to be so all or nothing and like, let's just have fun now when it's like we can have fun and still not, you know, kill people with our policies in place.

MG: You and I have spoken before about the idea of a risk budget. What is your risk budget at this point in the pandemic? How are you assessing risk?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: For me, my risk budget, it fluctuates mostly from week to week, and it's dependent on what's going on with other people in my household as well. But right now, you know, we don't have plans to see any more vulnerable family members the next upcoming weekend. So my risk budget is a little, you know, a little more roomy this week. What that means is I saw a patio open this weekend. I was… it was pretty well spaced out. It was outside and we hopped on and had a drink. And it's that kind of thing of, OK, what am I doing in the next week? How should I act? You know how far removed from my last dose of a vaccine? It's all of those things that factor into what your budget is in a given week.

MG: Dr. Barrett, what about you? The last time we spoke, you were recovering from COVID, and I'm glad to hear that that recovery is going well. But how are you assessing risk as you go about your life?

LISA BARRETT: Yeah, very sort of similar way. Trying to get the most up to date information in terms of cases. Right now in most parts of this country there's a significant sea of virus around us, so the absolute case number doesn't change my week to week risk stratification. But you know, I look around, I make sure I know who I'm going to see if I've been somewhere where I think that there was mask off activity in a public space and I was there. I don't see vulnerable people, but I just want to pause for a second. This is all great and I love what Peterborough's done. But again, there's a lot of people out there who really want to wear a mask, really want to continue to moderate their activity, stay home when they're sick. But there are huge social pressures. Not everyone has the social capital right now and the power to do what they want to do, they just don't without these mandates. And so while I look around and I know how I'm going to manage my risk and that of people around me, that's a sophisticated thing to be able to do. And not everyone is in a power position to be able to manage their social interactions that way. Every day I get DMs from people who say I want to wear a mask but don't feel that I... I don't feel comfortable saying that in public or doing it. We're losing a great big tool here right away and there's not a good reason for it. So risk assess. Yes, use your tools, masks, vaccines, tests where they're available. Don't throw that out and look around at case numbers and then try not to be around vulnerable people. But let's be clear and vulnerable people are between one and five and one in 10 in Canadian populations, and you're not going to know who most of them are and you're going to end up putting someone at risk.

MG: Well, I was going to say the other part of this is who are we abandoning in the absence of those rules or mandates or whatever you call them?

LISA BARRETT: Well, that's just it, I mean, it's not even just the medically vulnerable or people who have other reasons to be vulnerable or can't get vaccinated or don't. It's really social structure now. We're asking people to be vocal about their health choices. And that's really difficult for people who don't always have, you know, a social situation that lets them do that. It's very difficult for people in this very polarised environment about masks to stand up for things especially, you know, you live in a group setting or you're around people and you don't feel you've got the social power structure to do that. There's a lot of people out there that we're putting in a difficult position. And is that... it's not the same as if we were doing it when we were not in a respiratory season. We're at a peak part of the season and we're now telling people to be able to do this on their own. And that's poor timing. We don't have to do that right now.

MG: Samantha, how do you understand the decisions by governments? In Quebec, it seems, is going to extend its mask mandate that is a bit of an outlying decision in many parts of this country. The pandemic is still here to Lisa's point. Governments have turned the responsibility of managing it over to citizens. How do you understand that?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: I think what Dr. Barrett said is just really important. I also don't really understand why we're dropping, why we've dropped in Ontario, where I live, the easiest risk mitigator wearing masks in indoor public settings. I think there is a lot of pressure because many places in the world were doing it and we don't want to seem behind and people are frustrated and I get all that. I get the negative associations people have with masks and we do want to just shove it away. But I think we're being really short term. I think the reality is we don't know how much longer this will be around and it likely will be around for, you know, at least the rest of the year, if not more. And I think we're just being really short term with our thinking. I want to be able to enjoy the most out of this summer, you know, lull period that we're anticipating and I don't see how those policies will set people up for that success.

MG: Do you also worry about who... to Dr. Barratt's point, who the government is abandoning and not taking those steps? Who if we are being asked to kind of bear the burden ourselves, who's being left behind in that?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: Oh, absolutely. It's the role of public health to protect the most vulnerable in our population, people with the most privilege and the most resources. They don't necessarily need those guidelines because they have everything at their disposal to protect themselves and their communities. But those who don't have the options don't have the social capital, the ability, the bandwidth to set rules and aren't given the power to control what others around them are doing. It's the role of government to protect those people. And right now, the policy decisions being made, especially at the provincial level, are really signalling like, well, too bad, you're immunocompromised, we've done enough for you. It's on you now. And that's just really unfair. And it's, in my opinion, an abandonment of the responsibility that public health officials have and our provincial governments have in listening to public health experts.

MG: Dr. Barrett, Dr. Piggott talked about some of the tools that are being used to help create that risk index. Nova Scotia has stopped providing daily information on COVID. Instead that's being released weekly based on epidemiology reports. Testing is difficult to get when it comes to a PCR test, and so the numbers in many jurisdictions are a whole lot lower than the actual case counts. At this stage of the pandemic how important is real time data to know where we are at this moment?

LISA BARRETT: I really do think we're at such a peak that daily data won't make a huge difference to what folks should be doing. I don't think it's that lack of daily reporting that makes things different in terms of what your behaviour should be. But I can tell you, it makes an exceptional difference to not have access to daily updates or more frequent updates. Psychologically, for people, it signals to folks and this is, you know, a little bit outside my area of expertise, but I hear it all the time. People understand when things go back to less frequent reporting, they think that this is less important. Some part of them thinks that this is less important and that we're also done with it. And that's not a great choice for people. A daily reminder that, you know, we have 1300 cases in the province that, you know, record numbers of cases a day helps people, if you're going to throw responsibility back to individuals, helps people understand exactly how serious this is. So I do think not to change behaviour, but to remind people and give them good information on how much virus is around and how stressed their health systems are is very important. And so is testing, I mean, the masking and the testing part of this, we have those tools now. We've had them for two and a half years and using them now really does help people to still get out and prevent secondary spread. Negatives aren't helpful. The positives are and taking those tools away from folks or making them more difficult to get, it's really, really challenging.

MG: Samantha, how do you get that message to people who perhaps aren't as risk averse, people who have been very eager for mandates to end people who don't want to wear a mask?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: I think it's really tricky, and especially with all of the fatigue right now, I think an important step for us to take that I think people won't want to do necessarily is just to remind them of the long term game that we're playing here. I think there's... They anticipated summer lull and as Dr. Barrett said, leaving respiratory season in the summer months. I think that's a really good time for people to refill their cups, refill their energy. And I think perhaps focussing on that, that there is a break we anticipate hopefully coming can be helpful to motivate people to stick it out a little longer because it has been a really long and difficult winter. But at the end of the day, I think that's where policies are helpful because right now, as you say, when you give people the option and they're really keen and they don't really care as much anymore, they're over it. It's... There's not a lot of motivation there to keep wearing a mask in settings like the grocery store. So I think one reminding people of the good ahead and the break that's hopefully ahead and having those policies in place can be really helpful.

MG: Dr. Barrett, last minute to you. We keep being told by politicians and others that we need to learn to live with COVID. The vast majority of Canadians are vaccinated. There is fatigue as well. How much more do you think Canadians are willing to do to forgo to help stop the spread of this virus at this point?

LISA BARRETT: Probably not a lot. And the good news about the tools we've just talked about is that they don't mean Canadians have to forgo pretty much anything. Wearing a mask doesn't cost you much. Moderating your behaviour doesn't cost you much, and getting tested doesn't cost you much. From a social perspective, it allows you to do things, they are tools of enablement, not restriction. And how much do I think Canadians can do that? I think if they are starting to get the right message from their provincial governments again, they can do that for the next number of weeks until we're out of this. I do think Canadians can do it. In fact, I think Canadians should have to do this. We don't want to be that country that puts people who are vulnerable, either socially or medically into a bad position. We've done well so far. We can get back to it again, but someone has to figure out why we're making poor choices at a policy level right now.

MG: It's good to speak with you both about this and we'll talk again. Thank you very much.

BOTH: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Lisa Barrett is an infectious disease specialist. She was in Halifax. Samantha Yammine is a neuroscientist and science communicator. She was in Toronto. And as they both said, these are confusing times. How are you assessing risks? Do you feel that every venture out into the world is an adventure? What does your risk budget look like right now? And how are you interpreting the fact that in many ways these decisions are left to you to try to figure out what's the right way forward and what perhaps you should pull back on? Send us an email. Let us know Thecurrent@cbc.ca or on Twitter @thecurrentcbc. Coming up after your regional update.

ERIC REGULY: My father was not a hotel journalist. He was in the action and I wanted to experience where he went to learn more about him and I learnt a lot about him. I learnt that he wasn't just an action junkie. He was actually, in my view, a truth warrior.

MG: He followed his father's footsteps all the way to the historic battlegrounds of the Vietnam War and 90 seconds. My conversation with the journalist Eric Reguly about his dad, Robert Reguly. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Back in a minute. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

Eric Reguly on the life and legacy of his father, Robert Reguly

Guest: Eric Reguly

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Voices from another war, from another time.

SOUNDCLIP: [MALE VOICE 1: The rifles have been jamming the mud's slowed everything down and the artillery comes in everywhere and just gets pretty futile and frustrating sometimes.

MALE VOICE 2: The really depressing part of what it is like there isn't really much you can do. You know what I mean? You see a round come in, you see your buddies blown away and wounded and stuff like that.

MALE VOICE 3: Well, I can't say that I'm scared stiff, but I'm scared. I mean, after a while, you know, it's going to come and you can't do nothing about it and you just look to God, that's about the only thing you can do].

MG: Soldiers from Con Tien in 1967, during one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. One of the reporters covering the carnage was the Toronto Star's Robert Reguly. By the time he arrived in Southeast Asia, he was already one of Canada's best known journalists. His fame came not from covering battles, but from headline making scoops as an investigative reporter. His son, Eric Reguly is the European Bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, and Eric's written a new book about his father, the Vietnam War and the incredible life of his journalist dad. The book is Ghosts of War: Chasing My Father's Legend Through Vietnam. Eric Reguly. Good morning.

ERIC REGULY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: That your dad might have known some of those men in that report. What do you think when you hear those voices?

ER: Well, what struck me about those audio clips is that the Vietnam War had no front lines, so it was danger all around. I remember my father talking about that because they were never out of danger. Unlike World War II, there was... And the Korean war, there is a front line. But in this... In the Vietnam War, you were always surrounded by danger. There was no predictability. You could step out of a jeep and onto a landmine, and a lot of journalists got killed that way. So it was chilling. Yes, I remember my dad talking about that.

MG: When you say the danger was all around you. I mean, that includes if you were a journalist, you tell a story in this book about your father actually picking up a rifle and he begins firing?

ER: Yes. So in June 1967, when we're living in Chevy Chase, Maryland. My father was... Well actually, in May, sent over to Vietnam, and he went into the horrific Con Tien battle and he went in with seven hundred marines. They were getting slaughtered. At one point, a marine handed my dad, two grenades, a sack of marijuana and an M16 automatic rifle, and said something like "we're not here to protect war tourists", meaning journalism. We're losing a lot of men. You're on your own. So my dad had to dig a foxhole, which he lived in for three days, and he said the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong would run through at night shooting and everyone around him was either wounded or dead, all the Americans. And he said he had to save his own life. He had to pop out of the foxhole and fire the machine gun. He doesn't know whether he killed anyone, but he may have. He told me that.

MG: He came back from reporting in Vietnam, you say, hating U.S. foreign policy. How did what he saw changed who he was?

ER: Well, so my father was Canadian, right, and he's from Thunder Bay, and he didn't go over with a jingoistic view of the war, like many American reporters and Americans in general thought that war was won, even what it was being lost. And in 1967, when the war was still very popular in the states, he saw that the Americans could not win this war. And he said so to his friends, to his editors, and in the final stories he wrote for Vietnam. He said this war was over and it disturbed him. It made him cynical about American policy, and it affected his view of the United States for the rest of his life. Because, you know, he went on to cover the Middle East Africa/Indo-Pakistan war, and he didn't think the Americans were a force of good overseas. And he was very down on American foreign policy for the rest of his life. But that started in Vietnam.

MG: He died in 2011, and then in 2018 you went to Vietnam to retrace his steps covering that war. Why did you want to go to Vietnam?

ER: Well, I've struggled my entire life to understand what motivated my father. I used to think Matt, that he was a thrill seeker and only a thrill seeker, an action junkie. I knew he was brave, but I didn't know how brave he was. So, I mean the process started first of all, with reading everything he published before and during and after the Vietnam War. But I also wanted to go to the spots that shaped it. Like that battle, you mentioned Con Tien, where he had to fight his way out. I went to probably two thirds of the battle zones he went to just to feel it, to smell it, to look at it, to talk to the locals, some of whom remember the battles my father was in. My father was not a hotel journalist. He was in the action and I wanted to experience where he went to learn more about him. And I learned a lot about him. I learned that he wasn't just an action junkie. He was actually, in my view, a truth warrior and wanted to find out what was really happening. And luckily, he was very brave, a lot braver than I would be. He would run towards danger, my instinct is to do the opposite run away from it.

MG: What kind of dad was he? You say in the book that you saw him in some ways as glamorous and semi mythical. What kind of father was he?

ER: As a father, he was... Look, we had a lot of problems as a family because he was largely an absentee father. Look, I love him with all my heart and as a little kid I thought this is what fathers did. They went away to war and they came home. He was not very engaged as a father for either me, his wife or my two sisters. He was always travelling, always taking huge risks. I mean, not very attentive when he was at home. Like, I don't remember him going to school plays or concerts or anything like that. You know, my mother largely raised us, so it was difficult. But I mean, not entirely unusual for the era. So there was scarring of it. And also, you know, there was no internet back then. There were no iPhones. I mean, we didn't know where he was or even if he was alive until we saw his by-line in the Toronto Star.

MG: He was one of, as I said, the best known journalist of this country. And to your point, your mother goes through agony when he is off being a war correspondent, not knowing whether he's going to survive or not. Why did you want to get into the same line of work as your father and become a journalist?

ER: Because I was absolutely obsessed by his lifestyle. I mean, it was a fascinating lifestyle, not only when he was on the road, but when we came home. We would have parties and dinner parties, and such unusual and fascinating people would be at our house. There would be spooks and musicians and celebrities and TV stars and movie stars, this is the sort of world he lived in. And I found it really, really glamorous. But at the same time, I didn't want to entirely replicate his life. I mean, look, I've never covered... I've been in dangerous spots in my life, but I've never covered a war where I was, you know, watching bullets fly. But I didn't want to replicate his life fully because I wanted to have a family life as well. And, you know, I like to think that I'm a good father.

MG: Were you competitive with him as a journalist?

ER: Yeah, very much so, and... I think I still am, I mean, I get emails quite often saying, sorry Eric that story wasn't as good as what your father would have written or the opposite saying, you know, you've surpassed your father... Which I don't think I have. But he used to tease me about it. He was critical of my stories, especially my business stories. He thought I was, you know, not too critical of big business. I think I was. But he was quite left leaning, but he was funny about, he would say, things like... Eric beneath your veneer, there's more veneer. Or he'd say, Eric, you know, there's a lot less to you than meets the eye. We'd have a good laugh, but you know, part of me was thinking, maybe he's right. You know, maybe I'm not half the journalist he was.

MG: He was really competitive with other journalists as well. What is the story of... This is long before cell phones when stories would break and he would go around and would unscrew the end of a payphone so that he could file the story and other people couldn't.

ER: Oh yeah, that's a funny story. It was when he was a court reporter. I think it was in Vancouver where I was born. They wouldn't have computers. They would have to phone stories into the copy desk after the trial ended for that day. What my father would do... And he told me the story is that before the reporters went into the courtroom, he would unscrew the mouth pieces of the payphones, so take out the receiver and put it in his pocket. So all these, you know, a dozen journalists would run out the phone in the story and the editor, on the other hand, couldn't hear them. Oh, I love that story.

MG: He helped make his name through covering the story of a thug by the name of Hal Banks. Who was Hal Banks?

ER: Hal Banks, was an American criminal, actually. He was brought to Canada in the late 50s or early 60s to break the Seafarers International Union, which is the big Great Lakes Shipping Union, which very strike prone the Liberal government at the time in effect sponsored this guy to come to Canada, lived in Montreal, and he started a war of the Seafarers International Union and tried to break them. He was criminally charged. He disappeared in the United States. The FBI couldn't find him. The RCMP couldn't find him. And my father found him in Flatbush, New York, in 1966 in a few hours on his yacht. And because he found them, he got chased by Hal Banks' thugs and they hit my dad with a blackjack, opened up his scalp, bleeding profusely. But my father was smart enough to hire a getaway driver, and they raced through Flatbush, New York, with Hal Banks thugs in pursuit. It was a huge story at the time. And my dad actually took pictures too of it.

MG: The way that you tell that story, it sounds more like a caper, like a crime caper than journalism in some ways. [light laughter]

ER: Well, you know, I didn't believe the story because I was, you know, I was very young when this happened and I said, Dad, did you really get hit on the back of the head? And he said, Yeah. Then he called me over. He would part his hair at the back of his head, take my hand, he said. Feel that, and I felt a huge scar at the back of his head, where Hal Banks' thugs opened his scalp.

MG: That was a huge story, as you say. His next scoop, though even bigger, this made headlines all around the world and caused a good deal of envy here. This is Norman DePoe in Munich on March 13th, 1966.

NORMAN DEPOE: SOUNDCLIP: [Well, this is the building where a Gerda Munsinger is still holed up, spending what most newsmen here hope will be her final 24 hours of refusal to talk to all but the one newspaper that has her under exclusive contract. She's already big news here in the local press. The Sunday Munich dailies feature front page headlines. Inside the paper there is a full page photo of Mrs. Munsinger and perhaps for the first time in Munich history, photographs of two Canadian cabinet ministers.

MG: That newspaper, who had her under exclusive contract was the Toronto Star, the intrepid young reporter who tracked her down was your father. Why was the Canadian media so keen to find Gerda Munsinger?

ER: Well, it was a sensational story. Gerda Munsinger was thought to be a Soviet agent, probably was. And she was sleeping with Canadian cabinet ministers. One in particular, she had an affair with. Now back then Matt, Canada was a big deal in NATO. And if you had a Soviet agent sleeping with your defence minister or deputy defence minister, he was. That's a massive security issue in the cover up. She was reported dead. The Canadian government said she was dead. My father checked her out with his then good connections. One was a Mossad agent from Israel in Montreal and found out that she was very much alive and living in Munich, Germany. So he got her on a plane... And in fact, Norman DePoe was on the plane with them but, Norman DePoe, was going to London to cover the British elections, and my father had agreed to have dinner with him and ran away... hid from him when they got to Heathrow Airport and jumped on the next plane to Munich. Now I've been to the apartment where Gerda Munsinger lived. This is a great story. He sussed out the apartment where she lived, when she entered the building. He went upstairs, banged on her door. She opened the door and she took a few steps back and my father said, Why are you moving back? And she said, You're an assassin sent to kill me, aren't you?

MG: Oh my goodness.

ER: And yeah so, Gerda Munsinger thought my dad was not a reporter, but an assassin sent to silence her. And then what he did was very clever. I think my father invented chequebook journalism in Canada in 1966. He realised he had the exclusive of the year, probably the decade, and he gave her several thousand dollars in U.S. dollars, which was back then, you know, a fortune. And bought the exclusive, bought the photographs. And you know, back then, newspapers could hang on to scoops for days, even weeks. Now it's nanoseconds, right? And it was the biggest story of the year, probably the decade it was sixty four point type "Star man finds Gerda Munsinger", which is it was the same size type that was used to announce the end of world wars.

MG: And the reason that they were able to hang on to that, in part, was because the paper went to these extraordinary lengths to make sure that they didn't get scooped by other papers.

ER: Yeah. So when Ralph Allen, who was then the Toronto Star editor, realized my dad had found her very much alive and had bought an exclusive with her. He didn't want the Globe and Mail, my newspaper or the Toronto Telegram, now long defunct, to find out about it. That's how competitive newspapers were, that Ralph Allen of The Star ran a phoney edition with no mention of Gerda Munsinger on the front page. So you had copy boys running to rival newspapers at roughly midnight to get the first editions and bring them back. So the Telegram and the Globe and Mail copy boys came back with the phoney front paper of the Toronto Star and then the next edition they let it rip. The editor of the Telegram at the time, a man named McFarland said that it was the worst day of his life getting scooped by Bob Reguly of The Toronto Star.

MG: What did you learn? You talked about going on this adventure in some ways to learn about your father. What did you learn about him?

ER: When I grew up, I thought he was just a thrill seeker. You know, he needed higher highs more often to get his jollies. And that's what I believed through most of my life. But when I read... went back and read all his stories, when I retraced his footsteps, when I realized the risks he took and the stories he wrote, which were not standard stories they were probing. They ask questions. I realized that he was a truth warrior, that he really wanted to get behind the story to explain it. He was... really looked out for the underdog. He wanted to discover the truth. And I think he did.

MG: There's another very deadly war that's going on right now in Ukraine, and there are reporters who are dying in covering that war. Do you think of your father?

ER: Oh, all the time. Yes. You know, Ukraine is also, it's a war without defined front lines, especially with modern warfare. A missile can come out of nowhere and hit Lviv, which is, you know, theoretically nowhere near the front lines. So I do think of that and I do think of the journalists there and including our own Globe and Mail journalists and how brave they are. Look, I don't think any of the reporters there or most of them are not there because they need the highs of covering a war. I think they're genuinely concerned that this war is causing a lot of damage, a lot of suffering and has to stop now.

MG: You wrote that you were envious of your dad because he went to Vietnam and covered history, and I only heard the stories. And you are now, I mean, you're not on the front lines, you're not in the battlefield, but you are covering Russia's war with Ukraine. And you're covering history. History is unfolding right now, and you're helping to document it. What's the story about this war that you think you'll tell?

ER: I guess that on this particular war, it seems to me like an old fashioned war. It seems to be almost like a Vietnam War in the sense that there's no defined front lines. It's largely a war of... Where you can get killed any time. Where it's armour tanks, bullets like an old style war, and that I find quite odd that, you know, nothing much has changed in 50 years.

MG: And in the countries that you've been in around Ukraine, what stands out to you about what you've seen and what you've heard?

ER: The fear. I was in Georgia and there is abject fear that Russia is going to invade Georgia next... they have invaded twice already and there's that anxiety. I mean everyone I talk to, every Georgian I talked to said that if Putin wins Ukraine, they're next and Moldova, and they may be right. So, you know, it really struck me that this war was real, out of control and could easily expand.

MG: This is a really powerful book, and there are some great lessons about journalism in terms of being there and telling that story face to face as your father did and as you're doing right now, Eric, it's great to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

ER: Thank you very much, Matt. Bye bye.

MG: Eric Regularly is the European Bureau Chief for the Globe and Mail. His new book Is Ghosts of War: Chasing My Father's Legend Through Vietnam. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. We've been talking about war this morning. Past and present. We'll leave you today with a reflection on war from one of our listeners. He wrote to us after hearing our conversation with Paolo Pietropaolo, my colleague at CBC Music. Paolo shared a story with us. This was a story that he wrote 10 years ago. It's called "The Cello's Tale". It is about a ballet dancer represented by the cello, and that dancer stays behind in her country during a war while others around her flee. This is a story that Paolo has returned to as the war in Ukraine continues.

PAOLO PIETROPAOLO: SOUNDCLIP: [The cello smiles at her friends, squeezes their hands. And helps them climb the steps into the carriage. But when they reach back to take her hand and bring her aboard. She looks up. I can't go with you. Someone has to stay here and pay witness. Someone has to fight back. The train starts to pull away. The cello can't stop the tears from welling in her eyes. She feels a chill. She turns up the colour of her coat. And walks away from the station. There's much to be done.

MG: That's CBC Music host Paolo Pietropaolo and part of The Cello's Tale. David Packer listened to that story from his kitchen in Halifax and cried. It transported him back to the years that he spent as a humanitarian health care worker during the Bosnian War.

DAVID PACKER: In 1995 I stood on the broken remnants of concrete and twisted metal of the Sarajevo Library, where the cellist Vedran Smailovic had played Albinoni's adagio in G Minor, daring the gunners in the hills to shoot him, testing them to have compassion and himself to survive. His cello sang a musical soliloquy to the [inaudible] market every day for 22 days. Each day for one of the people who died waiting for the bread when a mortar shell squeezed between the buildings and turned everything red and broken. We had driven past the shell of the library, building the number of times when Jeff, a colleague who I was working with, who at the time was making his first trip into Bosnia, came and he was already aware of the library's demise and the cellist who had sat in the rubble. Jeffrey decided he was going to take his video camera and record some shots for his colleagues and friends back home in Canada. I advised him that this is not a really good idea. I told him that snipers just sat across the river in the hills, and they had not hesitated in the past to down civilians at that corner. I also could not let him go alone if he decided to go. During the 45 minutes from our house to the old part of town, he seemed to get angrier with every step we took towards the library as we passed. One destroyed building after another. We made it slowly down the east side of the building past a blocked off entrance way full of rubble to the corner, where if you follow the road up the river, you would come to the Old City gates through which Jewish people, Turkish aristocrats and Byzantine Christians once flocked in head of advancing more powerful neighbours. The front of the building was completely blasted. But as we peered inside, we could see the carved pillars and parts of the balcony still in their place. Everything was chipped from shrapnel. And what would have been the central hall were large concrete chunks from the upper walls amongst which sat parts of the metal frame that held the Cupola.

[Music: Cello]

DAVID PACKER: I felt no fear now. What overwhelmed me was the need to stand in the place where Mr. Smailovic played the cello. To be him for one minute and face the deadly wind coming in from the hills. And they stood there in the silence with only a little whistle from the wind finding its way through the structure. I cried for the people of this rich, fervent land. For the children locked in their graves in an overflowing makeshift cemetery. For a helplessness, I felt knowing that anything I could do would likely be insignificant in protecting even one more life from the deadly onslaught. I cried for what we humans are capable of when we have an incapacity to accept difference and we mistake greed for powerful leadership. I weep now for Ukraine, for Afghanistan, for Yemen, for all the places in this world where a cello can voice with absolute clarity what we must do but is drowned out by trumpets which loudly proclaim victory as they tread on the bodies of the innocent. I can't go to Ukraine like I did when I went to Bosnia in 1995 because I'm too old. My tenor cello voice is weakening, I know, but we must speak up for the cello.

[Music: Cello]

MG: That's David Packer in Halifax reading a letter he sent us. We don't believe that there is a recording of that performance in Sarajevo by Vedran Smailovic; the one we heard was by Yo-Yo Ma. And that's The Current for this Monday, coming up next on CBC Radio One. It's Q. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening and we'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: Albinoni's adagio by Yo-Yo Ma]

Monday April 4, 2022 Full Transcript

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